Vimanarama review

Grant Morrison and Philip Bond’s Vimanarama is a delightful little comic. It’s one of Morrison’s simpler comics and part of why I like it so much is because of its simplicity. It’s pop comic or the comic equibalent of a popcorn film. Note, that it’s not the comic equivalent of a blockbuster film, not at all. It’s light-hearted and charming and it’s also funnier than most comics written by Morrison. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and neither should you.

While the comic doesn’t take itself too seriously, the characters really do. Ali is a young Muslim man who is going through and existential crisis. His father has arranged for him to marry and he’s hours away from meeting his bride-to-be. He’s convinced that when he meets his future wife he will know if God loves him or not by how beautiful she is (or isn’t). He’s seriously worried that she’ll either be ugly, stupid or boring. As it happens, Sofia is very pretty and she’s far from boring. Nothing about Ali’s life is boring because the same day he met his fiancée is also the beginning of the end of the Earth when he inadvertently unleashed a great evil upon the world.

The best thing about this comic is the tone but it’s also the easiest thing to miss. A lot of it has to do with Philip Bond’s art. His stocky and cartoonish characters work really well with this story. It’s drastically different from his earlier collaboration with Morrison on Kill Your Boyfriend. Here his art style is more exaggerated or defined than it was with Kill Your Boyfriend and it really works. It actually works better with Vinamarama, partly due to the juxtaposition of the regular human characters and the godlike Ultrahadeen (religious superheroes) and the evil Atlanteans (Jack Kirby inspired villains). Actually, now that I think about it a lot of this comic works by presenting opposing elements and letting them play our organically.

I started to talk about the tone and that’s what makes this comic work for me. Bond’s art is walking on the edge of characterization and Morrison’s dialogue is much sillier here than it usually is in his comics. Really though, it’s two comics professionals not taking it took seriously but still managing to produce a very interesting and very entertaining story. I should say four professionals as colourist Brian Miller and letterer Todd Klein help to round out what is essentially a superstar cast of creators. They’re goofing around a bit but they’re doing it like pros, nothing is unpolished, and the result is a micro version of what you would normally find inside a comic written by Morrison.

I’m pretty sure the whole thing is meant to be over the top for humorous effect. When talking to journalists about the sinkhole in his store, the Ali’s father mentions that the underground mine (that’s what he thinks it is at the time) was a threat to him and his family. He almost lost his scholar son (Omar) who only survived because of his brother (Ali). Really though, he’s exaggerating for the press. Omar is disciplined and obedient but he’s far from being a scholar. Likewise, Ali likes to doodle and he doesn’t appear to have gainful employment. Being described as an artist isn’t accurate at all. It doesn’t sound funny when I explain it but trust me, in the hands of pros like Morrison and Bond, it works rather well. Really though, it’s the compound effect of these little gags being thrown around the page in the midst of godlike alien apocalypse and meet-cute love story. The first issue actually opens with a double splash page taken right out of a Bollywood film because this is the kind of story it is. Imran, Ali’s nephew, couldn’t even crawl yesterday but today he’s walking around getting into all sorts of trouble.

All the humour is just one part of the comic. The second part is the budding romance between husband and wife to be, Sofia and Ali. Their story feels so real and even though it’s told in three single issues, the whole thing feels rather well paced and believable. There is a third part to the comic and that’s the superheroics, a love child of Jack Kirby and Eastern philosophies and religions.

Vimanarama is a micro Morrison story. A lot of his popular themes are present here such as love, metaphysics, superheroes, Eastern cultures but, most important of all, is the theme of human transcendence and the power to save ourselves. Sofia doesn’t fall in love for Ali because he’s cute or charming (mostly because he’s not really charming at all, he’s a bit depressing really) but because he has “sad eyes”. The other reason she falls in love with his is that while his family is busy bickering and complaining about the destruction of their corner store, Ali is always running around trying to save everyone. He’s the family hero and nobody recognizes it but Sofia.

Ali’s decision to achieve transcendence through death in order to save the world was a plan doomed to fail but his heroic action (as much as you can call suicide heroic) helps to defeat the Atlanteans. Though Ali doesn’t succeed on his own, it’s his heroic spirit that helps Ben Rama realize the potential that modern man has to succeed. Prior to Ali’s gesture he was caught up in his own bravado and partially defeated by the decay of the great civilization of Earths he’s familiar with (civilization from 6,000 years ago). This is a deceptive comic. My earlier descrition of pop comic isn’t accurate. That’s what it is on the surface but readers who take their time and choose to savour Vimanarama will be reading a completely different comic than those who are simply reading these issues in an effort to catch up with their reading pile.

