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Underground > Comic Books >

Vimanarama! #1

  
  

Page: 1(2)345

 
 
Haus of Mystery
19:34 / 10.02.05
That's 3 for 3 then - another fucking ace series. Loved this, really dug the dry humour and instantly likeable characters. Needless to say Bond's art was a thing of wonder. Yeah, just really liked it, but don't have the ish in front of me for specifics. Except

"lucky I've got my Dad's hammer"
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
21:23 / 10.02.05
This was just great. Philip Bond's art was perfect as always, and I'm looking forward to more of the dayglo cosmic stuff we got from him at the end of the issue. The coloring is aces as well, just perfect for Bond's energetic, cartoony style and Morrison's flashy script.

I'm loving the characterization in this. Seaguy was full of garish, wild characters and We3 obviously focused on animals instead of humans, so it's nice to see Morrison writing normal people again, whether or not they're involved in ridiculous situations or not. He's so good at it, and I had almost forgotten that after Seaguy, We3 and JLA. I love this series.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
22:33 / 10.02.05
He also talks about Grant's readings in "Islamic religion", which is equally naff, as the title itself is from Hinduism.

Well, if so I'm confused, because the characters are Muslim according to that interview Sax quoted.

I felt this book was OK: more reminiscent of Rogan Gosh than I had hoped, actually (normal guy gets drawn into Kirby-religious psychedelia, comedy emerges from contrast between his mundane soap-reality and the mindblowing lotus-deity mythos he's confronted with) and inevitably recalling Kill Your Boyfriend as well, if only in looks, kitchen-sink humour and again, clash between mad weirdness and everyday British life. I also felt I'd seen the same kind of thing, without the Islam, in Milligan and Hewlett's "Hewligan's Haircut". The Galactus-gods are the highlight but even those are vaguely familiar from Shaky Kane.


I'm afraid I didn't really find this book funny or anything but predictable in its storyline: strip away the family drama, which is jolly enough but perhaps borderline-stereotypical (no TV soap these days would introduce Asian characters in terms of their arranged marriages) and the plot runs "boy meets girl, they release forces of evil and have to call on forces of good to save world." Plus a baby-in-peril, the device that made Labyrinth so watchable. I mean really: this is a Saturday morning cartoon plot. I expect the narrative of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe live action movie with Dolph Lundgren was more complex and original.

The concept is neat -- mesh a pre-existing religious pantheon, one we don't often see in Anglo-American pop culture, with a pre-existing superhero mythos, which we see all the time in Anglo-American pop culture. But so far that just means the heroes and villains, the fortresses of solitude and death-box devices, look different. Or, mostly different, because it is clearly Darkseid designs with a bit of a flourish. The splash spectaculars are the kind of thing you'd see each month in Morrison's Doom Patrol -- every new sudden appearance of a hero-team or villain-group earns a double-spread, so you're almost reading a picture book with one frigging panel every two pages.

Art is mostly inventive and cute, though it's so cartoony I wonder how it can evoke anything but pleasant admiration -- that is, can you feel fear or sorrow when you're looking at such stylised people? When Ali and Sofia are racing towards the Lotus, there's no real sense of anxiety. It's almost slapstick, Scooby and Shaggy running from Frankenstein's monster. And did I miss something obvious, how how does he suddenly realise her identity?

My full marks go to the colouring. Otherwise I found this just went down like jelly and angel delight, not touching the sides.
 
 
sleazenation
22:41 / 10.02.05
I was a bit disappointed in the art - I love Phil Bond's stuff and this was stil head and shoulders above most comic art out there, but it still struck me as a little sub par - especially the evil ones...
 
 
The Falcon
00:07 / 11.02.05
And did I miss something obvious, how how does he suddenly realise her identity?


There's a bit about how they're going to pick up Ali's wife to be, but his father is going to make him suffer a bit more, and then the kid says something about the 'other woman' going to look for the baby, so presumably he clicks the two at the predestined point.

I've absolutely no idea how common arranged marriages are in the UK these days, but there's a definite Bend it like Beckham-cum-Bollywood trib in that first splash (fit asian birds dancing as football soars above) and there was a good bit of mention of arranged marriage within said film.

Anyway, you'd be delighted to be arranged to wed Sofia.

Unless you loved another, of course.

Interesting, using a panel of Bendis dialogue; 'Six.' Six thousand.' 'The baby just did.' etc.

