Who Is Charles Webb?
A frequent contributor to Comics Bulletin, Twitchfilm, and his own blog, Monster In Your Veins, I do more than write about comics, movies, and games – I make my own. I was the lead writer on the horror-mystery mobile game “Exile,” and contributing writer to several other titles for both classic mobile and home platforms. Most recently I’ve taken on the Lead Game Designer position for the North American arm of Advanced Mobile Applications where I hope to have some interesting projects to tell you all about soon.
Sometimes a State of Grace
By Xavier Lopez
Stories, tales, mysteries, fables and an army at war with love itself. It has been an interesting couple of weeks down Vertigo way. With the start of the new year, Vertigo finds itself mirroring the cycle of life. For in this period, a story continues and begins (albeit in collected trade paperback form), one long-running epic tale continues after its seeming climax, and a graceless story comes to its inevitable end.
As I noted in the last installment of this column, Vertigo is very much a writer's dreamscape, a place where authors get to ply their trade alongside some very pretty pictures. The only thing is that, with stories, the trick is always in the telling. And as Cain would more than likely tell Abel, this is a mighty big trick—not always easy, not always successful, and sometimes god-awfully messy.
Let's begin, this begin at the beginning, so to speak. House of Mystery came out twice in the last two weeks, in the form of its latest issue, #9, and its first TPB. The series' first graphic novel compiles the opening five issues of this interesting new series, along with variant covers and some very nice character designs by Luca Rossi. 
Let me say, first, that I grew up reading tattered copies and reprints of the House of Mystery issues edited by veteran Joe Orlando—you see, my dad was a huge fan of such classic television shows as Twilight Zone and Night Gallery—and he loved stories that had that classic last-minute-gotcha moment. You know the kind, the ones that turn on you at the final possible frame when you realize that the book To Serve Man is actually a cookbook.
My dad absolutely loved that one. But the thing is that, at this point, we are so aware of that trope, that it becomes harder and harder to catch us with this particular type of story. Let's face it, we do seem to be a more demanding, jaded set of readers--especially seeing as how we are paying considerably more than 35 cents an issue, even adjusting the price for inflation.
We now expect a bit more of a bang for our buck. Luckily, there is more to House of Mystery, and we'll get to that, but in terms of the short-stories told within the House, they tend to be of the Twilight Zone variety and very much like those that you would have heard around the campfire. That is, very short, a little campy, and ending with exactly the twisted entrails that you would expect.
The thing is that here these shorts range from mildly interesting to the hollowly graphic or just plain silly. To be fair, however, I don't think that I could come up with a monthly short story, and I do admire Matt Sturges and Bill Willingham for even attempting to do this on a monthly basis.
As I said before, however, there is more to the series, and it looks like it could go in some interesting directions as we are beginning to see in the monthly series. Back to the TPB, which reprints House of Mystery #1-5, wherein we are introduced to Fig, an everywoman character who is, at turns, pretty, spunky, and sweet but not too pretty, spunky, and sweet as to be threatening. She is, in essence the perfect character for Willingham and Sturges to use as a foil for all the wild and weird denizens of the world they are creating.
This said, however, I have to admit that the first few issues read like a cross between Waiting for Godot—or even, ironicaly Twilight Zone's "Five Characters in Search of an Exit," with a dash of Cheers, a sprinkle of the Amityville Horror, and a smidge of the poet Baudelaire thrown in. Still, if this is anything like Sturges and Willingham's other works, then there may be all sorts of interesting directions that this series could go in and, more than likely, will before it collects its fair share of adoring fans.
I, for one, am definitely ready to give this series a chance, even if I worry that it seems too hastily willing to lock itself into a sit-com mise-en-scene; we are too quickly introduced to the cast and the main settings where the brunt of the stories will occur, for my taste, and they are so perfectly set up as the locale for the series that it feels too contrived.. I hope that the book doesn't so easily give in to the temptation of staying too close to the House of Mystery from which the series gets its name, and I would be very happy to see more of the world that they are creating. If the only limitation is that each issue has to have a story-within-a-story, I would like to see what would happen if Fig moved further out into this fantasy space or became trapped in the TARDIS-like interior of the mysterious mansard setting--meeting up with all sorts of creatures, each with a story to tell. I mean, every rat, cockroach, and spider must have something they are just itching to share.
