Unfortunately for Ruthye, Kara is initially reluctant to help Ruthye, as
she has her own significant responsibilities to return to, and she
initially tries to explain to Ruthye the differences between justice and
revenge. But Krypto was hurt by an arrow from Krem, and the only way to heal him is to find Krem and find a way to undo the specific poison, and agrees to help Ruthye (time to go John Wick on that guy).
They begin their travels across the universe in search of Krem, on what
is essentially a space Greyhound Bus. Eventually making their way back
to a world with a yellow sun, they begin their search in earnest. They
learn that due to their shared love of violence and cruelty, Krem has
joined a group called the Brigands, that roam from world to world
bringing violence and death, and finding a way to profit from it (by
only killing *some* people in exchange for compensation). Throughout the
heart-wrenching fourth issue of the series, in particular, Supergirl and Ruthye go from
world to world, always a few steps behind the Brigands, and always too
late to stop the terrible violence. Issue 5 is out this week.
There are so many interesting ideas that King is working with in SWOT, and the character depictions are fascinating, but where I want to start is the stunning art from Evely and Lopes. This is my favorite-looking comic on the stands now, and Evely (Sandman: The Dreaming, Wonder Woman) and Lopes (Sandman: The Dreaming, Batgirl) work together so seamlessly that it's impossible to think about the linework without thinking about the color, and vice versa. I recently learned that they've worked together previously, and I'm not at all surprised. I hadn't seen much of Evely's work prior to this, so her work was an absolute revelation for me. Beautiful doesn't really begin to describe it.
First things first, Evely is an exceptional sequential storyteller. My standard for this is to ask the question “would you be able to understand this comic if there were no words on the page?" and in the case of SWOT, the answer is an emphatic yes (obviously this question doesn't work for all comics). Such as in the above page where the action between the parties is clear and the setting of the sun conveys the passage of time. Or in the immediately below page where Ruthye comes to her dead father and the camera moves to her hand, and pulls back to her eyes on the sword, and then to her whole body (as she decides to take the sword). We see her thought processes and her plans begin to take shape, even without the words on the page.
And
beyond being able to tell her story sequentially, Evely does so much
intricate, gorgeous work on every page. In fact every individual page of
the comic feels like its own little story or tableau, and I want to
linger on each page and not read through too quickly. Evely puts a
tremendous amount of detail into each page. Whether depicting the inside
of a spaceship, the office of a local official, or a sad hospital
room, that rich sense of detail is present on each page. Part of what
makes Evely such an effective storyteller in addition to a great sense
of pacing and rhythm, is the ability to portray some of the most
effective, striking facial and body acting than I’ve seen in a comic in a
long time. Evely draws the most expressive faces, there’s definitely a
heightened sense of emotion on every single page and within every single
character. I sort of think of this kind of like the comic equivalent of
a silent movie, where silent movie actors and actresses used to have to
act in a larger-than-life way in order to compensate for the fact that
you couldn't hear their words directly.
Thankfully,
there are words on the page of SWOT, and we'll get to those. But it’s the eyes of the characters in particular that I want to mention. Evely has an incredible knack for being able to portray
so many different emotions just in the eyes of her various characters,
whether those emotions are resignation, fear, steely determination, unbearable anguish, sorrow and frustration. All of these emotions
come across incredibly clearly through the eyes of the various
characters in the story. And what wonderful characters those are. If I
were to try to describe the style of art Evely has, on a scale of more
or less realistic I would say, it’s a it’s like a heightened sense of
reality. Everything is a little bit bigger and more than realistic.
But the emotions,
the actions, and the way characters look an act and interact with one
another, all feels incredibly grounded, notwithstanding the fantastical
settings of the story. Ruthye is always steely and serious. Her sense of
determination almost never seems to waver, and she is clearly a child that is
wise and serious far behind her years. And Evely‘s Supergirl is a woman of beauty
and strength and tremendous grace. She does not generally attempt to intimidate any of those who would challenge her, but her strength and determination clearly come
across on the page, particularly in the initial issues of the story. Whenever she is fighting, she knows that she doesn’t have her
superpowers and she is vulnerable but she fights with the strength and
determination that is unmatched, regardless of the presence or absence
of super powers.
But as I said before, this comic would not be what it is without the artistic team of Evely and Lopes. As gorgeous as all of Evely‘s work is, it’s the addition of absolutely stunning colors from Lopes that really helps bring this comic to life. These colors can vary from the rich warm colors of the hearth of Ruthye‘s home, the blazing red sunsets of her world, to the rich, varied, and weird selection of colors that illustrate all of the various alien species that Ruthye and Supergirl meet in their travels. In the below scene of the spaceship in which Ruthye and Supergirl travel, those bright colors are contrasted with the worn-out, faded colors of the ship itself. On the final few examples of pages below, the colors of tragedy and massacre and bloodshed are so rich and bright as to be almost overwhelming. It feels like the sky is the color of the blood that has been shed, and even the Supergirl is only one small being surrounded by that violence.
