City of Heroes, part 2

(Edited to add, July 4: Looking at this and comparing it to the first and third sections of City of Heroes, I thought that I should edit it a bit to make it fit the pattern. I know it doesn't matter anymore but the fact that it sticks out like a sore thumb is like an itch I can't help but scratch. Gotta warn ya though, I'm lousy in shifting to one topic to another.)

Of course, I must admit that I've also started picking up a few of the local flavor.

One was the collected Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah by CarloVergara, a funny turn-on-its-head look at homosexuality and comic legends like Darna, while the other was the graphic novel After Eden by Arnold Arre, a talky love story that somehow involves white negligee-wearing angels and black overcoat-wearing devils. And of course, there's also the anthology Siglo: Freedom as edited by Dean Alfar and Vin Simbulan. (Which, really, I was planning to check out except that Dean gave me a free copy already. *wry grin*) I also checked out some Filipino rock band/superhero group action courtesy of Batch 72 by Budgette Tan.

Looking the stuff coming out in stores like Comic Quest and Filbars, the local comics scene looks great thanks to-- based on my limited knowledge of the comics market--Whilce Portacio (and cool superhero group with big guns, Wetworks) for opening the way for local talent to enter the international market.

And speaking of superhero groups that started from the the Wildstorm universe, Warren Ellis' The Authority deals with that fascinating question when dealing with a group of high-powered superheroes: when you have all that power, what's stopping you from trying to better the world? Of course, a lot of comic books have been done on that same concept. Ellis' take on this is to include a lot of current events and-- oh yes-- lots and lots of bloody violence.

However, it's Ellis' smaller, almost-throwaway ideas that would thrill the reader. For example, there's the alien shiftship, the Authority's main base of operations the size of a small moon, which defies time and dimension. There's the Bleed (the space between dimensions) and the different universes that the ship travels through (like the mechanical realm of the Devachanic and the ethereal IdeaSpace and its schools of Obsession Fish). Likewise, Ellis has created characters like Jenny Sparks, the electrical-powered Spirit of the 20th Century, and Jack Hawksmoor, the God of the Cities who once battled a sentient Kansas City using Tokyo City as a battle suit. Yikes.

Story-wise, the comic books are exciting but only to a certain point as the storylines revolve around the idea that, to quote the Midnighter, the characters need a bigger stick to take down the big baddies. Another weakness in The Authority is that Ellis focuses only on Sparks (due to story concerns), leaving the other characters a bit thin. And because of this, the dialogue sometimes suffers. Oh, there are moments of humor, like when one of the characters, the Midnighter, crashes their alien ship against an island city as his version of a 'big stick'. However, when the same character mutters the same lines in each and every battle, it gets tiring.

Overall, an exciting popcorn read.

(To be continued...)