Steve Orlando, Creees Lee, and Rain Beredo put their own imprint on the Marauders in Marauders Annual #1 with a more active approach to the team’s activities, queer subtext/text, deep cut characters from the merry mutant library, and general mayhem. This issue wisely combines the assembling the team and first mission to make for a satisfying reading experience. It has explosive action and also grapples with Krakoa’s ideology with this issue’s antagonist, Brimstone Love (Last seen in X-Men 2009!)
Before sending the Marauders on a rescue mission, Orlando and Lee take some time letting readers get to know the new members of the team, namely, Akihiro, Psylocke, Aurora, Tempo, and Somnus. The cold open of Marauders Annual #1 is centered around Akihiro and shows a side of him not usually explored my most of his writers as he investigates a Morlocks graveyard in Greenwich, Connecticut and tries to figure out who’s been preying on mutants. He ends up motivating the Marauders’ first mission. With close-ups of Psylocke’s face, Creees Lee captures the sadness and regret she’s felt after Hellions, and the way her daughter was used to blackmail and manipulate her ends up being her motivation for joining the team.
Tempo’s intro sequence is the most clever, and she uses her powers to fast forward through a breakup conversation with Orlando and letterer Cory Petit turning in one hell of a run on piece of dialogue. He and Lee indulge in some soapiness meets disaster bisexuality by having two of Akihiro’s exes on the team, namely, Somnus (Who gives Iceman the prom night he deserved) and Aurora. All of the Marauders have a heart to help their fellow mutants, but have been through shit in their personal lives so being on this team is an opportunity to turn this negative energy into something positive and productive. The Marauders are a little messier and edgier than the X-Men, but have more of a moral compass than the X-Force and bring more of an inclusive approach to Krakoa in contrast with the cloak and dagger work of the Hellfire Trading Company and Quiet Council even though Kate Pryde and Bishop are still involved in that side of the business.
What makes Brimstone Love such a compelling antagonist in addition to his Tenacious D music video design is that what he’s seeing makes sense in many cases. Krakoa definitely has a cult-ish vibe, and by making a country ostensibly only for mutants, it does go against Professor X’s initial ideas of mutant/human coexistence. (The climax of the comic happening at the long-neglected Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters drives the point home.) The Morlock Carver especially makes some great points about Krakoa only being for “good” and good looking mutants, which makes sense because many of the former Morlocks are kept out of public life and live in a kind of retirement community in Arizona as seen in the previous volume of Marauders. Carver betraying Akihiro undermines his ideas, but it shows that Steve Orlando (and hopefully other “Destiny of X” writers) is critically dissecting the Krakoan experiment and even connecting the current Marauders team to the original mutant-killing one from the “Mutant Massacre” crossover.
On the flipside, what Brimstone Love and his followers use to explain their actions reminds me of what a lot of cis het allies say to queer folks (*cough* Bachelorette parties at gay bars, or having “ally” be a part of the LGBTQ+ umbrella) when they’re mad that we want spaces for our community. For example, a human talks about how the founding of Krakoa undermined his work to fight for “mutant rights” in a way that sounds like a lot of liberals who think that fighting for LGBTQ+ rights ends with the freedom to marry. Because maybe some of us don’t want to be apart of this institution and form relationships in a new way. That’s just an example off the top of my head, and it’s cool to see Orlando and Creees Lee engage with queerness via the mutant metaphor while also featuring a superhero team where the queer members outnumber the straight ones.
Marauders Annual #1 rejuvenates the concept of the Marauders of a team with new members that are sure to bring intrigue, drama, and cool powers. (See the Lee’s visualizations of Somnus and Tempo’s abilities.) Steve Orlando and Creees Lee also use the new-look Marauders to explore things like respectability politics and safe spaces while also including violent brawls against bad guys from the 1990s that look like a fundamentalist preacher’s worst nightmare. I’m all aboard with this new book and am interested to see how Marauders recontextualizes characters from the X-Book’s past while engaging with the metaphorical connection between queerness and being a mutant while having kick-ass, attitude filled fight scenes.
Story: Steve Orlando Art: Creees Lee Colors: Rain Beredo Letters: Cory Petit Story: 8.2 Art: 7.7 Overall: 8.0 Recommendation: Buy
Marvel Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Euphoriareally goes off the rails in “Ruminations: Big and Little Bullys“, and this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Writer/director Sam Levinson spends the entire pre-title sequence trying to garner sympathy for a pedophile using nostalgic colors and some great New Wave tracks in the painfully predictable saga of Cal Jacobs (Played by a forgettable Elias Kacavas) having a repressed upbringing and only getting to spend one real night with his best friend/true love Derek before being thrust into his role as patriarch and father when his girlfriend is pregnant. Closeted queer men being pedophiles is a painful stereotype, and honestly all this information about Cal could be deduced from his actions in the present day except for him being a Ministry fan.
Honestly, this scene is Exhibit A of Euphoria being a show with a gorgeous visual style and an uncanny sense of how to weave in musical cues, but this can be done in a bloated and self-indulgent way like having a romantic dance sequence to “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS featuring a younger version of total irredeemable monster character. It’s better in the sequence immediately following the flashback where Levinson draws upon Zendaya’s dance background to show how much her drug addiction has consumed her life as Rue is in her own little world and puts Pop Tarts in the fridge and milk in the cupboard. This reverie ends with a deadpan line reading from Storm Reid as Rue’s little sister Gia, who asks if she’s high. And we’re back to the fourth wall breaking slide projector device where Rue (with an assist from Elliot) breaks down how she manipulates people in her life that she’s not a drug addict, including her family and friends by using key phrases to make everything seem okay. Of course, only her sponsor Ali sees through this bullshit so she has to go for a more direct approach towards the end of the episode and bring up that he was a bad father while toting around a suitcase with $10,000 worth of drugs. Colman Domingo strikes a balance between vulnerability and rage in his performance, and cinematographer Marcell Rev’s camera drinks up his face while the generic AA meeting drones on.
And speaking of the suitcase with $10,000 of drugs, this is where Euphoria loses the plot and becomes Tarantinoesque instead of showing the great lengths that Rue will go to feed her addiction. After a rough day at school and home, Rue has an epiphany where she realizes a way where she can do drugs for free. Of course, Fezco doesn’t buy her yet unspoken business plan mostly because he knows she’s an addict. However, Laurie (Martha Kelly), who was the drug queenpin from the season premiere, doesn’t share his qualms and totally goes for her half-assed pitch that includes pointless Steve Jobs references and a plan centered around high achieving teenage girls and blackmail. Of course, Rue doesn’t have any of these apparatuses in place, and there’s a real sense of danger when Kelly flatly delivers a line about kidnapping and selling her to make the money back. The suitcase that Rue nonchalantly takes to an AA meeting and home in front of her mom raises the show’s stakes, but also takes the focus off Rue and her relationships for a generic crime story. Also, Laurie’s only been in two episodes, but there’s no way in hell that she’d move forward with that business plan.
