This is Spawn Point my regular-ish posting about all things Spawn and his Universe. Sometimes you plan to write a weekly column looking at the nature of Spawns franchising. Sometimes you get called to strike for a couple weeks, temporarily enjoined, and catch up on 3 weeks of grading. In the spirit of catch up what follows is a look at the latest issues of Monolith and Rat City as well as the debut of Misery. One day I'll expand on my notes and write about Gunslinger Spawn post-Spawn #350 (maybe next week).
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| Misery #1 Script/Plot by Todd McFarlane Art by Szymon Kudranski Color by FCO Plascencia Lettering by Andworld Design |
Misery is the new four issue miniseries focusing on Cyan Fitzgerald. Cyan has been a constant supporting character for Spawn, both Simmons and the series; representing what could’ve been for him and Wanda and an innocent bystander in Hell and Heavens war on Earth. The idea of a Cyan focused miniseries is kind of interesting given this long history within the franchise, what is her perspective on the insanity that is her life? Unfortunately this first issue doesn’t do much to justify ‘why’ readers should care (or buy more issues.) Todd McFarlane and artist Szymon Kudranski are currently working on the relaunched Sam & Twitch and at least in this first issue Misery feels like it would fit as an arc in that series featuring Cyan not on its own.
Readers might be a little surprised when they open the book and think there has been a massive misprint. Misery #1 opens not on Cyan and her father failing to communicate, but a 6 page sequence about Jenny and her abusive piece of shit cop husband. Jenny was delayed due to traffic and with-it dinner. The piece of shit partner did not take this justification in a normal rational or loving manner and proceeds to brutally abuse her. It is the kind of sequence that feels at home in Sam & Twitch. The splash page credit sequence, juxtaposing the scene of an accident with everyday items which become linked to Jenny’s travel drama is fantastic. Colorist FCO Plascencia delivers a moody palette as Jenny arrives home with a rageful red slowly building up and emanating from the piece of shit partner threatening to overtake not just the lone light source but the inky darkness on the page as well. The graphic nature of this opening sequence establishes the physical and visual stakes for the series.
This darkness is contrasted with the lightness and relative failure of Father Daughter communication between Cyan and Terry. While Cyan says this is about Terry not finding justice for her mothers murder, this feeling of resentment is born of a failure of recognition. A moment subtly captured by Cyan entering her translucent form. While I will get on McFarlane’s scripting in a moment, this is a plainly well done sequence by the creative team. It’s a bit weird that Kudranski is just drawing Terry as Keith David, but it’s an homage that works.
After meeting up with an old friend the second big set piece / violence against women occurs. In a sequence that feels like it’s pulled out of the fever dreams of 70s New York a group of young men don’t like being called “ass turds” and told to shoo (read: stop harassing us). It's the kind of unhinged dialog only McFarlane could write. They proceed to threaten physical and sexual violence against Cyan and her friend at the next stop. Like the opening splash page Kudranski juxtaposes larger images with tight close-up panels of a l lecherous tongue and unzipped pants to get across what is really going on here. Cyan fights back and even gets the better of a couple of them.
Cyan’s moment of female rage is visually captured by Kudranski as the devolution of the page itself. Panel lines go from typical solid black or white borders, to scratches, until the whole thing explodes in a double page spread as Cyan gives her assailant what is essentially the Penance Stare as touch. This is the kind of work I like seeing Szymon Kudranski do. The fanning panel layout and shift form ink to pencil like line work mixed with the random geometry (that reads a little trash polka). FCO Plascencia slowly drops the color from the pages as the eye goes from left to right. In the middle the figure of Cyan and her victim/ assailant locked in a moment of two way empathy. McFarlane’s narration says Cyan’s world “shatters into the … insane” and it is an apt description for the splash page. Cyan is flooded with all the horrible stuff this man has done and it is redirected back on him tenfold. A crime scene photo on the next page, another clever panel with in a panel, shows him bleeding through his eyes apparently alive.
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It’s pages like this that make up for some of the more stilted figure work Kudranski produces. I often wonder if it’s a matter of how coolers follow his line work that leads to that color banded realism (see Sam & Twitch also done by FCO Plascencia). Mikel Janin’s line work as a similarly referenced and stilted posing but at least with June Chung it works. The color and page design the art team produce in Misery is why this wouldn’t neatly fit as a case in the paes of Sam & Twitch, it’s too weird and supernatural influenced. But this aesthetic difference doesn’t change how marginal Cyan feels in her own book. She is on a journey of self-discovery and after a run in with Jen at the police station (and dodging Twitch) winds up at Granny’s house. Maybe the next issue will start to interrogate what it is Cyan wants as she reacts to her new Rogue like power set.
