I swear I didn’t read A Thousand Crows’ review of Supermarket, before writing my own. I especially didn’t read the comments below the post, where somebody named AngelVision wishes that the series had been six or eight chapters. Honest. Anyway, here’s an excerpt, with which I’m in complete agreement:

The story itself has a anti-consumerism tilt to it, but it’s mostly violence, action, and humor. I really loved the world that everything was set in, with all it’s towering buildings and beautiful toxic sunsets, and I could look at Kristian Donaldson’s depictions of it forever. What didn’t feel as strong to me were the characters inhabiting that world: they didn’t make a huge impression on me. That’s not to say that Supermarket isn’t entertaining – it’s awesome – but there are better examples of Brian Wood’s writing. …more

Chris Arrant, on the other hand, liked the book a lot — enough to place it at number six in his top graphic novels of 2006 list.

Like me, Ian Brill was taken with the book right up until the very end, and has particularly interesting things to say about Wood’s ability to build a character, and then to build a story and a thematic structure around that character’s, um, characteristics:

There’s a scene early on in Supermarket that defines the book’s star, Pella Suzuki, and the book itself. Coming downstairs for breakfast the teenager lectures her mother about the plight of farmers who never see any real money from the billion-dollar coffee industry. After taking that first sip in the morning Pella’s sermon is interrupted so she can ask her mother “Is this Sumatran? S’good.” That uneasy co-existence of two contradictory notions, enjoying the spoils of the industrial world while still knowing the injustices behind those spoils, is at the heart of both Pella’s character and the book. Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson have created a comic that stars a would-be revolutionary who decries her urban surroundings while reveling in the almost sci-fi aesthetic of today’s cities and their cultures.
…more

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A while back, I loaned my fifteen-year-old niece a copy of Demo: The Collected Edition by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, and she loved it. She loved it, loved it, loved it (as did I). Or, at least, she said she loved it. Who can know? Maybe she was just humoring me. I had been trying to foist Western comics on her for several years, with no success. In her natural habitat, undisturbed by unclish enthusiasms, she’s a fan of xxxHOLiC and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, etc. Now I’m wondering if I’ll give her my copy of Supermarket, by Wood and Kristian Donaldson (who is sort of a latter-day Cloonan, drawing the same slouching, sneering, manga-influenced-by-way-of-Paul-Pope, too-cool-to-be-hip cigarette smokers with consciences, utilizing the same fat, confident linework that Cloonan and Pope made famous, all elegant and choppy, realistic and design-y, Vertigo and Kodansha, at the very same time).

I think I probably won’t.

It’s not that the thing doesn’t have its moments and its qualities. The first chapter, in fact, rocks. In it, we meet our protagonist, Pella, a self-righteous, cynical, but unselfaware teenaged girl from the richest side of a scary future metropolis, the “Supermarket” of the title, rendered by Kristian in gorgeous neon noir, a place and a time exactly halfway between right now and Blade Runner. By the end of that chapter, Pella finds herself homeless and in hiding from the most dangerous criminal gangs in the city, cut off from her fundage and her family, and required, simply, to stay alive. On the last page of that chapter, she’s rolling into the worst parts of town on a dark, crowded bus, with the drunks and the punks and the other anonymous losers who populate all “less than Platinum” levels of this socioeconomically segregated city, trying to figure out what has happened to her, and what she should do next. We have been given a glimpse at just enough of her spoiled self-righteousness to want to watch her suffer and learn. We have been given a glimpse at just enough of her intelligence and conscientiousness to want to watch her thrive.

“Oh boy,” I said to myself. “This is going to be good.”

And for a while, it is.

From a certain point forward, though, you find yourself watching a third-rate Quentin Tarantino film on paper, this agonizingly choreographed action sequence after that agonizingly choreographed action sequence, and then another and another, each ratcheting up the artificial “Oh My Fucking God” factor one mechanical notch at a time. There’s a lot of raw material here — the kind of High Concept Hollywood pitch fodder that works well when described in the most nugatory way, but only then. The Yazuka with a Samurai sword who poses, and says, calmly, “Submit to me,” before he charges, not waiting for a response. The bloodthirsty underworld gang comprised of Swedish porn models. Etc. Blah. High Concept can’t always carry the day. High Concept can’t ever carry the day. Just ask the guys who made Snakes on a Plane. It’s always about the execution.

Don’t get me wrong: on a moment-by-moment basis, every page, every panel, is eye-poppingly well-crafted, even the most violent ones (maybe especially those). The fatal flaw here is hardly a lack of what we call, in the technical parlance, chops. Wood and Kristian have both, assuredly, got chops, and chops to spare. On the strength of his other projects, Brian Wood is one of my favorite writers. Kristian Donaldson, whom I’d never heard of before this, knocked me out. That’s an artist I’ll be watching in the future, for sure. If the last chapter or two of Supermarket had been stretched out into, say, three or four more, allowing for better character development and more thoroughly extrapolated stakes-raising, if the slam-bang action sequences had been less archly imagineered, if the ending hadn’t been entirely too easy and abrupt after all that rigamarole, etc., then I’d probably have been able to recommend this book to you with enthusiasm.