Like the previous episode, “Ruminations: Big and Little Bullys” checks in with all the characters of Euphoria whether it’s as big as a potential love triangle between Rue, Jules, and Elliot (Dominic Fike and Hunter Schafer have insane chemistry.) or as minor as Kat sticking her foot in her mouth when having dinner with Ethan’s parents. Once again, Sam Levinson doesn’t know what to do with her this season. However, he does go full metafictional with Lexi, who is directing a school play seemingly based on Euphoria and especially her relationship with Cassie, and shoots the scenes where her parents are arguing like a behind the scenes featurette for a TV show. This is all because Lexi perceives herself as someone who watches and observes, but never intervenes. She obsessively writes on her laptop while Cassie spends three hours getting ready every morning so Nate will still be into her although he ends up getting back with Maddy by the end of the episode.
Sydney Sweeney pulls off deranged and obsessed very well in this episode mainly through body language and one big monologue while she’s hanging out with Maddy about how Maddy should be with someone who doesn’t fight with her and worships the ground she walks on. Lexi wants to bring this kind of main character energy to her own life, but for now, she’ll settle for having a bunch of students auditioning for her play because Oklahoma! is played out in 2022. Maude Apatow bringing a mix of energy and passivity to the expanded role of Lexi has definitely been one of the highlights of Euphoria Season 2, and it’s interesting to see Levinson use a similar fourth wall-breaking, narrativizing device for both her and Rue’s arcs this season. It’s like they used to be friends or something…
To end this review on a positive note, I love the playful and slightly chaotic interactions between Rue, Jules, and Elliot in this episode. They have frank conversations about sexuality and queerness with Elliot observing that Jules is a trans girl who wears a binder, and she sees him as “not gay” and “not straight”. With Rue out of the room, they also chat about how her sexual desire waxes and wanes. For example, she and Jules mess around a little bit this episode, but then the drug suitcase plotline kicks in, and there isn’t a lot of interactions between them. There’s also something naturalistic about how Hunter Schafer goes from Jules shining a lamp on Elliot like she’s interrogating him to smiling at him and starting to realize that she has similar feelings for him like she does for Rue even after he admits having a crush on Rue.
Plus Elliot has one hell of a monologue about how great a character Jules is that hits home after Fezco and Cal Jacobs call her “Jewel” in an interaction where Cal rolls up to Fezco’s shop looking for the disk of him having sex with Jules. He immediately gets cut down to size verbally and physically as Ashtray hits him with a rifle butt over and over again because Cal know he’s behaving suspiciously and can’t go to the police. Fezco and Faye’s (Chloe Cherry) response to Cal’s pedophilia plus Nate being in love with a girl that his dad had sex with immediately contradicts the opening flashback, and it’s nice to have Sam Levinson take a break from the sympathizing flashbacks and dream sequences and let Angus Cloud and Cherry react to how fucked up everything is. It’s also nice to see Cal put in his place for once instead of using his standing in the community to get his way, and also Euphoria is at its best when it’s pitch black comedy and not romanticizing abusers and pedophiles.
When I saw the previews for this week’s episode, I knew that “Ruminations: Big and Little Bullys” would be a step down in quality thanks to a flashback trying to make viewers sympathize with the monstrous Cal Jacobs. And it was worse than I imagined with Levinson and Rev going full 1980s nostalgia for the hell of it and not adding any new depth or information that we could have gotten from Cal’s present day appearances. Throw in an inconsistent approach to Rue’s arc that goes from clever and ingenious (The dance sequence) to hackneyed and melodramatic (The aforementioned suitcase.), and this episode of Euphoria is kind of a bummer. However, there are some bright spots like Fezco and Faye’s Greek chorus role to all the fucked up stuff going down at Euphoria High, Lexi using story to find herself and become more assertive, and the queer love triangle of Rue, Jules, and Elliot. More of that and less creepy old dudes in future installments, please.
One of my favorite parts of Wolverine as a character is that he can fit into all kinds of genres of story and different eras too because of his long life. On a surface level, Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, and Frank Martin get that too, but the execution is sorely lacking as they kick off a mini-event in XLives of Wolverine #1. Percy has told good Logan stories in both podcasts and comics, but this isn’t one of them as he and Cassara follow an underwhelming dangling plot thread with Wolverine facing off against Omega Red in multiple timelines to rescue Professor X.
The whole premise of X Lives of Wolverine #1 screams derivative with Logan getting the multiple timelines and outcomes that Moira X did in House of X/Powers of X. Over the past couple decades, Wolverine’s past and future have been excavated, retconned, and re-contextualized so many times and even spawned two live action films. So, it’s nice to see Percy and Cassara just have him be violent and protective in different settings instead of trying to hype up yet another new mystery about his past. Poetic captions and good staging aside (For example, the horror that Charles Xavier’s father has in his face when Omega Red is threatening his newborn son.), X Lives of Wolverine can’t escape that it’s just the two months of filler before “Destiny of X”.
I think the reason that X Lives of Wolverine didn’t connect with me beyond time travel for the sake of time travel was that Omega Red and his variants are quite one-dimensional villains. As seen from his work on X-Force, Joshua Cassara has a real gift for body horror, and Omega Red has an all-time great design. But he doesn’t have that much of a personality beyond that design and even ends up playing second fiddle to the devious Mikhail Rasputin. (His manipulation of Colossus is the real plotline I’m looking forward to.) The other “Omegas” are even worse and show up in the main flashback timeline trying to kill Professor X at birth. There’s nothing interesting to unpack: just bad guys with Omega symbols on their foreheads trying to kill a baby. Omega Red’s motivation does make sense because Beast wanted him to come back with his painful carbonadium intact, but this information is confined to a data page that breaks up the visceral action from Cassara and White.
And, yes, the action is basically if Mark Millar scripted an Omega Red-centric version of the Clone Saga. There’s lingering panels where Xavier’s mother acknowledges that she miscarried Cassandra (Later Nova) as well as Wolverine cutting an umbilical cord with his claw. But, for some reason, Wolverine won’t kill these Omegas even though they’re jeopardizing the life of man, who would one day give him an opportunity to be a part of something bigger than himself. The Omegas are drawn and act like generic enemies that would be tossed off without even thinking, but Benjamin Percy does a whole moral dilemma thing with them. (I guess “Kill no mutant” does apply to alternate timelines.)
Even though Percy did seed Omega Red’s anger against Krakoa in previous issues of X-Force, the character works as a B or C-plot not the centerpiece of an event. Joshua Cassara stages the fight between Wolverine, a badass Mrs. Xavier, and the Omegas in a compelling way with gritty colors from Frank Martin, but it feels like a generic video game fight. With the appearance of Rasputin and the presence of Jean Grey, the upcoming timeline hops might have better stakes, but honestly after 40 pages of this, I’m not sticking around every week to see if they do.
