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eddycurrents · 6 years

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For the week of 6 August 2018

Quick Bits:

Black Badge #1 is a wonderful start to this new series from the team behind Grass Kings. Matt Kindt, Tyler & Hilary Jenkins set up a new story featuring a troop of kids engaging in black ops operations as a pretty neat premise. The characters so far are somewhat unlikable, but that seems partially to be the point.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Bloodshot Salvation #12 closes out this series and with it Jeff Lemire’s tenure with the characters. Amidst all of the crazy government organizations, experiments, and far-flung future assassinations, this has at heart been a story about family and the lengths people will go to in order to protect their own and there’s a wonderful sense of closure at the end here. We know it won’t last as Bloodshot: Rising Spirit is coming, but it’s still nice while it lasts. Also some very nice art from Doug Braithwaite and Jordie Bellaire.

| Published by Valiant

Clankillers #2 is pretty much made by the art from Antonio Fuso and Stefano Simeone. That’s not to take away from the story of family, betrayal, and Irish mythology with Sean Lewis, which is excellent, but Fuso’s art is just so perfectly suited to this. His style reminds me a lot of early Sean Phillips and a bit of Duncan Fegredo.

| Published by AfterShock

Daredevil #606 begins the next chapter for the series and it is ridiculously good. Interspersed with a main narrative of Daredevil tackling a band robbery by Hammerhead, Charles Soule and Phil Noto build up the pieces for the next stage in taking down Kingpin, bringing back two-thirds of Daredevil’s task force from Hunt for Wolverine. They’re a weird group, but it’s obvious that Soule likes writing these characters. Also, the art from Noto is just phenomenal.

| Published by Marvel

Death or Glory #4 is just more brilliance from Rick Remender and Bengal. The art is seriously god tier. The car chase this issue alone is incredible, not to mention the tension of Glory and her charges attempting to escape the abattoir. This is just astoundingly great comics.

| Published by Image / Giant Generator

Exiles #6 takes a little bit of downtime to figure out the new direction for the team to take before immediately dumping them in a new alternate reality. The artwork from Rod Reis is absolutely gorgeous and I really like how Saladin Ahmed seems to be building the team more as a family.

| Published by Marvel

Fantastic Four #1 is a very welcome and long overdue return, but thankfully this is a great issue. Sure, the team technically isn’t back yet, but in the main feature Dan Slott, Sara Pichelli, Elisabetta D’Amico, and Marte Gracia focus on one of the core tenets of these characters: family. And when combined with a sweet and funny flashback of the Four trying to find their way home, this is a good start, with beautiful artwork. That goes also for the back-up Doom story from Slott, Simone Bianchi, and Marco Russo, that gives us a more primal Doom. One that reminds me a bit of the Doom who was trapped on the Heroes Reborn counter-Earth. After his turn as Iron Man, I don’t want to see Doom slide back into outright villainy, but what comes next remains to be seen. Overall, I loved this, and am anxious to see what’s around the corner.

| Published by Marvel

Farmhand #2 is as good as the first issue, as Rob Guillory begins to flesh out the Jenkins family and hint that more strange shenanigans are going on in the town and at the family farm. Great art from Guillory and Taylor Wells.

| Published by Image

Her Infernal Descent #4 takes a few more interesting turns as Lynn takes a walk through “heaven” and then we get the ultimate cliffhanger. This entire series so far has shown a lot of inventiveness from the entire creative team, with Lonnie Nadler, Zac Thompson, Kyle Charles, and Dee Cunniffe all delivering some impressive work. This one kind of ups that with the depiction of Circle H and the angels constructing the condos. Also, the wood of suicides with Hunter S. Thompson is brilliant.

| Published by AfterShock

Hot Lunch Special #1 is a very solid debut for this crime drama from Eliot Rahal and Jorge Fornés. Comparisons to Fargo will probably abound, due to location, but this is much more serious in tone and execution, with some very evocative art from Fornés.

| Published by AfterShock

Hunt for Wolverine: The Adamantium Agenda #4 concludes the second of these minis, where the end result is seemingly all going to be “We didn’t find Logan, but we all found the true Wolverine that resides in our hearts.” I poke fun, but these have been enjoyable, especially this one from Tom Taylor, RB Silva, Adriano di Benedetto, and Guru eFX. Nice humour throughout as Taylor shows he really gets Spider-Man, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones, leading me to hope that somewhere down the line he gets a New Avengers title going. Also some really big revelations that should have both personal and broad implications for the X-Men.