But all is not gloom and doom in Lopes' colors. To the contrary, the richness of his color palette throughout the comic brings into extraordinary life even the most grim of situations. And in other parts of the story, Lopes and Evely work together to create images of unsurpassed beauty, such as a troublesome space dragon that Supergirl has to fight so that the spaceship can keep going without danger. Lopes has a wonderful grasp of light and shadow; there are panels in which one person is relaying the nature of the attack upon he and his friend by the merciless Brigands, and the use of light and shadow in his hospital room really brings to life the despair and desolation and pain of that moment. It’s really quite masterful work.
As I read
SWOT I realized that the basic outline of the story reminded me of
True Grit by Charles Portis, first published as a novel in 1968. It was made into a movie in 1969 starring John Wayne, and remade in 2010 by the Coen brothers (with a young Hailee Steinfeld). She stars as a girl who decides to hire a retired US marshal to hunt down the man that killed her father; he's initially reluctant, but takes on the assignment.
SWOT of course does not have a plot identical to
True Grit, but there are some meaningful similarities. The story of
SWOT has a plot that
sounds like that of a western; a man is murdered in cold blood, and his child seeks out a bounty hunter in order to exact revenge against the man who killed her father. She and her hunter/protector set out across vast landscapes and through all sorts of treacherous obstacles in order to seek vengeance (or justice), and to put a stop to this man’s reign of terror. While being very much a superhero/science-fiction story, that sense that a western provides, of adventure, a vast scope and simple, primal goals and motivations, all of that is quite present in
SWOT.
I mentioned before that the art of Evely and Lopes is so good
that you
could understand the story without any words on the page. However, I’m so glad that this isn’t that sort of story. King (one of my favorite writers in comics (my deep dive
into Strange Adventures here)) does some
of his absolute finest work as a writer in the pages of
SWOT. There’s a
fair amount of text, as the entire story is being narrated by a
much older Ruthye, decades in the future. Ruthye‘s narration is
serious and informative and thoughtful, but also at times extremely funny,
and always incredibly additive to the story. It is through this narration that
we get so much of a sense of Ruthye's life. She is an entirely
serious child, wise beyond her years, but it's also clear how little she truly understood (at the time) the task she was undertaking.
Ruthye is
steadfast in her focus, and King effectively conveys that in her
dialogue and narration. When Supergirl wants to Stop Ruthye from seeing
footage of some of these atrocities, Ruthye is completely offended and
says “I am not some innocent with eyes moistened by the morning dew!” and
later challenges Supergirl by saying “We both have our missions! My
vengeance is not lesser than your nobility!” It's an interesting juxtaposition. Ruthye is operating from some of the most basic motivations. And Supergirl feels
responsible for Ruthye, and feels like Ruthye has already seen too much
horror in their travels (and she wants to shield Ruthye from any unnecessary trauma). But Ruthye feels bound to witness all of the
horrors. This is part of their journey and their mission, and she feels a
moral obligation to see all of the suffering that has been caused by
the man against whom she seeks vengeance. It’s not necessarily a
motivation that can stand up to adult logic and scrutiny, but to a precocious and serious
child who lost their beloved father to murder, Ruthye's motivation and
logic make perfect sense. Sometimes, when you’re attempting to
deal with uncomfortable truths and pain, one of the most tried and true
methods for dealing with that pain is to try to replace your sadness
with anger. Supergirl understands this as a general matter, which is why she's willing to have Ruthye accompany her on this quest to find Krem.
And who is Supergirl in the story? Almost all of our interactions with
Supergirl are seen through the eyes of Ruthye. Ruthye speaks of
Supergirl with reverence and admiration. But she also brings a great
deal of insight as she describes the character and personality of
Supergirl. More generally, as we see in the story, Supergirl is far more
than just a heroic icon. She’s a real person and an extraordinary one,
but a person nonetheless, subject to real emotions and reactions and
limitations. She came to Ruthye‘s planet because she just wanted to get
drunk on her 21st birthday like any person would on Earth. But for her to do something as mundane as get drunk, she had to travel halfway across the universe. And while she was
initially reluctant to take on Ruthye's cause, she found her own
motivation, other than just revenge, that would motivate her to take on
this quest. Through Ruthye‘s descriptions and through the action we see
on the page, Supergirl is a figure of tremendous patience and
compassion. Her kindness towards children (and people who are suffering generally) is nearly
boundless.
