Review – Hawkeye # 1
I really enjoyed the last Hawkeye series with Mockingbird. I’m not a huge fan of the character and so I don’t mind seeing different takes on him from different writers. I’m certainly not going to pitch a bitch about the way Marvel used him in The Avengers on YouTube the way some people did. I will admit that the current re-design of his costume strips him of some of what makes him visually unique, but his costume is systemic of the current trend in comics where a stripped down sense of utilitarian design work is en vogue. However, a costume does not make the character. So is the book focused on a character worth reading about?
Yes.
Matt Fraction and David Aja reteam and bring back some of the magic they worked with Immortal Iron Fist on a character who needs a steady hand more than just about any solo character in Marvel’s stable. With his profile raised considerably because of his appearance in The Avengers Hawkeye needs to validate his own existence somewhat. He isn’t a particularly interesting character most of the time. He’s a side dish to the main entree in team books. He’s someone who is born to share the spotlight. Fraction luckily is one of those writers who really knows how to dig deep and find the things that work about a character and this is one of his strongest debut works since Iron Fist or Invincible Iron Man. I personally have been enjoying the majority of his work but will admit that he can fall into a little bit of a lull sometimes. His Uncanny X-Men run was about 50/50 and Fear Itself had none of his usual flair.
With Hawkeye, Fraction seems to get back to the nitty gritty. We get maybe a page and a half of Barton in costume and the rest of the issue follows his exploits while he’s not on duty. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t a hero story. It isn’t about him going to pick up milk or wash his car. Instead we get a closer look at how Barton views himself; in the context of his role as an Avenger, in the shadow of Captain America, and as a simple man without powers standing next to men who can shatter planets. Fraction utilizes the first issue to tell a stand-alone story that explains why Barton does the things he does and where his moral code comes from. And Fraction tells us more about Barton through the way he treats a simple dog than most writers do with an entire series worth of heroic exploits. I know some might say its a cheap trick to play the wounded animal card, but Fraction nails it and nobody can really deny how effective the issue is.
I was planning on giving the series a pass entirely but the first issue was good enough that I can see myself following it through. I know for a fact that there are less deserving books that I’ve stuck with for the duration. I figure this one isn’t going to disappoint me anytime soon.
Comic Review Double-Shot
I haven’t done day-and-date reviews for individual comics in a while. I get my books mail-0rder nowadays for financial and convenience reasons and I only rarely will pick up a book off of the rack. Usually it’s when I have some spare cash laying around and want to give something different a chance. Today I got some issues that I initially passed on because I didn’t have the cash for them in my budget at the time.
AVENGING SPIDER-MAN # 9
STORY BY Kelly Sue DeConnick
ART BY Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson
COLORS BY Edgar Delgado
LETTERS BY VC – Joe Caramagna
COVER BY Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson
PUBLISHER Marvel Comics
COVER PRICE:$3.99
Next week sees the first issue of Carol Danvers’ turn as Captain Marvel. This week gives us a sort of primer as she teams up with Spider-Man in a fun little issue written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, who will be handling the ongoing series as well. I have said that while I don’t consider myself one of those “shipper” fans, I would totally support Peter Parker and Carol Danvers as a couple. Their banter and flirtations are often a delight to read, especially if they’re written by someone who gets the voice of those characters individually. Kelly Sue does. She’s one of the writers at Marvel who can seemingly write any character with ease and put them into a story that is fun and breezy in a more classic tradition that eschews the post Bendis style that seems to find its way into every book no matter who is actually penning it.
Avenging Spider-Man # 9 feels like a classic issue of Marvel Team-Up in all the right ways. The story centers around Peter and Carol going for a flight in Carol’s new junker of a plane when they find themselves caught in a dispute between a young lady who has had a brush with the law and a private security firm trying to bring her in. It is a fun read and a welcome change from what I’ve been reading from Marvel at the moment. I’m hoping that trend continues with the ongoing series. Kelly Sue has set the stage for something that could easily be just as good or better than the last volume of Ms. Marvel which I enjoyed from end-to-end.
REVIVAL # 1
STORY BY Tim Seeley
ART BY Mike Norton
COVER BY Jenny Frison, Craig Thompson
PUBLISHER Image Comics
COVER PRICE:$2.99
SYNOPSIS: For one day in rural central Wisconsin, the dead came back to life. Now it’s up to Officer Dana Cypress to deal with the media scrutiny, religious zealots, and government quarantine that has come with them. In a town where the living have to learn to deal with those who are supposed to be dead, Officer Cypress must solve a brutal murder, and everyone, alive or undead, is a suspect. A beautiful “farm noir” that puts a new twist on the zombie genre, created by NYT Bestselling author TIM SEELEY and acclaimed artist MIKE NORTON.
Tim Seeley has made a name for himself on Hack/Slash and I bought this based off of that reputation alone. I haven’t been following his run on Witchblade, but this seemed more up my alley. Revival seems like it fits more into the mold of Image comics like The Walking Dead in that there is definitely a lot of world building being done but the core of the series is going to be centered around the interactions of our main characters. The danger with something like that is that you have to give people something to like. I wouldn’t say that Seeley’s character work is the best thing about Hack/Slash. The characters there are somewhat thin but the reader is still able to connect. In this series, Seeley has severely stepped up his game. Right off the bat we are given small looks at Dana and her personal life that make her immediately relate-able. She has family issues aplenty as well as personal issues relating to her own personal successes. This is one of the best first issues of a new comic I have read since Chew with regards to getting a sense of character.
Revival is definitely worth a look. It isn’t just another zombie book. To even use that term in association with it is somewhat misleading. This is a horror book, to be sure. I’ll even admit that parts gave me goosebumps. It’s been a while since I’ve read something that did that. Aside from the character work, Seeley has done a great job setting the mood here. Mike Norton’s illustration of the gore really hammers it home as well. I think this one could very well be one of the best things to come out of Image in a good long while.
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So there you are. Go buy those things. You won’t regret it.
Review – Queen Crab
I try to support Jimmy Palmiotti when I can. The guy is a class act all around and I very rarely dislike his output. This particular endeavor was a Kickstarter funded project that I went into completely blind based off of the faith I have in Jimmy’s creative potential. The guy has a sharp mind and a narrative style that I can really get behind. This particular book feels like something unlike what you normally get with a standalone graphic novel in that while it tells a complete story it leaves you with more questions than you may be willing to tolerate.
It’s a brisk read, not at all what you would call dense but featuring a lot of Palmiotti’s trademarks. The dialogue is raw and rugged, the characters are all flawed human beings that don’t fit into any easily identifiable category, and the crux of the narrative is centered around something far outside the realm of normalcy. The twisted sci-fi element of the book comes out of nowhere and is played completely straight, with little effort made to construct it as a mystery that needs to be unraveled. Instead it seems like a setup for that mystery to be handled later after the business at hand is taken care of. This doesn’t have the finality of something like Palmiotti’s “Random Acts of Violence” for example. It seems like an extended first issue of a comic book series that will run for a few issues before reaching a point of closure. I don’t know if there is any plan for further installments with the character because, as I said earlier, I went in completely blind. It’s not a book that everyone will love. It’s a book that will challenge even folks who are big fans of Palmiotti’s regular work.
But, the price tag is extremely reasonable and it’s a nice enough change of pace from the norm that I feel comfortable recommending it. Just know that your expectations are probably going to be subverted in some way because the book simply isn’t conventional in most respects and for that I have to give it a thumbs up.
Christmas Review – Batman: Noel
I picked this one up as a Christmas special. Figured it would be a nice little diversion as most DC graphic novels are. Azzarello and Bermejo’s Joker hardcover was fun and I still have the Teen Titans: Games hardcover sitting on my desk. I’ve often had debates over why DC and Marvel don’t invest more heavily in single-serving graphic novels considering how easy they are to promote and build buzz around. The general public is far more likely to pick up a graphic novel than get hooked on individual monthly issues. I remember when Earth One came out everyone seemingly lost their shit over it and it went to multiple printings. It seems to me if you want to entice new readers you should try to cater to them in a format they enjoy. I don’t think that DC and Marvel need to curb their monthlies altogether but I’ll be damned if they’re not shooting themselves in the foot by dragging their feet on graphic novel production. I know artists are somewhat hesitant to jump on-board graphic novels because they would rather get paid their monthly page-rate but I’m sure there’s a compromise there somewhere that could mean big business for the comic publishing world.
Batman : Noel is a pretty good little graphic novel. Lee Bermejo does double duty on writing and art, though Charles Dickens should get a writer credit seeing how this is a pretty direct adaptation of A Christmas Carol even if they didn’t use the title. The story centers around Bob, a lowly runner for the Joker who has a chance run-in with Batman who in the context of this story exemplifies the persona of Scrooge. They really play up the “Batman is a bastard” angle here. I have to say that it’s not the sort of Batman I normally enjoy reading. Too dour, too tied to Frank Miller’s insanity and grumpiness. It would have been a complete turnoff if not for the fact that it was done to serve the purpose of the narrative. I mean, we’re all familiar enough with Dickens’ work to know that he’ll have a change of heart in the end.
The fun of Noel is in Bermejo’s use of Batman’s cast of characters to fill slots in the Dickens lore and the beautiful artwork that he does it with. Say what you will about the book, it is hard to deny that the artwork is anything less than stunning. The layouts, the finishes, the colors…all of it comes together to create something that truly pops. If you were to show this to someone who doesn’t read comics regularly, you can bet your sweet ass they would be impressed. It is some of Bermejo’s best work. It’s vibrant and eye-catching in a way that his work in something like Joker wasn’t. While that artwork was still impressive, it was a muddy, dark blotch. It was too dark to truly impress. Here you get a real feel for how good Bermejo really is.
I admit that the pricetag is a bit hefty for the story content, but it’s a good read and something that I’ll probably pull out around this time each year just for a lark. I would say that’s enough to give it a hearty recommendation.
RATING: 7/10
Weekly Comic Reviews
I know these are becoming completely random and in no way weekly but I feel compelled to write them when I get a chance. Hopefully someone will make a choice based on my recommendation and validate the miniscule bit of effort I put into updating this site every so often. There were plenty of books to choose from this week, so let’s get to it.
AVENGERS X-SANCTION (MARVEL COMICS) # 1
Oh Jeph Loeb, we meet again. This time he managed not to make my eyeballs bleed with rage, so let’s chalk that up as a win. I was fully expecting Red Hulk to sodomize Cable or something equally batshit insane to happen. I know that he doesn’t have the same leeway with the 616 characters that he did when he wrote Ultimatum but I still can’t get that out of the back of my mind when I pick up one of his books.