'S worth it just for a team called the Ultra-Hadeen. I've only got Rama and Buddha named; no idea about the totem-pole-heads guy or the goddess (Shiva? doesn't look much like her.)
 
 
Aertho
00:35 / 11.02.05
POWER of MAGENTA, indeed.

So I felt the same about the Ultrahadeen not being very Islamic, but our Western obsession with Christ only clouds the fact that these monotheistic things are contextual growths from legendary pantheons. So Rama is to Ali as Baldur is to me. I'll be interested in how Señor Morrissione bridges fundamentalist presumptions with aryan/semetic histories in two issues.

Atlantis! It's all about Atlantis! And unless that wacky elevator was actually a teleporter, why is there ancient Mesopotamian architecture under a British suburb? Also: is it just me, or is there only four types of person so far? Dad, big bro: humorless pontificators, Fatima: inabled, subtle wisdom, Sofia: reckless ubergirl, Ali: lost in the thick of it all... And those last two are probably gendered versions of the same type.

You're gonna have to clear up that Bendis reference, Dunc.

Not hating the Scooby drama AT ALL. This is an adventure book! Luvvin the Kirbyness.

Back to Ultrahadeen and Kirbyness: Rama/Cthulhu? Buddha/Ganesh(see the nipple rings!)? Are these subcontinental amalgams from cradle of civilization-style mythoses? See Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips, and Eternals and Deviants...
 
 
The Falcon
00:45 / 11.02.05
It's fairly simple; the panel with two overlapping speech bubbles, as exemplified above, is classic Bendis-style comicbook dialogue.

Parodied everywhere by now.

Not that I consider this especially parodic.
 
 
Aertho
00:48 / 11.02.05
Oh.

Hardly connotative for the man that did what M.A.S.H. couldn't and killed Hawkeye.
 
 
Abraxas
03:54 / 11.02.05
Working from the assumption that the second balloon in panel 1, page 30 is something like a translation of the first one (actually it's "Who opennedd the Black Door?" then) you arrive at "All is light, I said to you." for the balloon on the double-page spread immediately preceding that page. Nice.
 
 
Sax
05:58 / 11.02.05
Guardian piece from today
 
 
Sax
07:51 / 11.02.05
Mr Tricks - but I didn't think the We3 discription would include "genetic" weapon enhancements.

Good point. Your No-Prize is in the post, True Believer.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
08:46 / 11.02.05
I'm going to venture that the plots in three out of the four recent Morrison 3-parters are weak, and that's only because I haven't read Seaguy.

By weak, I mean extremely simple and linear, which isn't necessarily a bad thing and never struck me as a huge problem at the time -- but looking back at We3, JLA: Confidential and Vimanarama (so far) it seems disappointing as an overall trend.

We3:
#1 introduce main characters, animals escape
#2 animals flee and fight
#3 one animal dies, two are rescued.

JLA:C
#1 introduce minor heroes, villains rise
#2: villains seem to triumph, major characters return
#3: major heroes kick villains' ass

Vimanarama

#1: introduce human characters, villains, heroes.
(#2: villains seem to triumph
#3: heroes and humans kick villains' ass)

Maybe you could reduce a lot of comic book plots to this kind of basic breakdown -- but maybe you couldn't. I don't feel you could do it easily with three issues of Invisibles, or off the top of my head, three issues of 100 Bullets, Watchmen, Human Target, Zenith, Sandman, The Filth.

The explanation "Grant's just doing a fab kirby-tastic adventure comic" is fine... once. Maybe twice. Three times in a row makes me start seeing it as samey, and feeling restless. Yeah, bubblegum super-compressed 3-minute pop comics, and all that. But do you want three courses of bubblegum? The extreme version of this was Really and Truly, which looked great (Rian Hughes) but read like shit: it read like the rambling coked-up bollocks of a Nathan Barley giving his pitch for a graphic novel.

To be honest, just now Grant Morrison seems to be excelling at design and high-concepts -- almost the skills of an illustrator, not a writer. His dialogue and rapid character-sketches are still very strong at times, as we saw with the intro of the Knight and Squire in JLA: C #1 -- he has the ability to make you feel you know and care about a character after just a few panels, even when restricting himself to minimal conversations in We3 -- and he always has the power to twist a wedge in your heart when he chooses to.

