Katana #1

My instinct is that this will be my favorite moment of the comic book: the anticipation before Ann Nocenti's writing kicks in.

Read comics are sweet, but those unread
Are sweeter; therefore, Ann Nocenti, write on;
Not to the physical fan, but, more endear'd,
Write to the spirit fanboys of no discrimination:
Pimpled youth, in darkened room, thou canst not read
Thy story, nor ever know the clichéd plot;
Bold Reader, never, never canst thou know,
Katana's fate in store--yet, do not grieve;
She cannot disappoint, though Nocenti write her tale,
For ever wilt thou think this comic doth not suck.

Then there's some lie about truth being beauty and beauty being truth. Linking to Quasi-Thinking and Pseudo-Learning makes me realize how nicely that would work as a Tumblr. But that would mean I'd have to dig up Professor I. Noah Better from the crypt of personalities in the back of my mind. Not like his way of speaking and thinking wasn't almost identical to my own. But it would mean a lot of photoshopping that I probably don't want to get into! But damn. It's like Tumblr was made for Quasi-Thinking and Pseudo-Learning! Where were you thirteen years ago, Tumblr? Jerko!

When I first heard that Katana was going to have her own title, I was as excited about a comic book event as my cynical, fuddy-duddy nature could allow. A character from the original Outsiders, a team I loved when I first began reading comic books. And she would be escaping the horribly written current incarnation of The Birds of Prey! Hosanna!

And then I read Ann Nocenti was writing. Fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK. I am not familiar with any of Ann Nocenti's pre-New 52 writing. In fact, when I first began reading her run on Green Arrow, I thought she was an amateur with potential. She had some decent story ideas but had yet to perfect her writing so that she could pull off the stories. And then I looked her up and saw she had many, many, many years of comic book writing experience. So now she wasn't an amateur with potential. She was a lazy professional who didn't seem to fucking care about fleshing out her own ideas. I was reading her scripts picturing her shrugging her shoulders and grunting, "Eh. Good enough!"

But I still have hope! Because what else is there? I'll pretend I don't know who Ann Nocenti is and begin at the beginning: the beginning.

I like the look of the first page. Too bad that doesn't last.

That first Narration Box has nearly nothing to do with the rest of the Narration Boxes and it's a missed opportunity to boot. It's nearly a Haiku. But nearly being a Haiku makes it as far from being a Haiku as not nearly being a Haiku. But if it were a Haiku, it would make more sense in the context of this page. It would then be more successful doing what, I suppose, it's supposed to be doing: setting up the imagery and feeling of Katana's current predicament. Perhaps Nocenti wrote it as a Haiku and the editor or letterer didn't get it and "fixed" some perceived awkwardness in the grammar, perhaps adding the first "the" or the conjunction in the final line. Or perhaps it was just a missed opportunity. I'm not usually a fan of Haiku in any language other than Japanese but it certainly would have been fitting here and as a motif throughout the series.

The man Katana is fighting, Coil, is simply a typical misogynist that has mastered some ridiculous sword that's more slinky than weapon. He's not even a clever misogynist. He calls Katana weak and claims she should be in the kitchen. Zero points for creative misogyny. That's bumbling redneck, backwater speak. Coil is supposed to be an elegant Japanese swordsman. I expect his misogyny to be delivered in flowery language and subtle innuendo. It's shameful to be so brusque about it.

On the first page when Katana gets captured in Coil's sword, she screams, "No! I hate you!" This seemed an odd thing to say although I suppose Coil and Katana must be familiar with each other. They need some history for the protagonist to be declaring she hates the antagonist. But whether they have this history or not, it's apparent two pages later why Nocenti had Katana say that. So that she could have Coil say this: "Hatred is useless, Katana--it is as if you drink poison and expect me to die." So basically this Japanese Spiral Sword Master is a redneck misogynist that likes to spout fake Buddha quotes. Perfect Ann Nocenti character!

But this whole fight with Coil is getting ahead of ourselves, as usual. It won't take place until later so I guess I was wrong when I expected to begin at the beginning. Instead, Tatsu's story begins as she heads to Japantown in San Francisco looking for a girl named Shun, possibly because she has some tattoos on her body that Tatsu needs to interpret.

Or she's just interested in a lesbian love affair.

While walking about Japantown, Tatsu encounters the typical wise Japanese master/drunk persona. I'm sure he'll become important later when Tatsu needs training and/or Ancient Secrets of the Masters! Tatsu then rents her new place from the Gambling Addict Landlady archetype.

