Katana #8

This fight is still taking place? It's been on repeat since Issue #1. I guess that's what Coil meant by "Welcome to the Tight Rope." Except I think he meant Merry-Go-Round. At least they labeled the characters correctly on this cover.

Why am I still doing commentary on Katana? I should just link back to Issue #1 since that's where the story keeps winding up anyway. The worst part of all of this is that there is no consistency in the story. Katana wants to kill Coil. Then she lets Coil go. Now she wants to kill Coil again. Katana doesn't want to join the Sword Clan. Then she wants to infiltrate. Then she gets an offer and refuses. Then she wants to infiltrate. But first she has to defeat Coil. Nice job making the story as crazy as Coil's sword, Nocenti. Very artistic. It's shit to read but the form is nice!

The issue begins with Shuntouchable displaying her 1000 years of Outsider history tattoos. That's a pretty amazing tattoo artist to fit 1000 years of history on the skin of one person. Especially when the tattoo of Katana teabagging a dragon takes up her whole front torso! That hardly leaves any room for the other 1000 years! I say "the other 1000 years" because the tattoo of Katana is prophecy and not history. She is hoping that Katana kills Coil. So am I!

Katana and Coil are about to fight each other while both using coil swords. It's in the Sword Clan bylaws. The only way to join is to beat somebody with the weapon that they're named after. So to defeat me, you'd have to best me at insulting Scott Lobdell. "Scott Lobdell is so fat that when he sits around the house, he really feels unmotivated to do much of anything else for the rest of the day."

And the wicked banter begins!

Coil begins his next verbal assault with a grammatically questionable statement which I understand but it could still be confusing. He begins to attack Katana's abilities as a wife. Really great zings like "you burned toast" and "you were good at sex but not very good at housekeeping." It's all just stunningly hilarious and apt because she's a woman! I would probably add a few more like "You are very poor at doing calculations!" and "You have a peculiar female odor!" After Coil mocks Katana for being a terrible 1950s American ideal housewife, Katana responds with "Don't talk about my husband!"

*sigh*

Katana, Katana, Katana. He wasn't talking about your husband. Sure, he was pretending to be Maseo when making the bad at being a wife cracks. But his comments had nothing to do with your dead husband. The one you killed. Oh man. She killed her husband. She really was a horrible wife!

The only mistake she made last time you fought her was having you pinned to a tree with a sword at your throat and then running away saying, "I can't fight him yet! He's too powerful!"

Next it's time for Coil to shut up and let Katana insult him for a few panels! Katana is just brutal in her verbal assault. She calls him a gossiping gossiper who gossips. She says he whispers then calls him a gossip then says he whispers and that he deals in gossip and then mentions how he gossips again. Hello? DC? Is there an editor on this book? I guess for people who love awkward dialogue that constantly repeats itself, this book is for them! Might I also recommend Gertrude Stein to those people? Although I like Gertrude Stein. Nocenti just doesn't pull off the tortured emotion that comes through with the reading of Stein's best spiraling repetition as you constantly come nearer and nearer to the point yet always just seem to miss the mark and have to prepare yourself for another pass at actual movement.

Next Coil reminds Katana about everything that has happened so far in this comic book to try to tie it together in a kind of Macbethian-themed blood soaking. Unless it's more like trying to take an elevator at the Overlook. So listen to Coil. Forget that nothing in this comic book has made sense. Forget that cause and effect have been thrown out the window. Don't you dare remember that bit where Katana was welcomed to the tightrope. Because now it's about all the blood that Katana has drawn to get here to where she is now: nowhere. See? She's made no forward movement! She's just spiraled around and around and around like Coil's weapon and it's gotten her nowhere. Nocenti really is writing the Gertrude Stein version of a comic book. That still doesn't mean it's any good. It may have been good if, thematically, this shit actually existed from Issue #1 instead of being fudged to seem like something else here. But at least I can look at it and pretend it's something more than it actually is. Exactly how life should be!

This is why I'm convinced the Owl is the seventh mystery weapon. Because they have the same agenda. Maybe, with the introduction of The Falconer last issue, the seventh mystery weapon is simply Birds! And they have different factions that have split due to the belief of which bird is best suited for their prime weapon.

I just asked Lord Google about Coil and Katana since Katana references memories from when they were kids and I don't remember how they know each other. I suppose Coil was friends with Maseo and Sickle and Tatsu but have no memory of it. I did find a recent interview with Nocenti which I read some of before they began talking about Issue #8 and I stopped reading. What I learned from the interview is that the comic book Nocenti has in her mind is much, much better than what she's actually putting down on the page. None of what she says Katana is about comes through in her storytelling. And even some of the things she says to justify her choices don't make sense since the context is entirely different in the comic book than the way she presents it in her interview. Like she says Katana's mind is hard and humorless so sometimes she needs to be teased which is her explanation for The Falconer saying that swords can't kill falcons. Except The Falconer didn't fucking say that to Katana, did he? So how was that teasing her? How is that helping put a thought into Katana's mind, as Nocenti says it was meant to do?

After reading the interview (It was here so you can reference it if you haven't already read it being that it's on a site that people probably read a lot because they advertise in the comic book I'm currently holding in my hand and all the others as well), I'm beginning to understand why people say they like Ann Nocenti's writing. I think it's because they read her authorial interpretation of her own stuff and they believe what she says. They then read the horribly executed version of what she says she's trying to do and see it through the lens of her explanation. Perhaps her comic books make sense at that point. Maybe. It's a theory!

