Superman: Action Comics Vol. 1: Invisible Mafia (Review)

Action Comics is the original title in which the Man of Steel first appeared way back in June 1938. The title celebrated the publication of its 1000th issue in 2018, and, after making the jump from Marvel to DC, legendary comics writer Brian Michael Bendis took over writing duties on issue #1001. Bendis's run on the title opens with Invisible Mafia, and this volume feels very much like a first chapter.

Superman: Action Comics Vol. 1: Invisible Mafia

Bendis already made his big introduction as Superman's newest guardian with The Man of Steel miniseries, a big, bombastic story oozing classic appeal. For better or worse, Invisible Mafia brings things back down to earth. Clark Kent is back in the newsroom of the Daily Planet, working alongside newer faces like gossip columnist Trish Q and reporter Robinson Goode, as well as stalwarts like photojournalist Jimmy Olson and editor-in-chief Perry White. Noticeably absent is Lois Lane, a classic Superman character and now Clark's wife. She is accompanying their son, Jon, on his rite of passage across the stars, but to everyone at the Daily Planet, Lois and Clark are just having marriage problems and taking time apart. As those rumors swirl, fires begin breaking out across the city of Metropolis, and Superman is named as the arsonist responsible, an accusation that nobody really seems to believe. This is where Bendis's story begins.

While Superman works to get to the bottom of things, Clark uses his connections as a reporter to comb through leads. Of course, the arsons are revealed to be part of a larger scheme, a distraction to keep Superman busy while a new cabal—the titular "invisible mafia"—plots in the shadows. This volume is almost entirely narrative set-up with very little payoff, suggesting that Bendis intends to play the long game with his readers. Given all the fanfare surrounding his taking on Superman, this really comes as no surprise. Bendis will be writing Superman for a long time.

There's nothing groundbreaking about Invisible Mafia, and there doesn't have to be. Not every Superman story has to be about planets colliding or stars exploding. Yet this story feels like classic Superman, marking a return to a kind of earlier status quo wherein Superman worked to save the good citizens of Metropolis from mostly human threats. "Mostly" applies here because the most memorable villain debuting in this volume is the mysterious Red Cloud, who materializes as an ethereal crimson mist with a vaguely human face. The volume's stellar art goes a long way in making this new villain instantly iconic, and Bendis sets up the mystery of Red Cloud to be a major storyline going forward.

A couple of interesting subplots thread through the volume, from Lois's secret return to political intrigue surrounding the city's mayor. Classic villain Lex Luthor gets a brief tease that will likely have greater significance in the context of the larger narrative. But, like the main storyline, these subplots are mostly introduced with very little resolution. The real joy of reading this volume lies in seeing Bendis lend his deft touch to these classic characters. There are some really clever lines of dialogue that had me smirking because they sounded like something Superman would actually say, and the newsroom antics at the Daily Planet are fodder for some real laugh-out-loud moments, most often courtesy of Perry White, the original grouchy newspaper editor.

Invisible Mafia is not the biggest or the most magnificent Superman tale, nor does it set out to be. But in terms of establishing what the world of Superman will look like under Bendis's penmanship, the volume accomplishes what it sets out to do. In more than one way, the story is a distilled version of Superman, unplugged and stripped down for a back-to-basics storytelling approach that calls to mind the kind of Superman your grandfather might see if you asked him to close his eyes and think back to the Action Comics of his youth. With art by Ryan Sook, Patrick Gleason, and Yanick Paquette, the Man of Steel looks as iconic as ever. After all the Flashpoints and paradoxes and world-shattering events that have characterized the DC Comics universe the past several years, it's nice to see Superman back in Metropolis fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.

The Flash, Volume 1: Move Forward (Review)

When DC rebooted their comic book universe with The New 52 in 2011, the Flash was one of their many mainline characters to receive a facelift. Despite the overall initiative's mixed reception, The Flash is one title to consistently appear on many "best of" lists from that era of the publisher's history. With industry veterans Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato on both writing and art duties, it's easy to see why.

