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By Jason Bourgeois
Hello and welcome back to Grey Matters for February! This month, let's just dive right in and see how things are going over with DC's long struggling title, Brave & the Bold.
The book restarted a few years back with Mark Waid and George Perez, weaving together an epic tale of team-ups that worked as single issue stories, but had plot threads that tied them all together for the first year. Once Perez left, however, the book shifted focus quite a bit, and the stories became one-shots plain and simple, or at the most, two or three issues long. The book has not been doing good since.
So DC brought in the fan favourite writer J. Michael Straczynsi onto the book. He's best known as the creator of Babylon 5 and the Jeremiah TV series, and who reinvigorated Amazing Spider-Man a few years back, as well as Thor. I'll be honest and say he's probably one of my favourite writers, although he does have his off days. But I do cut him a lot more slack than others might, and that might colour some of my forthcoming opinions.
Joe came onto the book after a hefty delay after the announcement, and the book drifted ever deeper into the sales charts. The hope was that he'd reinvigorate the book with his name alone, and it looks like that is not the case.
Which is actually a shame. Yes, he's only doing single issue stories so far, which I think is a mistake, but the difference is, they're actually really, really good stories.
I think Brave & the Bold doing single issue stories is a bad move, because it's the classic anthology problem. It's a different cast every month, there's no one to latch onto to care about, and no ongoing story to care about either. The early issues of the new run got that right, at least. They kept an ongoing plot flowing to bring people back each month, and characters flowed into and out of the story, then right back in again, giving a sembelnce of an ongoing cast.
But the new book is still doing the same old thing. Unless you're a JMS fan, you probably won't read it month in and month out. Why would you? And if you're a fan of characters floating through in any given month, you still might give this a pass, since the issues seem to be pretty much throwaway issues. Why would you come over to read a Batman story there, when you know nothing of consequence can happen to him? The hardcore fans will grab it surely, but they won't be back next month unless their minds are blown. That's a hard thing to do in 22 pages.
Although, I think JMS is coming pretty damned close. The issues are ultimately of little consequence to any given character, but he is writing some very rock solid character pieces. He did an issue with Batman teaming up with, of all people, Brother Power, and he got into Batman's head, really brought the character alive for me, in a way I've never really experienced. I'm not a Batfan, but for those pages, I really got into Bruce's head, and was one of the more interesting stories with him in it. Also, with using someone like Brother Power, he could do something with him, and really made you feel for that character's plight, feeling out of time, in an amazingly short period of time.
But at the end of the day, they're still very much issues you can toss aside when you're done and forget them pretty quickly. I really love the issues when I'm reading them, but then they're just kinda there. Joe gets so into every character's head, and brings the reader along with them in such a perfect way. I can't help it, I know I'm gushing. He just nails every character he's handled so far, in my opinion.
The book is absolutely worth checking out. It'll only cost you a comic, since they're all single issues. The writing is spot on, and the art is rock solid as well, and I hope people give it a chance so they can read some very good character pieces. We don't get enough of those these days, and it's almost always action. So the change of pace is nice.
There are also hints of bigger things coming down the road later this year, after a Legion of Super-Heroes two-part story, that will hopefully bring more attention to the book as it begins to take more chances. They wanted to start out slow, bring people in, and then blow them away. Sadly, taking things slow just means less people notice. It's always better to come out with a bang, than it is to take your time and make people wait eight months to blow their minds.
I'll be there when it happens, and it would be great if more people checked out a very solid book being done by some very good creators behind the stories.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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