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| Rat City #3 Script/Plot/Lettering by Erica Schultz Art by Ze Carlos Color by Jay David Ramos |
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| Rat City #3 Pages 3 (top) 4 (bottom) |
Three issues in and the creative team seem to have come into their own as a unit. Erica Schultz plotting and scripting does a good job of both structuring the issue and telling the story and giving Ze’ Carlos room to visually tell it, in particular a shattering splash page. The standout for me in this issue, however, is the work of Jay David Ramos’ palette. Their vibrant use of color is giving the early 90s experimentation with digital color (when it was still new and mixing with existing printing processes)* and it adds to both the readability of Carlos macro page design choices. In particular Ramos keeps the figures of Peter Carin, now know as the Deviant by PTS, bold and with a lot of soft rendering of details in contrast to the environment. Rat City's environmental palette is technically applied in a similar way, but the spectrum of colors and their value makes everything darker. The grime of the city as Peter rushes out the door with Rhys is the mixture of browns and greens on top of dirty silver with blue back lighting. In contrast to this complexity Carin’s Deviant form, is composed of defined segments of Red, Black, and White roughly following the 60-30-10 rule. The lack of refraction when the Deviant’s mask hits the neon lights of (Nu) New York City helps to sell the supernatural qualities of the suit as this unholy fusion of technology and demonic energy.
Picking up from the suit reveal in the last issue, Rat City is in near constant motion as Carin fleas with Rhys and the forces of PTS. With no real downtime except for the final scene the creative team do the right thing and just show readers the hints of the Deviant’s powerset. This might surpise you but, it’s a lot of the same powers most Hellspawn have! Of note is Carin using and controlling the shadow teleportation technique, first unknowingly activating it and winding up at St. Raymonds Cemetery the final resting place of the rest of his battle brothers and now Rhys. Carlos uses the teleportation and Carin’s growing familiarity with it as the transition point into a heart shattering splash page. The final teleport of the issue also acts as the page transition to another scene Dr. Boze facing the anonymous Chairman of PTS, so not only is Carin getting more sophisticated with their use but the creative team as well. How the creative team manages to show and not tell the powerset in this issue was heartening considering how much “telling” is baked into the formal logic of Spawn IP.
Peter doesn’t have many answers to what he’s gotten himself into, but readers are beginning to get a better sense of things under the neon glow. For starters, the narrator of this series is Rhys’ informant-comms support, Quinlain Wali. Dr. Boze refers to Wali with the gender neutral honorific title of Mx. so until otherwise I’m assuming Wali goes by they/them pronouns. (update: and the writer confirms this) It might be a little hard to figure that out though as they throw themselves off the top of an old New York bridge after meeting Carin and saying they're the source of the mysterious black out in issue #1. It is an effective enough cliffhanger. While I’m doubtful Wali will perish in the next issue, it raises the prospect of an Augustus Hill (see Oz) style narrator which could be interesting.
It is a rare thing though to see the omniscient narrator and with it raises questions of their perspective. It forces up a meta read about the nature of storytelling itself how will this perspective influence or create decoherent meaning with the artwork, comics are semiotically premised on words and pictures synergizing with one another. (For an example of how this unity is perhaps a bit more an assumption and imposition by the reader and a position that perhaps subordinates the artist too the writer see KirbyWithoutWords.) It’s something to think about going forward with the genre mix of this book maybe the narration is where more classical storytelling forms will come through the most.
A good example of this synergy in action is the double page spread after Carin leaves the cemetery and finds himself in a kitchen. Ze Carlos design work, transforming the panels into shattered glass after Carin punches out his reflection is just good skeuomorphic design work. It creates a tangible visual metaphor for both Carin’s emotional state, one of broken exhaustion of not just losing Rhys but it feels like the last 11 years in general, as well as his bifurcating identity of Peter Carin/Deviant. That is a lot to respond to and “adapt” to after a lifetime of adaptation but “Peter didn’t want to adapt anymore. He wanted to die.” And he tries to seppuku with a shard of glass (because what would cyberpunk be without the cultural appropriation of Asian cultures). The suit won’t let him. Schultz lettering decision to break up the 5 sentence narration and use it to guide reader along this emotional and narrative journey in the splash page is an effective decision.
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Of the currently released New Universe titles, this is my favorite so far. It has the most effective genre and franchising mix with fundamental storytelling choices that just make it easy to read and onboard people.
*I’d have to go run the numbers a bit more, but roughly I’m imagining the color work up to ~30 ish, there’s what I assume is a shift in printing tech by roughly the 60s that allows for a wider gamut of coloring to occur that really helps to give Brian Haberlin and Dan Kemp the space to make some of those plainly hard images of late 90s early 00s Spawn.