The Flash: Move Forward

Manapul's comic art is some of the most distinct in the business, and his pairing with colorist Buccellato is an uncanny match. The complementary artistic styles combined with their tag-team effort on the story immediately puts The Flash in a category all on its own. Rarely is such a synthesis of narrative, art, and general style so fully realized in a mainstream comic book. But here it is, and the world is better for it. The New 52 was geared primarily toward accessibility, creating space for new readers to jump aboard classic titles that had been running for decades. And Move Forward is the perfect place to start following the adventures of the Scarlet Speedster.

Forensic investigator Barry Allen is the fastest man alive. After he's struck by lightning and doused in chemicals, he gains access to a mysterious energy field known as the Speed Force, which grants him the ability to move very quickly. Donning a bright red suit, this modern day Hermes (or Mercury) races through Central City as the Flash, protecting the city's residents and fighting all manner of crime. This is a pretty straightforward concept for a superhero that clicks neatly into archetypal place. And there are two ways of approaching a character like the Flash, whose superability basically boils down to "he can run real fast." One approach reduces the character to a supporting role, which is usually what happens in most of the character's adaptations outside of the source material, essentially turning Barry into something like a wise-cracking sidekick to the more popular Justice League members. But there is another approach, one that seeks to embrace the inherent silliness of the genre, while trying to work with the character in interesting ways. Thankfully, Manapul and Buccellato take the latter approach.

As accessible as this volume is to first time readers, the plot is deceptively complex. But it doesn't hit you until the back half of the story. The world of the Flash is much more akin to pulp science fiction than that of many other mainstream heroes, which makes a certain amount of sense given Barry's abilities. When you have a character who can lap the world a couple of times before breakfast, the storytelling has to be creative enough to actually develop real conflict and lend the characters some relatability. The unfortunate result is that, like Superman stories, Flash tales can easily fall into the category of paint-by-the-number, with goofy villains posing minimal real threat, contrived conflicts, and underwritten characters. But Manapul and Buccellato manage to strike a good balance here between the bonkers sci-fi elements and good character development. There's a sense in which they throw everything and the kitchen sink into the story, which begins with a rogue CIA asset named Manuel—who just so happens to be an old friend of Barry's—who has the ability to clone himself, before pivoting into time travel, then venturing into the Speed Force itself.

If all of this sounds very confusing, that's because it is. This is a book written with uncommon intelligence and attention to detail, stringing together multiple classic sci-fi genre tropes with the kind of reckless abandon and lightness of touch that you sort of forget how hard it is to tell these types of stories well. Manapul and Buccellato make this look easy, and Move Forward really should be a kind of gold standard across the medium for how to reinvent a classic character with smart storytelling, solid dialogue, great themes, and sheer fun. This is the kind of story that doesn't appear to demand much from readers at first glance, but for those who like thinking through stories and spending time with characters, there is a trove of good content here. This book definitely rewards multiple readings.

I most appreciate how the creators write Barry. He's always been a bit of an everyman, but it's very easy to turn him into a mouthy brat. There's not a trace of that kind of laziness here. He's funny without being reduced to slapstick, enthusiastic without being blindly optimistic. Like anybody, he has his insecurities, but he doesn't let those things define him. He's still figuring out the extent of his powers at this point, and both their unpredictability and his limitless potential lend the volume a healthy dose of excitement, as we want to find out just how far Barry can push himself. The pounding plot is tempered by the occasional moment of quiet reflection, and these quieter moments interspersed with flashbacks are some of the best rendered panels in the entire volume. Barry Allen is a genuinely likable hero, the charming kind with a touch of whimsy, cut from an older cloth of storytelling and who are increasingly hard to find these days.

Move Forward is a great introduction to the Flash, an iconic and much beloved character in the DC universe. A zany sci-fi romp from first panel to last, the superb artwork by both creators is just the icing on the cake of this brilliant reinvention. In the capable hands of Manapul and Buccellato, The Flash promises to take readers on a wild ride.

You just have to keep up.