But personally, I'm a little disillusioned with a solid run of 3-part plots that go bang-bang-bang with very few variations or surprises, not to mention a worrying number of plot holes and ambiguities (how did the animals get out, how did Batman get free, how did Ali know Sofia's name).
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:50 / 11.02.05
None of those are plot ambiguities at all. The doctor let them out by disarming the locks; Warmaker 1's ghost + he's just that cool; someone told him she was down there. It's not Morrison's fault you have serious reading comprehension difficulties. Jesus.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
08:56 / 11.02.05
In the first two cases, I was far from the only one who thought Morrison's writing, or his artist's work, was unclear. In the third case, it's too early to call whether anyone else also found this an ambiguous and perhaps under-explained ploint.

Your loyalty to Morrison is leading you to be needlessly insulting towards me.
 
 
DaveBCooper
09:04 / 11.02.05
Funny that people are wondering how he knew she was Sofia, I took the ‘other lady’ line plus the stuff about picking her up to indicate it was her, and spent most of the time wondering why he hadn’t actually said anything about it several pages earlier.

Minor quibble, though, this was a fun read. Nice and light. I like the way the binman treats the dog in that page showing the outside of the shop, and other background details.

Kovacs, I kind of see what you’re driving at with your ‘three-act’ analysis, but I felt that Seaguy and Grant’s run on X-Men rather breaks away from this, as there are a lot of bits in these series where there seem to be pages or panels missing, and it falls (as with the Sofia issue above, ironically) to online postings etc to provide clarification. I’ve unkindly called it story-suggesting as opposed to storytelling, as it seems as if Grant loses interest in the third act, and kind of leaves it to the reader to figure out what’s going on. Not so much in We3 and only in odd panels in JLA:C, admittedly, but I know Grant said that people may be reacting badly to anything that deviates from the classic three-act structure I think you’re alluding to. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate on his part, to be honest, as it looks more as if the story (or its writer) have run out of steam and just kind of stopped, as opposed to actively ending.

But I digress. I enjoyed Vimanarama issue 1.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:05 / 11.02.05
Nah, I insult Morrison and his cosmic-squid-loving fans all the time. Shortly after The Filth finished it felt like I did little else. That's not what's causing me to be insulting towards you.
 
 
Sax
09:28 / 11.02.05
Question is, just how dense do people want the plotting of a three-part comic series to be? Incredibly complicated and convoluted plots do not necessarily make for good storytelling.
 
 
Sax
09:30 / 11.02.05
Oh, and on my first reading I was perfectly happy with Ali coming to the conclusion that the woman he'd met underground was Sofia. Didn't occur to me that he would think it was anyone else, really.

BTW, Flyboy, your new ficsuit name is unnervingly similar to "Haus" when the eyes just flick across it. Have you merged with Tann and Ganesh to become the All-Threeing-Eye?
 
 
Haus of Mystery
09:51 / 11.02.05
Once again I find myself thinking, what about all the fucking skill stuff Morrison has brought to the party with these minis? WE3, Seaguy, and hopefully Vimanaramabananarama are all strange, beautiful beasts that, to me, leap off the shelves. When I finished Vimanarama I certainly wasn't thinking 'But HOW did Ali know that was Sophia?!?' I was more tickled by the fact that he's thinking with his old chap whilst a horde of ridiculous baddies are threatening the usual Morrisonian World-rape.
 
 
Axolotl
10:25 / 11.02.05
I really enjoyed this. Bond's art is excellent as usual and I'm really looking forward to seeing the Dark Ones cut loose on the world.
I thought the plotting was fine and didn't have any problem with Ali working out it was Sophia down there. I'm guessing he didn't comment on that fact straight away as he was busy a) trying to find a missing baby and b) exploring a mysterious underground world.
As for the supposed simplicity of our Greg's recent work, they've all been 3 issue mini-series which can't and shouldn't be overly complicated. All the series Kovac's cited as examples of more elaborate plots were on-going series and thus should aim for a higher complexity in plotting and characterisation.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
10:31 / 11.02.05
Absolutely, MacGyver. In my own estimations of the three Vertigo serieses (I think JLA is sort of a different animal, as continuity, no matter how slight, can fill in a lot of holes that might otherwise need narrative filling in the course of three issues), I think that Grant has figured a quite pleasant way to make a ninety page story feel compressed yet dense. In 90 pages I don't think you've necessarily got room for any motivation that's more complex then what we're seeing in these books. Girl-Impressing, Home, er, Girl-Impressing Again. But, like most pop, it hints at more complex things in the midst of its simplicity. Sure, when it comes to things like race, stereotyping, etcetera, some might prefer a bit more complexity/subtlety, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary when you're just out to build a solid yarn.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
11:10 / 11.02.05
Mostly interesting points, and I shall have to come back to this issue later.
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
12:11 / 11.02.05
onyhoo, plot's hardly the most important aspect of a comic. it's da telllin of da story.

zats wot alan moore sez so there.

