The Sad Last Stand of a Broken Man

"This is not The Greatest Song in the World, no.

This is just a tribute."
-- Tenacious D, Tribute

Of all of the "nostalgia" projects that Marvel could possibly put out -- say, regaining the license to Micronauts, maybe a new Alf comic, or resurrecting dead concepts like Rocket Raccoon -- the one that probably wouldn't pop immediately into anyone's head is a resurrection of the Marvel Cosmic. It started with the Infinity Abyss mini-series, then earlier this year with Marvel: The End, and now with the ongoing Thanos series. I guess Quesada must have a soft spot for Starlin's work, or something, because it doesn't seem to fit in with the current Marvel publishing scheme. Today's Marvel seems all about grounding the characters in some sense of "reality", getting them out of their costumes, and into a sort of more realistic approach to their storytelling -- going from just straight up, goody, coloured costumes to spinning the story through other genres (i.e. superhero as cop drama, superhero as legal thriller, superhero as sitcom, etc.)

The Cosmic Shakespearean Tragedy

Although often waxing Shakespearean monologues of woe, destruction, and hubris, the characters in Starlin's cosmic tales have always been appropriately larger-than-life. You won't see Gamorra settling down off the New Jersey turnpike earning a living as a stripper, giving us insight into the human condition, peeling away levels of her psyche with every fallen article of clothing, no. That would just be silly. Granted, someone writing fan fiction has probably already tapped that idea, but that's never been the approach that Starlin has given the cosmic characters. ...and you won't start seeing an alternate approach here either.

If you think of Richard III with a cast of aliens, gods, superheroes, and a giant purple madman in the title role, you'd come close to the nature of the arc of Starlin's Thanos. Up to this point, Thanos has largely been portrayed as an unrepentant villain -- with occasional flights of seeming heroism that usually amount to nothing more than doing the "good" thing in order to save his own purple hide. Now, aside from Thanos Quest and The Infinity Gauntlet, although I enjoyed the premises and the large landscape of the entire Marvel Universe Starlin set his epics against, my interest normally fizzled out before I reached the end. Although there were interesting things going on here and there, series like the other Infinity books, I never finished.

It has been some time since I read the initial offerings of the few, but if I remember correctly, I always found the execution to be entirely too bland and it's always going to end up back at the status quo. Nothing really changes, and Thanos himself ended up looking like nothing more than a pathetic failure. A Quixote tilting at windmills for his lady Death. Even if you take it as a character arc, intent on progressing Thanos himself, it fails because there's really no growth, just endless cycles of striving for power, attaining it, and then losing it again. I suppose there's probably a moral lesson in there somewhere, that those out to gaining power through negative means are destined to see it fall from their grasp, or from the perspective that those with the "disease to please" can never achieve anything of substance for themselves since they're doing nothing more than walking to the whims of another. ...but I think I'm attributing too much to a "cosmic adventure" comic book. Maybe that is the thematic character development that Starlin is trying to make explicit in this first issue of Thanos' new ongoing series, but it feels like all so much exposition.

As Thanos sits, sits on a barren desolate world that he himself destroyed, he waxes for the audience, "I have always been a monster, Adam Warlock. This I have accepted, even taken pride in. You cannot conceive of the misery I have left in my wake." (Thanos #1, pg. 6) Yet, Starlin hasn't the wit of Shakespeare, and what follows the villain's self-admission comes as nothing more than a recap, giving no further insight into the nature of the beast. No dramatic turn, no further character points, a simple retelling, not even coloured by the character's narration.

To exposit or not to exposit? That's a bloody question

I've seen it many times before that a comic is lambasted for not telling the reader enough about the past history of a character that it's deemed unfriendly to new readers. Strangely enough, this criticism usually comes from longtime readers and not someone new to the material. Case in point, Crimson Dynamo. I've seen numerous reviews and comments about the series being difficult for people without a working knowledge of the previous incarnation of the character, since this new series doesn't say anything about it other than the name of the guy who designed it and wore the original armour. What does it matter? This new book isn't about him, it's about someone entirely new, who themselves have no clue who this guy was. Knowledge of the original creator has absolutely no bearing on the enjoyment of the new series.

Likewise, though, when a book does receive a detailed history of the character at hand, it too gets cut to shreds for "boring" old readers, and dumping too much exposition on their heads; information that they already know to boot. Jim Starlin is from the "old school" of comics writing, and as such, the first issue of Thanos is essentially an encapsulation of his prior history. Everything a reader might "need" to know about the character that happened before this point. Honestly, it isn't terribly exciting, but it gets the information across that will allow us a more "informed" view of what will come now that Thanos has apparently turned a new leaf.

The interesting thing is that no doubt, had Starlin not included this material, self-same critics would have been attacking it for turning Thanos on to a new path without giving us the information of what came previously to judge the repentant hero turn against. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, that really seems to hinge on whether or not the given critic happens to like the previous work, whether it's a currently popular writer/artist, whatever, that lends a bias to their critique.

In the best of all possible worlds, exposition is woven seamlessly into dialogue and action, but, honestly, very few seem to actually be able to do this. Starlin's tack is to make it explicit, have the characters come right out and say what has gone before, albeit with a slight turn of reflection. I think, had Thanos' recounting of his history been a little more peppered with questionable recollection -- the usual colour of an unreliable narrator -- , there might have been a greater hook to "listen" to what he's saying.

Excellent Birds

Where Starlin does go right, -- and I believe where he has always been great and the reason why he can bring me back every time he does a new project despite the fact that I never seem to wind up finishing them --, is as a draughtsman. His pages are always well-designed and easy to follow. In this first issue, he uses a fair amount of double-page spreads, that nicely enhance the "scope" of the cosmic nature of the book.

There's also an interesting design element on most of the pages that I think is part of the true appeal of the book. On most pages, there are little black boxes. As evidenced in the spread above, it's in the lower left hand corner. Like on the other pages, it makes very little sense. It's not a box for page number, there's no dialogue or caption, it's just a black box superimposed over the image. It's an alien image brought into the design, and makes you notice it because it feels so out of place, especially as it grows larger and larger on every subsequent page, eventually developing into three black panels. Then three black panels with a progression of opening eyes. Apparently, someone has been watching, and at Thanos' repentant surrender turn, screams a cryptic, "So it begins!" This, I suppose is the hook of the book, an unexplained set of devious eyes lending credence to the idea that something "bigger" may be happening. If you blink, you'll miss it.