Loneliness: The Chronic Paradox of Being

We're all mystics and freaks

With the spirit beneath

Deeper than any ocean

Let the string section "riff"

Seal it up with a kiss

Honey, we are all golden

In the new dark age

No one trusts anyone

In the new dark age

They forget to have fun

In the new dark age

The only light from the sun...is you

Bill Mallonee, "In the New Dark Age," from the album Winnowing (2015)

Introduction

A cursory Google search for "loneliness" yields results not entirely unexpected. We are told that we are a profoundly lonely people here in the west, despite our technology, despite connectivity on a global scale. Supposedly, the more communal eastern cultures do not face such individual isolation and, so we're told, must therefore be less lonely. News articles bombard us with both practical and psychological solutions to the "problem" of loneliness in western culture. Pop culture produces dozens of songs per year in which loneliness is the dark muse. The church even occasionally throws her hat into the ring, inventing a new "program" to be implemented at all the satellite campuses, like a new singles ministry to afford the unmarried and lonely opportunities to mingle together in the hope that some of them will become married and therefore un-lonely.

What all of these proposed "solutions" have in common is a presupposition that is not entirely wrong, nor is it entirely right. A presupposition that says loneliness is a negative human emotion to be eradicated. After all, wasn't it God himself who said that it's not a good thing for man to be alone in Genesis 2:18? Yet in correctly identifying the profound importance of relationships and connectivity to the human experience, perhaps this presupposition simultaneously shallows out that importance by misunderstanding the most critical aspect of loneliness: that loneliness is as much a condition of spirit as it is an emotion.

Our goal here is not to offer a solution to the crisis of loneliness—here identified as a "crisis" because to identify it as a "problem" implies that an easy solution exists. Rather, our purpose here is to redefine loneliness to incorporate the spiritual condition of man, the fundamental aspect of loneliness that seems to be entirely absent from mainstream thinking, especially in the church.

The Self-Conscious Soul

Only the lonely

Know the way I feel tonight

Only the lonely

Know this feeling ain't right

Roy Orbison, "Only the Lonely," from the album Lonely and Blue (1960)

American poet Sylvia Plath writes:

God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of 'parties' with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter—they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship—but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.

from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, ed. Karen V. Kukil (New York City: Anchor, 2000), 31.

Plath understands something that many modern Christians would see as cynical: that the degree to which one feels lonely or experiences the sensation of loneliness is the degree to which one recognizes that they actually are lonely. What she manages to capture here runs opposite the conjecture that says, "I am not lonely because I do not feel lonely." Instead, she suggests that one only feels lonely when the soul becomes self-conscious, aware of its present state of loneliness. The difference here is subtle but key. In the same way that anger can be described as the reaction of the spirit against that which causes it pain, perhaps we can begin our redefinition of loneliness by suggesting that loneliness is the sensation of the spirit that recognizes something is missing.

Such a notion flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which can often be gleaned by simply attending any singles group that meets at a local church throughout the week. This wisdom says loneliness is simply the degree to which one is isolated from other people. And while there is certainly an important physical aspect to the condition of loneliness, hollowing out loneliness to be a straightforward issue of proximity eliminates a present reality that Christians do not have the luxury of eliminating: a reality in which we are not merely physical beings with combustible chemicals rattling around inside our skulls, but in which we are deeply, intrinsically spiritual beings as well. This spiritual component of the human condition and its relationship to loneliness is our target here.

Plath herself was married when she took her own life—again, the crisis of loneliness is not merely an issue of physical proximity, because the divide in our spirits carved by sin is vast, and infinitely more frightening than the divide between ourselves and the people we love. So frightening, in fact, that it is enough to make those of us who feel it most deeply consider taking our very lives.

Loneliness and the Human Condition

Yeah, I still watch the shows you showed me

I still drink that wine

But these days it tastes more bitter than sweet

And all my friends are way too drunk to save me from my phone

So sorry if I say some things I mean

I don't know, I don't know

How I'm gonna make it out

I don't know, I don't know

Now you got me sayin'

Fuck, I'm lonely, I'm lonely, I'm lonely as
Fuck, come hold me, come hold me, come hold me
It's been me, myself and why did you go, did you go?

Lauv (ft. Anne-Marie), "fuck, i'm lonely," from the album ~how i'm feeling~ (2020)

The great filmmaker David Lean, when discussing his seminal film Summer Madness (1955), said:

I think loneliness is in all of us; it is a more common emotion than love, but we speak less about it. We are ashamed of it. We think perhaps that it shows a deficiency in ourselves.

from David Morrison, "10 Great Films About Loneliness," British Film Institute (BFI), Aug. 8, 2018.