I appreciated the minimal plot in WE3 - allowed more room to focus on character and world vision presented.

vinama - was okay i thought. not sexy enough to be honest and the love god at the end was too smooth. mind you the mister-six-alike with a tower of arms on his heid looks pretty cool.

liked the predicament spun by the final page too.

racist bit: i prefer bond's white chicks.
 
 
The Natural Way
13:26 / 11.02.05
Racism? Racism?!?! OUT!!!! GET OUT!!!!!

Besides racism, I get a little tired w/ the people who complain about plotting. It's only one small part of the the whole experience of reading a comic, and, by fuck, most of the stuff people had a problem w/ in We3, Classfied and Vimanarama all seem pretty clear to me. Kovac's, I think I've said this before, and as much as I do dig yr posts, yr approach to comics is perhaps a little too English Lit for me.

As for Phillip Bond conveying emotion, He (and his art-soul-buddy, Jamie Hewlett) draws some of the most expressive faces in town and that's all I need. I reread Vertigo Pop London the other day, and it struck me just how bloody broad Bond's range is. Every nuance, every subtle facial tick - it's all there. And I feel it.
 
 
FinderWolf
13:41 / 11.02.05
Yeah, the designs for the Ultra-Hadeen were fantastic. Guy with many heads and arms on top of his head rules!
 
 
Haus of Mystery
13:43 / 11.02.05
Watch it Puce - Yawn has ninja powers (like all Scotch people).

Agreed - Bond's art was just so fucking nice - really a total joy to read. I also felt for once, the colours weren't over the top - vibrant but without horrid '3-D' effects.

When these are all released in TP (with no fuckkkkkking adverrrrrts) I shall buy all three, go home, and wank myself stupid.
 
 
FinderWolf
13:54 / 11.02.05
I thought this was fun, pretty light - looking forward to seeing what happens next as the set-up has now been established.

"Don't buy their bulbs" - bulbs meaning flowers or light bulbs? I guess that's an anti-Pakistani graffiti bit?
 
 
Raw Norton
14:25 / 11.02.05
I'm a little surprised that the bulb thing hasn't gotten attention heretofore. Unless I'm totally missing some anti-Pakistani slogan, the whole thing smacks of foreshadowing to me. Maybe I've been reading too many comic books, but I say show me a couple of hooded figures in the first few pages, and I'll show you two benevolent mystical allies whose faces are revealed in the next issue. Plus there's something ominously queer about the way they spraypaint: one writing the top line, the other writing the bottom line.

It does strike me as a little insane that folks seem to be hung up on these recent 3-issue story arcs as being plotless or formulaic. Not that these aren't valid characterizations, but I guess they don't express why I read these things. In every one of these, where the plot is thin, the story is nevertheless thematically tight, and that alone is compelling. And while George isn't exactly subverting my expectations of story structure (Seaguy notwithstanding), each mini is its own experiment in storytelling.
 
 
Sax
14:29 / 11.02.05
Plus there's something ominously queer about the way they spraypaint: one writingthe top line, the other writing the bottom line.

Perhaps a parallel with the Totem Pole character on the last page..?
 
 
Triplets
14:34 / 11.02.05
I think people are being a bit too hard on Lander, in his review he does mention Bradford as where the book his set. The India comment being a probable brainfart. To quote:

In addition, Brian Miller's colors are gorgeous, bright and lush and perfect at setting the mood, whether it's in the rain-soaked streets of Bradford or in the brightly lit underworld at the end of the book.
 
 
Sax
14:37 / 11.02.05
Unless, of course, he thinks Bradford is a place in India.
 
 
sleazenation
14:49 / 11.02.05
Interestingly, The Guardian piece makes it into the paper's 'news' section with Phil Bond's art given the full colour 'widescreen' treatment...
 
 
Aertho
14:49 / 11.02.05
I did... for like two seconds.

Architecture over and under ground threw me.
 
 
Mario
14:59 / 11.02.05
A little possible clarification for the "musical number" on the first splash page.

I don't think they are dancing, but playing catch. It just LOOKS like a dance number because Granite is messing with our minds.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
15:09 / 11.02.05
That guardian box thing was covered in bulbs...
 
  

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