In Search of Tony Bedard

Here on my blog, I've given Tony Bedard a lot of flack. A lot of this guff came from his run on Exiles. While I'm starting to suspect that a lot of that ire was misplaced, likely belonging to Chuck Austen who preceded him on the book, much of his mainstream work has been (in this writer's humble opinion) lackluster at best.

One issue on the Outsiders was enough to send me packing. His run on Birds of Prey had a similar result. Awhile back, I began polling my friends to see if they could suggest any good work by Bedard. The only answer I received, from Jim Shelley, was to look into the Negation series from now-defunct Crossgen. The series started off co-written by Mark Waid, so I wasn't positive if he was riding on Waid's coattails, or if the book was entertaining on it's own merits.

Then R.E.B.E.L.S. was announced. I considered picking up the first issue from DCBS, due to a hefty 75% discount... but saw that Tony Bedard was the writer and decided against it. It's not money, but why buy something you're not likely to enjoy, right? Imagine my surprise when several folks whose judgment I trust recommend that I look into the book. So when I found myself placing an order from an online comics retailer, I added the first and second issues.

I'm glad I did.

I'm glad I did for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the story is fun and unexpected. I don't know much about Vril Dox and L.E.G.I.O.N. but I picked up enough from the Rann/Thanagar war to get the gist. It's an early attempt to create something like the Legion of Super-Heroes in the present, headed by the ancestor of Brainiac 5. However, run by the pragmatic Vril Dox, it has set itself up as a police-force-for-hire. The gist of this book is that someone has managed to usurp Dox's organization and is using it to conquer the worlds it was hired to protect. And of course, Vril Dox is eagerly wanted by whoever's now in charge. Dox is contacted (in a rather amusing and in-character method) by his counterpart in the 31st century. Brainiac 5 is concerned with his own existence, and tries to help guide Dox through this crisis. However, the way Vril Dox interprets Brainiac 5's advice is amusing to say the least. The tone is generally light, and fun... which is something that is frequently missing from modern comics. And the two issues I've read thus-far have been genuinely amusing.

I'm also glad because, as much delight as I seem to take in poking at Tony Bedard, I really wanted to see a good example of his work. For all the complaining and grief, I credit Bedard with two of the laugh-out-loud funniest issues I've ever read, both from his Exiles run. (See "Mission Impossible" and "Rube Goldberg", two examples of hysterical super-hero comics.) But nobody wants to read bad comics. Well, with the possible exception of Chris Sims and his insane love of Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose. (I'm still waiting to see his Tarot/Anita Blake fan-fiction.) I wanted to read something good by Tony Bedard in order to lay off of the guy. I have, and so I will.

The fact of the matter is that I'm now pre-ordering the rest of R.E.B.E.L.S. I look forward to getting the third issue.

The Trial of Tony Bedard

A little while ago, I posted, detailing the reasons for my negative impression of Tony Bedard's work in comic writing. I also stated my intention to hunt down a few issues of the CrossGen series Negation, as a friend had provided it as an example of something Bedard wrote that didn't suck.

I received the issues today. I've read them through, and I'm digesting them.

I'm not sure who came up with the pitch for the series, but I really like the idea. It's the story of a group of people plucked out of the CrossGen Universe, and dragged into another dimension to be studied by the forces of the Negation Empire, ruled by the God-Emperor Charon who plans to invade the CrossGen universe. So we're starting with a cool concept, and a mark in it's favor.

And I have to admit that over the course of the first six issues, it certainly didn't suck. In the first two issues, Tony Bedard shared writing credit with Mark Waid, but the book certainly didn't tank in the third issue. (And it's not like Mark Waid's never written a bad comic... I only need to think of his three issue run on Top Cow's City of Heroes series for evidence.)

Naturally over the course of the issues, the prisoners attempt to escape, which turns them into fugitives in a strange universe. In two small groups, they manage to escape their prison, pursued by their former jailor. So on some level, it's a pretty archetypical story as a group of disparate individuals with few common ties must evade a massive force. I think one of the things that bothered me about the first six issues was that we learned very little about any of the characters. It's possible that some or all of them originated in other CrossGen books that either I haven't read, or don't recall so that's not as heavy a criticism as it could be. One thing that I did particularly like was that one of the main characters, Obregon Kaine is considered a major threat despite the fact that he doesn't have any weapons or any powers... It's his ability to organize and rally the others that makes him a threat. To me it draws parallels to Captain America. He never had as much raw power as some of the other Avengers, but because he was the one who could pull the others together and orchestrate things tactically, he was the most important Avenger on the field

My final verdict on what I've read is that it was a pretty enjoyable read. It's not great, but it rises above mediocrity and moves along well. It doesn't do enough to erase all the stuff I've read that's left such a bad taste in my mouth, but I think it does go to show me that he's capable of writing something pretty decent.

On Tony Bedard

I was asked the other day just what I had against Tony Bedard. As I answered, it occurred to me that I may not have ever satisfactorilly answered that question here. So this is the post in which I talk about Tony Bedard.

Now, I don't personally dislike him. I've never met him, so there's nothing in that regard. But my impression of his writing has never been very good.

The first time I encountered Tony Bedard's writing was as a replacement writer for Chuck Austen on Exiles. Now don't think I had any special love for Austen's run on the book. (In all honesty, I think it was worse than Bedard's run.) But at one time, Exiles was a very special book for me. Pretty much all of Winick's original run was a book I looked forward to reading as soon as I could get my hands on it. It was one of the books that I read first.

Bedard's run though, had a total of two issues that I liked. I'll grant, I do absolutely love those two issues. But Tony Bedard's run ran over forty issues. Forty issues, and I can only recall two that I genuinely enjoyed, both of them extremely early in the run. (The issues are Mission: Impossible and the truly noteworthy Rube Goldberg in which the Exiles save the universe by purchasing a cheese danish.) Excepting those two issues, the rest of the run was mediocre or adequate at best, and I'm ashamed that it took me so long to drop the book.

Standing out among those issues of his run on Exiles was a story, and I'll grant that this one probably wasn't really Bedard's idea, where the Exiles travel from one different universe to another, allowing Marvel to handilly renew their copyrights on the New Universe, 2099 Universe and Squadron Supreme universe. The story dragged on, month after month, and was finally the straw that broke my back regarding the book.

But Exiles is only the biggest example. Tony Bedard has signed an exclusive contract with DC, and his track record at his new publisher hasn't impressed me either. He took over Birds of Prey after Gail Simone left the book, and his first issue was thoroughly mediocre. He wrote a single issue of Outsiders, and apparently it left a big enough impression that DC handed the new Batman and the Outsiders title to Chuck Dixon, instead of Bedard, as had previously been announced. (Granted putting Chuck Dixon on a book featuring Batman is as close to a no-brainer decision as one can get.)

Lastly, Bedard is one of the writers on the beleagured Countdown. I don't think I need to tell anybody what I think of that title, do I?

In the interest of fairness, though, I asked my friend to suggest something good that Tony Bedard had writen, and he put forward the Crossgen series Negation. So when I couldn't find any of the book at Ye Olde Comic Shoppe I ordered several issues online.

I like to think that I'm a pretty fair guy, and I'm willing to give him a shot. I'll let everybody know what I think when I've read it.