Story: Benjamin Percy Art: Joshua Cassara Colors: Frank Martin Letters: Cory Petit Story: 4.0 Art: 6.0 Overall: 5.0 Recommendation: Pass
Marvel Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
The second episode of EuphoriaSeason 2 begins right where the last one ended with Nate being beaten to bloody pulp by Fezco. This is because in the last season, Nate tipped off the cops on Fezco’s drug business to blackmail Rue and Jules so they wouldn’t bring a DVD of his father/town leader Cal (Eric Dane) having sex with Jules. This plot point gets revisited in the closing moments of the episode, but only after writer/director Sam Levinson threads together an episode looking at the dreams the characters of Euphoria have about relationships and the often dark reality. “Out of Touch” is a dense, yet visual stunning hour of television sprawling across the families and friends of everyone in the main ensemble in contrast with the premiere staying confined to the Fezco flashback and a New Year’s Eve party with a drug dealer pit stop.
After going full gory medical drama, Levinson uses Nate being unconscious to probe his inner thoughts that are bathed in angelic light. This dream sequences shows a softer side of one of the most sociopathic characters on television as he loves, respects, and desires Cassie and wants to build life with her while breaking the cycle of abuse and in the Jacobs family. His dad is an almost comedic figure doing yoga stretches instead of being a menace and interrogating Cassie and Lexi about who attacked Nate at the party and then taking a gun to Fezco’s gas station although he doesn’t start shit because Lexi is there being awkwardly flirtatious around the malt liquor cooler. There is also a darker side of these sequences with images from Cal’s sex tapes, and Nate having sex with his ex (and Cassie’s best friend) Maddy showing up in an image overload. None of Cassie and Nate’s actual interactions are like the dream sequence with a truck ride to some houses under construction ending up being super-terse except when Nate says they can’t see each other again, and they end up having sex on the second floor of an unfinished house in the pitch black. Maddy and her penchant for violence and outburst (As seen in a quick cut montage) is what comes between them, and honestly the Jacobs family has bigger fish to fry thanks to the aforementioned CD.
The other big dream sequence in “Out of Touch” involves a characters that’s the polar opposite of Nate Jacobs: Kat (Barbie Ferreira). She didn’t get much screen time last episode beyond being sweet with her boyfriend Ethan and keeping Jules company, but Sam Levinson returns to her arc of empowerment and escapism from last season. He goes full visual overload with Kat having a vision of a Dothraki warrior from Game of Thrones killing her boyfriend and having rough sex with her, which basically boils down to Ethan being nice so maybe she should let him go. This extends to the real world as he’s darkly lit during their bowling outing while Kat, Jules, and Maddy get Instagram-ready montages of them bonding and having a good time. The other dream sequence involves, I guess, influencer-type women of different shapes and sizes telling Kat to practice self-love while she’s in her bed practicing self-loathing. Euphoria is never subtle, but it’s some heavy-handed messaging about social media’s obsession with ultrapositivity. Levinson is better at digging into his character’s psyches than social commentary so it’s a bit of an unwanted detour even though it does eventually find its way back to the simple, yet effective message of being afraid to be happy for once. (A bathroom chat between Maddy, Kat, and a fellow Euphoria High student gets the point across in a more natural way.)
The other main plot line in this episode of Euphoria is Jules getting jealous about Rue’s new friendship with Elliot, and by extension, her relapse into drug use although she does go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and introduce her sponsor Ali (Colman Domingo) to her mother. Zendaya and Dominic Fike have an easy chemistry in the scenes they share and feel at ease in each other’s presence with Sam Levinson’s images and Labrinth’s score showing their connection over music and drugs. And when there’s dialogue, Elliot brings out an honesty in Rue that’s the opposite of how she interacts with Jules and her mother later on in the issue. (Ali is a fellow addict and can see through her bullshit.) Rue ends up opening up about her dad passing away from cancer and finds a kind of comfort in the messiness of life as she and Elliot understand that her drug use didn’t come out of grief, and she would probably still be using even if he was alive. Zendaya brings a haze and awkward energy to her performance this episode that plays off Fike’s insight and straightforwardness, and it doesn’t feel contrived at all that Jules think Rue is romantically interested in Elliot.
In addition to these multiple relationship tension plot lines, “Out of Touch” has so much else going on from Fezco harboring a fugitive Faye (The girl doing heroin last episode) to the beginning of a Lexi empowerment arc and Maddy having her own kind of a fantasy sequence as she tries on her employer’s fancy dresses and outfits. Two episodes, and Euphoria is juggling lots of plotlines and succeeding with most of them. Sam Levinson dips into the manic crime saga energy from the premiere with Faye’s, I guess, G-plot that involves her escaping from a motel through a ventilation shaft into a dumpster by a Taco Bell. She’s an awkward presence, especially when she interacts with Lexi and Cal and exists more to show shit could hit the fan with Fezco at any time. Angus Cloud definitely plays him in a more harried and terse way even though there are still sparks between him and Lexi, and he treats Faye kindly although she’s really a pain in the ass.
“Out of Touch” doesn’t get as good as its radiant opening sequence where Nate imagines a happier and more conventional alternate future for himself that doesn’t involve lies, threats, and blackmail, but Sam Levinson does a good job of checking in with characters like Kat, who didn’t do much in the premiere, and Elliot, who has amazing chemistry with Rue. Plus Cal Jacobs reminds everyone that he’s the true antagonist of this show thanks to a menacing performance from Eric Dane with just the right touch of paternality. The sequence with him in the gas station is a great little mini-thriller and shows that Euphoria can be suspenseful and not just visually beautiful and have great musical choices.
The Sword of Hyperborea #1 is the first installment of a four issue miniseries centered around a titular sword that has had an impact on the Mignolaverse from the dawn of time (From its name, I can deduce it’s connected to Robert E. Howard/Conan stuff.) to the apocalypse aka Ragna Rok. On paper, this sounds pretty fucking cool like Hellboy meets Highlander, or like Michael Walsh’s Silver Coin, but sword and sorcery. However, in execution, this new comic from Mike Mignola, Rob Williams, Laurence Campbell, and Quinton Winter is far from it. With the exception of the opening sequence which establishes BPRD Agent Howards’ relationship with Liz Sherman as well as his duty as wielder of the Sword of Hyperborea, this book is a confusing mess that will only resonate with hardcore Mignolaverse fans. There are bits and pieces that are coherent like one of Gall Dennar’s fellow tribe members saying that his strength only comes from the sword and paying the price, but it doesn’t come together into any kind of satisfying whole, or even slice of a story.