But while Supergirl's compassion is almost infinite, her patience is
not. We see that she can get frustrated like anyone else, and she can get
weary. Even if not physically tired, Supergirl is not impervious to
emotions, and as the pair make their way from one world to the next, the
limits of her ability to process not just this much suffering, but this
much cruelty, become apparent. In one of
the powerful scenes in issue four, we see as Supergirl
flies all the way inside a star just so that she can let out a scream
and not hurt anyone or anything else in the process. This leads Ruthye to a
really insightful observation about Supergirl which is that she has to
spend most of her life being incredibly careful and constrained, making sure that
she doesn’t grab a person's hand too firmly, or move something or
someone too quickly. Ruthye imagines just how incredibly difficult it
must be to feel so constrained, so slowed down by all of the regular, non-super people in her life. She speculates that Supergirl must be in pain as a result of having to limit herself so much. Her biggest super power seems to be holding back her own power and greatness in order to function amongst the ordinary, weak people with which she is surrounded. In this way, Ruthye (and King) make
having superpowers (and being Supergirl) actually seem pretty sad and constraining.
Halfway
through the story, I’ve wondered, what exactly King‘s perspective is on
Ruthye and Supergirl's quest? What does he think about Ruthye's
continuing motivation to seek vengeance for the death of her father? Early on in the story, Supergirl attempts to dissuade Ruthye from going
after Krem, and speaks of the difference between vengeance and justice.
However, ultimately Supergirl agrees to work with Ruthye to find Krem so
that he can be held responsible for his actions. It’s hard to say that
it is justice that keeps these characters moving along from moment to
moment as they attempt to track down Krem. Or even vengeance, really. My sense is that the quest
itself becomes all consuming, whether you call it justice or vengeance. They’ve gone down such a long road now (and invested so much time and emotion) that it's too late to
back. At a certain point, when Supergirl feels that they’re getting a
little closer, she wants to send Ruthye back home, to try to spare
Ruthye from any more suffering. But Ruthye insists, and Supergirl is at this point
too worn down by what she’s seen to push back too much. She understands, they're in this together and there's no turning back.
I think there are some
pretty interesting ideas here at play, about the emotional toll that a
single-minded quest for revenge can have on a person. As I mentioned
earlier, I think Ruthye's single-minded focus on vengeance, and the
seriousness of her character, are intended to function as coping mechanisms, for her tremendous sense of grief and loss. She says it herself,
her father was her whole world and without him she feels adrift. Having lost a parent myself, I can say that anger and frustration and
impatience are far easier emotions to reckon with than grief. Grief can
feel like a bottomless hole from which you can’t return. With anger, I
think you at least feel like you were in control. I’m not sure if it's ultimately helpful to try to cope with an emotion by covering it up with different emotions. But it can at least feel better to
be able to direct those emotions somewhere as anger, particularly towards things where you feel like you potentially have some control. But it's a defense mechanism, and the grief is always still there, until you actually deal with it.
I've
loved many of King's other stories for that sense of ambition, and all of the big ideas he explores such as those relating to identity, reckoning with war and the costs of those wars on all parties involved.
Specifically he’s dealt with the shifting and elastic nature of morality in war, and the
blurry lines that exist sometimes between a hero and a criminal.
King has also confronted the profound sadness and loneliness of
depression, particularly dealing with serious depression while also
attempting to function in a highly stressful work environment. And some similarly interesting ideas are present in SWOT and I am sure
that they will make themselves even more clear as the story moves
along.
But ultimately, it’s not the ideas about grief and loss and vengeance that make me truly love SWOT. It’s the story, and it’s the
characters, and it’s the way that they are all
brought to life in such a stunning manner that makes me love SWOT as
much as I do. Were it just a comic of great ideas, I don’t think I would
have the emotional attachment to this comic that I do. But there’s
tremendous heart on every page of this comic. Very much like a western,
the values and motivations of the characters feel primal and
fundamental, and ultimately extremely understandable. And it's brought to
life by art that’s so evocative and rich and empathetic, that I can’t
help but love the heroes of the story, and hate the villains. The conclusion of issue 4 is definitely a low point for these characters, but
I trust King and Evely and Lopes in the story that they’re telling (and I'm certainly hoping that even if things get even worse, we're going to see a satisfying conclusion). And
I absolutely couldn’t imagine not following these characters in their
journey to the very end. SWOT is a special book. It's not always an easy read, but I think you'll love it as much as I do.
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