But even if people read Katana and believe it's the masterpiece Nocenti says it is, they still have to deny moments like these two panels back to back:

Here Katana has beaten Coil and tells him how much she likes the blood and violence and defeating all those men.

And, very next panel, here is Coil telling Katana she's lying about liking the violence and learning to like it.

In the interview, Nocenti describes the comic book and what she means by the weapons and the people and how it fits and, if I hadn't read it, I'd think, "That sounds really interesting and well put together! I'd read that!" And then I'd read this poorly written, awkward dialogue piece of shit and wonder what the fuck happened to Ann Nocenti's grand story.

After Katana beats Coil, she still has to pass another test to become leader of the Sword Clan. That's another thing you have to ignore if you want to enjoy this comic book! The fact that Katana went from wanting to infiltrate the Sword Clan to wanting to lead it. Katana went from wanting to get vengeance against Coil for something he did to her husband (maybe that's where some of their previous history was mentioned) to defeating him to gain control over his Sword Clan. Changing your character's motivation from issue to issue isn't the best way to write a superior story.

So Katana's next challenge is to defeat Mona Shard who escaped from Katana's sword when it was broken, stole Shuntouchable's left foot, and is now trying to take over the Dagger Clan. I'm not sure how this became a traditional part of the challenge to lead the Sword Clan since Mona just recently escaped the Soulbringer after being trapped there for hundreds of years. Perhaps it's an addendum challenge: "If Mona Shard is currently free, she must be killed. Also, her name is Mona Shard because she uses a shard of the Soultaker as her weapon and it's always been Mona Shard because of reasons."

Let me take a break from reading Katana for this unimportant thought out of my stupid fucking head:

You know what kind of people I hate? The ones that lose their shit if you refer to Frankenstein's Monster as Frankenstein.

Great, asshole. You know something we all know and, while the rest of us have decided that it's certainly culturally acceptable to refer to the monster as Frankenstein because it just makes it easier, you have decided to turn it into a crusade and make sure everybody knows that you know how things really are. Why don't you just go back to fucking tube socks.

Except you know that Frankenstein shit is the type of shit I'd flip out over in my comic book commentary voice! Also, I actually have nothing against fucking tube socks.

We now return to Katana starring a bunch of people with weapons for names.

Mona Shard meets the most ruthless little girl in San Francisco.

This kid passes Mona Shard's "Viciousness Litmus Test." She can be killed.

Mona Shard possesses the girl's body (although I'm not convinced she's a little girl. Maybe an undersized adult thug). She goes back to her hideout at the wharf and starts karate chopping a bucket of sand in preparation for taking over the Dagger Clan. Are the Dagger Clan just an offshoot of the Sword Clan? Maybe the drunken rejects? Because they are drunks! Nocenti made sure to characterize them as enjoying whiskey in two separate speech bubbles by two different characters. See? That's independent witness verification or something legal like that.

Later Katana has a meeting with The Falconer because her hard and humorless mind needs teasing. See how easy it is to understand Nocenti's complex story when you've got Nocenti feeding you lines!

The Falconer tells Katana that she shouldn't rely on killing but on offering sanctuary to her foe. Or maybe he was saying that if she wants to kill something, she needs to get it to trust her first! Just like she did with Maseo! So she already knows that lesson! But she's apparently forgotten it because she asks The Falconer, "What are you trying to tell me?" Oh, how cute. She's just like one of Jesus's disciples! The Falconer responds, "Ask again later." Apparently ambiguous wisdom only comes out of him a few lines at a time and then he's exhausted.

Later the Mad Samurai that once hunted The Creeper but is now free from the Soultaker decides he wants to possess a Sumo Wrestler. I mean ride! He wants to ride a Sumo Wrestler! I'm up for that!

I scanned this because it's the best written bit in everything Nocenti has produced for The New 52 so far.

I've been bitching a bit about Shuntouchable's body being both a history text and a prophetic text but I'm fairly certain it's always been a little bit of both. But mostly it's concerned with prophecy. That's why Katana kept visiting it so she could get clues to the path she was on. The earlier mention at the beginning of this issue where it said she had 1000 years of Outsider history on her body was stupid and that's the thing I've been joking about. You know, just to clarify why I don't have a problem with her saying the thing here about everything on her body being possible. The bits where Katana kind of repeats herself (corral/tame, bucked me/threw me) edge into the weirdness of Nocenti's dialogue to always overstate things but it works here, sounds fine. Saying the tattoos were burned into Shuntouchable sounds stupid but why would I even bring that up when this is the best scene Nocenti has written?! Am I a complete and utter and hopeless cunt?

That was a rhetorical question! The answer is obviously no. Jerko!

The final page is also a winner because it has a monkey joke!

Now I would actually love for Nocenti to write a Dagger Clan book that is a complete whimsical farce. I think I could love that book. I think. I might be daring the universe to do something stupid but I think I've got good instincts for projects that will never be done but I can claim would have been wonderful.

Katana #8 Rating: No change. Those last two pages saved this thing. I can't completely hate on a book when the writer has finally turned in something that passes my harsh critiques. Anyway, that's Katana! Better in Ann Nocenti's head than out!