And this is a shame because Campbell and Winter’s visuals are damn good. Laurence Campbell’s style is a hybrid between Mignola and Andrea Sorrentino while Quinton Winter’s palette is suitably apocalyptic with clashing pitch blacks and lights. Winter brings an elemental approach to the coloring of the book with lots of green, reds, and whites fitting for a story that is set, for better and worse, around the dawn of humanity. (The one line in Mike Mignola and Williams’ script that I actually smiled at was Liz calling Howards, “Captain Caveman” before he jumps into action.) This works well with Campbell’s thick, sketchy lines that show the struggle to survive in prehistoric times, and how something like the Sword of Hyperborea can turn the tide. On the other hand, Laurence Campbell takes a simpler approach to his monster: all tentacles and straight lines like a kind of end point to humanity.
The Sword of Hyperborea #1 is centered around a simple idea: one day humanity will be destroyed by monsters. It’s hard not to connect to what Mignola and Rob Williams have put in their script with a deadly pandemic raging, income inequality soaring, and the climate rapidly changing. I definitely get that foreboding from Campbell and Quinton Winter’s art, but it doesn’t come through in the story, which is structured like some vignettes (Howards fighting monsters, Gall Dennar’s tribe succession, Howards/Dennar going into a deep dark cave) combined with trailer type images that will either be fleshed out down the road, or are already familiar to Mignolaverse fans. There’s repeated mentions of Chicago and modern imagery juxtaposed with the cave/apocalyptic stuff, and without context, it reads like generic foreshadowing.
Also, I don’t get a feel for either Howards or Dennar as characters beyond they have a magic sword and are going up against monsters that end the world. It looks cool, but I don’t care about these guys at all, sorry. Also, the apocalypse doesn’t have much build up beyond tentacles and lightning. It’s all very vague and reads like a Xerox of a Xerox of Robert E. Howard’s ouevre: all keywords and bad things happening and not even fun purple prose. Honestly, if this wasn’t connected to Hellboy and BPRD in some way, I wouldn’t even tell the hardcore fans to check it out.
Laurence Campbell and Quinton Winter bring some compelling prehistoric and high fantasy settings to life in The Sword of Hyperborea #1, but Mike Mignola and Rob Williams’ script is too bogged down in lore to make Agent Howards or Gall Dennar compelling leads. By the end of the issue, I just know that Dennar is a strong guy with a sword who doesn’t have much of a personality beyond beating his rivals and monsters with the aforementioned sword. If I predict correctly from the ending, subsequent issues are going to jump into different time periods and introduce additional characters, who are hopefully fleshed out more, but that’s a path I would only recommend for the Mignolaverse completionists.
Script: Mike Mignola and Rob WilliamsArt: Laurence Campbell Colors: Quinton Winter Letters: Clem Robins Story: 5.0 Art: 8.0 Overall: 6.0 Recommendation: Pass
Dark Horse Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
After over two years off and a couple special episodes to tide viewers, Euphoriais back for second season and doesn’t waste any time getting back in full swing. Writer/director Sam Levinson uses “Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door” to check in with all the main cast members from season while also telling the origin story of Fez (Angus Cloud), East Highland’s drug dealer with a heart of gold.
The episode kicks off with a potent opening sequence shot on gorgeous, grainy film stock by cinematographer Marcell Rev and introduces us to Fez’ grandmother (A scene-stealing Kathrine Narducci), who is truly a “motherfucking G” as Zendaya’s voice-over puts it. Levinson does tracking shots through the bowels of a strip club before stopping on a dime as Fez’s grandmother puts two in the legs of his father while he’s getting oral sex from one of the strippers. (This is the first of several scenes with male full frontal nudity.) Then, she goes back to the car where young Fez, who has a black eye from his dad’s abuse, is waiting and drives him home launching into full flashbacks of how he became partners with her. This is in addition to being Ashtray’s (Javon Walton) brother and guardian after his mother abandons him.
This flashback reinforces Fez’s strong bond with those he considers to be his family, including Euphoria‘s protagonist Rue (Zendaya) and that him being willing to kill for them isn’t just an exaggeration. The opening scene establishes a cycle of violence that Fez is caught up in and can’t escape by chilling on the couch and chatting with Lexi (Maude Apatow) about the origins of Christmas and the ethics of drug dealing. Fez’s world is full of tension, and he’s 100% aware of that like when he chides Rue for joking around after a drug buy where Fez, Ashtray, and her have to strip down because their supplier is paranoid that they’re wearing wires. Zendaya’s facial expressions when a burly drug dealer named Bruce tells her to strip down are pure trauma and going from that charged environment to a New Year’s Eve party takes a toll on both her and Fez, who doesn’t leave the couch until the end of the episode.
The New Year Eve’s party with its unbridled, hazy atmosphere of drugs, sex, booze, and wash cloths covered in shit is a great device from Sam Levinson to take the temperature of the main characters of Euphoria and also play with some different pairings of characters. Until the Labrinth/lens flare/ring light finale of the episode, Rue actively is avoiding Jules (Hunter Schafer) so she spends a lot of the episode dancing and having a good time with Kat (Barbie Ferreira). Kat and Jules bonded pretty early in Season One, but Jules’ relationship with Rue took center stage and made her world “smaller”. It’s nice to see her circulating around the party even as she keeps an eye out for Nate (Jacob Elordi), who manipulated and blackmailed her last season. As mentioned earlier, Lexi and Fez bond, and his upbeat attitude and the fact that he’s generally impressed with helps her enjoy the party while she tries to figure out where her sister Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) went. It’s a real opposites attract situation, and you can tell in Apatow’s eyes that Lexi is happy to spend time with someone who genuinely cares about what she has to say instead of trying to get something from her. Lexi and Fez were both underrated characters in Euphoria Season 1, and it’s nice to see them get the spotlight off the bat.
The third pairing is the darkest and saddest, Nate and Cassie. Before viewers even get time to settle into the party, Sam Levinson whips over to Cassie buying powdered donuts at a gas station and generally wallowing. Of course, she runs into Nate and his big truck, who offers her a ride to the party. Nate’s recklessness and objectification of women is on full display on the ride up as he drinks beer and hits triple digits on the speedometer. Sweeney hits a great range of emotions on the ride up from total fear to elation as she sticks her head out of the window while Orville Peck plays on the stereo. Cassie is struggling with her self-perception, and if she wants to be in relationships or just keep it casual. She’s not in a good place, and Nate takes advantage of this in a messy bathroom hookup that is one of the main sources of tension in the episode as Cassie hides in a bath tub while Nate’s star-crossed ex Maddy (Alexa Demie) uses the facilities and roasts a former classmate, Travis for trying to fit on her. Cassie’s ex McKay (Algee Smith), who isn’t that bad of a guy, tries to have a conversation about possibly getting back together, but she can barely speak after the utter humiliation of hiding in the tub, betraying her best friend Maddy, and being present for yet another instance of male full frontal nudity.