This issue seemed a little light for the first issue of a major event comic, but that having been said it is the sort of style folks have come to associate with Loeb following his Hulk run, which had a similar sort of pacing and tone. The McGuiness art certainly doesn’t help to distance the two. I feel like this is going to ultimately be an utterly disposable piece of event overload but seeing how it’s only going to be four issues long I can’t complain too much. Fear Itself seemed to last forever so a quick little mini-event might be refreshing in the end. I can’t say. Maybe I’ve just been bludgeoned by Marvel’s books so effectively that my brain has turned to mush and I’ll just buy whatever they tell me to.
Me am Marvel Zombie. Take my money. *sigh*
DOCTOR WHO (IDW) # 12
There really isn’t much to say about this particular issue other than it features the art talents of Mr. Paul Grist of Jack Staff fame and the result is a charming almost entirely dialog free story featuring the eleventh Doctor making the Christmas rounds with Santa in the Tardis. It’s cute, it’s breezy and I enjoyed the heck out of it. If you’re a Who fan it’ll probably hit you right where it needs to. I would recommend it to anyone looking for something as a stocking stuffer for younger kids looking to get into comics or sci-fi. It’s just plain nice.
I really don’t know what else I can say about the book. It’s a little on the light side but that is just part of the charm. I hope you’ll give it a try.
THE RAY (DC COMICS) # 1
I was going to pass this one up. I won’t lie, it didn’t seem like anything that begged to be read. That seems to run counter to my usual feelings about the Palimiotti/Gray writing team but there was a feeling of generic blandness to it in the previews I had come across and so I had planned to let this one pass me by. But the thing is, I DO know that Palmiotti and Gray rarely turn in merely passable work and I owed it to myself to read the book because if nothing else it filled a niche that the new DC lineup seemed to have missed out on. I’m certainly glad I did for a myriad of reasons. First and foremost, the writing team has given us a hero who is aware of hero tropes in a way that makes for quite a refreshing read. The inner voice of this new character doesn’t seem like any other hero on the stands. There is a uniqueness to him that I have to applaud, especially considering that I was afraid the title would exemplify the polar opposite. Some of that has to be due to the fact that he’s not another anglo-saxon hero living in a major metropolis. Here we get a Korean-American dating a Hindu woman who works as a lifeguard while living with his hippie flower-power parents who has his powers thrust upon him and deals with it in a way that seems utterly realistic and runs organically with the rest of the narrative.
The art by Jamal Igle is quite good, as it usually is, and readers should find themselves pleasantly surprised by how good this book is. It really does come out of left field and shatter expectations. Please go give this one a shot. It will send a message to DC that these types of stories still have an audience. People on the ‘net beg for books like these and yet the numbers never seem to add up. Hopefully this time around we can mark one in the win column for b-list heroes with stellar writing.
SACRIFICE # 1
Sam Humphries is something of an indy darling right now. His previous one-shot “Our Love is Real” made a real splash earlier this year and he’s following it up with a self-published book that has been garnering the same level of buzz. The book tells the story of a young man with some psychological issues (for lack of a better term) finding himself in the ancient Aztec world and caught up in the middle of a power dispute over the proper religious teachings that the Aztec people should follow. He also doesn’t want them to wind up getting slaughtered by the incoming Spanish, so he’s got that going for him.
The book is a complex and interesting read. I admit that I had to read it twice to get the flow of information down, but seeing how the version I read was digital and I don’t have a whole lot of experience reading in that format there may have been a bit of a learning curve element to it.
I would advise giving it a shot. This may be your chance to see the breakthrough work of an artist poised to really break out in 2012. I get a similar vibe from what I got off of Fraction during Casanova here and if that’s any indication of things to come Humphries is going to wind up on top sooner rather than later.
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That’s it for this week. Hopefully you will find something to enjoy there. I should have a review of Sherlock Holmes : Game of Shadows for you as well this weekend. That should be exciting.
Weekly Comic Reviews
And I’m back. Sorry for skipping out on doing reviews last week but I’ve been busier than I would like and it was the last thing on my mind. Also that issue of Catwoman sorta bust a blood vessel in my brain. This week was a more pleasant reading experience, so the reviews should reflect that. Let’s get started!
ALL-STAR WESTERN # 1
The first review this week is for what I have to say is the best book of the week. I feel like getting that out of the way early is important because I’m gonna gush fairly heavily on this one. I’ve been a vocal booster of Palmiotti and Gray’s work on Jonah Hex for a long time now and when the reboot news came down the pike I was surprised to see Hex getting any attention in the new DC landscape. I figured it would be the perfect time for DC to quietly push the character aside the way it has with a few other less-than-stellar selling titles. I’ve been hearing the same “the trade sales keep it alive” line in regard to Jonah Hex for a while but DiDio’s comments that new books would be judged harshly and only the best selling titles would remain in a short period of time made me wonder how this new interpretation would work for our favorite heavily scarred western bounty-hunter.
First and foremost I need to point out that this is not your typical Jonah Hex issue. Gone are the desolate western landscapes where the dust and dirt seem to fly off the page and nestle in the corners of your eyes. We’re now in the developing sprawl of Victorian-era Gotham City, a place where cobblestones have replaced the muddy central thoroughfare of the frontier town. Our Jonah Hex here is an older iteration, having experienced the frontier life and aftermath of the Civil War. He is drawn to the city on contract to help hunt down a Jack the Ripper-esque murderer who is carving a bloody swath of violence through the city leaving a trail of mutilated prostitutes in his wake. It is a story that matches the setting quite well and Palmiotti & Gray set the stage for our adventures efficiently giving us a quiet slow burn through the proceedings punctuated with sudden bursts of violent energy as if the book itself mirrors Hex’s personality.
I felt like there was more in this issue than in three lesser titles combined. It felt dense without feeling impenetrable, offering an excellent place for those who have heard how amazing Jonah Hex was and are finally willing to give the character a shot. Tying his history in with the development of Gotham City should drawin some Bat-fans interested to see how Hex fits in with the story of the Waynes, the Cobblepots, and the Arkhams. Fans of Snyder’s work on Batman will not be disappointed by the similar tone and the uninitiated should be drawn in by the sharp pacing and quality artwork.
Overall Rating: 5/5
AQUAMAN # 1
I’m an unabashed Aquaman fan. Seriously. I’ve got a good longbox full of Aquaman books and I feel like it’s a shame that nobody gives the guy a real shake. He’s a warrior king from under the sea! The logline alone should sell it but most people only view him as a joke. As such, it’s not surprising that Geoff Johns has gone in for a psuedo-meta presentation of the character where the surface world and the DCU don’t understand why Aquaman exists. I admit that it’s a bit disheartening that this is the direction he wanted to go, because it’ll be hard to dissuade people from believing everything they previously thought about the character when even the folks in the book itself don’t take him seriously. Of course it seems like Johns is also using every page of the book to prove everyone wrong. He lays the smackdown on a bunch of bank robbers, clarifies that he does not in fact talk to fish, and makes sweet love to his woman on the seashore after deciding that he doesn’t want to be king of Atlantis anymore.
This issue reads quite a bit like Johns’ Green Lantern no. 1 when he relaunched that character a few years back. As was the case with GL, Johns dives in head first and works to establish a status quo that clearly defines what sort of character we’re going to be dealing with and doesn’t divert much attention to the looming threat, devoting perhaps three pages total to setting up any sort of external conflict. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it’s important at this stage to prove to the readers that Aquaman is a character worth reading about. I think that Johns has done that effectively. I believe that people who weren’t fans previously will indeed have something to latch onto with this interpretation.
Let’s hope that Aquaman takes off big time like Green Lantern did all those years ago. He deserves it, damnit.
Overall Rating: 4/5
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK # 1
I almost passed on this just because I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of John Constantine being in any book with the “Justice League” label on it. It’s like seeing an old friend who used to weigh 300 pounds showing up looking like Chris Evans on the set of Captain America, your brain just can’t wrap itself around the concept of what is being presented as opposed to what you believe in your head to be true. Sort of like when a sentence doesn’t end the way you expect it banana.
That having been said, Peter Milligan’s name on the cover pretty much sold me entirely and then the contents of what was under that cover won me over entirely. It doesn’t read at all like what you would expect a “Justice League” title to read like. We do get the central Justice League team showing up and attempting to handle the supernatural threat but it soon becomes apparent that it will take a different sort of hero to sort things out. Thus we are introduced to our team through small vignettes. Shade the Changing Man shows up in a scene that is actually a bit heart wrenching. Xanadu, Zatanna, and Constantine get drawn in as well and we finish the issue with the players in position and the game ready to begin. If the issue weren’t almost entirely setup and exposition I would have given it a perfect score. I was expecting something a little bit more along the lines of JLI where they are assembled and the action has begun by the end of the issue but with so many characters to juggle I’m impressed that we got as much material as we did. It’s quite impressive.
OVERALL SCORE: 4/5
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And that’s it for this week. I hope you’ll go out and buy some of these. It’d be nice if the good books of the DC relaunch were the ones that sold the best. Basically I want you to buy 10 All-Star Westerns each and hand them out to friends. Because that would be amazing.
Weekly Comic Reviews
It’s that time again! And lucky for you this time the reviews are on time. I hope you appreciate how much effort goes into that because I really don’t feel like being analytical at 8:00 am on a Thursday morning. I’m doing this all for you. Really. Because I sure as hell am not getting paid to do this.
BATMAN AND ROBIN # 1
I’m apologetically pro-Damien. I think he’s one of the best things to come out of Grant Morrison’s Batman run. There’s something about him that sets him apart from all the other Robins and I would say that it’s mostly the fact that he’s what Jason Todd could have been. The whole “Sidekick with an attitude” thing works for some and doesn’t for others and Damien works. Now, I will admit that too much of his schtick can be tiresome. But the same can be said for any character. I love me some Deadpool but I got some serious DP burnout following the 87 series he had going on at once last year. Luckily, DC seems to realize that Damien provokes strong reactions and therefore uses him with a deal of finesse. What I mean by this is that usually his personality is either downplayed or dialed up depending on the context of the story. In this debut issue, he’s far more antagonistic than usual because we’re being reintroduced to his dynamic with Bruce. That level of mutual respect that we had seen in previous stories seems to have been scaled back because of this new timeline and as such we get some interesting character beats from both Bruce and Damien in regards to their views on the sentiment of death and the ethos of fighting crime.