Here Lean identifies in overt terms the same "deficiency" which Plath speaks of more implicitly in her own writings. As Christians, we understand this deficiency in ourselves as the great divide that sin has carved in our spirits, a divide between ourselves and God, which has a million implications for the divide between ourselves and other people. Scripture is saturated with language that directly correlates the relationship between God and man to man's relationship with his own kind, and we prove ourselves foolish if we believe we can excise from the discussion of loneliness the recognition of this initial divide between ourselves and our Creator.

After all, out of this great divide we turn to what Plath calls "the opiates," and the "shrill tinsel gaiety of parties with no purpose." While the church is quick to sit in judgment of a secular world where such hedonism is on full display, we are all too eager to ignore the fact that we modern evangelical Christians have become very good at producing our own opiates and throwing our own parties with no purpose, numbing agents in the form of what theologian Stanley Hauerwas identifies as "sentimentality."

Sentimentality and the Condition of Loneliness 

Strangers

Killing my lonely nights with strangers

And when they leave, I go back to our song, I hold on

Hurts like heaven, lost in the sound

Buzzcut season like you're still around

Can't unmiss you and I need you now

I'm so tired of love songs, tired of love songs,

Tired of love songs, tired of love
Just wanna go home, wanna go home,
Wanna go home

Lauv & Troye Sivan, "i'm so tired...," from the album ~how i'm feeling~ (2020)

In an interview with Duke University titled, "The Life of a Theologian," Hauerwas asserts:

The church is filled with sentimentality. I wish that we could produce interesting atheists. But we're not strong enough believers to produce interesting atheists. Instead, what we hear so often in sermons is sentimental drivel about how Christians are to love one another, and to love everyone in a way that is just bullshit. There is no reality to that.

His trademark wit and colloquial speech on full display here, what Hauerwas keenly identifies is perhaps the most insidious threat to the modern church: sentimentality. We might best describe sentimentality as that which trades on emotion for the sake of emotion, that which seeks emotional satisfaction without the emotional connection. Grace without pain. Love without cost. Redemption without the cross. To put it another way, sentimentality could be described as the "Disneyfied" version of the Christian life.

The sentimental believer is one adept at appearing devoted to Christ, whose faith holds up in fair weather because fair weather is what the faith demands. But the moment this faith is excavated, the topsoil overturned and the roots exposed, we find that Christianity is present in this believer's life because it supplies comfort through emotional shortcuts, worshipping a Christ who demands nothing beyond a vague and nebulous "love." The sentimental Christian can speak the language of sacrifice yet know nothing of its practice. The moment Christ truly demands something of this individual, the faith becomes compromised, much like the second seed in Jesus's parable of the soils (Luke 8:4-15). This is a faith that neglects to count the cost of sin, because this faith is built on pretense—the "new dark age" of western Christianity, in which every interaction between two people is built fundamentally on pretense, manifesting as the "opiates" and "parties with no purpose" in the church.

These opiates and purposeless parties meant to remedy the perceived problem look a lot like "community groups." In an honest effort to combat the loneliness-inducing effects of sin, we tend to encourage simply making the right friends, all in the effort of attaining the holy grail of marriage, wherein all negative emotions like loneliness are banished to the nether, never again to return because, after all, God is love and love is all we need. While this is not to say that such groups do not serve a good and healthy purpose in the church, we are naive if we believe loneliness is a problem solved by putting people—even believers—in close proximity to one another. Especially in the church, we tend to become sentimental about loneliness.

The Paradox of Loneliness

I traded all my friends for drugs and the internet

Ah shit, am I a winner yet?

Look quick, hasn't hit him yet

Mom's back home with a drink and a cigarette

Still hasn't hit him yet

I sold my soul

And all I got

Likes from strangers, love on the internet

Drugs and the internet

I wonder what it feels like

To be more than I am

Lauv, "Drugs & the Internet," from the album ~how i'm feeling~ (2020)

At this point, we've entered firmly into the paradox. If we understand loneliness as a condition of spirit, then we can understand the longing for physical proximity to be one that seeks to remedy that much wider fissure. As Christians, we understand that only God can fulfill the longing of our spirits to be both fully known and accepted. Yet Scripture does not teach against physical proximity; rather, Scripture teaches that community in the context of the church is a good thing. So, "community groups" can be worthwhile ventures, provided that, in the context of our discussion here, community groups are not seen as the singular remedy for the sensation of loneliness that is inherent to the human experience. We should not seek to eradicate the experience of loneliness, precisely because we should allow for loneliness in recognition of it being not merely the experience of a single man or woman; rather, it is a significant and pervasive component of the spiritual condition of every man and woman, east or west, married or single.