Humiliation and disgust along with the little bits of violence are recurring motifs in “Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door” with Rue mixing heroin and cocaine and almost overdosing on her new buddy Elliot (Dominic Fike) only saved by her knowledge of drugs’ effects and bringing her pulse back to normal with Adderall. There’s a warm, smoky vibe around Rue and Elliott, and it’s fitting they end up smoking weed by a camp fire, which is where Jules finally finds her. Levinson and Rev pull out all the stops for a big romantic reunion while using light and dark to show there’s still tension, especially between Nate and Fez. This whole episode is full of shots of different characters keeping tabs on each other keeping an uneasy stalemate until it all boils over in a moment of violence in the final moments as Fez’s world collides with the world of the party.
“Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door” sets the tone for what is likely to be a very dark season of Euphoria with Fez unleashing a killer instinct that’s usually hidden behind jokes and keen insight. Kathrine Narducci’s grandmother barely appears in this episode, but we see the impact her presence had on Fez with repeated dialogue and actions in the present day. Also, Sam Levinson and Marcell Rev have successfully changed Euphoria’s visual look to better reflect its broken and on-edge characters while the music is more oldies and nostalgic needle drops than the latest hotness as almost stand-in’s for the missing parents or homages to folks like Fez’s grandma or his new drug source, a soft-spoken former teacher named Laurie. Euphoria Season 2, Episode 1 is confident, depraved, and not afraid to get its hands dirty with an incident towards the end of the episode that has me anticipating the fallout next week and for the rest of the season.
Crush and Lobo #8 wraps the series up with mayhem-filled, fourth wall busting team-up between father and daughter Czarnian. Both Crush and Lobo are back in jail together, and they have to find some way to get out and maybe learn some life lessons along the way. Well, maybe not the life lessons part as Mariko Tamaki’s narrator voice for Crush continues to be snarky and fun as hell firmly planting her into the anti-hero category if not as scummy as her father. And, thankfully, Crush and Lobo #8 isn’t all talking heads as Amancay Nahuelpan and Tamra Bonvillain bring the property destruction and colorful aliens to wrap the storyline up with some familiar faces from earlier in the series making a return.
I love Crush and Lobo #8 goes from probing the relationship between Crush and Lobo as well as ideas like nature vs nurture, or if people (Aliens in this case) can really change to just being snarky one-liners and punching. Tamaki’s narration adds layers to what was already a fun action book, and she and Nahuelpan play with different tropes like big romantic gestures and fight first and team-up later. However, this comic ends up being about Crush taking control of her own destiny and not being the teen version of her dad although she is skilled at taking money to bring in alien criminals. But that’s not all she does as Crush still holds a torch for Katie and is still on decent terms with the Titans even though she missed a lot of Red Arrow’s texts in space. After eight issues, Mariko Tamaki and Amancay Nahuelpan have definitely forged a unique and lively personality for Lobo and leave the door open for them or other creators to craft more funny, violent, and maybe slightly heartbreaking adventures for her.
Even if Crush and Lobo end up punching a lot of robot therapists in the head with colorful blood effects from Bonvillain, Crush and Lobo #8 takes a fair and smart approach to therapy that Crush applies to her own experience with clairvoyant aliens and Katie, who goes to therapy. It’s not about being the subject of a book or science experiment or a lost cause, but about learning about yourself and coping mechanisms from an intuitive, well-trained third party aka not the robots in Lobo’s prison. Change is difficult, but still doable, especially in small ways. This applies to Crush and Lobo as Tamaki and Nahuelpan don’t make sweeping changes to Crush’s status quo (And as the more well-known of the pair, Lobo is an incredibly static character.), but have her make small changes and do-overs. For example, she’s honest about her feelings towards Katie and drinks coffee like a regular customer instead of blowing up the space coffee shop. Crush isn’t going to be a paragon of good any time soon, but her messiness and the fact that she might actually give a shit underneath the quips and cool exterior is what makes her a character that I could connect to and can definitely anchor her own series.
Crush and Lobo concludes with big splashy punches and pages from Amancay Nahuelpan seasoned with self-aware scripting from Mariko Tamaki and a color palette from Tamra Bonvillain that ranges from garish to sterile depending on if the scene is set on cool planets or in jail. It’s an entertaining series and definitely proves that Crush can stand on her own apart from her more famous father even though their interactions led to a lot of humor and a little bit of soul searching.
Even though it was a shitty year overall, I found some great comics to enjoy in 2021, both old and new. Beginning with its “Future State” event, DC easily shot up to become my favorite mainstream publisher thanks to its renewed focus on different visual styles instead of a Jim Lee-esque art style and its emphasis on LGBTQ+ characters even after Pride Month. Vault and Image continued to be the homes of both my favorite creators and SF stories, and AWA, Dark Horse and even Black Mask and Archie had titles that surprised me even if they didn’t make the cut on this list. Finally, continuing a trend that I jumped on in 2020, I continued to read or revisit classic comics (Both old and new) in 2021, like Copra, Invincible, The Umbrella Academy, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Wonder Woman: True Amazon, The Invisibles, Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Force, Hawkeye, and Black Bolt among others.
So, without further ado, here are my ten favorite comics of 2021
Alice in Leatherland is a wholesome, sexy, and hyper-stylized slice of life romance comic from the creative team of Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli. The book is about Alice, a children’s book writer, who leaves her small town for San Francisco when her girlfriend cheats on her and captures the fear and adrenaline of taking a big step in your life. The series explores sex and love through an expansive cast of LGBTQ+ characters that I wanted to spend more than five issues with. Romboli uses fairy tale style visuals as a metaphor to examine Alice’s feelings and self-growth throughout the series, and she excels at depicting both the hilarious and erotic. Alice in Leatherland is an emotional, funny read with well-developed queer characters and made me immediately add Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli to the list of creators I’ll read anything by.
The Autumnalby Daniel Kraus, Chris Shehan, and Jason Wordie was the most unsettling comic I read in 2021. The book follows Kat Somerville and her daughter Sybil as they leave Chicago for the town of Comfort Notch, New Hampshire. However, this town isn’t a rural oasis, but incredibly creepy. Kraus’ script unravels the foundation of blood that the town is built on while Shehan and Wordie create tension with the fall of the leaf or a crackle of a branch. I also love how fleshed out Kat is as she deals with being an outsider in what turns out to be an unfriendly space with her parenting style and approach to life being critiqued by her neighbors. Finally, The Autumnal is the finest of slow burns beginning with NIMBY/Karen-like behavior and then going full-on death cult. It’s a must read for anyone who has lived or experienced a place where time seems to stand still, or who thinks a NextDoor app post could be the basis of a good horror story.