Like some other books this week, it’s clear that some holdover elements from the old continuity will be front and center for certain characters. In this case, it’s the worldwide enterprise of Batman, Inc. The fact that Batman has only been around for five years in this continuity doesn’t seem to hinder that storyline at all. We’ve yet to see exactly what parts of Batman’s history are still relevant. I don’t know if Knightfall, No Man’s Land, Murderer/Fugitive, etc. have happened in this timeline but we do know that Damien is still around and Batman Inc is still happening around the globe. Again I have to point out how troublesome this is to new readers if that’s truly what DC is trying to draw in with this relaunch. Someone picking up Batman and Robin # 1 without a prior knowledge of Morrison’s work on the character might be a little perplexed as to when exactly Batman had a son and what the hell Batman, Inc. is. Fans of those particular storylines will not be let down however, as this is a pretty direct continuation of those themes in a similar sort of style.
Overall Rating: 3/5
DEMON KNIGHTS # 1
I’ll just go ahead and say upfront that this is my favorite title of the bunch so far and if you haven’t already you need to go buy a copy and read it right now. The rest of this review is just going to be me gushing over how amazing the book is and how lucky we as readers are to have someone like Paul Cornell writing a book like this. Seriously, if there is one thing that I have to applaud DC for in this whole stunt it’s giving good writers chances to work on books that otherwise would have never seen the light of day. There are a lot of people who are going to pick this up just because of its connection to the “new 52″ and they’re going to find one of the most fun, well-written fantasy adventure comics to come along in a long damned time.
I’ve always been a fan of Etrigan. I think he’s one hell of a character and he really hasn’t been given his due in the last few years. That changes here and I think it’s mostly due to the fact that Cornell knows how to write him and that he is a character that works best when he has appropriate characters to bounce off of and he gets that here with Madame Xanadu, Vandal Savage, and a whole host of medieval side-characters. The fact that this is set entirely in the middle-ages allows Cornell to go wild and do whatever he pleases without worrying about bumping up against someone else’s plans. The recent dust-up with Gail Simone being displeased about Batgirl’s appearance in Birds of Prey without her prior knowledge comes to mind. I don’t think anyone is going to try to appropriate anybody in Demon Knights anytime soon. There is an artistic freedom that comes with a book like this that I really can get behind.
Seriously, go buy the book. It’s the shining pinnacle of what this relaunch has to offer.
Overall Rating: 5/5
SUPERBOY # 1
This one is hard to review. It’s not a bad book. It’s actually quite an interesting read. It’s just so hard for me to disconnect this version of the character from the previous incarnation. Even more so than last week’s Green Arrow, not a whole lot of this book felt like what I would associate with Superboy. That having been said, what we’re presented with is a fresh take on the character. The scientific procedural element of the story is interesting and provides an excellent framework for progressing the issue. My only problem with the book has been that Superboy’s personality is defined by NOT having a personality. That can only last for so long before it becomes a chore to read through. I think that Scott Lobdell knows this, but he’s trying to match the character’s personality to the expected tropes of the genre he’s presenting the character in. He’s a clone, so he needs to be a blank slate at the beginning. That’s how these stories work. I think he’s trying to play with expectations a little bit and it’ll be interesting to see where he goes with it.
Superboy is a title that I’m cautiously optimistic about. The final page seems to indicate that this storyline somehow informs the new Teen Titans, which doesn’t look very interesting at all to me. I can’t really say for sure how much I’ll enjoy this past the first issue. I’ll just have to keep reading to find out.
Overall Rating: 3/5
SUICIDE SQUAD # 1
I am very tempted just to write *facepalm* and leave it at that. There really are no words to express how much I disliked this book. Anything not involving King Shark (he’s a shaaaaarrrk!) was pretty much terrible. Deadshot has lost his mustache and Amanda Waller is a young, thin slice of bland. This was just…well, a mess. I don’t imagine any other DC book has missed the mark as hard as this one has. Or let us hope, at least. I’d hate to see what could be worse than this slap in the face to what was once an amazing title.
I don’t want to sound like a cranky fanboy, but seriously…I just can’t imagine how anyone would find this interpretation of the title appealing. It’s generic, bland, and brings nothing new to the table while disregarding the elements of the characters involved that made them interesting in the first place. It’s just one big ball of missed opportunity, because these characters in their pre-reboot forms on the same team would have been interesting to see. Now? not so much.
Overall rating: 1/5
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN # 1
So, controversy, huh? We’ve got an African-American/Hispanic Ultimate Spider-Man and that has some people angry and other people bored and other people happy as hell. Emotions! Does any of that have any bearing on how good the book is or isn’t? Not really. The initial PR stunt nature of the book is a bit disheartening because I think it might have been a little bit better received if it had come out of the box as a surprise. It’s actually a pretty decent book. It doesn’t feel like a continuation of the old series as much as it feels like an entirely new story where someone who isn’t Peter Parker somehow winds up getting spider-based powers. It’s got Bendis’ usual sense of story-flow, that is to say that it begins a bit slowly, but the slice-of-life soap-opera elements of Bendis’ writing were what made that book work so well in the early days.
I’m not going to call this one better or worse than the Parker years because it’s only been one issue and it’ll be another twenty-three or so until I’m able to see what sort of book this is really going to be. All we know right now is that Miles is going to have a little bit of a different power-set from Parker judging from that final page cliffhanger, and that he probably won’t have a costume until around issue six if Bendis keeps to his usual pace. But if everything between then and now is well written as it was back when he first launched USM, then I doubt we’ll really care.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
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And that’s our show everybody. Join us next week for another round of my telling you what you should do with your money. See you then.
Bonus Comic Reviews!
I was able to get my hands on a few more of the new DC # 1 titles that I thought looked interesting enough to read and I figured it’d be worthwhile to add my two cents as to their overall quality and value. Because I’m an expert. I wrote a book. It’s on Amazon. That gives me free reign to critique whatever I want. At least that’s what I got out of all those literature classes I took in college.
ANIMAL MAN # 1
Are you reading Jeff Lemire’s excellent Sweet Tooth by any chance? If not, you should be. It’s the sort of dark, moody, effective Vertigo mystery that keeps that branch of the publishing division alive with its artistic merit. It’s seriously one of the best books on the market right now and at least three volumes are available in trade paperback for your reading pleasure. I say this because it’s not a fluke that Jeff Lemire is able to put out amazing work on a regular basis. That’s evident with his take on Animal Man, a book that, I believe, in a few years time will be held in the same esteem as Grant Morrison’s own vision for the character.
In this version we get Buddy Baker, animal rights activist, indie-film star, and part-time superhero trying to come to terms with what it is exactly that he wants to be. His unease with the way he comes off in an interview recently published in a magazine, which we get to read as the opening page of this debut issue, shows the conflict of this character in a very stark, contrasting light. He knows he does a fair amount of good as a superhero, but also knows his value as a community activist. Add this in with how his family perceives him; a wife and two children who each have their own view of Buddy Baker and what he means to them. Buddy’s son Cliff obviously wants him to be the superhero and hopes that he can in turn share in Animal Man’s adventures. Daughter Maxine just wants her father, a regular father who can provide her with what she wants/needs, and takes it very hard that she cannot have a puppy because of the way it would interfere with Buddy’s connection to his powers. His wife Ellen wants stability. Whether that comes from a movie paycheck, his activism work, or as a superhero doesn’t seem to matter much to her as long as she has Buddy in some constant form. This contrasts with Lemire’s characterization of Buddy as the sort who constantly changes everything about himself.
This is one of the best written books of the relaunch. As with most b-list characters, Lemire is given a longer leash and wider freedom to play with than if he were writing Superman or Wonder Woman. He has more leeway to play with the character and push boundaries. I don’t foresee this one being a major seller but I think it will be a critical hit and a cult favorite for years to come and all of that is deserved because this is a true standout of the relaunch.
Overall Rating: 5/5
MEN OF WAR # 1
Bringing Sgt. Rock into the modern world seemed like a fairly stupid idea. Like Jonah Hex, I always felt like the time period was essential to the character. You can do a one-off story of time displacement but it never feels right. It seemed like this time they were just going to have Sgt. Rock exist in the modern military environment with no reference to WWII. He wasn’t being brought forward, he was never back there in the first place. In Men of War # 1 we get a slight hint that this might be a direct descendant of the Rock we’re accustomed to. In the first segment where we’re introduced to Corporal Rock, an Army sergeant references his great-grandfather who was also a sergeant. I think by dropping that little line of dialog they were able to put aside my fears that this book would in any way be a disservice to the character of Sgt. Rock.
The first segment here sees Rock and his team deployed on a mission where things go pretty haywire and a superhuman, who remains unidentified in this issue but is hinted at being Superman, ends up derailing the overall plan and dumping the team in a violent crossfire. It’s fairly well staged if a bit generic but the cliffhanger ending is more effective than the rest of the issue and makes me want to see how everything plays out.
The second story is more grounded-in-reality with a group of Navy SEALs taking on some insurgents in a classified mission where technically they aren’t even in the area. The pacing is quick and reads like a comic version of Black Hawk Down with a cliffhanger ending that’s just as effective as the one in the preceding Sgt. Rock story.
It’s not an amazing book, in fact it feels fairly by the numbers, but it’s been a while since we’ve gotten a military action book and it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out…
OVERALL RATING: 3/5
SWAMP THING # 1
I’ve championed Scott Snyder as one of the best new talents DC has picked up in years. His Batman work is exquisite and American Vampire is a damn fine book. So when I saw he would be taking over the reigns of Swamp Thing I figured he was just the man for the job. His sensibilities seem to fit quite well with the themes and ideas that seem tethered to such a character and so I was excited to see how it would work out.
I can report that it’s a little bit of a mixed bag. It’s obvious that this was supposed to come off of the end of Brightest Day and reads like a sequel to a story that I missed. Snyder jumps in head first and establishes the narrative which comes off as a bit of an abrupt start. There are references here to Moore’s work on the title as well as the recent developments of Brightest Day and all of that feels out of line with the rest of the reboot titles in that everything else read like a clean break from what came before in most respects where as this one feels less new-reader friendly. I understand that a lot of these things would feel organic if I had been reading what came before but at the same time that defeats the purpose of a company wide reboot and a new # 1 on the cover.