| Published by Marvel

Maestros #7 concludes what has been a funny, irreverent take on magic and fantasy from Steve Skroce and Dave Stewart. For a series that has had some interesting setbacks for our lead, this one’s actually pretty straight-forward, even as it gives us a sympathetic flashback for Mardok’s story.

| Published by Image

Medieval Spawn & Witchblade #4 is a decent conclusion to the series. I’ve liked the story that Brian Holguin and Brian Haberlin have been telling, even as the Spawn’s backstory does indeed reveal itself a take on the Arthurian myth. I’ve really enjoyed the art from Haberlin and Geirrod Van Dyke.

| Published by Image

Nancy Drew #3 has some really nice character moments as the crew tries to put the pieces together of Pete’s mother’s murder and some shady history. The art from Jenn St-Onge and Triona Farrell is perfect for the story.

| Published by Dynamite

Oblivion Song #6 claims to be an end to a story arc, but this book doesn’t really seem to work like that, instead with each issue being a series of transitions in a larger serial narrative. Changes occur and questions abound, but there’s no definitive conclusion to anything, just more story. And it works, because what Robert Kirkman, Lorenzo de Felici, and Annalisa Leoni are creating here is very compelling.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Optimus Prime #22 begins its tie-in to the Unicron event and the march to the end of IDW’s Hasbroverse. Like pretty much all IDW crossovers, it’s woefully out of sync with the event as a whole due to lateness, but it is still entertaining. This gives some of the much-needed back story for how the pieces got to where they were in the early parts of Transformers: Unicron and fleshes out more of the political machinations going on behind the scenes. Great art from Sara Pitre-Durocher and Josh Burcham.

| Published by IDW

Outpost Zero #2 is not really at all the direction I expected this series to take, but it’s very good. Sean McKeever, Alexandre Tefenkgi, and Jean-Francois Beaulieu have some interesting teen drama on their hands here and a nice mystery to boot.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Port of Earth #8 concludes the second arc, with some fairly frightening implications and revelations that we’ve kind of suspected since the first issue. Zack Kaplan, Andrea Mutti, and Vladimir Popov are telling a very interesting story here.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Predator: Hunters II #1 begins a second series of these new Predator Hunters from Chris Warner, capturing a similar tone and approach as the original Predator film. Nice art from Agustin Padilla and Neeraj Menon.

| Published by Dark Horse

Relay #2 spotlights the dark side of the Relay and what they’re doing to the universe. Some very interesting moral and ethical issues are raised this issue by Zac Thompson and it looks like more to come between the team. Beautiful artwork from Andy Clarke and José Villarrubia.

| Published by AfterShock

Shadow Roads #2 is another captivating instalment of this series. I love that Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt are back exploring the world of the Sixth Gun and expanding on the weird aspects of that world, with some very impressive artwork from AC Zamudio and Carlos N Zamudio.

| Published by Oni Press

She Could Fly #2 is more strangeness, even as the story comes together in some very interesting ways. I absolutely love the artwork from Martín Morazzo and Miroslav Mrva.

| Published by Dark Horse / Berger Books

Transformers: Lost Light #22 is another issue to do your head in as James Roberts crashes together the threads from the past several years of More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light. It’s fairly impressive how all of this is coming together and still maintaining the wonderful humour that is always included in the scripts.

| Published by IDW

Transformers: Unicron #3 begins fleshing out some of the Transformers mythology and tying it together with some of the expanded Hasbroverse. It’s nice to see John Barber putting some of the pieces together here even as it heralds the end. Also, this is some of the best art of Alex Milne’s career, really stepping it up a notch, beautifully coloured by Sebastian Cheng and David Garcia Cruz.

| Published by IDW

X-Men Blue #33 explores the future that Magneto was transported to in order to escape Bastion and the Mothervine mutants. Great art from Marcus To and Matt Milla as it really feels like Cullen Bunn is working towards his Magneto endgame.