Contrary to its title, James Tynion, Guillem March, Steffano Rafaele, Arif Prianto, and others’ TheJokerisn’t a comic looking at the Clown Prince of Crime’s inner psyche, but is a globe-trotting P.I. type story featuring Jim Gordon trying to capture the Joker for some folks that looks shadier and shadier as the story progresses. Tynion and (predominantly) March show the effect Joker has had on Gordon’s life and his family while also showing him discover himself outside the bounds of Gotham and its police department. As the series progresses, TheJoker shows the impact that Batman and his rogue’s gallery have had on the rest of the world, and the ways governments, intelligence agencies, and more nefarious organizations deal with threats of their ilk. Along with a crime novel set in present time, James Tynion, Matthew Rosenberg, and the virtuosic Francesco Francavilla created several flashback comics showing the development of Jim Gordon’s relationship with the Joker over the years, and how it effected his family life and career almost acting as a “Year One” for Gordon as Francavilla’s art style shifts based on the era the story is set in. Plus most issues of Joker feature colorful backup stories with Harper Row trying to bring Joker’s newest ally Punchline to justice in and out of prison from Tynion, Sam Johns, Sweeney Boo, Rosi Kampe, and others.
Kane and Able is a dual-cartoonist anthology featuring work by British cartoonists Shaky Kane and Krent Able. Kane’s stories flow together in a Jack Kirby-meets-David Lynch kind of way blurring the lines between fiction and metafiction, reality and unreality while also acting as an opportunity for him to draw cool things like dinosaurs, space women, aliens, the King of Comics, and even himself. Able’s stories have more of a grindhouse, body horror quality to him as a chainsaw-wielding Bear Fur battles a boom box wielding cockroach woman, who flesh bonds everyone in a listless, major city. Both creators have delightful, distinctive styles and put their own spin on genres like sci-fi, exploitation, and superhero. Kane and Able is free-flowing, clever, and most of all, fun and is tailor made for the larger page format of treasury editions.
As far as pure visuals go, Static Season One by Vita Ayala, Nikolas Draper-Ivey, and ChrisCross was easily one of the best looking books on the stands in 2021. This was in addition to reinventing the iconic Black superhero through the lens of contemporary social movements, like Black Lives Matter and protests against police brutality in summer of 2020. Static Season One doesn’t merely pay homage to the classic Milestone series, but brings it into 2021 with fight sequences straight out of the best shonen manga and a three dimensional supporting cast that holistically explore the Black experience in the United States while also being a coming of age and superhero origin tale. Draper-Ivey’s character designs are sleek as hell, and his high energy approach to color palette adds intensity to fight and chase scenes. I’m excited to see what the talented creative duo of Ayala and Nikolas Draper-Ivey bring to Static’s journey as Season One wraps up and Season Two (hopefully) begins in 2022.
5. Renegade Rule (Dark Horse)
Renegade Rule is an original graphic novel from Ben Kahn, Rachel Silverstein, and Sam Beck that is a perfect fusion of a sports manga and a queer romance story set in the world of competitive video games. Even if you’re like me and have only attempted to play Overwatch a single time, Renegade Rule and its world are quite accessible via things like hypercompetitiveness, sexual tension, and breathtaking fight choreography. The in-game sequences are almost like musical numbers and use shooting, sniping, and various acrobatics to make characters’ unspoken thoughts real. Renegade Rule is like if your favorite sports movie and romantic comedy had a gay baby who loved kicking ass at video games, and I pumped my fist every time the Manhattan Mist overcame adversity or overwhelming odds and smiled when certain characters ended up with each other…
After a four year absence from interior art, co-writer/artist J.H. Williams III didn’t mess around with Echolands, a love letter to both genre fiction and double page spreads. Done in collaboration with co-writer Haden Blackman and colorist Dave Stewart, Echolands is an epic fantasy quest loaded up with all kinds of genres and art styles leaking off the page and was one of the most immersive comics I read in 2021. It has a sprawling cast and world, but Blackman and Williams know when to slow down and dig into Hope Redhood and her allies and antagonists’ motivations and when to drop in a multi-page underwater or underground chase sequence. With its unique landscape layouts and all the details in J.H. Williams and Stewart’s visuals, Echolands is definitely a book worth picking up in physical format and has backmatter that both humorously and seriously adds to the worldbuilding.
In honor of Pride Month, DC Comics put some of its most talented LGBTQ+ creators on its most iconic LGBTQ+ characters in a super-sized celebration of overcoming adversity, being yourself, and loving whoever you want to love. DC Pride covered a spectrum of sexual and gender identities from a fast-paced date night story featuring the non-binary Flash, Jess Chambers, to James Tynion and Trung Le Nguyen’s fairy tale influenced story of Batwoman’s younger days and even the first appearance of transgender superhero Dreamer (From the Supergirl TV show) in the comics. Depending on the character or creative team, the different stories could be adventurous and flirtatious, heartfelt and emotional, or a bit of both. This book shows that superhero comics have come a long way since the stereotypes of the 1980s and 1990s, but there’s still room for improvement as many of the characters featured in this anthology are relegated to backup stories or are supporting cast members of cisgender, heterosexual heroes.
Barbalien: Red Planet is a masterfully crafted, queer rage infused superhero/sci-fi comic from Jeff Lemire, Tate Brombal, Gabriel Walta, and Jordie Bellaire. It understands subtext is for cowards and draws parallels between Barbalien coming out as gay and a Martian with his new friend/potential lover Miguel, who is a Latino activist fighting for the US government to do something about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Barbalien: Red Planet pays homage to the Black and Latinx activists who fought for queer liberation and is also an emotionally honest character study for Barbalien, who is easily my favorite character in the Black Hammer universe. Lemire, Brombal, and Walta use the superhero and sword and planet genres to explore the conflict between queer folks and power structures as Barbalien struggles with trying to fit into Spiral City as a white cop or being his true, gay Martian self. And to get personal for a second, Barbalien: Red Planet inspired me to speak out against my city’s Pride organization’s open support of police even though it led to me resigning as chairperson of my work’s LGBTQ+ employee affinity group. It’s both a damn good superhero book and a story that had a huge impact on my life in 2020-2021.
My favorite comic of 2021 was Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans that wrapped up with the mother of all quest arcs. But beyond having cool fantasy landscapes and wrapping up each party member’s arc, Die nailed the importance of stories, whether games, comics, films, prose, TV shows etc., to change how we view and interact with the world in both a heightened and realistic manner. Most of the realism came in Die #20 where the main characters escape the world of the game into our reality with the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing and have emotional reunions with loved ones or just hang out by themselves. However, the final arc of Die also is full of existential nightmares courtesy of Hans’ visuals as well as awakenings and self-realization, especially in Die #19 where Ash comes out as non-binary and discusses how games and fiction shaped their identity. The final issues of Die is a double-edged look at the power of narrative and games to shape us done in both glorious and surprisingly intimate fashion, and I felt I really knew Ash, Matt, Angela, Isabelle, Matt, Chuck, and Sol in the end.