That nitpick aside it is a well written book that I think will explain everything that needs to be explained in due time. The artwork by Paquette is amazing, as it usually is and it compliments the story and tone perfectly. I think that this will be a great book given time but it simply had a hard time coming off the starting line. Once it rounds the first corner I expect it to pull out ahead of the rest fairly quickly.
Overall Rating: 4/5
Weekly Comic Reviews
It’s been a while since I’ve done any weekly comic reviews, but with day-and-date digital becoming more common it’s easier for me to do timely reviews for you folks. I hope to keep a regular schedule when I can, with new reviews available every Thursday. I would have kept to that schedule this week but I was involved in an auto accident and have been dealing with the fallout from that little debacle.
Anyhow, here’s some reviews!
BATGIRL # 1
Here’s one I was looking forward to. Gail Simone has hardly ever steered me wrong. Just about every book she’s written I’ve given golden reviews to because she knows how to balance character, plot, and wit with equal measure to the betterment of any book she’s placed on. She’s one of the biggest talents that DC has and it’s nice that she’s getting one of the most high-profile books of the relaunch to play with as her own.
The book begins with a mystery villain called “The Mirror” assaulting a man who he believes cheated death when he escaped a sinking boat where the rest of the souls aboard perished. He then proceeds to rectify this problem by drowning the man with a water hose. I don’t want to make any Final Destination jokes because I only vaguely remember watching the third one one night on Showtime when I couldn’t sleep and therefore don’t have a whole lot of reference but it does seem like a strikingly similar concept and I would be a bit disappointed in its inclusion if it didn’t tie in well with the idea of the overall plot, being that Barbara Gordon is on the list of people who should have died; an obvious first reference to The Killing Joke that will probably drive a lot of the drama as the series unfolds.
We then are treated to Batgirl doing her thing and taking down a particularly vicious group of serial murderers all the while getting glimpses of Barbara’s mindset in the process. The internal monologue here gives us a good idea of who this Batgirl is in the scheme of the new DCU. I have to admit that a lot of Barbara’s dialogue and internal thought process felt…off. Not particularly wrong but just a bit off base. I’m not going to lie, she has some lines that seemed more in tune with Frank Miller’s DKR Batman than what you would expect with Batgirl, but I’m thinking it may be more of Barbara trying to effect a different persona while on patrol than a struggle to find her voice on the part of Simone.
Compared to last week’s JLA # 1, this is a stellar intro issue. We don’t get many answers as to why Barbara is able to walk again or much in the way of true world building but we get the foundation laid for those things to emerge organically which I find to be far more important. The only problem I found with the book really was that a lot of the dialog felt a bit over-the-top in what seemed like an attempt to feel more like the silver-age comic book writing of the seventies. It felt jarring at some points, especially on the last page where a Gotham cop shouts some dialog that feels like it belongs on the cover of a sixties-era Detective Comics issue. But it’s not enough to dissuade me from finishing out the rest of the arc and perhaps staying on for the long haul.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
GREEN ARROW # 1
Oh boy…
Listen, I’m a fairly big Green Arrow fan. I’ve got a complete run of the title going back to Grell’s run in the eighties. I think he’s one of the best B-list under-the-radar characters that DC had for a while and I appreciated his push to the forefront of the DCU in recent years but lamented the fact that it diluted his character and made him somewhat less interesting as a consequence. I was happy to see him married to Black Canary but saddened by how mediocre that book was aside from some amazing art on the first arc by Cliff Chiang.
This book gives us a reinvention of Green Arrow that I don’t find particularly interesting. They’re touting him as sort of a vigilante Steve Jobs and they’ve given him a personality that falls more closely in line with the Smallville interpretation of the character. I can’t fault them for doing this as that is the version that most of the mainstream identifies with but at the same time for those of us who have been reading Green Arrow for over ten years it’s hard to swallow. It doesn’t feel like Oliver Queen. It may have worked with a new character, but for Green Arrow fans its a disappointment.
The story is nothing to write home about, Ollie is overseas in Paris stalking some low-grade super-villains and it seems mostly written as a way to introduce his methodology and support team which includes his own personal Oracle-who’s-not-Oracle and a pacifist weapons developer. Oliver’s belief system is still intact from previous versions of the character but his attitude has changed. I know that this is an all new continuity but there seems to be almost too much overhaul here. It would have been nice if there were more balance between the old and new on display but as it stands there’s not much to interest already established fans of the character and therein lies one of the problems of the relaunch. They’re hoping to bring in new readers but they’re only going to be replacing the old readers they’re alienating with the changes. I’m not going to be sticking around for this title, for example, despite the fact that I have been on-board for about as long as I’ve been collecting. That should say something.
Overall Rating: 2/5
JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL # 1
I fully expected to hate this. I really did. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy this one quite a bit. Is it the “bwaha-ha-ha” style of the original? No, it’s something different. The dynamic here works, though. Also, unlike JLA#1 we get the whole team assembled within the first issue AND thrown into their first mission. It’s not very decompressed the way that some other books have been. It’s got a brisk pace and a lot is established in the very first issue.
Booster Gold leads the team, chosen because he’s a glory hound who can be easily controlled by the UN so that his PR image doesn’t get tarnished, and this immediately sets up some conflict with resident Green Lantern Guy Gardner. In a few panels we get to know everyone’s feelings on each other. It’s a nice quick buildup and helps establish characters that most people might not be familiar with in a short little exchange of dialog. It works. I will admit that there’s not much in the way of explaining the backstories of a lot of these characters. I am willing to bet new readers will be confused as to exactly who Godiva is and what the hell she’s doing on the team, but this is a serialized medium and I’m sure things will be fleshed out as the series progresses.
This one could easily be one of my favorites of the relaunch because it isn’t written in a way that makes it feel decompressed or empty. There is a lot to like in this book. If you want bang for your buck, this is one of the titles I suggest you pick up. Really. Plus it has Batman and you know you need more Batman.
Overall Rating: 4/5
DETECTIVE COMICS # 1
I was hesitant to read this one. Tony Daniel is not high on my list of most-admired Bat-writers. His recent run on Batman was pretty much horrible. I almost dropped it entirely until I realized I’m pathetic and need a complete unbroken run in my boxes because I’m a nerd like that. So it was with reluctance that I picked this one up. Though I did it entirely for review purposes. Because I love you guys.
It’s not a bad book.
There, I said it.
Of course it’s a Joker story, because you have to come out of the box hot and capitalize on what people are expecting and the new DCU needs to establish the Joker as much as it does Batman early on or people will think things are amiss. It’s the sort of well-established formula Joker story we’ve seen before but at the same time it feels well put together and cohesive in a way we haven’t seen in a while. It’s sort of like a forced in-continuity version of Brubaker’s Man Who Laughs with more focus on Batman’s drive to be a good enough detective to anticipate what the Joker can and will do.
We also establish Batman’s relationship with the police. That is to say, he and Gordon are buddies and everyone else wants to shoot him repeatedly. It’s a classic dynamic that I think most Bat-fans will appreciate because it’s what they’re used to and at the same time it feels like an organic part of the idea of Batman. That he works in the shadows and people are immediately distrustful of him. It adds something to the character when he’s working alone and under the radar. How this jibes with there being so many other members of the Batfamily operating at the same time is yet to be seen but at the moment it seems to work just fine.
It’s not the best Batman story ever, but it’s a strong enough effort coming out of the gate that I have to tip my hat to Tony Daniel for upping his game. He really did a good job with this one, which is not something that’s easy to do when so much is riding on a single issue. So, kudos.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
ACTION COMICS # 1
This is the big one. The one that I was anticipating above all others. Grant Morrison back on a Superman book. I was anticipating All Star levels of amazing. I was hoping that finally Superman would be getting the sort of widespread attention he deserved and not for shitty PR stunts like rejecting American citizenship or walking across America like a hobo. I was hoping for a total reinvention of the Superman mythos in a single issue and a literary orgasm.
Was it all that? Not really, but it was still one of the best books to come out of this relaunch. This new young Superman, fresh into the world and looking to make a difference, isn’t what you would expect out of Superman. There’s more edge and attitude to him than you would expect. The way he intimidates criminals, which is something he’s always done but albeit more playfully, makes him seem as if he’s working from Batman’s playbook and so when he transitions back into Clark Kent the shift is so much more immediate and dynamic. It’s a change that I agree with, although seeing as this is sort of a “year one” story for the character I don’t think it will stay forever, it’s too much of a change to be entirely permanent.
We also learn that he’s still friends with Jimmy Olsen but in a shocking turn of events he’s working for a rival newspaper and Lois Lane doesn’t like the idea of Mr. Kent beating her on a scoop. Lois only appears for a few panels here but she’s still the same spunky independent woman that she’s always been and I hope that in coming issues we’ll get more of her because Morrison truly does write her well, even in short snippets.
My favorite element of the issue however was Morrison’s Lex Luthor, seen here working in conjecture with the government to bring down Superman. He’s relaxed and sure of himself with no sign of bluster or bombast. This is the same Lex Luthor that we saw in All Star. The sort of man who would be bemused at the idea of finding himself on death row. A man with a plan. He executes a Goldberg machine style plan to bring down Superman that ends in an amazing final page cliffhanger and I simply cannot wait for the next issue.
Seriously. Buy this book. Or I will hurt you.
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
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And there you have it. Next week should see more reviews for your reading pleasure. See you then.
Review: Justice League # 1
I’ve read more Justice League # 1′s than I would care to count. Each time we get something drastically different from the previous iteration, making it hard, for me at least, to say exactly what makes for a definitive Justice League book. Grant Morrison’s run was pretty damned fantastic. As was the JLI group. The earliest incarnations of the team I’ve only read a handful of, mainly because I don’t have a ready access to the back issues the way I do with the JLI to present. (I have all of JLI, the Morrison era JLA book, and dropped the last volume of the book around Final Crisis)
I wasn’t going to bother with DC anymore. I’ve been slowly working my way out of monthly comic buying and sticking to trade releases and only keeping the books that I have the strongest of attachments to. JLA wasn’t one of those books. But I have to admit that the hype around Geoff Johns and Jim Lee tackling the book in an all new continuity was enough to make me pick up the first issue. The (arguably) biggest names DC has to offer working on a title that should be their premiere book of the lineup is not something that comes along everyday. I’ve likened it to putting Bendis on New Avengers back in 2005. How it took six years for DC to figure out a winning formula is beyond me. Johns alone would have been enough to sell the book but Jim Lee is a demi-god to most of the loyal comic buying public. The early numbers for the book indicate as such, what the actual sales translate to is another question entirely.
