"Casual Consumption" for this week includes parts of two of the same works as last week’s edition – Invincible and Dune (two works that will likely be in almost all of these posts for quite a while) – and two new ones, Star Wars: Dark Times (the Dark Horse comic), and The Venture Bros. A lot of stories about power and greatness here. Here are my thoughts (Warning: spoilers abound):

Star Wars: Dark Times - issues #1 and ???

Starting with the new guy. I usually don’t read Star Wars comics, but I had been wanting to get to this one because of its apparently dark and more serious tone. This week I was able to read issue #1 plus I don’t know how many more pages because Dark Horse’s volume 1 trade doesn’t tell you when you’re at the beginning of an issue, nor does it have page numbers of any sort. I’m too lazy to go back and count, but I’m fairly certain I got most of the way throw the second issue. Something around there at least.

I’m very pleased with what I’ve read so far. The comic takes place shortly after the events of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and alternates between Darth Vader on Coruscant and two heroes – Bomo, a Nosaurian, and Jennir, a Jedi General – on New Plympto, which the Empire is in the process of conquering (with relative ease). The treatment of Vader here is the stand-out part of the comic. Though he’s certainly evil, he’s not yet the despot we know from the original trilogy, and in fact he’s undergoing a bit of a life crisis.

Dark Times begins with Vader coming to the harsh realization that serving as the right-hand man of the ruler of the galaxy is not nearly as fulfilling as he thought it would be. This Vader is not against conquering the world and bringing it under fist, but he also wants to do something with it. Anakin Skywalker, after all, never wanted to rule the galaxy just to rule the galaxy. He wanted to rule it so that he could right it. He may have wanted to right it through tyrannical means, and he may have sold his soul and committed great evils to accomplish a greater good as he sees it, but he ultimately wanted to do what he felt was best for world. But that's not what he gets to do, as it turns out.

At one point, an Imperial clone trooper is updating Vader on the victory at New Plympto and informs him that the Emperor has ordered the captives – mostly female and young Nosaurians – to be sent to the slave market for a quick profit. At hearing this, Vader has a brief but poignant one-panel flashback of himself as a child saying, “I had a dream that I became a Jedi – and I came back and freed all the slaves.” This Vader arc has so far presented him in a more complex manner than any of the films have – as a man who gave up everything to bring his imposed version of order to the galaxy but who instead is realizing that he has gotten himself into a much more self-serving process, one in which power is used only to gain more power. It gives the arc’s subtitle, The Path to Nowhere, a more immediate – and sadder – meaning. Overall, this first part has presented an insightful story about not just Darth Vader but power in general.

The Venture Bros. – episode 3.6

The Venture Bros. is one of my favorite cartoons and one that I’m very familiar with, but I don’t expect to be discussing it much here because there’s often not much to say about individual episodes except for “It was funny,” “It was awesome,” “It had a nice reveal,” or some combination of the above. Episode 3.6, “Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman,” however, presents an interesting characterization of Dr. Venture and great achievers on the whole.

“Dr. Quymn” involves the Venture gang encountering a female childhood friend of Dr. Venture’s while stealing (and soon thereafter returning) a golden idol in Africa. The woman, Dr. Quymn, had a mutual childhood crush on Thaddeus Venture, and she’s no less crush-worthy now. Naturally, Dr. Venture’s amorous propensities are awoken upon meeting her once again. Unfortunately, Quymn’s overly masculine, bisexual bodyguard, Virginia (“Ginnie”), is jealous of anyone who comes near Quymn and puts up an aggressive block throughout their entire time together, at one point throwing Dr. Venture out of the room as Quymn is in the middle of seducing him.

The theme is one so classic that it’s almost a surprise to see it here: unrequited love. Drs. Venture and Quymn clearly have feelings for one another, but Ginnie will not allow any consummation to transpire. Ginnie at the same time is in love with Quymn but (due to that little problem of Quymn’s sexual orientation) will never see that love fulfilled. Even Quymn’s daughters, Nancy and Drew, and the Venture boys experience unrequited love, as Hank actively pursues a relationship with the girls while they simultaneously avoid him in their own pursuit of Dean, who doesn’t want anything to do with girls, period. It’s like electrons circling a nucleus: everyone is revolving around a center, but there are so many attractive and repulsive forces at play that the process becomes infinite. Even Brock, who is himself on the receiving end of some advances from Ginnie (and rejects her) has an unfulfilled love of his own (Molotov Coqtiz), though she is not present in this episode.