To some extent, in fact, it is the short stories that become the weakest part of this series. Take, for instance, the story "Gothic Romance" from this month's issue, written by Bill Willingham and very nicely illustrated by Swamp Thing veteran Bernie Wrightson. While it is great to see Wrightson return to the place where he drew his very first DC work, and fun to see his interpretation of some very classic MGM and Hammer movie monsters, I can't help but wish the story was just a tad stronger, the ending just a bit more surprising.
That being said, Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham seem to be on quite the roll lately, what with the recent news that Fables will soon have a pilot episode and that ABC will have the option to pick it up as an on-going television series. In addition, both writers have taken over the mantle left by departing uber-writer Geoff Johns of my all-time favorite superhero series, the JSA. These are indeed interesting times for fans of the two writers.
Speaking of Fables, the latest issue, #80, shows our favorite Fables picking up the pieces after the complete destruction of their beloved Fable Town. The aptly named, and utterly evil, Mr. Dark is on his way, and some very scary events presage his imminent arrival. The once captured and defeated sorceress Baba Yaga is free again, a magic bottle appears to be missing its most recent inhabitant, and across the world, the most innocent—young children—are giving in to some very dark urges. 
Needless to say, things are again heating up in the land of the living fairy tales. It is amazing how effortlessly this series moves from story to story, building slowly, almost imperceptibly, until before you know it, events have gathered steam and exploded into climax.
It is, however, quite another story (literally) with Rick Veitch's Army@Love, which strains with every page. This series has tried very hard to do what authors like Grant Morrison do with ease--that is, write a story that is at once clever, original, thought-provoking, and which winks at the audience while also attempting to, if not break, to at least bend the fourth wall, leaving a few big dents in it.
What Veitch appears to lack (here, at least), is that unquantifiable grace that could have made a yarn like Army@Love into something more than a pastiche of moments and ideas. Not to get to metaphysical, but "grace" according to Merriam-Webster is defined as favor or charm—basically, a god-given effortlessness--that this story just seems to lack.
The funny thing is that everything is here--the ideas, the pathos, the sense of post-modern irony--and yet things never quite gel. There is random weirdness in the form of several crazy characters (including the Big Finger), ironic references to the fact that these are merely comic book characters trapped in a four-color world, even the threat of total annihilation and some major commentary about the Iraq war and Neo-conservative atrocities. But it just doesn't come together. Instead, this story is ugly in the same way that those religious tracts that they hand out at the fair-grounds (and which seem to magically show up shoved into new-age books) are. The parable is there, the ideas are there, but one is too stupefied by the car-crash of repulsiveness that fills each page to actually be able to see them. 
Veitch, here creates an unbelievable, manic alternate world in which no one behaves even slightly like real humans would in similar circumstances. Which would be fine and even interesting if there was just a hint of humanity to any of the characters. But, instead everything seems calculated to merely shock—which again, could be fine—but here, something is just missing. The nearest I can come up with is that the series, and especially the ending, lack a hint of that indefinable something which we pathetically label "grace."
In comparison, Gary Erskine's inkwork lends a much needed grounding sense of the banal to the wacky proceedings of the rest of the book. His realization of Big Finger, which is a metaphor that will send every high school kid into paroxysms, is visually an interesting mix of pop-surrealist H.R. Pufnstuf, the Grimace, and something out of Pokemon—in other words, silly while still being an interesting interpretation of Veitch's writing.
Better yet is the way that Erskine's work brings a sense of irony to the rest of the book. His stark, almost hyper-realistic way of showing you every pore of a character's puffy fleshiness is a bit like watching a pornographic movie on a hi-definition television. He replaces romance with a brilliant harshness that only brings into sharp focus just how horrible and over-the-top everything is.
In the end, as Veitch's anti-hero Mr. Loman slouches toward the piles of garbage of his past and his inevitable future, finding his ultimate peace in just forgetting the events that once transpired around him, I can't help but feel that sometimes readers wish they could do exactly the same thing.
Until next time. This is Xavier, signing off.
Got a comment or question about this Soapbox?
Leave at message at the Vertigo Spotlightes Message Board.