13 january 2002

CABLE moves onto the second story arc of its relaunch. It's worth noting, by the way, that the book expressly credits writer David Tischman and artist Igor Kordey as collaborating on the plot for this one. We're in the Balkans this time round, and of course Kordey comes from that part of the world. He fought in the war.

It's hardly surprising, then, that it's a subject Kordey would want to write about. It's slightly more surprising that he would choose to do so in a story entitled "How Many Albanians Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?" In any event, we're in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia (of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, if you want to avoid offending Greece), and once again we're given no clear indication of what Cable has come here to achieve. The story goes out of its way to emphasise that it's not telling us.

As with the previous storyline, this issue sets about establishing an extensive supporting cast, and it's fairly obvious what the general theme is here. The ethnic tensions here are between the Macedonians and the Albanian minority. Macedonia is secretly planning a genetically-targetted virus to wipe out the Albanians. The Albanians, meanwhile, are planning a mass cloning exercise to generate more Albanians. The storytelling challenge here is that Albania long since got relegated to the joke country of Eastern Europe, and that means that getting us to take a giant Albanian clone factory seriously is not going to be easy. Given the title of the story, the creators seem to have opted to meet this one head-on and acknowledge the lunacy of the whole thing. We'll see whether that actually works or not.

The art is wonderful, naturally, and since Kordey comes from the area I'm going to give a little more latitude than I normally would in terms of credibility. The opening scene of a Kosovan Muslim killing his sister because she's been raped would normally break my suspension of disbelief - I know it happens in some parts of the world but I don't recall hearing of it going on there. But presumably Kordey has a fairly good idea of what he's talking about, so I'll take his word for it and accept it as a rather nasty scene which is made to work on the strength of the art.

Pretty decent, along the same lines of the Peruvian storyline, but also showing obvious warning signs of the same flaws - too many minor characters to flesh them all out, and such an emphasis on moral ambiguity that it's hard to know who we're meant to be rooting for, and more importantly, why.

Sticking with the former Yugoslavia (or, to be strictly accurate, an unnamed eastern european nation which just happens to have a track record of genocide in a recent civil war), Mike Grell and Michael Ryan begin their relaunch of IRON MAN.

Grell is one of the relatively small number of creators whose work I don't think I've ever read, despite being told for a decade or so that they're legends of the medium. Unfortunately, while this is a generally competent issue, it does leave me wondering what all the fuss is about.

This being Grell's first issue - and presumably in line to kick off a trade paperback at some point - he takes the sensible step of recapping the origin and re-establishing the basic concept of the character. And that means it's time for yet another exciting Iron Man Origin Retcon, because inconveniently, the United States hasn't actually fought any wars in Asian jungles in the relevant time frame any more. So now we have a weird attempt to patch the origin over by referring instead to the War on Drugs. This looks very awkward, but given that Quesada and Palmiotti spent much of the preceding year messing around with story elements from the character's origin story, I suppose it wasn't really an option to dump it altogether and start from scratch.

Then again, it's not as if Iron Man's origin story has ever been truly all that significant to the character. Grell is obviously going for a back-to-basics approach here, with the key points of emphasis being Tony Stark as reformed weaponmonger, and Tony Stark needing to recharge his artificial heart every 48 hours (a plot point obviously intended to echo the character's heart condition from the 1960s). The origin story, in its previous form, doesn't really help Grell with either of these points - the heart condition now has a completely new and separate backstory of its own (which isn't even touched upon), and the character's origin doesn't provide him with any motivation to give up making weapons, because the character didn't get around to doing that until quite a few years afterwards when more liberal attitudes prevailed among his writers.

There's nothing Grell can do about the heart condition - which I think is an awful plot idea, glaringly artificial in its attempt to hit the reset button on the character, for the sake of a plot element which wasn't even very strong to start with. But he retrofits the origin story so that Stark is now going to find out why his wonderful prototype battle armour didn't work. All of this is mirrored in the present day with some of that armour cropping up in eastern europe so that Stark can be suitably tormented and remember the importance of not making weapons any more.