Honorable Mentions: Casual Fling (AWA), Nightwing (DC), Made in Korea (Image), Barbaric (Vault), Superman and the Authority (DC), Catwoman: Lonely City (DC/Black Label)
18 years after the previous installment, director, producer, and co-writer Lana Wachowski returns to a world of choices, hacking, philosophical monologues, and yes, kung fu in The Matrix Resurrections. Writers David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon help her shape a script that treads a narrow line between a J.J. Abrams-esque remake, or the approach George Miller took in Mad Max Fury Road where he took familiar iconography and characters and used them to explore new themes and turn the set pieces up to eleven. The basic premise of the film is that Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) are somehow still alive after the event of The Matrix Revolutions where they still died. However, Thomas Anderson and “Tiffany” are a video game developer and soccer mom who have never even spoken and see the events of the previous trilogy as a video game developed by Anderson. But the appearance of the enigmatic and energetic Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and a new take on a couple familiar faces from the original films cast this reality into doubt…
From the opening scene of The Matrix Resurrections, which is a shot by shot recreation of the opening fight sequence in The Matrix until Bugs and the new look Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) shake things up, this is a film that is in deep conversation with its predecessors as well as Hollywood’s propensity for reboots, remakes, sequels, prequels, and expanded universes. Wachowski, Mitchell, and Hemon take potshots at the studio that has been trying to make this film since 2004 with or without the Wachowskis in a pitch perfect parody of focus groups and the committee approach taken to most tentpole films in 2021. However, The Matrix Resurrections doesn’t drown in metafiction and uses these early scenes to set up Reeves’ more forelorn approach to an aging Neo that is tired and haunted as well as Jonathan Groff‘s new-look Smith, who is Anderson’s business partner and is generally doing the most during both his condescending monologues and physicality-filled fight scenes. Honestly, I was fatigued with Neo and Smith’s relationship after the Burly Brawl in The Matrix Reloaded, but Lana Wachowski breathes new life into the rivalry by making it a metaphor for binary thinking versus fluidity, safety versus risks, and nostalgia versus something new.
The theme of humans and machines (Now called “synthients”) working together was explored in The Matrix sequels to mixed reviews with Chingy Nea nailing the contemporary audience reaction by saying “Perhaps audiences [at the time] were more attuned to sequels like Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which was just as full of Judeo-Christian imagery but was a more obvious story of fantasy heroes and didn’t tend as much toward existential philosophy and horny latex vignettes.” In The Matrix Resurrections, synthients have made getting in and out of The Matrix and real world much easier with a couple of them playing a key role in Neo’s second unplugging. They also are crucial to the ecosystem of Io, the new human city, that is more garden oasis than warzone. Old age makeup sporting Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) fights to protect the status quo at all costs, and she barely sees the irony of putting Neo in house arrest after his mind was freed from a simulation as her soldiers geek out at a man, who has inspired them so much. After all she’s been through, no one will begrudge Niobe a bit of piece and quiet (The sound mix and score are tamped down during the Io sequences.), but freeing minds has started to play second fiddle to caring for plants, which is why she is in conflict with Bugs and her crew.
Breaking the binary and playing with well-established formulas is always on the margins of The Matrix Resurrections from dialogue about the red and blue pills to a new context for the famous sparring program. Wachowski, Mitchell, and Hemon weave in tons of callbacks and motifs from the original both visually, verbally, and even sonically in Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer‘s score that melds orchestral and electronic music. It can be annoying at times, and I’m not a big fan with the film’s actual ending. However, where it works best isn’t Henwick or Abdul-Mateen mugging at the camera, but when the film puts meat on the bones of an idea or plotline that didn’t land in the first three films like Neil Patrick Harris‘ The Analyst, who replaces the Architect’s math and metaphysics for psychology. And this is where I say the best part of The Matrix Resurrections isn’t its expertly choreographed fight scenes (You can follow Neo’s character arc through the way he fights.), cool chases, or even that it abandoned Christianity for The Invisibles as its spiritual mentor: it’s the romance and relationship between Neo and Trinity.
On paper, Neo and Trinity’s love for each other was the lynchpin of The Matrix trilogy, but their on-screen relationship seemed stiff and clinical (See Trinity’s overlong death monologue in The Matrix Revolutions.) although Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are fine performers. The Matrix Resurrections makes spark fly between them by sneaking in a romantic film under the guise of an action/science fiction one in addition to making Neo and Trinity saving each other the main crux of the plot instead of extra nonsense with the Oracle, Architect, or side characters from a video game. Neo and Trinity get to have full adult conversations about being dissatisfied with their jobs or marriages, and how they deal with these issues through therapy or repairing motorcycles. (Some things never change.) Because they have lived full lives over the past decades, getting out of The Matrix is a much tougher road, and The Matrix Resurrections spends a decent about of time showing the pods where Neo and Trinity are plus the pain to get them unplugged. Finally, there are new dimensions to Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss’ performances of these characters with Reeves getting to be sweet and charming while Moss gets to hide that she’s a total badass for about two hours before cutting loose in what is sure to be several crowd pleasing moments.
The Matrix Resurrections isn’t a pop culture shifting blockbuster and may rely on grace notes from its predecessors a little too heavily. However, it uses action to build tension and shape character relationships, which also extends to the special effects and production design. Let’s just say the old dog of bullet time might have one last trick. Reeves and Moss also explore growth, love, and aging in a tender way through the characters of Neo and Trinity, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen and Jonathan Groff add humor and physical brutality to the iconic characters of Morpheus and Smith respectively. Lana Wachowski has crafted a film that is an engaging work of cultural criticism, a showcase for setpieces and worldbuilding, and also happens to be romantic as hell.
Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since eight-year-old me read an 1,008 page fantasy novel called The Lord of the Rings(And The Hobbit too because it’s an actual children’s book.)just so I could be allowed to watch a fantasy movie called Fellowship of the Ring on VHS. There was also the Fellowship of the Ring video game for GameBoy Advance that had characters from the book, like Tom Bombadil, but would glitch out midway through the Mines of Moria. This was a glitch that not even the Prima strategy guide or GameFAQs.com could fix.
As you can tell from this introductory paragraph, The Lord of the Rings has been a huge part of my life. Along with Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia, and good ol’ Redwall, it was my first fandom and is partially why I’m interested in genre fiction and, by extension, write for this website. One thing I love about going back and re-watching The Lord of the Rings films is seeing how my relationship with the characters and themes has evolved over the years. For example, when I was younger, I hated how “slow” the scenes in The Shire were at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, and would fast forward to when Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) began their journey. Now, I understand the contrast between the idyllic, adorable life of the Hobbits with the darkness that pervades the rest of the film as Peter Jackson shifts the tone from light comedy to fantasy thriller, and how these scenes establish the intoxicating power of the Ring through its effects on Bilbo (Ian Holm), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and Frodo.