But what about the book itself? Is it any good?
That’s a little bit harder to answer. The book reminds me of a fine mixing of Bendis’ work on the early days of Ultimate Spider-Man as well as Johns’ own work when he relaunched Green Lantern. Like USM, this is an origin story, and it’s decompressed quite a bit. The days of a team assembling, fighting a threat, and moving on to the next issue are long gone. In this issue we get Batman, still being hunted by the police as they’re not yet aware that he’s “one of the good guys” as he tries to take down a monstrous looking villain that I at first mistook for a revamped Killer Croc.
Pictured Above: Not Killer Croc
Eventually Green Lantern gets himself involved. We soon learn through his banter with Batman that super-heroes are a relatively new phenomenon here and that the world doesn’t quite know what to make of them as of yet. Green Lantern is then surprised to find out that Batman is just some dude in a mask, bereft of any real superpower. The writing here is quick, snappy, breezy, and light. It covers a fair amount of ground in setting up the status quo and getting the ball rolling. The timeframe for this issues is fairly short, so by the time you get to the end of the book, some people might be a little let down, regardless of the somewhat tantalizing cliffhanger where we’re introduced to this new continuity’s Superman.
I can’t say this is a bad book. Jim Lee is on his A-game and there’s quite a bit to cover in a world where the rules haven’t been defined yet, so no matter what there’s a sense that no matter what Johns crammed in it would never be enough. If anything, the only thing I can say is that the book is promising. It’s an origin story where they have free reign to play around with the elements as they please. It looks like we’re seeing some tweaks already with the way they handle Cyborg, who we see as a high-school football player in this issue. The elements are there and only the rest of the arc will tell us if this was all worth our time or not.
Rating: 6/10
Review – Takio
I’d been wanting to read this one for a while now. It caught my eye back when it was solicited because it seemed pretty far outside of Bendis’ usual comfort zone. Sure he’d written age-appropriate superhero stuff with Ultimate Spider-Man but this felt different, mainly because of the graphic novel format and the fact that he was bringing along his Powers co-creator Michael Oeming for the ride. The plot was supposedly hatched in cooperation with Bendis’ daughter Olivia and the characterization of the two leads is indicative of some input from people their age. The bickering, the energy, all of that adolescent experience seems quite genuine despite the outlandish story where they wind up getting superpowers in a freak accident.
The story doesn’t break any new ground. To anyone who has every read a superhero story the tropes are there and evident in spades. The humor is reminiscent of Bendis’ work on USM, which I don’t have a single problem with because I loved USM until the wave of Ultimatum came crashing down and destroyed not only the character’s world but my own interest in the title. That having been said, the early issues and just about anything written featuring the high school environment was quite entertaining and that really carries over here, with the two sisters having a relationship that anyone with a sibling will be able to identify with. Superpowers or not.
As for the book itself I can say that it reads rather quickly, but for the price tag it feels like a good value. I think I was expecting more in the style of Powers where we get much more dialogue crammed in than is probably necessary which makes the narrative feel vibrant and constantly moving. Instead we get a narrative structure that allows for the artwork to tell the story for good chunks of time, which is fine because Oeming is one of the finest working artists we have right now, but it does make it feel as if the book is travelling in slow motion at certain points. But once again I say that with what they charged for a hardcover edition of the book, the value is superb. If only Marvel could learn to translate some of that value into their monthly books maybe I would be able to do weekly reviews of their books again. But if it comes down to $3.99 for a regular sized book or $9.95 for an occaisional hardcover digest, the digest comes out looking much more appealing.
I’m not sure when the next volume is set to hit, but when it does I’ll be the first to rush out and get it because at the end of the day the book entertained me and I felt like it was a good value, which is something that is becoming more and more of a rarity nowadays.
Weekly Comic Reviews
And as the cold weather breezes into Houston about a month later than it should have, we get the first new books of November. It’s an interesting haul of titles filled with debuts and final touches. This is all very poetic and whatnot, but the truth is I’m hopped up on leftover Halloween candy and could make a bowel movement seem melodic.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #647 4.99
AVENGERS ACADEMY #6 2.99
BATMAN AND ROBIN #16 3.99
BOYS #48 (MR) 3.99
BUFFY VAMPIRE SLAYER #38 2.99
BULLSEYE PERFECT GAME #1 (OF 2) 3.99
CAPTAIN AMERICA MAN OUT OF TIME #1 (OF 5) 3.99
GENERATION HOPE #1 3.99
JONAH HEX #61 2.99
PUNISHER IN BLOOD #1 (OF 5) 3.99
SCARLET #3 (MR) 3.95
SECRET SIX #27 2.99
SUPERBOY #1 2.99
WOLVERINE #3 3.99
WOMEN OF MARVEL #1 3.99
YOUNG ALLIES #6 2.99
I’ve bolded the issues I will review. Which is redundant, as the reviews will now begin and you will be able to see what I have reviewed.
BATMAN & ROBIN # 16
Here it is. The conclusion of Grant Morrison’s run on Batman & Robin before he jumps onto the new “Batman Inc.” title which should be one hell of a ride given the setup he provides for us in this issue. Morrison has been the architect of the Batman universe now for about as long as I’ve been working in comic book retail. Close to five years or so. He’s not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. It seems like he’s moving into the third act of his overall story with Batman Inc. The fact that his overarching story has an act-structure ties into the melodrama he’s crafted. His Batman reads like a sci-fi/action opera and it’s evident that he’s put a great deal of effort in making sure the parts all come together.
The biggest achievement that he can lay claim to in regards to his Batman ouvre is his ability to shake things up in ways that other writers have teased for the short term but never committed to in any real way. Plot twists that Morrison uses as the long-term theme of his story seem like ideas that other writers would love to pursue but only for six issues or less. Morrison seems to think that shaking things up and doing so in a way that shifts the paradigm of how Batman operates on a level that is not easily reversible is the key to telling a good story. I won’t argue that it’s made for some of the most compelling reading for quite some time.
What I really appreciate about Morrison on the Bat books is that in a few years time we’ll be able to view him as one of the better Batman showrunners in the history of the character. There aren’t many creators who leave such a lasting mark on the character that fans can easily identify. Most of the time you get the requisite Denny O’Neil or Frank Miller. Morrison is going to be the next name on the immediate go-to list when all is said and done.
BULLSEYE : PERFECT GAME # 1
Bullseye is a character who can be used to absolute perfection or to an end that simply does not work. There’s not a whole lot of middle ground when it comes to the character. He’s been front and center for so many great and memorable moments and then again he’s been wasted or misused by writers who simply want to use him in a way that doesn’t really make sense.
Here we get a story where there’s very little actual Bullseye. The story is all second-hand, but it gives us an insight into how the character operates that we don’t really see. That part that deals with how and why he picks his targets. The montage showing some of his more unique and violent kills is a perfect example of why Bullseye sometimes doesn’t work out in the hands of an unskilled writer. He’s the perfect killer. He knows he’s the perfect killer. He’s got the same problem Superman does in the sense that he’s so above and beyond the range of his peers that he can come off as boring in his superiority.
The biggest downfall of this book is that lack of Bullseye. The second hand narrative structure is interesting but ultimately unless they give us something a little more substantial it’s basically not even like reading a comic at all but reading a comic about someone who read a comic about what Bullseye did for a year. That sounds stupid, but it gives off a little of that vibe.
CAPTAIN AMERICA : MAN OUT OF TIME # 1
It’s a Captain America miniseries written by Mark Waid. I’m not going to pass that up. Seriously, I don’t care that it’s essentially a retread and that no matter how they take the story it’s essentially inconsequential because it’s one of a hundred takes on the same story because it’s such a great part of the Captain America mythos that’s being retold.
The stuff set in World War Two is pretty good. We get some fun banter between Bucky and Cap amongst some soldiers who don’t know who they are and we get some fun, if cliched, introspective moments where the two discuss what they would like to do when the war is over and the fighting is done. Of course all of this happens mere moments before Bucky gets caught in the explosion that “kills” him and Cap winds up frozen in the ice.
What really works in this issue is the dichotomy between that old world and the new one that Cap wakes up to. You really can feel how directionless and confused Steve is when confronted with a world that has grown leaps in bounds in technology and regressed equally in its brutality. The dangers of being a hero in such a world become readily apparent and the ending of the book packs quite a punch.
I think this one could be one that people regret not picking up if they let it slip under their radar because it is an excellent read. However, Marvel needs to learn that these arbitrary books aren’t going to get the same readership they would at a lower price point. $3.99 is a warning siren to a lot of consumers nowadays, even if the book is worth the cash, as this one seems to be.
GENERATION HOPE # 1
They’ve been building to this one for a while. I need to begin by saying that I would have been just as happy had this been the central running plot of Uncanny X-Men or Legacy. Or hell, run it through both titles as a crossover. It would have worked just as well. This has the smell of a cash grab by throwing it out as an independant mini-series. It’s like if Marvel had done the Inferno followup they’re doing in New Mutants as a mini-series and let the ongoing title move along as if nothing happened. I think the logistics of this miniseries are flawed, and I needed to get that out of the way up front.
As to the book itself, it’s hard to tell what direction it will take. Whether the fifth “light” will be the villain for the whole of the series or if there is something more is not readily apparent. The book seems to indicate as much, but to what end they are going with the character in question is unknown.
If you haven’t been reading X-Men, this book is not very new-user friendly. All the characters have been introduced over in Uncanny, which backs up my assertion that it should have been continued there. So if you need the background, pick up the last few months of Uncanny after the end of Second Coming. That should fill in some gaps for you.
I’m hoping there’s a bigger endgame here than I’m seeing at the moment. To justify its existence, the miniseries better have one hell of a closer.
PUNISHER : IN THE BLOOD # 1
All you whiney fanboys can quit your bitching, Frank Castle is back in non-monster form to do what he’s done for the last thirty or so years. It’s still got the same gritty flair that Remender brought to the title under the Franken-Castle banner but in an easily digestible, familiar package so that frightened fans don’t feel offended by change.
The first issue feels like a classic Punisher riff, it builds upon years and years of 616 Punisher lore, with Microchip and the long feud with Jigsaw coming back into play. It feels a bit more natural than the early parts of the last volume did, as Punisher shouldn’t be anywhere near storylines that have anything to do with alien invasions. He’s at his best when the capes don’t make an appearance.