| Published by Marvel

Other Highlights: Accell #13, Amazing Spider-Man #3, Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #22, Animosity: Evolution #7, The Beauty #22, Champions #23, Charlie’s Angels #3, The Dead Hand #5, Dejah Thoris #7, Dissonance #4, Domino #5, Dungeons & Dragons: Evil at Baldur’s Gate #4, Eternal Empire #10, Invader Zim #33, Lumberjanes: A Midsummer Night’s Scheme #1, Mech Cadet Yu #11, Nancy Drew #3, Old Man Logan #45, Quicksilver: No Surrender #4, Spider-Man Annual #1, Spider-Man vs. Deadpool #37, Star Wars: Darth Vader #19, Strangers in Paradise XXV #5, TMNT: Bebop & Rocksteady Hit the Road #2, Tomb Raider: Inferno #3, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #35, Unnatural #2, World of Tanks: Citadel #4, Xena: Warrior Princess #7

Recommended Collections: Champions - Volume 3: Champion for a Day, Outcast - Volume 6, Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt, Star Trek: Discovery - The Light of Kahless, Star Wars - Volume 8: Mutiny at Mon Cala, Thicker Than Blood, Vs. - Volume 1

d. emerson eddy is wondering why there isn’t an even larger size cup of coffee. It should also come in jugs. Mugs and jugs.

#This Week in Comics

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asksabhaniblog · 7 years

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A Book on Rekha looks at the Bollywood diva’s life with sympathy and awe The young Rekha was body and slut-shamed and sexually harassed. She rose above it all to become the ultimate Hindi film leading lady. Yasser Usman, author of a new book on the star writes that Bollywood’s cruelty pushed her to become a recluse..

Rekha and Naseeruddin Shah on the sets of Umrao Jaan (1981),

the crowning glory of her career. Rekha won the National Award for best actress for the film.She wasn’t high up in the pecking order of Bollywood stars for a child of the 1980s. But I am intrigued, even moved, by her: Rekha seems wracked by loneliness and sadness, but it wasn’t always this way. Something drastic happened around 1990 that fundamentally changed her. Rekha went from being the Kim Kardashian of the 1970s and ’80s – attention-seeking, exuberant and sexually frank to a degree not seen in India even today – to a Greta Garbo-esqe figure, tragic and reclusive. So what happened to make Rekha clam up? The exhaustion, and the trauma, of years of combating vicious sexist attacks by colleagues in the film industry and the press, at a scale unimaginable today, had finally caught up with her. Had Bollywood ultimately managed to break Rekha?

It all started when she was born in 1954. Bhanurekha was the “illegitimate” and unacknowledged daughter of the polygamous Tamil film star Gemini Ganesan. She was unrelentingly teased in school as a “lotta”, Tamil for bastard. Such cruelty was to be her fate for years to come.

When she was pulled out of school and hustled into films in her early teens – she was even beaten by her brother when she refused – Rekha discovered that acting came with a generous dose of sexual harassment. And when she moved from Madras to Bombay in 1969 to support her bankrupt mother, Rekha was jeopardized by the absence of a father – or a godfather. In the male-dominated world of Bollywood, this gave licence to lecherous directors and producers. In her own words, “It was one of the most frightening phases of my life… Guys did try and take advantage of my vulnerability.”

Gold Spot advertisement (1969).

Before any of Rekha’s Bollywood films were out, she modelled for ads to earn extra money. This one was shot by Shyam Benegal. (Shyam Benegal; source: Shahid Mansoori)

Perhaps the most egregious example of the harassment – assault, really – that Rekha had to endure took place on a film set when she was fourteen. At a shoot for Anjana Safar, later renamed Do Shikari, producer Kuljeet Pal, director Raja Nawathe and lead actor Biswajeet conspired to force Rekha into a kissing scene. When the director called “action”, Biswajeet grabbed Rekha and forced himself on her while the camera was rolling. The director didn’t call “cut” for five long minutes. Rekha couldn’t protest for fear of the consequences; and rather than being damned and proceeded against by the law, the producer was celebrated for the discovery of a “bold sex kitten”, that most obnoxious of phrases.

If this wasn’t outrageous enough, consider the harrowing body-shaming Rekha was subjected to. Her 33-inch waist was a source of mirth and much commented on, as was the colour of her skin. For instance, when Kuljeet Pal cast Rekha for his film, the actor Raaj Kumar, of Mother India and Waqt fame, reportedly remarked to the Nairobi-based Pal, “You’re from Africa. No wonder you like black girls!” Similarly, when Navin Nischol found out that Rekha had been signed as his co-star for Sawan Bhadon, he complained to the producer: “From where did you pick out this namoona [character]? Itni kaali-kalooti [So dark and ugly]!” Even the great Shashi Kapoor, who was later a good friend to Rekha, harshly remarked at the premier of one of her early films, “How is this dark, plump and gauche actress ever going to make it?”

