This one bills itself as a perfect jumping on point for new readers, and lines up a load of Vertigo (and other) creators to affirm this as one of the best comics they have seen in their puff. For me, though, it has proved a perfect jumping off point, as reading this issue has confirmed my suspicion that this title is nicely drawn but is going nowhere. I reckon this title had promise initially when it was about the weirdness of long haul air travel, but it seems to have rapidly lost any kind of narrative coherence.
Air was the only comic I bought this week. Nightmare. Is there good stuff out there I am missing, or has the supply of quality monthly comics dried up? One thing I am excited by is the sudden appearance of American Flagg collections. This early 80s title was Howard Chaykin's big comic, and I am curious as to whether it is any good or not. Skimming it in the shop reveals a lot of women in their underwear, which is basically what you expect from Mr Chaykin, but the rest of the art also looks rather impressive. I may yet give this a go. I think back in the day it was seen as one of the big serious comics of the early 1980s. Interestingly, unlike Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns (both of which I think it precedes*), American Flagg is not a superhero title. I have read that back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the supers did not have the stranglehold on mainstream comics they have now, with many people thinking that the long-underwear brigade was on the way out. I have started wondering if, perversely, the critiques of the form by Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns actually breathed new life into superhero comics, by making them all edgy and kewl. What do you think?image source
*or does it?
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* American Flagg 1983, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns & Watchmen 1986.
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