This could be the beginning of a great new chapter for the character, if Remender’s past work is any indication of what he can do with Frank now. He certainly kicked the show off with an impressive debut, so it’s his ballgame to lose. Let’s just hope he doesn’t get too inventive, or people will get frightened and claim that he’s “ruined the character again” and run to the hills like stampeding fear-cattle.
SUPERBOY # 1
Jeff Lemire is in a position to be a hot item. Sweet Tooth is an amazing book and he’s got that good buzz to his credit as well as being hailed by just about everyone as the next big thing. With Superboy he has the chance to really let loose and show the world what he can do with the mainstream DCU characters. Superboy isn’t a sacred cow. He has a following but he has room to be molded into something more concrete. The building blocks are there, Lemire just needs to move them around.
He certainly doesn’t waste any time with this issue, utilizing a familiar old Superman villain to write some great action scenes that are drawn out spectacularly by artist Pier Gallo whose work has a very classic feel to it, which fits the Smallville setting wonderfully.
Where Lemire also garners some good will is the manner in which he sets up the supporting cast. This is the first issue, and for many new readers this is their first exposure to the character, but the interactions with the Smallville community are written in the same manner that they would be had the title been running for five years. The familiarity works. Lemire doesn’t get overly expository with everyone in the first issue. He knows that the time will come to fill people in when the moment is appropriate. He gives just enough to let the story work itself out organically and the book is better for it.
I think this one could end up being a long-running fan favorite. Let’s just hope Lemire stays on the title for a long enough time to truly leave his mark on the character, because judging from the first issue it could be quite an interesting and fun take on a character who until this point has basically been defined by his association with the Titans, his relationship to Wonder Girl or his overly violent death.
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And them’s the reviews. Hope you enjoyed my ramblings. Now I’m going to finish this bowl of leftover candy and watch old episodes of the Simpsons while I work on a poetry paper for my creative writing class.
Superman : Earth One – A Review
By now you’ve probably read every single last report on Superman : Earth One that the media machine can spit at you. It’s been getting major press since before it’s launch last week from all over the place including CNN, USA Today, and other reputable news sources that I don’t pay attention to. The focus has mainly been on the depiction of Clark Kent as a young hipster with a hoodie. It’s such a dramatic change in direction, isn’t it?
The truth of the matter is that a lot of people are going to be torn on this book. Some are hating on it because of the liberties it takes with the mythos. Others for the fact that this Clark doesn’t seem much like the Clark we’ve come to know in the past seventy years of his publishing history. The thing is, it has no bearing on the regular title. It’s a standalone universe. The way I see it, the people complaining about it are the same people who lost their marbles over the changes that Bendis made when writing Ultimate Spider-Man way back when that first started up. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have any bearing on that. This is an expiriment in updating the origin of Superman for a modern audience using what the writer believes are modern sensibilities. I won’t comment on whether or not he has a grasp on what modern audiences want, because the nationwide sellouts of the book indicate that he has a fairly decent idea, regardless of the quality of the book he produced. I don’t think a wide majority of Superman fans picked up the book, as they’ve been fairly vocal about how horrible his run on the regular in-continuity title has been thus far. It seems to me that the majority of the people picking up this title are the uninitiated, who will have no qualms with the changes because they will only have the slightest inclination that anything has changed. Remember that for a chunk of the population, Smallville is the default incarnation of the Superman character. Smallville.
The book isn’t that bad. It really is just Ultimate Superman. The only problem being that in the format which it has been published, you’re not really getting a whole lot of story for the price. I feel like the book ran maybe four issues worth of content but they charged me for six. That having been said, I think a premium has been placed on the book for the high profile creative team. JMS has had his name in the news alot lately due to his work on Wonder Woman as well as the regular Superman title and Shane Davis is a damned fine penciller, so DC is probably just trying to get their money’s worth. The price certainly didn’t seem to affect the buying public as they snatched it up in droves. But it is worth noting that the story is a brisk one. Thankfully the book stands on its own in such a way that you don’t need to buy a second volume to complete the story. I would have felt a bit miffed if I’d paid the price I did and didn’t even get a full story out of it.
As for the story, it’s familiar to those who have read anything remotely related to Superman before ( it felt a little bit too much like Birthright in some places for me), it also diverges from the regular path a little bit simply by virtue of being set in modern times. Clark Kent pursuing an active career in print journalism seems a bit anachronistic and so they play with it a little bit and Clark’s entry into the field isn’t the same as it was in his previous incarnations. None of that really matters, the key players are there and the dynamic still works. Although the Jimmy/Clark dynamic might be interesting to watch this time around considering that Jimmy seems to be less the bumbling loser that he is often portrayed as.
I will give the team props for not utilizing the old guard of Superman villains for this go-around. If there’s one thing a lot of people agree on its that the old villains are getting stale. There are numerous petitions to keep Lex Luthor out of the next Superman movie because people are tired of the same old shtick. Here we get a villain who helps reinforced the thematic elements of Superman’s arrival. The fear of the foreign is on full display and I think that will be the underlying thematic element of this particular version of Superman. It’s certainly a timely and relevant metaphor. The only question is whether or not Stracynski can keep it subtle enough not to be overbearing.
On the whole, it’s an interesting effort. Not as fun as the early Ultimate universe was, but definitely a popular expiriment nonetheless.
Overall Score : 7/10 Stars
*******
Winners From The C-List : Freedom Fighters # 1 (A Review)
People ask me why I buy certain series. For example, I picked up Freedom Fighters # 1 despite the fact that I was very vocal about how much I disliked the previous two mini-series by the same creative team. I think for this particular book it came down to three things:
1. I trust Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. They constantly hammer out great stuff and their misfires are the anomolies.
2. Phantom Lady’s Cleavage.
3. I needed review material for the dead days following Labor Day holiday.
As I told Palmiotti on Twitter earlier this morning, I disliked the previous two mini-series but this one connected better in my opinion. I stated that the main cause of that is probably that it doesn’t have ties to any event book. The first mini-series from the team spun out of Battle for Bludhaven, a book that was not that great in its own right. This one doesn’t seem to have ties to anything in the larger scheme, it’s not a Brightest Day crossover at least as far as I can tell. It’s just a superhero book that wants to do its own thing.
A few sites have complained that there is too much jammed into the issue. That the flow doesn’t feel right and that it’s compacted. I disagree completely. For 2.99, I feel this is one of the best comics for your money that DC has published in a while. Just because a book doesn’t fall into the post-Bendis decompression phenomenon doesn’t mean that it’s crammed. I think we as a fanbase have grown content with padded books that don’t live up to what can be done with the storytelling medium. Here we get a fight with superpowered neo-nazis, an asteroid threatening to destroy the earth, an alien parasite destroying a town, and a government conspiracy about the foundations of the US. None of it feels obtrusive however, because it serves to reintroduce the characters in a manner that shows that they’ve been active in the DC universe even if they weren’t getting much stage time.
I think of Freedom Fighters as sort of like a more easily accessible Doom Patrol. All of these people have something they are struggling with internally, whether it’s the Human Bomb whose troubles are pretty apparent or Black Condor who has serious emotional baggage in regards to his native American heritage, there is that internal strife that makes for intriguing characters. Unlike the Doom Patrol however, you don’t feel sorry for these characters for having to put up with an asswipe like Niles Caulder. While Uncle Sam is a hardcase, he’s no self-serving jerk. He has the weight of the nation on his shoulders, literally as his power is connected to the soul of the country, but he doesn’t come off as completely unlikeable and that’s why I really like the book; I like the characters. They’re relateable and interesting. They may not be the biggest names in the business but they’re not complete throwaways. Jimmy and Justin do a good job of infusing them with life, which I hope will sustain the title long enough to get some good stories. Unfortunately DC doesn’t seem to be pushing the book very hard, which is a shame. Then again, they don’t push Jonah Hex very hard either and that doesn’t affect its fanbase much at all. I hope the same will be able to be said for Freedom Fighters.
Weekly Comic Reviews
After another brief hiatus the reviews have returned, and I’m sure you were all so worried that I’d never get back to the weekly review schedule. Well, here I am. I can’t say much for this week’s crop of books because it was a light week all around. Picking what to review was actually the hardest part of this little endeavor because everything I picked up is in the middle of an arc and if you haven’t made up your mind on a book by part four I doubt my little review is gonna sway you either way. If you do get to part four then read my review and go “well I’m not picking that up!” maybe I need to consider a career as a hostage negotiator.
Arrivals 8-25-2010
ACTION COMICS #892 3.99
ASTONISHING X-MEN #35 2.99
AVENGERS #4 3.99
BATMAN #702 2.99
BLACK WIDOW #5 2.99
CAPTAIN AMERICA #609 3.99
FANTASTIC FOUR #582 2.99
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #15 2.99
GREEN ARROW #3 (BRIGHTEST DAY) 2.99
SHADOWLAND MOON KNIGHT #1 (OF 3) SL 3.99
SUPERMAN SECRET ORIGIN #6 (OF 6) 3.99
THOR #613 3.99
WONDER WOMAN #602 2.99
X-MEN LEGACY #239 2.99
Now let’s get this over with.
AVENGERS # 4
I praised the first issue of Avengers as a return to the classic feel of the title with a little bit of Bendis’ trademark style. Four issues in, I still get the classic vibe but I don’t so much think that Bendis’ Bendis-ey tendencies (that’s an odd rhyme) are all that suited for this sort of book. Contrast this with New Avengers where he’s really feeling his groove and hasn’t lost a beat since the last volume and you can see where he feels more comfortable. Bendis likes to do epic on a small scale. Epic as it pertains to the individual or a group of individuals. In New Avengers, it’s really Bendis’ statement on how Cage has grown as a leader and Doctor Strange’s role in the world of magic. You can boil the importance of the arc down to two characters, in essence. With Avengers it’s a little harder to do that. And while it’s still a good book and an interesting read, I’m not sure if it has Bendis’ singular focus. However, Bendis does get major brownie points with me for his use of Killraven. I mean, when was the last time we saw that guy? All I know is that its cool that he’s getting a little face time because I think he’s a great character.
Where I’m sure I’m going to lose alot of you is my feelings on the artwork. Now, I like JRJR, I think he’s a great talent and he’s practically synonymous with Marvel. That having been said, his work here looks rushed. I don’t doubt that he was rushed. But this is the Avengers we’re talking about. The Avengers should have the best art in the damned company as far as I’m concerned. New Avengers looks amazing. Avengers looks like a sketchbook that’s been colored in. There’s none of the finished nuance of his work on Amazing Spider-Man or KickAss (though Kickass took like three years to finish eight issues, so he probably wasn’t as rushed.) But all the same I would rather the book come out every five weeks to give the man some extra time than have an Avengers book that looks like it was drawn by someone with shaky hands and blurry eyes.