Vimanarama is an inspired combination of cosmic superheroics like Jack Kirby’s Fourth World or The Eternals mixed with a family centric dramady and the result is a comic filled with contrasting ideals that’s s pleasure to read.

Miscellaneous Reviews 04: Happy! and Godland: Hello, Cosmic!

Happy!:

Published by Image and created by a superstar creative team of Grant Morrison (writer) and Darick Robertson (artist), Happy! in an exercise in juxtaposition, a genre mash-up comic and like all other mash-ups, it succeeds not based on the genres it’s playing with but on how good the story is. I would characterize Happy! as a mash-up failure and here’s why. Morrison takes a crime story and mixes it with, um, something. That’s the first problem. If you’re going to mix two things together, you have to be able to clearly identify what’s being mixed. This comic is clearly a mash-up of something but Morrison never clarifies both components of what’s being combined. One side, the crime comic, is pretty clear but what’s the deal with Happy the Horse? What kind of story is it and how do you categorize that? I can easily picture a crime story because millions of them exist, some great and some terrible but I’m not able to come to terms with Happy (the horse, not the comic - well the comic, too).

The other reason why Happy! doesn’t work is that the recognizable part of the comic is a boring rehash of other stories. Most notably, it reminds me of the basic plot of The Hard Goodbye, the first Sin City story by Frank Miller. I’m not saying Morrison is taking his plot points form another writer, I’m pointing out that nobody seems to have noticed the pretty strong similarities between both stories. As for the parts that make this story different from The Hard Goodbye, they’re trite and predictable. Mash-ups aren’t very convincing when the basic story stems mostly from one of the two genres and uses a well-known story in the same medium as its plot.  My third problem is that Morrison’s unique authorial voice is completely lost. It’s hard to tell it’s actually written by Morrison. The reason could be that he’s unfamiliar with crime stories. The dialogue also suffers because I got a sense that Morrison was trying too hard. Most of the characters use fuck as punctuation and while that in itself isn’t necessarily what makes the dialogue terrible, it certainly doesn’t help.

I don’t even have anything particularly nice to say about the art. Robertson does a good job drawing things that are gross. He’s really good at capturing images and characters that show the dirtier parts of life, particularly life in the city. I think Robertson is a good fit for this kind of story but there was something different with the inking. The lines were thinner than what I’m used to seeing with his art. At the end known of that really matters because the colouring was too dark to let any of the line work to really shine through. What could have been a really interesting mini-series by two well-known and applauded creators in modern comics, Happy! will undoubtedly be relegated to a mere footnote in the story of these creators contribution to the medium. 

Gødland: Hello, Cosmic!:

Gødland is a superhero and cosmic comic pastiche. Specifically, it riffs on the works of Jack Kirby, both his art and a bit of the writing, and on the family dynamic of the Fantastic Four. It’s co-created by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli and they’re not just making use of some of the great comics of their youths, they’re also using what is known in the industry as the “Marvel style” of creating comics. Casey writes out a plot and hands it over to Scioli who draws out an entire issue and hands it back to Casey who writes in the caption boxes and dialogue. It’s a different form of collaboration than what we usually see in comics today but it seems to work pretty well for these two.

I’ve regularly read good things about Gødland online, particularly by people whose taste often matches up with me. I’ve also read other comics by Casey that I’ve enjoyed quite a bit (but he also has some terrible stuff). It was just a matter of time until I read Gødland and now that I finally have, I’m a bit disappointed. Part of my disappointment is related to my expectations. I wanted more science fiction, more things cosmic. The first volume of Gødland focuses as much on the Archer family and their relationship with the universal cosmology than it did on supervillainy with characters such as Basil Cronus (love the name), Discordia and her father. I like it but I don’t love it. I feel like Casey and Scioli are getting their footing but it’s still impressive what they accomplish. You can tell that they have a good idea where they want the story to go but it’s not minutely planned out.

The first volume of Gødland leaves me wanting more. It kind of felt like a tease even though Casey and Scioli introduce a lot of characters, some important backstory all while setting up the larger story still to come. I want to know more about the space foetus Adam meets on Mars, I want to know more about Maxim the armoured spaced dog and Iboga the mysterious space god. I also want to know more about the Archer sisters, Stella, Neela and Angie. I feel like the book will focus primarily on the Archer sisters and their relationship (or lack of) with Adam but also because family is an important theme in Casey’s body of work. Gødland is simultaneously impressive and underwhelming. I know, it’s a strange combination, but I’ve responded to a comic like this before. It makes me feel like I did when reading Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles which is one of his best comics. I’m hoping that’s an indication that Gødland will also be a great comic but the only way to find out for certain is to keep on reading.