#I'm really fascinated to see if I can look at his Madame Xanadu comics

[zahri-melitor]

Rebirth is going okay but I’m pretty busy between uni and work right now so I’ve switched over to reading more Matt Wagner stuff and. uh. hmm.

The man is interested in the grotesque and the internal-external expression of horror. Which 100% translates to what he's worked on over the years: Batman stories about the Monster Men, about Two-Face, about Riddler. Sandman Mystery Theatre. The Demon. Madame Xanadu. Doctor Mid-Nite. House of Mystery.

(Honestly amazed he got to write a Trinity story, but the contents of that story now make more sense to me in context).

But reading it can be a bit, well, this comic story, Faces, was written in 1992, wasn’t it? (LOTDK #28-30).

It's not that it's badly told, but the themes of body horror surrounding Two-Face and that very late 80s/early 90s ugly art style aesthetic (the wider cartooning style one, not the Liefeld/Image one) are a lot to take in and it's somewhat callous in how it portrays the humanity of the Monster (TM).

I really, really disbelieve that, Wagner. My understanding is that they largely died out around the 1950s or so, and your story here is more reacting to the early 1990s revival scene and the discussion surrounding the future of circus at that time in terms of the decrease in animal acts, the increase in physical feats and the ethics of it all.

It's interesting. But the approach to the interrogation of the topic is going to catch modern readers off guard.