Presbyterian writer Frederick Buechner puts it this way:

The paradox is that part of what binds us closest together as human beings and makes it true that no man is an island is the knowledge that in another way every man is an island. Because to know this is to know that not only deep in you there is a self that longs above all to be known and accepted, but that there is no such self in me, in everyone else the world over.

 Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1985), 47.

And herein lies the crux of the issue: We, by very nature of being human, have an insatiable desire to be fully known and accepted. This desire rests in each of us, this longing hardwired into us through our spirits. But the present reality of living in a fallen world means that no one—no matter how close, how open, how exposed we are to them or they are to us—is ever going to be able to meet that need completely.

So, the question we must then ask: why does God allows us to experience such profound emotional turbulence? Why, even as Christians, do we not feel un-lonely? And, at this point, I cannot help but think that the recognition of our spiritual state of loneliness is not only appropriate for every Christian, but also that such recognition is necessary. Necessary because the feeling of isolation that haunts us in our recognition of our lonely state is the thing that keeps us from ever becoming too satisfied while we live in this fallen word. This is a recurrent theme in Scripture—the recognition that God's people are not earthbound, but that, as the old song says, we are "bound for glory." And with this recognition comes the sternest of warnings—that if we are ever fully satisfied while on this side of eternity, then perhaps we are truly earthbound.

In The Hungering Dark, Buechner suggests that, for many Christians, experiencing the darkness of doubt and dealing with the more troublesome aspects of faith is the only way forward. The only way for faith to grow is to first get stuck in a rut, so that faith can "work itself out." In much the same way, perhaps the only means by which we can truly begin to deal with the loneliest parts of ourselves is to recognize that loneliness is not always a negative emotion to be eradicated; indeed, while we live on this side of eternity, it cannot be eradicated, no matter proximity to other people. The only way to frame loneliness correctly is to see that we are all lonely because there is still something we are fundamentally lacking—even as Christians.

I think that a sentimental faith looks for an excuse to get comfortable on this side of eternity. To go back to the parable of the soils, a sentimental faith either falters when tested, or is choked out by the enticing and sensual pleasures of life, the opiates and parties with no purpose. Sentimentality is an excuse to not reckon with reality, a reality in which life on this side of eternity is marked by hope, and not by satisfaction. A life that anticipates the life to come, not one satisfied by the life lived now. Indeed, the wisdom books of Scripture remind us that all earthly possessions fade with time, be it money, be it power, be it attractiveness. This is gaining the world, but losing the soul. The very notion of hope contains a tragic element, because to hope for something greater is to acknowledge that something lesser is now present. And somehow, in a sense of divine irony, loneliness becomes the very basis of why we believe anything about Jesus in the first place. Because in our loneliness, we find that we are desperate to, as Australian songwriter Nick Cave once wrote, "Just be done with all this twisting of the truth." And this recognition fuels our longing for the day when our faith becomes sight.

In his book, A Cross Shattered Church, Stanley Hauerwas writes,

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. But Lazarus was still to die. We are still to die. Jesus,  by contrast, has been raised never again to die. His death makes possible a communion that overwhelms the loneliness our sin creates. Our God has made his home among the mortals by assuming our deadly flesh so that we might be made friends of Jesus and even one another.

This means the incarnation is something more than a means of atoning for sin. In taking up human flesh, Christ found the way to finally bridge the gap in our spirits. Which means that loneliness, as a condition of spirit, might then be better understood as an intuited or felt eschatological realization that pushes us toward the future, as a chronic ache of the spirit for the day in which we finally look upon the one who understands us totally and accepts us in spite of it all—the key being that he looks back at us with human eyes. The face we will look upon is a human face. And the emotions we will see registering there as we talk with him and laugh with him are human emotions. In other words, the incarnation accounts for the human element of loneliness, the issue of proximity, which demands that we need something tangible for our longings to finally be fulfilled. And the thing that we still lack is the very tangible presence of Christ. We all laugh at doubting Thomas, but who among us would not sacrifice every last shred of dignity we have to be the one to plug our finger into the wound, to have him with us and our faith become sight if only for a single, fleeting moment?