The book is still strong, it’s just weakened by Bendis being out of his comfort zone and Romita’s art running at about 50% his usual standard. But it’s good to have the real Avengers doing stuff that the real Avengers would do. Thor smashes a martian spacecraft in this issue. That’s the Avengers I love.
BLACK WIDOW # 5
Marjorie Liu finishes the first arc on Black Widow as well as her tenure on the title with the fifth issue here. Next month Duane Swiercanspellhislastnameski takes over and crosses the title over with Hawkeye and Mockingbird. I don’t know what the tone shift between the two writers will be like but I’m pretty sure it’ll be minimal. This issue basically serves as a 32 page “exhibit A” as to why Black Widow is a badass. She does a lot of ass kicking here, and proves that in addition to being a spy and an Avenger she’s also a pretty good nude bondage model. (Yeah, I’ll scan that panel later, I promise.)
They’ve done a good job with this book. Black Widow isn’t the most amazing character in the world. She’s essentially a female Jason Bourne at this point. Effecient, badass, and portrayed by an A-List actor on film. As far as the writing on the book is concerned, Marjorie Liu is able to pull together the personal narrative with the spy action well enough that you’re left wondering why Black Widow hasn’t had a monthly title for so long. If there’s one thing that she does right with Natasha it’s that she makes her an organic and viable character that has room for years worth of stories based just off of the work in this introductory arc. Whatever comes next, it won’t feel like they’re trying to cash in on the character because of her appearance in Iron Man 2 but instead because there are stories that need to be told based off of what has been established.
I’m not sure what Duane is going to bring to the book, but he has big shoes to fill. Actually, I don’t know what size shoes Marjorie Liu wears. He’s got a lot to live up to that’s for sure. I expect at least one more equally awesome cold-storage bondage moment out of him before I think he’s anywhere near Liu’s level.
SHADOWLAND : MOON KNIGHT # 1
When I first picked up Shadowland I promised myself I wasn’t going to get the tie-ins. I was going to give Marvel the finger when it came to the side-books that had no real bearing on the actual story. Now we’re about two months in and I’ve gotten every tie-in they’ve released so far. Congrats Marvel, you’ve got your hooks so far into my hide that I can feel it in my colon. Anyhow, it’s not a bad thing because every tie-in book thus far has been worth the money. I haven’t been let down by anything in the Shadowland pantheon as of yet. I picked up this one because I was hoping to figure out where Moon Knight plays into the whole thing and how he wound up in the underground prison in the main series.
While the book does address those issues it also seems to focus on the themes presented in the Vengeance of Moon Knight book with Moony becoming a less violent hero and Khonshu taking it the wrong way, seeing as how he lives off of the blood that his avatar delivers to him through acts of vigilantism. I assume I’m getting that right, Moon Knight can be confusing sometimes. So Khonshu is haunting Moon Knight in his dreams and his waking hours in the visage of a gigantic chicken (I know he’s not really a chicken, but he looks like one and I find that funny) and another nutjob is running around as the “Shadow Knight” giving Khonshu the blood he wants and making Moon Knight feel all guilty. It’s a damned odd book but the way they weave it through the Shadowland tapestry makes it worth picking up.
Also, I guess Quesada pulled the stick out of his ass about the smoking edict because one of the characters is perpetually puffing away in this issue and that kind of made me chuckle.
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Well, that’s it for this week. I’ll be back next week with more unless I get another superflu of some sort. If that happens I swear I’ll never leave the house again.
Arc Review – Deadpool Corps
I’ve been a Deadpool fan for a long time. Long enough that the current Deadpool craze kind of fascinates and infuriates me. I remember telling anyone I knew who read comics at the time that they needed to be reading Cable & Deadpool because it was one of the best books on the stands and that by passing it by they were really missing out. And now that series is regarded as somewhat of a modern classic, with the issues being a little bit more expensive to pick up even before the Deadpool popularity boom and the original trade paperbacks damned near impossible to track down, at least down here in my neck of the woods. While that book was coming out, I was one of its biggest champions, espousing its virtue to every comic fan I knew. But the pervasive culture of comic collecting that centers itself around the importance of continuity and the so-called “big picture” left that book mostly ignored by the general readership of Marvel Comics.
Fast forward to today and that series is getting re-collected into trades, this time with Deadpool’s name taking top billing over Cable and the merc with a mouth has three monthly series going on at once, with one or two mini-series going on at the same time as well. When one ends another starts, so that might as well be another monthly as well. The point is that Marvel is definitely putting some effort into the Wade Wilson division of their publishing. The flagship eponymous title is pretty consistent. In many ways it feels like a spiritual parallel to the series from the nineties. Don’t believe me? Read a couple issues of the old series and then a few of the new series. There are striking similarities, and I’m not going to slam the book for not breaking new ground because it is still constantly entertaining which is the one thing I really look for in a Deadpool book. Deadpool TeamUp is the definition of hit or miss. The quality of that particular book is entirely dependent on both the writer and the guest star of the moment not completely sucking, and getting both to match up seems to be a bit of a problem. Usually only one or the other is on their game.
Then there’s Deadpool Corps, which turned me off before it even launched through the Prelude title which I thought was pretty much unreadable. I don’t know what it was that turned me off, aside from the fact that it just didn’t feel like Deadpool in my opinion. The tone seemed off and something about it left me feeling like the entire mini-series was a misstep. So I initially decided not to read the title that it spawned. I like Vic Gischler’s work, mostly. I don’t think he’s written much that I didn’t like, so I was sad that I didn’t get hooked in with DPC. I didn’t give it much thought after that, because I haven’t given any real thought to any book Rob Liefeld has been on since…well, I guess New Mutants. I know it’s easy to bag on Rob, but I won’t because some people think he’s a great artist. Some people dig his style. He’s supposedly a nice guy. All I know is that his art doesn’t speak to me on any level, and unlike his peers at the time he really hasn’t grown as an artist at all in the time since he rose to prominence. Just about everybody else who founded Image went on to improve leaps and bounds. Except Rob. Rob just stayed Rob. And if he can still move books, I suppose that’s fine. I still think that part of what sealed the deal for me not to pick up the book when it hit stands was his art. The mediocre lead-in was the crux of it, but the thought of forcing myself to stare at his artwork sure as hell didn’t help. If they’d had the art team from Merc With A Mouth or something, I might have been more easily persuaded to give it a try.
So cut to a few months later, I’m at Half Price Books over in Rice Village and I found the issues in the cheap-o bin and picked them up with the sole purpose of forcing myself to read through it and review it for the blog. I hesitated at first because I didn’t think I’d be able to really make any comments beyond the artwork. The thing is, I don’t have much to say about the artwork beyond the fact that it’s everything you would predict it would be. It’s not like you’re going to be surprised by anything anymore when it comes to Rob’s artwork. It simply exists. Do you want me to make a joke about feet? Too bad, it’s all been done and I’d rather focus on something else. I might point out that it looks like everybody’s facial skin has been stretched out around the skull and is slowly being pulled back toward a black hole where the nose should be, but there’s no joke there. Just a consistant oddity to the facial expressions of every character in the book.
But what about the story? What about the book on a whole? There’s more than just pictures to comic books, ya know. When it comes down to it, the book is mostly forgettable. There are some amusing gags here and there, like Lady Deadpool’s instistance that they name the unnamed galactic enemy they’re facing down “Frank” after an ex who she deemed equally destructive. Or the crew’s constant shuffling off of the Lobo-analog champion who keeps hounding them. But these are momentary diversions from the fact that the book is actually pretty dull for a bunch of Deadpools in space. Everything feels generic and uninspired. I feel like Gischler needs a harder edge to make his Deadpool work, as this has none of the gutteral power of Merc with a Mouth. I think that in trying to reach a more general audience and appeal to all the new folks who have latched onto Deadpool as their own, Gischler lost the edge that Deadpool needs.
It’s not the worst Deadpool book on the market. (I couldn’t stomach Wade Wilson’s War) but it doesn’t need to exist. Let Gischler write an arc on DeadpoolMAX where he can really work to his more twisted talent level, with an artist who can make those scenes come alive in vivid detail. Basically go back to what made Merc with a Mouth so damned funny. Because Deadpool needs to be hilarious or it’s just not Deadpool. I think sharing the spotlight among several Deadpools might be the problem. When it comes to Wade, you just need to remember one thing; There can be only one!
Graphic Novel Review – Troublemaker
I doubt I’m the target audience for this particular graphic novel. I’ve never read any of the book series from which this particular book emerged, nor have I read any books by the author in question. I simply happened upon a comic shop in Dallas that had over-ordered on the book and was liquidating them at 40% off cover price. For a little over ten bucks I’ll give anything a shot, especially if it’s something new that I’m viewing with completely unbiased eyes.
I’ll say that it was a fun read, if a little brisk. It seems like maybe they should have waited a little while longer and combined this edition with the second book slated for November into one larger volume. I feel like if I had paid the full cover prive for it I might have felt like I wasn’t getting my money’s worth. I mean, Scott Pilgrim was twelve bucks and about four times as long. But then again that wasn’t a full-color hardcover either, and having published a book I know how high printing costs are nowadays.
The book itself is pretty well done. The art by Joelle Jones has the perfect tone for the light-hearted and quirky mystery. It’s bright and sunny and features some excellent facial expressions that really help provide the book with a distinct style. The storytelling is tightly paced, and maybe a little too brisk. It feels like while being new-reader friendly, it’s definitely intended for people who are familiar with the characters as there’s not a whole lot of detail given to the backstory or establishment of the characters as they’re presented. But carefully placed blurbs and throwaway lines help connect the dots and fill in the blanks.
I’m glad I gave the book a read, because while its light fluff at best, it’s very fun light fluff which is actually a good thing in this era of overly dour comics that don’t dare just tell a fun story and leave the reader feeling entertained. I was entertained and I didn’t feel like an asshat for reading it. When you get right down to it, if you can say that about any book that’s a hash mark in the win column.