Unfortunately, the retrofitted origin has serious logic defects. The problem with the armour, as everyone appears to already know when Stark reaches Asia, is that it keeps pumping the operator full of drugs until they die on their feet. Two serious plot problems here: (a) it requires you to assume an incredible degree of stupidity on Stark's part not to take such a glaring error into account; and (b) it provides no plot reason for Stark to be trudging around an Asian jungle.

As for the present day part of the story, when it's not hammering home the fact that Stark used to make weapons, it's doesn't stray far from the conventional territory of grim, stoic rebels under fire from nasty villains. Grell resorts to some very shaky plotting to allow General Radanovich to personify the villains - in amongst his busy schedule of running the country, Radanovich appears to have found time to personally drive a sodding big tank into battle so that he can be blown up.

Michael Ryan's artwork is as solid as usual, although some rather heavy inking and muddy colouring make the issue less dynamic that it could have been. He has some good tech designs, though, which is promising. And it goes without saying that the new armour is a tremendous improvement, simply by virtue of not being the old armour.

This issue marks a welcome change of direction insofar as it backs away from the unsuccessful Tieri/Grant run. And attempting to ground the character more in the real world isn't such a bad move. But this is a issue with more than a few logic glitches leaping off the page, and in many ways seems to be taking a step back to what's worked in the past.

A MOMENT OF SILENCE, as you undoubtedly know, is a collection of four silent stories in response to the World Trade Center attacks. Reviewing books like this is next to impossible because nobody reads them in the normal way - any response is still ultimately coloured by the events which the stories are about, rather than the quality of the stories themselves. But I'll have a stab anyway.

Rather than focussing on the attack per se, these are stories about individual people caught up in the situation. One consequence of this is that, strictly speaking, two of these are not really stories about September 11 at all. Rather, they're stories about loved ones being killed by arbitrary and unfair events, without having the opportunity to say goodbye.

"Moment of Truth" is written by Bill Jemas and pencilled by Mark Bagley. Since Jemas co-wrote the early issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, this combination isn't as bizarre as it may first appear. In any event, this is the story of Tony Savas, a building inspector for the Port Authority whose daughter works for Marvel. The point is simple - Savas escaped the building, but went back in to help, because he knew the layout and could assist the rescuers. And, of course, he died when the building collapsed - although the story sensibly cuts out with him going back into the building, since you already know the rest.

The trick with stories like this is not to idealise the lead character too much, since that would make the whole thing corny rather than moving. Jemas and Bagley sail close on a couple of panels, but generally hit the right balance. It's not at all bad.

"Moment of Silence: A True Story" isn't actually a silent story, so much as a story with a lot of silence in it. This one's by Brian Bendis and Scott Morse, and it's technically the story of a firefighter called John Dudas. However, he just provides the framing sequence for several pages of the rescue efforts in the aftermath, with everyone stopping what they're doing in the hope of hearing something to rescue. It's eerie and effective.

"Sick Day" takes us into the stories which aren't really specific to September 11 at all. This one's written by Joe Quesada with art by the ever-prolific (and still consistently impressive) Igor Kordey. Fireman Michael Otten goes in to work on the night of September 10 to cover for a colleague who's ill; you don't need me to tell you what happens. Despite being based on a true stoy, though, the power of this comes from the family's reactions as they see the TV coverage and it has a wider resonance beyond just these attacks.

Finally, Kevin Smith and John Romita Jr's "Periphery" is unusual in that it doesn't claim to be based on any true story. It's simply about a guy who works in the World Trade Center arguing with his family before he goes to work, leaving them to wonder whether these are the last words they'll have had with him. Low key, effective, and strictly speaking not really about September 11 at all, since the point would have been much the same if he'd just been in a car crash on the way to work. It's relevant to September 11, of course, but it isn't really ABOUT it.

Still, in a four-story anthology there's room for one such story since, ultimately, there's a limit on what can really be said about the World Trade Center if you confine yourself strictly to that day. The first three pieces are really events rather than stories, although they work fine on that level.

How much interest you have in this book will probably depend on how over-exposed you feel to this material already. Here in Scotland, the news agenda largely moved on a couple of months back, which means that I can return to this material relatively fresh. Overall, it's better than I expected - to be honest, I'd been fearing a selection of mawkish flagwaving. But the Bendis/Morse story in particular is definitely worth your time on merit, and the rest of the book's pretty decent as well.