Speaking of archetypes and Japanese things, I had a dream the other night where I was being taught the proper way to throw Ninja Throwing Stars by an older black woman. That's the third most wise archetype after Yoda and the ancient Asian man! But I never learned the proper technique because my girlfriend woke me up. Now when I die because I can't throw a Ninja Star properly, it'll be her fault.

Katana takes up training in her new secret basement (that her landlady says she will forget about but since she's the Gambling Addict Landlady archetype, she'll be too nosy to forget), but finds she still needs more practice.

Oh! Good thing she met that drunk Master out front!

At night, Katana has a dream that she's fucking Coil, her and her husband's enemy. So they do have history. And if Katana hates him, could it be Coil is the one that killed her husband? Or perhaps Coil is the henchman of the one that killed her husband. I imagine the series will be a long road toward Katana getting vengeance against those that conspired to kill her husband. Or perhaps it will be more Memento-like, where Katana's true goal is the impossible: to bring her husband back. And the trail to the man that killed her husband doesn't actually matter. Just the rote business of searching and killing, over and over and over again, until, somehow, somewhere, she is reunited with Maseo.

In the meantime, Katana pays a visit to see Shun.

Oh darn. She does have tattoos.

Tatsu takes a look at one of the tattoos showing the history of her sword, The Soultaker. She finds the wielder looks insane. Which, of course, is how most people think of Tatsu. Is she crazy? Is it the sword that drives the wielder crazy? Or does it actually house the souls of those it kills? That, too, will probably remain an ambiguous part of this book for its eight issue run. No, no. It's not a limited series. But I have a feeling DC is going to be cancelling a lot of comic books in the next year or two without giving many of them much of a chance at finding an audience. Unless Batman or Jason Todd or Superboy star in a book, it's just not going to sell the units DC wants it to sell.

After her visit to Shun, Katana ends up fighting ninjas and being attacked by Coil. Oh! We're back at the beginning of the comic book now! And the final pages of their encounter as Katana gets the better of Coil and threatens his life are just a mess of weird dialogue. The gist is that Coil wants Katana to join the Sword Clan so that she can train to use the Soultaker sword but Katana won't join because they're just corrupt. But the actual dialogue is as off-putting and strange as the dialogue in any of Ann Nocenti's Green Arrow comics. The characters don't exchange dialogue; Coil spits up epigrams and Katana shouts her intentions. I don't even know how to explain how awkward and strange it is so here's the final panel of the comic book where you can see what I'm trying to describe.

It's as if every piece of dialogue Nocenti has someone say must be a pithy observation or a wise musing.

Katana #1 Rating: I'll start Katana ranked at #39. That puts it at the bottom of the comics I'd recommend only if you like the title characters and just above the comics books I think are pretty shitty. I figure a comic book by Ann Nocenti will hover right around this spot anyway. After finishing the book, I didn't really like the art. Sometimes the style seemed to work with the comic book but mostly panels just seemed awkward and didn't quite fit what was going on. There's one point where Katana realizes the Soultaker burns her palms as she uses it (why didn't this ever happen in Birds of Prey? Is this a new thing she's just finding out?). In the panel, she has both hands open, palms up, her sword hovering over her grasp and a look of extreme shock on her face. It's just ridiculous.

There were four main supporting characters in this book and they were all fairly stereotypical of the "kung fu" genre. The drunk master that I didn't know was a master when he's introduced except that I've seen many Kung Fu movies in my life, so made the assumption. Which is born out later as Katana thinks that there was more to the drunk than his sake. The desperate woman held in captivity that needs to be rescued from her cultural and class imprisonment. The misogynistic Japanese antagonist that still sees women as beneath men and spouts sexist nonsense as he battles Katana. And the landlady that hasn't shown that she's a stereotype yet but since she has a gambling problem and she's already seemed a bit nosy, I'm sure she's going to be trouble and not very good at keeping Katana's secret.

The dialogue is where I have the most trouble with Ann Nocenti. It never sounds natural. No two people can ever just have a conversation. They have to continually interject facts and sayings and quotes and excerpts from Wikipedia. I think Ann Nocenti should not be allowed near an internet connection while she's writing her scripts. They'd probably come off more natural and maybe she'd actually find she's good with characterization.

My expectations for this comic are not very high.