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| Script/plot by Sean Lewis Todd McFarlane, additional script Art by Valerio Giangiordana Color by Ulises Arreola Letters by Andworld Design |
The second issue of Monolith scratches some aesthetic itches with artist Valerio Giangiordano and Ulises Arreola leaning more into the 40k-esque sci-fi of it all and the absurdity that entails. Narratively there is still a bit of friction, but Sean Lewis’ scripting and Giangiordano’s page design make for some effective micro narratives within the issue.
Monolith’s journey against and towards Omega Spawn continues, now on the run after escaping from space prison in the previous issue. Space is a dangerous place and Monolith soon finds himself doing gig work on a transport train that barters supplies for safe passage. It is surprising instances of the working-class milieu of the franchise*, as Monolith trades his labor power for passage on the train. It grounds Monolith and begins a trend of the creative team in this issue of showing Monolith in action, training like he’s Space Conan, instead of telling us about it. Monolith’s internal perspective is still the subject of Lewis’ narration, functioning as the transitional hinge the flashbacks rely upon, but there is something more engrossing about seeing a young Monolith smashing rocks and bursting through Planet Eaters.
These flashbacks do raise some narrative questions, however. In the previous issue we are given a Gaia powered flashback showed Monolith as a young human child on Earth. Except, we are never shown him as a child on Earth in these new flashbacks. Monolith grew up on a planet that saw planets consumed by Gaia and the Planet Eaters. He imagines Earth, linking it as part of his history but he does not appear to be born there. Curiouser we also see him already in costume. It is this bit of friction and the overall emphasis of Monolith in action that helps to refine his character. Monolith appears to be in a state of arrested development, he is a BoyMan. Not unlike the Space Marines from Warhammer 40k, a group who are taken from their families at a young age and turned into transhuman killing machines and turned into the 90s idea of what 13-year-old white boy would think is rawesome. Monolith in the wake of the Planet Eaters presence begins to train and become awesome. Ethics and morality become flattened there is only good and bad, a child’s view of the world. This connection is reinforced when Monolith is pulled back to the present by a young child’s question about if he is a “good or bad.” As they leave the young child calls Monolith in the opposite direction because they are “good guys.”
There is ‘bad’ and then there is Evil, and Omega is the latter. Omega’s arrives in the kind of callously destructive fashion you would expect, the “good’ kid and their mother we were introduced to pages earlier lie obliterated on the side of the page. Lewis’ scripting of Omega in this sequence is the first time Omega comes off as having a bit of character to him, or at least the dialog paints this figure as the nihilistic space tyrant the paratexts have told us he is. Giangiordano visually captures this by melting space and time and showing Omega on a throne at the end of the universe as he talks about the rebirth of an enthralled Monolith. Is it Darkseid homage? Yes, and it is effective. It gives the character a level of thematic gravitas he was lacking in previous appearances.
The page design in this issue overall helps to carry this issue to new heights with Giangiordano hiding frames within frames or just turning pages into tapestry-like constructions. On the first page Giangiordano uses the triangular design of Monolith ship to naturalize the triad of panels that make up the first third of the page. This architecture provides easy guide for the readers eyes but also helps to mesh together in this atemporal morass that complements Lewis’ narration about being on the run in space. Monolith’s flashback page similarly evaporates time-space unity, but ironically guides the reader through a succession of gazes that are linked in the temporal-spatial unity of the page.
There is an artistry to these pages that isn’t found in the back half of the issue as Monolith and Omega brawl out. Giangiodano just goes full kaiju mode with this brawl, blurring the background into a spectrum of colors and speedlines. It’s a good Hulk vs Hulk fight that reminded me of this old Godzilla game for the SNEs.
The real drama of this fight wasn’t found in the choreography between Monolith and Omega, but the story around it. The creative team do a good job of leaning into the 40k of it all, by which I mean both the absurdity of these hulking alien demons (the collision of sci fi and fantasy). Lewis’ narration slips between referencing their struggle as natural phenomena, a “chain reaction”, and as unnatural “monsters.” As they brawl the perspective shifts away from our protagonist to the victims around them. They are ripping through this protected space without a care in the world. The human citizens of the colony, though, they care. And so we have interspersed throughout the brawl these cutaways and commentary on the human response to these monstrous deities rampaging through the city. They have reacted with a hail marry weapon, an artillery piece with a single shot that can split atoms, time, and space. Not that Omega or Monolith notice.
Much like how the depreciation of space-time unity helped to give certain pages a sense of gravitas, these cutaways give this back half some legitimate drama and tension. It creates Hitchcockian suspense, readers are shown the metaphorical bomb under the table with the ticking clock, and then the bomb goes boom! And Monolith becomes an isekai! The two combatants find themselves in a strange land, past Earth. It’s an effective cliffhanger that sets up Monolith’s first appearance in Spawn #313.
* The majority of characters in this franchise cannot be considered ‘working class’ they perform highly specialized labor, but the way the comics consistently frame their labor is from this perspective.)
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