Poster of Ram Balram (1980).

Starring both Rekha and Amitabh, the film didn’t do well and marked a low point in Amitabh’s career. The press had begun to write him off. That Rekha seems lost in public memory; she underwent a dramatic makeover and weight-loss in the years after she met Amitabh Bachchan. But during those days of humiliation, Rekha put up a brave front. She withstood the shaming and ridicule, and even the demeaning body-painting to make her skin lighter in films. She later said that though she felt “deeply hurt” at the time, it also steeled her resolve to “make it big”. Indeed, Rekha was irrepressible. And this, perhaps, unsettled people even more. How dare she be so unaffected?

Rekha’s sexual openness, too, was revolutionary, even by modern standards, and won her yet more ire. It is impossible to imagine a young starlet today saying some of the things Rekha said four decades ago: “You can’t come close, really close, to a man without making love”, “It is sheer fluke that I have never got pregnant so far” and “Premarital sex is very natural. And all those prudes who say that a single woman should have sex only on her suhaag raat are talking bull”! Rekha was totally open about being sexual and about her boyfriends. But the backlash for her candour – and sexual independence – was immense, and painful.

Rekha’s reported first marriage to Vinod Mehra in the early ’70s ended – and the humiliating details were splashed all over the press – with a violent confrontation with her mother-in-law on the landing outside Vinod’s apartment, before Rekha could even cross the threshold. Mrs Mehra, in Rekha’s words, couldn’t stand her “rotten past and reputation for being a sex maniac”.

In typically sexist style, the film industry and the press repeatedly singled out Rekha and maligned her, never her partners, for her supposed relationships. After reports of affairs with Jeetendra, Dharmendra, Sunil Dutt and Amitabh Bachchan, among others, Rekha was projected as a woman who posed a “threat” to the happiness of married couples in Bollywood. The press uninventively called her a “man eater” and a “nymphomaniac”. Even someone of Nargis Dutt’s stature unwisely pitched in: “She gives the impression to men that she is easily available... I’ve worked with a lot of children with a lot of psychological problems in my time. She’s lost. She needs a strong man.” Dimple Kapadia was pithy and direct: “Stay away from my husband,” she said, as if her husband Rajesh Khanna had no agency in the matter. Even with no one seemingly on her side, Rekha went on to become a superstar, and the highest paid actress of her time.

Rekha and Mukesh Agarwal at their friend Neeraj Kumar’s house in Delhi in 1990.

Mukesh was a businessman who was known to mount an enormous stallion to receive guests at his farmhouse in Delhi. To everybody’s shock, Rekha married Mukesh on 4 March 1990 in Bombay. (Mala Kumar) But perhaps the most devastating blow, the proverbial last straw, was the reaction to the suicide, in 1990, of Mukesh Agarwal, Rekha’s estranged husband of a few months who had been clinically depressed for years. In spite of Rekha having worked in Bollywood for two decades by that time, Shashi Kapoor was the only industry insider who condoled with her. The rest were either coldly silent or nastily and baselessly blamed Rekha for the suicide. Subhash Ghai railed: “Rekha has put such a blot on the face of the film industry... No conscientious director will work with her ever again.” A prominent male co-star thundered: “She’s become the national vamp. Professionally and personally, I think its curtains for her. I mean I don’t know how will I react to her if I come face to face with her”. Film magazines tried to implicate Rekha using flimsy and unverified trivia like that Mukesh hanged himself using her dupatta, and ran irresponsible and scurrilous headlines like “The Black Widow” and “How Rekha drove Mukesh to Attempt Suicide”. Her film that was playing at that time, Sheshnaag, was boycotted, and vandals blackened her face on its posters.

Author Yasser Usman (Picture courtesy the author)

Rekha, understandably, withdrew deep into a shell after this witch-hunt. And who could blame her? Her shocking story seems without parallel. Bollywood just couldn’t stomach the idea of an outspoken, sexually independent and successful woman. And so they chipped away at her till she clammed up and became the recluse we know today. Order was restored once again: that troublesome and vulgar woman was nowhere to be seen. Rekha had finally been subdued and broken

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