We spend countless hours looking for ways to numb that chronic ache in our spirits. We turn to the opiates and the shrill tinsel gaiety of parties with no purpose, both inside and outside the church, community groups and coffee dates, drugs and the Internet, all looking for some means by which we do not have to reckon with the fact that we desire to be fully known and accepted, and the only one capable of such a thing is alive and well but he is not here in the flesh. He is certainly present, but not in the way our loneliness desires him to be. At least, not yet. This is the paradox of being and living in the third dimension.

And the moment we succeed in numbing that profound ache, perhaps we will have lost it all.

Resources

Buechner, Frederick. The Hungering Dark. San Francisco: HarperOne, 1985.

Ejsing, Anette. The Power of One: Theological Reflections on Loneliness. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011.

Harries, Richard. Haunted by Christ: Modern Writers and the Struggle for Faith. London: SPCK, 2018.

Hauerwas, Stanley. "Why Community is Dangerous." Plough Quarterly, no. 9.

Mailer, Norman. "The Language of Men." Esquire (April 1953).

Morrison, David. "10 Great Films About Loneliness." British Film Institute. 8 Aug. 2018.

Plath, Sylvia. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. ed. Karen V. Kukil. New York City: Anchor, 2000.

"Stanley Hauerwas on the Life of a Theologian." Duke University Office Hours. Duke Univ., 2010.

Varden, Erik. The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance. London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018.

~how i'm feeling~ (March 2020)

This essay was originally written in 2019, revised and updated May 2020 to include lyrics from the album ~how i'm feeling~ by Lauv.

Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Incredible Hulk (Retrospective)

Marvel's The Incredible Hulk is a film to which I am particularly partial. Of all the early content leading up to the first Avengers movie, this overlooked gem is actually my favorite. There were only a handful of superheroes to really imprint on me as a kid, and the Hulk was one of them, through an old 1978 television series starring Bill Bixby as David Banner and Lou Ferrigno as his big green alter ego. It still feels strange to me calling our main character Bruce, because I had only ever known him as David. The Hulk was not a hero, but a kind of modern, scientific curse—the monstrous Hyde to a decent man's Jekyll, the first superhero who was certainly super but not very heroic, and the first to truly frighten me. Banner's first transformation in that original pilot, where all the little things that have gone wrong in a day lead up to that fateful moment out there in the rain while trying to change a tire, still gives me chills. It's always those wild eyes, the human face with eyes that have lost all traces of humanity, that make me shudder.

Marvel's The Incredible Hulk (2008)

If you do not have an appreciation for that old TV series, you will struggle to fully appreciate what The Incredible Hulk does in terms of both character and story. This is not an origin story, all of that material is presented during the opening credits, using imagery lifted straight from the Bixby series. The genius of that series was to turn Banner into a wandering soul, a man lost to himself and the world, searching for the ever-elusive cure to a condition that no one could possibly understand. Prevented from ever growing close to anyone and settling down, he's constantly on the run, hunted by the government for what he is, knowing he can never go home again. As a viewer, you dreaded the coming of that monstrous green thing to upset Banner's fragile peace, even though you knew it was inevitable. Every episode ended with Banner walking away from whatever destruction was left in his wake, wandering the lonesome highways and byways of backwoods America to Joe Harnell's now iconic theme, appropriately called "The Lonely Man." The Incredible Hulk tries to evoke this same spirit by repurposing everything from the imagery of that series and old footage of Bill Bixby himself, to Harnell's musical cues and a cameo by Lou Ferrigno. In many ways, this film feels like a big-budget reimagining of the Bixby show, The Fugitive by way of Greek tragedy, duality, and a big green monster.

The story picks up in Rocinha, Brazil's largest favela. Here, the quiet and backwards Dr. Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) lives off the grid, with only a dog for company. He's managed to find work at a bottling plant, and searches for a cure to his bad case of gamma poisoning. To do this, he maintains contact with the mysterious "Mr. Blue," a fellow scientist helping from a distance. Norton's portrayal of Banner is a revelation. He's socially awkward, understated, tormented. He manages to capture the essential loneliness of the character, making the role his own while channeling the same energy as Bixby without ever stumbling over into pastiche or imitation. This really is a testament to Norton's quality as an actor. Losing him, without a doubt, was one of the hardest blows to Marvel's cinematic universe during its formative years.

