Eisner Thoughts

Oh life -- you sure make writing a blog no one cares about or reads difficult.

So the Eisner nominations came out, and did you hear? People like to talk about them. Here's a few cents of thought (given inflation, it's probably considerably more than 2).

Madame Xanadu? Really? This book has never seemed greater than average and, unlike Air or Unknown Soldier, it doesn't seem to be trying to be much more. For one thing, it's stuck in the same situation as, bizarrely, Cable. They're both books which, while Xanadu probably has more potential than Cable, are hindered by the plot device of time-jumping-forward. It's simply a messy way to tell the story. In both, the characters have gone forward hundreds of years at a time, but don't stay at any of the times long enough for the reader to care. What happens is a mixture of a too-long arc (in Cable, it's just now closing up after 10+ issues, crossover, and related 2-issue miniseries, in Xanadu we don't have her in the present, but we're now into the 20th century) w/too short of stories. All in all, a completely OK book.

The best continuing series is just a bizarre collection. We have one of the best limited series of last year represented, so that's...good? W/the exception of Monster, I've read these series over the last year (I've got plans to catch up on Monster soon, it just hasn't happened yet). I've thought Thor was a pretty solid read, but there are definitely some better books (Incredible Hercules, anyone? Captain America? And that's off the top of my head, from other Marvel titles). Usagi Yojimbo just seems a bit random, though I do like the book, so I'm not going to complain too much.

I guess what this comes down to is the fickle nature of the Eisners. Selected by a very limited group of people pulled from a not-quite-as limited pool which differs year-to-year, you're not really getting a guarantee, as, well, sometimes really smart people who know their craft can have weird taste (if I were less lazy, I'd link here to Ebert giving Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties a 3-star review).

What I'm saying is that Madame Xanadu is a Garfield movie.