From: lf7z@ellis.uchicago.edu (Bob the Glennlizard)
Subject: Re: Grade Report: Enigma #1
Reply-To: lf7z@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 07:40:40 GMT

In article <rawdon.727751600@cs.wisc.edu> rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu writes:

Wow.  Real disagreement, here.  It's too early to say for certain, but
I came away feeling this will be Milligan's best work yet, and he's
probably my favorite writer at the moment.  I'd assumed it was so good
because he's been working on it a long time, and it's "matured"
somewhat (<ouch>, no pun intended).

Anywho, not to spoil things, but I looked up Murphy in the OED B{) ...
(I did not, that's a joke, I say a joke, son.  I have visions of poor
Lance hiding his OED forever :)



Seriously, if I read him right, this could be difficult to pull off,
because I think he's depending on staying a few steps ahead of the
reader the whole game, but potentially it could be great fun.

>Well, maybe not, but it sure SEEMS like I've read it before.  On the whole, I
>was very disappointed with Enigma #1, since it came off to me like just
>another collection of random weirdness, as seems to be in vogue in comic book
>horror these days.

OK, you got me here, Dial H for Hero?  Morrison's Psycho-Pirate, what?
And there is a lot of weirdness, granted, but I seriously doubt
whether it's random.

>We have some random individual - Michael Smith, who happens to be extremely
>compulsive - who gets mixed up with a supernatural entity named The Head, who
>goes about killing people and sucking their brains out.  This has something to
>do with a dead lizard the Head owned back when he was human, which he found
>outside a farm in Arizona where some incident (a murder?) occurred.  Then

"It was an ordinary sort of farm in Arizona.  The kind of place where
you'd have sexual relations with your parents and end up shooting
someone."  In other words, the farmer's daughter shot the farmer.
(Don't ya hate it when posters have comics next to their computers
:^)?  We and the lizard were there, and we haven't been fully told yet
why this is so relevant.  But it is.  And The Well is the spirit which
posseses the lizard and then the Head and then ... or something like that.

>there's this masked person roaming about who doesn't seem connected to the
>story.

Well, from the previews and gossip, he's the central character. Or
not.  But he's very connected to the story.  I guess not everybody
loves ambiguity like I do :) :) :)

>We're also treated to the usual assortment of casually-tossed-out impossible
>actions, such as an individual creating "a new language, a new grammar, eight
>cases and five genders.  This passes twenty minutes."  Once, this kind of
>avant-garde randomness might have been clever, but since it's been done to
>death by Grant Morrison in Doom Patrol, it leaves one feeling empty, cheated.

I'd agree with you here, except I don't think it's overdone here (like it
was in any issue of DP, where it was expected), and I don't think it
was supposed to feel casual.  Milligan isn't going to let us know who
this cat *really* is until he's finished, I guess that would be about
Christmastime...

>Which is, on the whole, how I felt about this whole issue.  An exercise in
>randomness, without any seeming purpose.  A lot like Doom Patrol, actually.

This time I'm serious

I think you're really wrong here, he introduced the two most likely
suspects for the Enigma, the Enigma itself, and the chief
counterpoint.  I suspect some of the things you're taking to be
random, are just purposely obscure.  Possibly why you missed the
incest reference.  e.g. the page where Michael Smith first encounters
the Enigma: "Which has a better, a more sublimely developed, sense of
the ridiculous?  Life?  Or death?  Or me?  Or Michael Smith?"
"Wait!".  That may seem random on first glance, but I suspect it's the
central theme of the series.  It tells you who is speaking here, and
who is not speaking in the "grammer" page you liked.  And it doesn't
do that either, really, because Milligan is shortly going to call
Michael's sanity into question, and suggest he's possibly
schizophrenic.  And the actor we met briefly, and the second lizard,
they're not random either, etc.

On the other hand, he's always had a somewhat similar style to
Morrison (well, the Morrison of A-Man, anyway), but he does have his
own style, the easiest way to point this up is to challenge someone to
find an equivalent to Skin amongst Morrison's work.  I don't think you
can, and the reason, I think, is that Milligan cares a lot more about
saying something about human nature.  He's done it here, as well.
They do both have a penchant for the bizaare and the surreal, and that
can very easily be overdone, but when they're not, I for one find them
very interesting, as long as there's a point to it.  If anyone needs
an example, remember Morrison's 'coyote' story.

>Now, this is, of course, the first issue of an eight-part story, so there's a
>lot which could be explained.  But regardless of the title, I'm just not drawn
>into a story which offers NOTHING but mysteries in its first issue, and
>mysteries by the dozen, at that, with no point of reference for me to
>understand why I should CARE about any of this.

Well, nothing to say about that last statement, personal taste and all
that.  I'm fairly certain a lot of it will get explained, but the
title *is* Enigma, right?  But, I mean, talk about a cliffhanger
ending!  Myself, I was going, "Oh, man, 30 days!?!"

>Duncan Fegredo's artwork didn't really grab me, either.  The inking seemed
>extremely messy, and many panels didn't make clear to me what exactly was
>going on.  The emotions and expressions of the characters often didn't match
>what SEEMED to be happening.  (For instance, Sandra's face on page 9, panel
>6.)  The nice color art worked hard to hold it all together, and the layouts
>and storytelling were generally strong, but the details and renderings just
>lacked cohesiveness.

Yeah, I can see where Fegredo's going to turn a whole lot of people
off, but I like inkers that "dare to be different (tm)" :) I noticed
the same thing about facial expressions, in fact it was the same page
that bothered me, when Michael turns on the TV.  But Sandra's face,
well... Your boyfriend makes love to you every Tuesday, but he's a
little limp tonight.  So he gets out of bed talking about some bizaare
homicidal maniac, and suggests going after said maniac.  Now he gets
an erection.  I thought the expression was appropriate :).  But I do
agree with you, the facial expressions are sometimes pretty off.  It's
just that his layouts and overall tone are unique enough, that I still
found it appealing.  But kudos have to go to the painter, Sherilyn Van
Valkenburgh, his inks must really be a bitch to color, and she did a
great a job, IMO.

>Maybe it will improve in the future issues, but from this first issue, there's
>nothing here to recommend.  Well, unless you like nice color art.

Ah, a small bit of agreement, there.  Well, I agreed with you
completely on the JLA issue, too.  And Michael, send a couple future
reviews to poor Hades, he's real lonely :) Best Nom du Net, though.
Uggh.  Overly long, 'night all.

Pax ex machina,
Glenn
......................................................................
"For criminal acts, and violence on the stage,
  For being a brat, refusing to act your age,
    You.  Can go.  To Hell."
  --- Alic Cooper, Brian's Song :)
"As soon as Roger saw the costume, his mind assumed the proportions of
 an industrial revolution unaware of the ecological damage it was
 causing"
   --- Enigma
g-carnagey@uchicago.edu, if you must know
......................................................................