It's not long before General Ross (William Hurt) picks up Banner's trail, and sics ace black ops commando Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) on him, forcing Banner to run again. Only this time, Banner is determined to rid himself of the monster within. So, he returns home to dig up old research, putting him on a collision course with his old flame, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler)—who just so happens to be the general's daughter. The forbidden love affair between Betty and Bruce is one of the great and underutilized comic book romances, and The Incredible Hulk wisely puts them front and center.

There is a reason this film is often seen as the bastard child of the MCU. Tonally, this movie does not jive with rest of the series. I suppose that's due in no small part to Edward Norton's uncredited rewrites on the script, which lends the story a kind of lonesomeness. There is a certain gravitas to this film, a kind of mythic resonance that simply is not there in the vast majority of other Marvel flicks. You can always tell when a film like this has more on its mind that just a lot of intense action by how certain scenes are staged. Many of this movie's shots are of Banner, alone and wandering through the world. His reunion with Betty on a bridge, at night, in the middle of a storm testifies to the care that goes into shooting these scenes, framing the world in such a way that we connect emotionally with these characters through the imagery alone. When Betty rushes after him and the thunder rumbles in the distance, it's as if heaven itself bears witness to the tragedy and weeps for this once perfect couple pulled apart by powers beyond their control. This is the real power of cinematic storytelling, when the themes and narrative are communicated through the image, not just the characters or the dialogue or force of plot.

When the final confrontation pits the Hulk against the Abomination that Blonsky has become, though this is the usual big CGI blowup movies of this sort demand, the story has actually given us context and thematic significance for this fight. The image of two monsters smashing into each other is about more than two monsters fighting, but both monsters represent philosophical points of view. Banner's fight is about accepting that what has happened cannot be changed, and attempting to right the wrongs of the past and present to better the future. "We made this thing," Banner tells Ross when he's finally captured, referring to the monster that is Blonsky and its connection to the experiments directly responsible for creating the Hulk.

Perhaps the thing I appreciate most about The Incredible Hulk is how the film takes its own story seriously. We live in an age of self-conscious storytelling, where being "meta," or pointing out the absurdities of the story to the audiences in the context of the narrative, is considered "creative." And perhaps, at one time, it was. But The Incredible Hulk does not do tongue-in-cheek, instead playing its tropes straight and true, and I find that a refreshing change of pace. This is a much older style of moviemaking, and storytelling in general. Yet there is a distinct sense in which corporate interference hampered the film's final form. We certainly needed more time with the characters, and Tim Blake Nelson's goofy Samuel Sterns suffers the worst here. He's set up brilliantly, only to fall away by the film's conclusion. There were clearly ideas in place to keep this story going, investments in which there is little to no return. Supposedly, Norton had a very specific vision for the character that ultimately clashed with the direction Marvel wanted to go in. We ended up with the Avengers, but I cannot help but wonder what would have happened had Norton's vision been fully realized. I doubt we'll ever know, but it's certainly a tantalizing question.

Banner's final words in the Bixby-directed 1990 film, The Death of the Incredible Hulk, still haunt me. As the dying man breathes his last, he realizes that he's finally found what he's spent a lifetime searching for, that the monster finally dies with him. He utters, "I am free." It's a shame we'll never see that arc completed by Norton's take on the character, because that haunted, lonely man played by Bixby is the same tragic character on display here. We ended up with one of the most successful film series of all time. But the mythic dimensions of this character were sacrificed in order for us to have it. Perhaps that is why all the other superheroes of Marvel's early years have received multiple sequels, and this film remains the only incarnation of this particular version of the character. Bruce Banner is a lonely man, and his struggle against the literal monster within is the stuff of myth and epic poetry—and his story just isn't compelling when told any other way.