In fact, this theme provides a glimpse at what seems to be an overarching theme of the entire Venture Bros. series: the inability to achieve life fulfillment. Along with scenarios such as these, we also get the perpetual inability of the Monarch to kill Dr. Venture, as well as Dr. Venture’s inability to live up to the greatness of his father. The theme ultimately seems to be handled here the same way it is handled in most literature: as the impetus that drives us to do things. At the end of the episode, the situation is so clearly unmanageable that Venture and Quymn concede defeat and leave, each flying directly away from the other. Instead of finding fulfillment, they go on to do more great things.

Invincible – issue # 7

What a great issue this is. Writer Robert Kirkman recreates the superhero mythology here with his own version of DC Comics’ most popular characters – and these versions might even be more archetypal. The comic consists almost solely of Kirkman establishing these characters’ existence, and the relative lack of story is no flaw because the mere appearance of the characters is compelling enough. The characters introduced (and quickly dismissed) are Darkwing (Batman), the Red Rush (the Flash), War Woman (Wonder Woman), an unnamed man-fish (Aquaman), Martian Man (Martian Manhunter), the Green Ghost (the Green Lantern, I assume, though his powers are somewhat different), and Immortal (Superman).

Kirkman and artist Cory Walker have a brilliant vision of each of these characters, taking their more famous DC counterparts and paring them down to their most basic qualities. Immortal, for instance, is perfectly masculine, with a simple blue, yellow, and white suit (no cape) and a black beard (made all the more masculine with the lack of a mustache), and he dispatches a ridiculous enemy called “Bi-Plane” simply by tossing him into outer space. There is also a subtly hilarious comic in-joke pertaining to the Aquaman character. He gets a single-page introduction, is shown sleeping on his throne for four of the six panels, gets the message to report for the emergency meeting, and swims off, saying, “Finally ... some action!”

(Second warning: bigger than usual spoilers here) The kicker to this issue, as anyone who reads it will know, is the final event: a quick, three-page killing of all of them – by Omni-Man. The issue functions almost solely as a setup for subsequent development of Invincible’s character, but the setup is perfect. We get the most basic, iconic superhero types – characters we can instantly recognize and understand – and then they are destroyed. It brings an end to a simplistic age of heroism and brings rise to what is sure to be a far more complicated era. At the same time, it complicates and complements Invincible’s/Mark’s passage into adulthood. Not only will he be in a world devoid of paradigms of heroism, but he’ll soon be living in a world in which his father, his own personal hero, turns out to be the most evil and powerful villain imaginable. I can’t wait to see where this comic goes.

Dune

I got slightly deeper into Dune over the weekend, finishing only the second “chapter,” even though the book isn’t split into chapters, per se, but rather into sections based on passages from the Manual of Muad’Dib. There’s really not much to say about this section, honestly, and I’m only bringing it up since I promised in my first “Casual Consumption” to return to the novel regularly. This portion of Dune involves the Baron and his Mentat, Piter, revealing to the Baron’s nephew, Feyd-Rautha, their plans to overthrow the House of Atreides.

There’s not a lot going on here thematically. This section mostly serves to set the grounds for the plot of the novel, though it does a good job at doing so, providing the reader with the reference point of a child who does not yet know what is going on but who is having it explained to him. At the same time, author Frank Herbert does a good job of establishing the relationships among the three characters: the Baron and Piter mutually respecting, fearing, and needing one another, even though the Baron holds the position of power; and Feyd-Rautha’s entrance into the political situation as an impatient young adult who himself wants to hold power some day and who retains little more than a working relationship with the Baron. Good writing here, and it’s a vital aspect of the story, but there’s not much to say about it.