Series Review (so far): Spaceman #1 - #5

This week marks the beginning of the Major League Baseball season. Which along with starting a rumor about the coming of summer here in the Northeast, reminds me of a great apocryphal story (great word that, apocryphal) about that handmaiden of sports, statistics. Story goes like this: during the off-season successful slugger goes to see management about a new contract. Said slugger says he batted .315 this past season (roughly three hits for every ten at bats, well above the league average). The general manager smiles and says, ‘yeah, slugger, but you only got a hit three times out of ten. What about the other seven times you went to the plate?' Baseball, of course, is the only profession you can fail at seven out of ten times and still be considered for the 'Hall of Fame.' Statistics can be counted on, but the devil is always in the details, the context. Blogger's stat tracker tells me that the post for my review of Spaceman #4 has been viewed one-hundred-and-seventy-six times since I posted it on March 3^rd. I would tag that a moderate success and yes (you glass-house-living-throwers-of-rocks) I have set Blogger so that it does not track my own page views.

  My writing about Spaceman #4 is what got me the gig at Comics Bulletin, so, at least, somebody liked it, right? I guess all that matters is that I think I have something to contribute to the critical conversation about Spaceman. I'll admit that I can understand how this is a tricky series to navigate either because of its pidgin futurespeak, or its monkey-man-meets-noir-dystopia-sci-fi, or, even, the audience's own 'anxiety of influence' because this is Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's follow-up series to 100 Bullets. As I often ask: So what?
  After I wrote my series review of The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, I emailed it to a few bloggers I’ve gotten to know (I believe) fairly well.  Their feedback was very helpful. The one theme that emerged from their feedback was, 'I'm not reading this series, so, why should I care about it?'  A 'so what?' in so many words. As much as I love Azzarello's gloss on language and celebrity culture, it's all academic wankery if the characters are underdeveloped and the plot is hackneyed and overcooked. Writing is a solitary pursuit, but editing and proofreading often turns into a team sport. To Martin, Owen, Justin and Seth here is (I hope) proof that I listened.  Thanks to Jason and Danny at Comics Bulletin for making this process easy and worthwhile. Instead of braining you, constant reader, with the beginning of the piece let me hit you upside with the end:

  ''Azzarello makes it easy to get stuck in Spaceman's semantic stew of words and the meaninglessness of meaning. Geeking out on words only gets one so far -- and if one wants more, they have schools for that sort of thing. What makes this story work is spaceman, is Orson. There is a ''knight-in-shining-armor'' quality to Orson that should not be given short shrift. The reader roots for Orson and wants to see him bring Tara home safe, but it's a question of can he rather than will he. A man of some means, a certain survivor, Orson is also out of place, out of his world and out of his depth. When Orson first brings Tara to his place, he says, ''I promd to keep you safe … but … we don know what that means jus now. Home might not be safe.'' Like many a traveler, many a spaceman, Orson wants to go home, but what is home to a space man? Spaceman has flown half of its arc, all that remains is a return. Azzarello and Risso will determine how safe of a journey it will be and if their spaceman can ever find his way home.''  

The rest, or as Robert Shaw says, '… for the head, the tail the whole damn thing,' go here: http://www.comicsbulletin.com/main/reviews/story-arc-review-spaceman-5-9

Review: Spaceman #4

Glossed in Space

  Brian Azzarello grounds Spaceman in language and the slipperiness of speech.  The alien argot Azzarello imagines occurs out loud; and each one of Eduardo Risso’s panels balloon with words, drunk on overlapping dialogue boxes; narrators in no need of narration.  In other words, Spaceman is one wordy ‘mo-foco,’ as the kids say.
  Half the fun of Spaceman is learning to speak the language and getting caught in the sticky web of words that Azzarello weaves into his low-down dirty story of kidnapping, celebrity culture, and genetically engineered workaday spacemen.  This tale, however, is not a mere gloss on glossolalia nor is it interested in inventing language for the sake of invention or, for that matter, for the sake of language.  What Azzarello and Risso create is a dialogue of binaries: public and private, perception and reality, words and pictures, haves and have-nots.  Amidst these opposites exists the spaceman, Orson, a cast-off, caught between worlds, floating through space.
  Spaceman #4 is an interstitial episode, that’s not to say that nothing happens, although not much does: plans are made, investigations go on, and new schemes are schemed.  This is a series that rewards being read backwards as well as forwards; words and phrases easily missed in previous issues the first time through yield treasure on a second or third pass[1].
  For example, the word ‘gold’ appears in two different scenes in this issue, each time the word means something different; ‘gold’ has a different value depending on means and on information.  ‘Gold.  Holee Fuck. Gold,’ says a headset-wearing someone lording over a bank of monitors.  In this instance ‘gold’ is an expression referring to prized moment.  The cameras of ‘The Ark’ (a reality TV show or ‘cast’) catch the parents of the kidnapped girl, Tara, reacting to being told that they are suspects in the police investigation of the crime.  The father, Marc, pleads with his wife, April, saying: ‘that playing Tara’s kidnapping out in public – it’s nobody’s business but ours.’  A private matter played out in public becomes a ‘golden moment’ broadcast in the binary code of ones and zeroes.  In the world of Spaceman, words and information are coin of the realm, but only if one has means.
  The other time the word ‘gold’ is used is when the four spacemen are staring at a pile of it that they have liberated from the Martian surface.  This kind of gold, real gold, is worth less than information, it has no value because as Orson says to his fellow spacemen, ‘We here – so’s it.  Gold be fuckin dust to us.’  What’s the value of ‘gold’ if there’s no profit to be made?[2]  No means means no.  This is only one example of dozens throughout the series (hell, in the course of this issue) when the elusiveness of meaning is made plain.
  Orson is a scavenger, although ‘salvager,’ is probably a better description of our ‘humble narrator;’ a creature of his environment.  It’s no accident that Orson ‘saves’ Tara or that his speech is a stew of infectious idioms.  Orson like language adapts.  As the two head towards their next dead end, Tara tells Orson, ‘I think this is cool’ and then corrects herself, ‘I mean I brain – I brain this is cool …’  In the final analysis Orson and Tara’s survival depends on if they can adapt or is it all talk.  You brain me?    

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[1] It irks me to write this, but Spaceman is going to read absolutely fabulously in a collected format.  Which makes one wonder if that was not Azzarello and Risso’s intention all along?

[2] I believe there is another reference to ‘gold’ in issue #1 or #2 (?) as well.  Did I mention this series would work well in a collected edition?