I Don't Have To Defend Myself To You People! (Fear Itself is Awesome)

DISCLAIMER: This blog was written during a long, dark night of insomnia. It is fueled by caffeine and self-loathing. It is likely riddled with typos and grammatical errors. I’m not even 100% sure that I am actually typing this sentence. If this is not the most coherent argument I have ever made, forgive me.

Look, nothing is right for everybody.

I’ve had a few requests to talk about Marvel’s big summer event, Fear Itself. I have no idea how the book is doing, sales wise or critically. The reviews that I am getting from other people are mixed, but I’m also not scouring the planet for all possible viewpoints, so I just don’t know.

(I’m at a place where I am trying to enjoy my entertainment in as much of a bubble as possible. Everyone I know talks about sales figures or ratings or box office returns like it matters. I just don’t care anymore. I mean, I’m happy when things I like are successful, and the people who create those things get to eat food and pay rent and all that good stuff. But I’m trying to just enjoy all of my consumed art as art, and not worry about how the rest of the world is digesting their portion.)

I know that a couple of the people who want me to talk about Fear Itself want me to do so in the sense of defending my appreciation of the book. I’m not quite sure what to do with that. Here’s my statement, and I’m sticking by it.

Fear Itself is my favorite Marvel crossover event in years.

That’s it. Not saying it’s the best. Not arguing any of its merits. I’m just saying that for me, as a comic book fan, it’s turning my crank. Which is my way of saying that I am happy to talk about why I like the story. But don’t expect me to proselytize about it, because taste is subjective and all that jazz.

An anecdote. I was coming off stage after doing a spoken word gig one night. I went to the bar and got myself a bottle of water, and a guy came up to me to shake my hand.

Him: “I really liked your set, man. You were really funny. I had a lot of fun.”
Me: “Thanks! I’m glad you dug it.”
Him: “My girlfriend hated you, though. She thought you were obnoxious, and that you had a high opinion of yourself.”

So… mixed review, right? But they’re both correct. I am kind of funny, and I was trying to make people have fun. And I AM obnoxious, and I DO think an awful lot of myself.

I’m just saying. Nothing is right for everybody.

Matt Fraction is, I think, divisive as a writer. Which is usually the sign of being really fucking good. Quality consensus from the internet only seems to come in the form of “meh” or “sucks”. If you can get a group of people in a room, and half of them love it and half of them hate it, I think you’re doing something right.

Like most things I have come to love, I am a late adopter on Fraction. I came into his work well after he had started doing stuff for Marvel, and am now having to go back and retroactively discover all of the indie stuff he did. (Same thing happened with Bendis. I read Ultimate Spider-Man and then fell backwards from that into Goldfish and Jinx and Fire. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of kids these days learn about the Clash from listening to Green Day. You can always do worse than to be someone’s  gateway into awesome.)

I actually met Matt, briefly, at New York ComicCon a few years ago. I shook his hand and told him I loved what he was doing with Iron Man. He was very polite and calm and quiet and nice, and if I had known then that he had written something like Casanova, and what it would do to my self-worth as a writer, I would have tried to eat his brain and steal his secrets.

Confession: It took me five tries to get through Casanova. FIVE. Jenny loved it at once, and encouraged me to keep at it. I was convinced that I wasn’t smart enough for the book. Or that reading the first page had unlocked some heretofore unknown learning disability. I eventually figured out that the problem is how I read comics normally. I tend to make a big pile and blaze through everything at once. Casanova isn’t the kind of book you can really read that way. It needs its own space to really be allowed to sink in and do its work. The only other comic I have ever had to make that kind of separate room for was Morrison’s Invisibles.

Once I finally got the trick down of reading Casanova on its own, with a different set of receptors than normally experienced guys in tights slapping each other, I fell in love with the book. I didn’t read it as much as I crawled around inside of it. It has several affects on me, even with repeated reading. One, it makes me desperately want to write. Two, it makes me positive that I shouldn’t write, because I am hopelessly out of my league. Three, it makes me talk like Warren Ellis fucks. Driving ambition, crushing insecurity, and a kind of intense hyperbolic profanity. Thanks, Matt Fraction.

I’m a fan, is what I’m saying.

He’s done my favorite run on the X-Men since Claremont. He’s helped take Iron Fist, one of my all-time favorite characters, and turn him from the “guy in the yellow booties” to the ultimate Kung Fu badass of the Marvel U. He’s got me reading THOR, for crying out loud. I haven’t done that since Simonson was on the book.

I’m a fan, yeah. So I’m probably predisposed to like Fear Itself. But I don’t know if I’m predisposed to love it the way I do.

I was going to get into a real spoiler-heavy analysis of the book, but honestly the thought of that bores me silly. So let me just break down my top three points as to why this is the big summer crossover of my dreams.

Everyone’s Invited to the Party

In the crossovers of the past few years, there have always been a handful of characters or books who were completely untouched by the event. Usually the X-Men titles, which has sort of occupied their own little corner of the universe. I really love that this seems like something that is affecting EVERY character in the Marvel U. In a shared continuity, when something big happens, I like seeing all hands on deck. And Marvel is going DEEP on their bench for this. In this market, seeing a book starring Howard the Duck, Nighthawk, She-Hulk and Man-Thing is mind-bogglingly goofily awesome. I never really cared about the Avengers: Initiative characters, but I am digging Youth in Revolt so much, I might go grab the trades.

Real Consequences and Real Emotions

As much as I have really enoyed the last few years of Marvel crossovers, they all felt like super-hero problems (like first-world problems, but you’re wearing tights). Civil War was about super heroes fighting each other. Secret Invasion was about an alien invasion, but it mostly felt like a bunch of super heroes fighting a bunch of aliens. With Fear Itself, I feel like every issue is showing the scale of the event, the impact on normal people, and the collateral damage of the story.

Plus, we’re seeing some actual, honest-to-god character moments in the midst of all the world-shaking. In issue #4, there is a little two-panel bit of business between Nick Fury and the Black Widow. No dialogue, totally in the background, but real and appropriate and kind of wonderful.

Like anything else, your mileage may vary, but to me, this feels like it’s affecting the WORLD. And not just the portions of it that can fly.

Tie-Ins That are More than Just Fight Scenes

Overall, the consistency of quality on these tie-ins has been exemplary.  I will cop to not loving ALL of the tie-in books. But a lot of them are using this opportunity to tell really fantastic stories, or doing really interesting things with their characters. Journey Into Mystery has taken the Fear Itself event and used it to tell the best Loki story in recent memory. Fraction’s Iron Man, which was already stellar, has become transcendent with the past few issues. Bendis has used the opportunity to do some great stuff in the Avengers books. Likewise, Gage’s Avengers Academy, which has always been great, has taken my breath away with the tie-ins.

Also, the Fear Itself: Spider-Man issues may be in my top ten favorite Spidey comics.

If you’re not digging Fear Itself, I doubt this will convince you of its greatness. But fortunately, that wasn’t my point at all. My point is that it has been a great ride for me, personally. I love the event, I love the story, and I’m looking forward to shaking Fraction’s hand in the future and telling him so.

Just before I eat his brain and take his secrets.

Hugs and Kisses,
(The)Travis