It’s not, I should mention, a complete load of crap, like so many contemporary action-adventure comics. There was almost something very special here, it just wasn’t given the space it needed to come together at the very end.

(The image on this page is a detail from Supermarket, copyright (c) 2006 Brian Wood, Kristian Donaldson, and Idea and Design Works LLC)

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Demo, a collection of twelve short stories in comics form by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, reminds me of a great album by some popular alt-rock band. Like the best alt-rockers, Wood and Cloonan twist the devices of mainstream pop to unusually thoughtful ends. In the case of a rock band, those pop devices might be catchy hooks, or crunchy guitars. Think of the way that REM used schmaltzy sentimentality to hateful and ironic effect in their first top 40 hit (”This one goes out to the one I love …”). It’s pop, but it isn’t — but, yes, really, it is — but, no, it really isn’t. And so on. That’s how it’s done in music. In the case of a comic book, “pop” means superheroes. Even allegedly non-superheroic pop comics, like Sin City or Planetary, present the reader with superheroes (or supervillains) to root for and/or despise, albeit tights-less, cowl-less, capeless ones. That Yellow Bastard, for example, would be right at home in any Batman story. Demo, on the other hand, remains comparatively non-action-oriented: it revolves around characters with super powers, but in a very different way than your typical Marvel or DC comic does. Well. Okay. That’s a bit of an overstatement. Some of the stories, like the first one, “NYC,” read like subplots in a 1970’s X-Men comic (I totally imagine that the next panel — the one after the ending of this story — involves Professor X’s disembodied head, come to save the day; it has to). That is not to say that they’re not good stories. They are better stories than most stories you read in comics these days. The best stories in the book, though, the ones that actually make it worth reading, are the ones that push all the way through the pop trappings, and past them, into real and realistic moments that you’d never find in a mainstream comic book, or even in any superhero movie — moments that are dangerous precisely because they are so ambiguous, and so startlingly drab.

The fourth story, “Stand Strong,” represented the first of those moments, for me. It’s about a blue-collar guy with super strength, a crappy job, and sleazy friends. It’s also, more importantly, about how, for most people, the acceptance of a mediocre, unaccomplished life is probably the only definition of adulthood that really means anything. The last two pages and a half, where James (the protagonist) watches his father’s friends and co-workers socialize in a bar, content with their unglamorous lots in life, speak more brutally about his utter defeat (even in the midst of what seems like a spectacular moment of success) than any number or combination of words could ever hope to do. They also tell of a writer who trusts his artist to make the most important, and most difficult, moments ring with meaning.

Wood’s faith in Cloonan is not misplaced. It is true that she flaunts her influences without coyness — they range from Hiyao Miyazaki to Frank Miller and Paul Pope (each story is drawn in a completely different style) — but she does so in an accomplished, knowing way, that betrays no hint of apprenticeship or naive imitation. She’s not reaching for other styles because she doesn’t have her own. It’s neither an homage nor a swipe, when she does it, in other words, but something else altogether. It’s a part of the story. It’s integral to the structure of the book. Cloonan knows you’re going to think of Miller when you read “One Shot, Don’t Miss,” in the same way that Philip Roth, say, knows you’re going to think of James Joyce when you read The Counter-Life, or, for that matter, in the same way that James Joyce knew you were going to think of Ibsen when you read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: the meta-reference adds another layer of meaning to the text, as they used to say in college term papers back in my day, and probably still do.

Here’s one of the coolest things about the book. The stories are all about people with super powers, right? So as you’re reading them — as one does — you just accept that about them. Super powers are part of this world. Got it. Now let’s see what happens. Then, in story number ten (another of my favorites), “Damaged,” your suspension of disbelief, and casual acceptance of the whole super-power trope, is actually turned against you (and against the seeming protagonist of the story), to provide the cruelest twist of all, as if Wood and Cloonan had come up behind you while you were reading the book, and razzed in your ear, and said, “Ha! You actually fell for that super-powers-in-the-real-world crap! Sucker!”

And you love them for it. Or, at least, I do.

So, yes, it’s that kind of book of short stories: each one sets you up for the next, and it all hangs together in a meaningful way. Like a concept album. Or, yes, like a demo tape.

And, yes, it’s highly recommended.

Title: Demo, the collected Edition
Creators: Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan
Publisher: AIT/PlanetLar
Cover Price: $19.95 (softcover)

More information about Demo at Amazon

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