Awake on Earth
Awake by Harald Voetmann, On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, Green Arrow by Mike Grell
I’ve been so impatient for May to run its course. The month has brought two books I’m super excited to read but I didn’t get them until the end of the month. With a bit of luck, Geoffrey D. Morrison’s The Coffin of Honey will be a May read, but Anakana Schofield’s The Library of Brothel will be a Juner fer sure.
Don’t despair! This past week alone I ripped through a couple of ragers.
Much like his more recent Visions and Temptations, Harald Voetmann’s Awake wraps the quest for abstract, infinite ideals in the thoroughly gross limits of the human body. This time, the carnal humiliations belong to 1st Century BCE Pliny the Elder, narrating his encyclopedic Natural History and his nephew Pliny the Younger, his nephew who becomes custodian of the Elder’s life’s works and gardens after Old Pliny perished when Mount Vesuvius erupted. It’s hilarious and disgusting.
Earlier this year I caught a terrible eye infection that left me unable to read or watch movies but remarkably still able to read comics on my phone. I’ve never had a tablet, but I imagine they are infinitely better for reading comics digitally than a crummy old smartphone. I read the entire Mike Grell run of Green Arrow comics, around 100 issues over 7 years (1987-1994) including a couple of miniseries and annuals. I had read about two years worth as they came out (89-90) but never caught up on how the series played out after I dipped. Until now.
Grell’s move on Green Arrow was to put the previously swashbuckling character into a realistic Seattle and have him reckon with the trauma of a life of violence. I came to the character via the toys and quarter bin copies of 70s & early 80s comics where Green Arrow was the token left-winger of the Justice League. He challenged Green Lantern’s space cop routine and called the Dark Knight Bat-Ronnie in probably my single favourite Batman issue, Detective Comics no. 559 with gorgeous Gene Colan art
Grell’s Green Arrow was (deliberately) a lot less fun* than these comics, though I must say the series really sparkled in the brief bits where Green Arrow and his longtime romantic partner Black Canary hit the town in their civilian identities and Grell allowed them charming banter.
Another aspect that I enjoyed watching play out over the course of a long run of stories was the way Grell constantly had Green Arrow meet up with other violent men (and women, especially the Japanese assassin Shado) to compare and contrast the toll such life took on them. This Jungian shadow self device recurs across 100 issues. Shado, obviously. There’s Eddie Fyres, CIA-turned-mercenary. The Horseman, an undercover Mountie. A haunted Australian mercenary who is also a film buff. Travis Morgan, the Warlord of Skartaris. Green Lantern outside his costume. An IRA bomber. A movie stunt coordinator with ties to the IRA.
Ed Hannigan and Dan Jurgens do most of the art, with inks by Dick Giordano (who was an executive at DC during that time, a legacy of Carmine Infantino’s run as publisher when artists were promoted) and give that consistent classic American illustration style to the book that makes Grell’s realism work. Denys Cowan does a handful of issues that are fantastic. Seek those out for a good time.
Grell’s stories read more like Robert Parker’s Spenser novels than any other superhero comics. They were clearly written with a more mature, sophisticated audience in mind than even the grittiest urban vigilante fantasies in Batman or Punisher comics of the day. Which explains why they were so exciting to me when I was 13.
Brazilian Ana Paula Maia writes books about violent men in violent environments, pushed to and beyond their limits. Her first book translated to English, Of Cattle and Men, is an unforgettable, disturbing meditation on how we’ve commodified brutality in the microcosm of the commercial beef industry.
On Earth As It Is Beneath, more of the same, except this time the brutality is found within the slightly more regulated prison system. These are exquisitely written, highly literary books that deserve the many accolades they’ve accrued. There’s a third Maia book coming this fall from Charco Press and I cannot wait.
But they also remind me of Mike Grell’s Green Arrow comics. Bronco Gil would have fit into a Green Arrow story but Green Arrow wouldn’t get far in a Maia story. Not even with a boxing glove arrow.