Superman Vol. 1: The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth (Review)

After making his introduction with The Man of Steel miniseries, Brian Michael Bendis steps fully into the role of Superman's latest curator with the first volume of The Unity Saga, titled Phantom Earth. This is a hard story to read in isolation, functioning best as a continuation of the story begun in The Man of Steel. We find Clark Kent bereft without his wife and son, as Jon has gone off to travel the stars on a rite of passage with Clark's newly-returned father, Jor-El, taking Lois along as Jon's chaperone. With such a drastic shift in responsibilities, Superman's life has changed overnight, and this new dynamic offers some nice character moments for Clark early in the volume as he faces a world without Lois and Jon.

Superman Vol. 1: The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth

But, true to comic book form, the introspection can only last so long before something goes awry—and things certainly do here, as Earth is mysteriously ripped from its orbit and transported into the dreaded Phantom Zone, an ancient and otherworldly prison that acts as home to the universe's worst threats. Bendis should be given credit for taking risks with the traditional storytelling format, as such an event would usually be reserved for the story's climax. Instead, he positions Earth's disappearance at the beginning of the story, thereby raising the stakes immensely, well before the halfway point. This move adds a level of tension that sees all of Earth's heroes working to find a way out of the Phantom Zone, a kind of ticking bomb that runs in the background that frees Bendis to focus on this story's emotional core, which is itself a doozy.

Back to settle unfinished business is Rogol Zaar, the monstrous creature introduced in The Man of Steel who claims to have destroyed Krypton and now intends to finish his Kryptonian purge by ending Superman. Zaar's origins and motivations are left shrouded in mystery here, a clear sign that Bendis intends to take his readers on a longer journey. The return of classic Superman villain Zod also brings more questions than answers, but perhaps the one answer provided in this story acts as a kind of thesis statement for what Bendis intends to do during his time with the character. As Zod, the self-righteous and self-proclaimed bearer of Krypton's future, goes up against Rogol Zaar, the monster claiming responsibility for Krypton's destruction, Superman finds himself pitted between them, and the battle that's about to unfold is for the very legacy of Krypton.

We shouldn't expect Bendis to wrap up this storyline as soon as it begins; indeed, Superman is whisked away from the Phantom Zone just as things are about to come to blows. It's a brilliant if frustrating tease, but lets us know that Bendis isn't finished with this story. Both Rogol Zaar and Zod will return, but in what capacity remains to be seen. The action in this book, like The Man of Steel miniseries, is big and loud, the scale cosmic in scope. While Superman battles to defend an entire planet trapped in the Phantom Zone, we really get a sense of how versatile and sweeping Superman stories can be. They're a kind of ultimate escapism, mythological tales that unfold on a huge canvas, with battles in which entire planets and worlds and galaxies hang in the balance.

The only trouble with stories of this scale is how easily the humanity of the characters can be lost. This is what makes stories of the "epic" genre so hard to nail when judging by modern storytelling standards. Achilles and Odysseus were great heroes, but they were legendarily flawed because of their hubris. Thus, their stories become warnings for us as much as they are entertaining, teaching us something about ourselves as a collective race of humanity as much as they delight us. Superman, on the other hand, is the paragon of truth and justice. He embodies humility, and his character is Messianic in nature. Much in the same way the humanity of Jesus, the man of sorrows, is sometimes lost in biblical interpretation, Superman can easily stumble over into a caricature of himself as the writer pens his character. Bendis wisely deals with Clark's emotional turmoil over his wife and son being gone, but when Earth goes into the Phantom Zone and the action ratchets up, a lot of this tension falls by the wayside. Part of this is done in favor of following the subplots of several Justice League members who are still on Earth while Superman battles the bad guys in space. And though these moments give us good humor, a little more focus on our titular superhero might have lent the narrative a bit more gravity, particularly when the stakes are nothing short of Kryptonian.

The art by Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, and Oclair Albert really gives us the sense of epic scale this story requires, especially in the sequences which unfold against the darkness of space. Finding ways to make that big black void colorful and even beautiful is a continual challenge as Superman hurls the villains through asteroids. The Man of Steel is always positioned and rendered as suitably heroic, as even the smaller panels would make for good poster material. Between the writing and the art style, Superman is off to a promising start in Phantom Earth. Bendis comes charging out of the gate by hurling Earth into a colossal crisis, so I can only imagine how the stakes will be further raised going forward. The last page of Phantom Earth brings a pretty surprising twist that makes me curious to know where Bendis will take the story next.