My relationship with a character that has changed the most is Boromir, who is played admirably by Sean Bean (Game of Thrones, Goldeneye). He joins the Fellowship of the Ring at Rivendell and is the only main cast member to die permanently. When I was younger, I thought he was the heel to Aragorn’s babyface and preferred his kinder, younger brother, Faramir (David Wenham), who is a wonderful character and may get an article of his own when the 20th anniversary of The Two Towers and The Return of the King rolls around. However, as I’ve gotten older, I started to connect with him as a flawed, tragic figure that ends up making a big sacrifice that sets up the hobbits, Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), on their own hero’s journey. While studying texts like the Song of Roland, Beowulf, and Dante’s Inferno (Boromir is totally what medieval theologians would call “a virtuous pagan”.), I started to see Boromir as a more modern version of the tragic hero archetype, who is consumed by pride and greed, but ends up redeeming himself in the end through death. He is a glowing example of the rich intertextuality of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic as well as Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens’ film adaptation, and how these works are in conversation with older myths, legends, and stories.
However, I’ve started to connect with Boromir on a personal as well as intellectual level. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to take on more responsibilities like a multi-faceted full time job, paying the bills, and relationships to name a few. So, I relate to Boromir’s struggles with balancing what his father Denethor (And, by extension, his home country, Gondor) want him to do, and what he personally wants to do with his life. Boromir’s constant mentions of Gondor and “his city” could easily be substituted with “the project”, “the numbers”, or insert office jargon here. However, you can definitely tell that Boromir cares deeply about his city as evidenced by his monologue to Aragorn in Lothlorien where he uses poetic language and describes Minas Tirith as the “The White Tower of Ecthelion, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver”. Howard Shore’s score soars during this scene, and for a second, it looks like we might get an Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and Boromir team-up to save the day. Alas, that’s not going to happen partially due to Boromir’s father Denethor’s desire for power and a weapon to defend his country.
Basically, Boromir’s whole motivation as a character in Fellowship of the Ring comes from a flashback scene in The Two Towers extended edition where he celebrates a great victory for Gondor, gives a short speech, and then breaks out the ale. However, his celebration is undercut by the appearance of his father Denethor (John Noble) aka the ultimate middle manager. Denethor isn’t the King of Gondor: his actual rank is Steward. Basically, he’s keeping the seat warm until the actual king (Aragorn, in this case) returns and is like an interim head coach if the “interim” tag never came off for hundreds of years. You can definitely see this in the way Noble plays Denethor as if he has the biggest of sticks up his ass, berates Faramir for making a strategic retreat instead of fighting while outnumbered, and doesn’t indulge in a pint of ale.
In this wonderful scene, Boromir tells his father that he wants to stay in Gondor instead of traveling to Rivendell to take an object that was responsible for the death of one of the greatest leaders of Men. (Isildur aka Aragorn’s ancestor from over 3,000 years ago.) His brother Faramir, ever being the empathetic one and trying to earn his father’s favor, says he’ll go to Rivendell, but Denethor doesn’t think he’ll toe the party line and forces Boromir to go and get the One Ring for Gondor so they can defeat Sauron and Mordor. This is in spite of the fact that the One Ring has brought nothing but suffering and death and should be destroyed. In a more modern setting, Boromir would be a top employee sent by a manager to do something unethical to get an edge on a competitor, but it ends up hurting the company and the employee. It’s very much a lose/lose situation.
With the information gained from this extended scene, Boromir’s behavior in the Fellowship of the Ring makes sense from the way he contemptuously throws down Isildur’s blade Narsil, which cut the One Ring from Sauron’s finger, in Rivendell to his firsthand knowledge of Mordor because it borders Gondor. I love how Sean Bean talks with his hands while delivering dialogue about how “one does not simply walk into Mordor”. On a more positive note, the way he treats the hobbits, especially Merry and Pippin, mirrors the way he treats his younger brother, Faramir. There’s a hilarious scene where he spars with them and then ends up being tackled by them and wrestling like a big brother and his younger brothers or nephews. In Moria, he helps them jump across a chasm in a tense chase sequence. These scenes add humanity to Boromir and show that beyond the company line of “bring the Ring to Gondor”, he cares about fostering close relationships with other people, and there’s a reason why his men were raucously cheering in the flashback scene. It shows that Boromir is more than just the mission his father sent him just like we’re more than our job titles and professions.
These moments counterbalance the scenes where Boromir acts condescendingly to Frodo (I hate how he ruffles his hair like the hobbit is a puppy.) and especially the pivotal sequence where he tries to take the Ring from him, tells him that he’ll fail in his mission, and that the Ring belongs to him. In this moment, the corrupt influence of the power of the Ring plus Denethor’s mission consumes him, and he acts like a total asshole leading Frodo to put the Ring on (Never a good idea.) to evade him. Boromir’s treatment of Frodo at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring has parallels to someone having a bad day and taking it out on a co-worker or even a totally innocent customer service professional for an unrelated reason.
However, Boromir still has some good qualities and apologizes to Frodo (Even though Frodo is off in the netherworld of the Ring and can’t hear.) with Bean’s voice breaking as he comes to his senses. Fittingly, he ends up taking his little bros, Merry and Pippin, under his wing and protects them from the attacking Uruk-Hai whose only instructions are to capture Hobbits and kill everyone else. His protection of Merry and Pippin ends up being his redemption and inspires the hobbits to become soldiers in the armies of Rohan and Gondor respectively with Pippin mentioning Boromir’s sacrifice specifically when he swears his service to Denethor. Also, Pippin being in Minas Tirith ends up saving Faramir’s life as Denethor goes totally crazy and tries to burn his son to death because he has totally lost hope. It’s like he saved his brother beyond the grave, and in my head canon, he’s smiling somewhere as Faramir finds love with another kind, heroic character, who is underappreciated by her people aka Eowyn.
Boromir doesn’t have the traditional hero arc of Aragorn, who goes from pipe smoking, weather-beaten Ranger to well-groomed King of Gondor and atones for Isildur’s mistakes as he distracts the armies of Mordor at the Black Gate so Frodo and Sam can destroy the Ring. However, Boromir’s storyline is more relatable to me as a human and worker in a late capitalist hellscape because his passions and values are subsumed to a never ending for a bureaucrat (Denethor) desperately trying to hold onto power in a world where he has become quite irrelevant.
In the end, Boromir doesn’t save the world or achieve some great destiny just like so many of us won’t be remembered in history books as great leaders or figures. However, he did have one great moment where he got to be himself and protect his surrogate brothers, Merry and Pippin. Boromir gives them hope that they’ll survive the next two films as well as returning to the Shire as sword-wielding, armor-wearing heroes. In a world where the wealth gap is increasing, the climate is rapidly changing, and a pandemic ravages the lands, I feel this one great moment where I know I made a difference is all I can hope for in life.
But, hopefully, it doesn’t involve me being shot through with some seriously gnarly arrows…