Weekly Comic Reviews
Here’s the deal. I’ve been busy with a TON of stuff today. Like, just about everything that I need to do in a given month I had to get done today and then some. So you’ll have to apologize when I eschew the typical format of these reviews and go about this a little differently this week. This week’s reviews will be comprised of just two books, Batman and Superman # 701. Basically, the biggest two books to hit this week. I mean, Birds of Prey # 3 was awesome, and a bunch of people who went apeshit over certain events in the second issue had eat some serious crow. I finally picked up a copy of The Sixth Gun which I recommend to anybody who likes Jonah Hex but wants a little bit of mysticism thrown in without being outright terrible like the film. Also Generation Lost made me fall in freaking love with the Rocket Reds.
Let’s start with Superman # 701.
Dear god, this whole issue seems like 32 pages of JMS trying to justify the premise of his arc to us by hammering us over the head with apathetic retreads of tired philosophy and even more tired retreads of scenes that Grant Morrison already did to perfection a few years back with All-Star Superman. Seriously, that suicide jumper scene was basically everything Morrison did but stretched out for a few pages with no sense of gravitas. It’s so mind-numbingly blunt that it looses any and all effect.
I think my biggest problem with JMS’s retread of Hard Travelin’ Heroes starring Superman is that JMS doesn’t seem to write Superman in the classic sense. The Superman I know is not the spiteful, sarcastic, embittered abuser of power that we get in this issue. This feels like Stracynski trying to finish out what he had wanted to do with Thor but couldn’t because he got tossed to the curb by Marvel editorial. I think that a lot of the bitterness that he feels over how that panned out is being transferred onto his Superman. Superman here doesn’t feel like he needs to answer to anybody. Not reporters, not the man on the street, nobody. He is sick and tired of everyone’s impatience and expectations. The problem is, he’s made Superman borderline unlikeable in this instance.
I’ve seen just as much love for this issue as I have hate, so obviously he’s struck a chord with people. But I’ve noticed that a lot of the praise is coming from people who are new to reading Superman on a regular basis. A lot of first timer’s interested by the premise got drawn in, and having no attachment to everything that makes Superman…well, Superman, they find this sort of bland retread to be new and fresh and exciting.
It’s not.
It’s lazy and it doesn’t really work for anyone who has any real understanding of Superman as a character. Some would argue that JMS is attempting to write away the flaws of Superman, but by turning him into a cynical jerkwad doesn’t do anything but create more flaws. It alienates the previously faithful readers and the new readership is not likely to stick around in the long run.
It’s not the worst issue of Superman ever written, it’s just an egregious slap in the face to fans of the character. It collapses under the weight of it’s own self importance and in the end will just be another footnote in the long history of the book that people look back on and sort of chuckle at.
Still better than Electric Blue Supes.
On the flipside, we have Batman 701, which goes back to the moments immediately following Batman R.I.P. and leading up to Batman’s collision course with Darkseid in Final Crisis. This issue is the first time in a while we’ve seen Bruce Wayne in the suit for the main story. I think Morrison was wise to hold off on this issue until now, simply because it gives the audience a broader understanding of his entire overall story and allows for the reader to follow the action with greater ease than if it had come immediately following R.I.P.
The artwork is just amazing, a step-up from Daniel, whose work seemed to be rushed while he had to perform the writing duties as well. There is more definition, more style on display here. It matches the mood of the story perfectly, and I think that goes a long way towards crafting an excellent issue.
The basic premise is centered around Hurt’s declaration that following the events of R.I.P., if Bruce were to wear the cowl again it would be the last time. A prophetic curse that weighs heavy on Bruce. It’s interesting that he takes this to heart the way he does, seeing how he comes down on criminals as being overly cowardly and superstitious and I don’t think that is an accident. Morrison doesn’t do coincidence.
His reaction to the death of a New God shows us exactly how Morrison feels about Batman as a character and it works well within everything that’s come to be associated with Bruce as far as his determination and his psyche. It’s the exact opposite of Stracynski’s Superman in that regard. Nobody will accuse this Batman of not being in character. He is the driven detective, the dark knight and he acts as such.
I’m looking forward to the rest of this arc.
Weekly Comic Reviews
Ladies and gentlemen, I drank a 1/2 gallon of Gatorade yesterday. I am more hydrated than I have been in my entire life and I’m pretty sure my brain is suffering because of it. So small talk be damned, it’s review time.
ARRIVALS 6-2-2010
AVENGERS PRIME #1 (OF 5) HA 3.99
FRANKEN-CASTLE #17 2.99
HAWKEYE & MOCKINGBIRD #1 HA 3.99
IZOMBIE #2 (MR) 2.99
JONAH HEX NO WAY BACK HC 19.99
JSA ALL STARS #7 3.99
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #39 2.99
SERENITY FLOAT OUT ONE SHOT #1 FRANK STOCKTON CVR 3.5
THANOS IMPERATIVE #1 (OF 6) 3.99
Stand back, I’m prepared to do criticism!
AVENGERS PRIME # 1
I wasn’t going to pick this one up at all but got suckered into it by Alan Davis’ pretty pretty drawerings. I don’t have much to say about the writing, because it’s typical Bendis fare; but it’s good Bendis fare, as we get some good cathartic character interaction between Tony and Steve that really needed to happen before the whole Heroic Age could take off. While the book seems to be heralded as the reunited Avengers back together for the first time since the Disassembled disaster, they actually spend most of the book’s length separated, which works in establishing what this series will focus on, as it’s definitely tied heavier to Thor than either of the other big three.
I don’t think that this book is truly in any way essential, other than the character interactions between Steve and Tony which could have easily been done in the opening pages of the mainline Avengers book. This is mostly an exercise in capitalism. It’s a cash grab, honestly. But it’s a well written and superbly drawn cashgrab, which is more than I can say for some other recent attempts.
HAWKEYE AND MOCKINGBIRD # 1
I will be honest and say that I don’t know too much about Hawkeye and Mockingbird’s backstory. The entirety of my knowlege is made up by what was presented in this introductory issue. I enjoyed what was presented but I don’t have the emotional attachment to these characters the way some people do. I will say that from what I saw on the page, this series could be an interesting one as the dynamic and the setup is different from just about every other Marvel b0ok out there right now. It’s a team book without being a team book. The group of specialists that Hawkeye and Mockingbird run with in this book, including none other than Dominic Fortune, give off a dynamic not unlike Birds of Prey, which doesn’t bode well for the inevitable Green Arrow/Black Canary comparisons that are bound to stick with the book despite being much better written than that book ever could have hoped as well as establishing itself as a lynchpin in the Avengers universe.
Hawkeye, despite the fact that I haven’t had much exposure to him, is central to the Avengers dynamic. He’s as attached to Steve Rogers at this point as the Falcon is, and they play on that well in this issue. I think that this series will serve as a nice companion piece to the new Avengers-centric Marvel Universe. I just hope it doesn’t get hamstrung by the fact that Hawkeye is, let’s be honest, a 2nd tier character and series built around those tend to have fairly limited runs. Like Hawkeye’s own series that lasted about twelve issues before getting shut down so he could die in Avengers Dissassembled.
Just saying…
Jonah Hex : No Way Back (Original Graphic Novel)
I stopped following the monthly exploits of Jonah Hex about twelve issues back. I just had to find some room to trim on the pull list and I switched it over to trades. But when this came along I had to pick it up because I’m a sucker for original graphic novels. This one is very well done, and feels like the monthly series but with the dial turned up to eleven. Honestly, this feels like what the movie should be. It’s a taut western tale that adheres to and embraces alot of the western tropes and devices, while seeming decidedly modern in it’s raw narrative structure and effectively blunt depictions of violence in the old west.
I’ll say that if you wanted mass market appeal for the character in the weeks leading up to his theatrical debut, you could have gone with an artist that is more easily palatable to the everyday reader, but Tony DeZuniga’s sketchy style fits the character well. He’s done some amazing work on some of my favorite characters, and while I think his style is a good fit for the narrative, some complaints about his artwork are bound to arise.
What I liked most about this book was really how it appeals to any and all Jonah Hex readers. Newbies get a pseudo-origin story and can jump right into the action with no real trouble at all, while old fans will undoubtedly love it for how well it stays in line with what’s come before. It hits all the notes it needs to and then some.
Highly recommended.
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And that’s it for this week. I’m going to focus my attention on these scrumtious extra crispy strips from KFC that I’ve picked up for lunch. They are just aces, and they won’t immediately put you into a death coma like a DoubleDown will. So, that’s just a check in the plus column.
Weekly Comic Reviews
You know what the best part of yesterday’s “Avengers Day” festivities were? Seriously? When my co-worker brought in cake. Volstagg understands where I’m coming from when I straight up tell you that even the crappiest day could be saved by cake. I mean, obviously when the zombies come and the fecal matter hits the rotating blades, cake isn’t going to make up for that, but I guarantee you that it won’t not help. That’s a promise.
ARRIVALS 5-19-2010
AVENGERS #1 HA 3.99
BRIGHTEST DAY #2 2.99
DEADPOOL #23 HA 2.99
EXECUTOR HC (MR) 19.99
GALACTA DAUGHTER OF GALACTUS #1 3.99
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #26 HA 2.99
SCALPED TP VOL 06 THE GNAWING (MR) 14.99
SUPERMAN WAR OF THE SUPERMEN #3 (OF 4) 2.99
X-FACTOR #205 XSC 2.99
X-MEN LEGACY #236 XSC 2.99
ZATANNA #1 2.99
I’m not gonna lie, dear readers…this week was slim pickin’s after last weeks full frontal assault by the big two. I will however give you what I can, as is my journalistic duty.
AVENGERS # 1
Let me get this out of the way, compared to New Avengers, this is about as Avenger-y an Avenger book can get. Sure, there’s a lot of Bendis’ trademark standing around and talking, but having recently re-read Busiek’s awesome run, there was a fair amount of expositional dialogue slinging in that era too, and I don’t know too many people who badmouth that run. Mostly out of fear that George Perez will come for them in the night and annihilate their souls with the power cosmic that he keeps stored in the lining of his Hawai’ian shirts.
Let’s see, Romita artwork? Check.
Clint Barton as Hawkeye? Check.
Steve Rogers giving an inspiring speech? Check
MOTHERF##KING KANG?!?!? CHECK!!!
Seriously, is there anything I think of as being more of an Avengers staple than Kang? No! Because he’s the most ludicrous Avengers villain of all time. He embodies the over-the-top grandiose nature of the book in ways that Dr. Doom or Ultron simply cannot. I know that’s a matter of opinion, but I would consider it to be fact, because that’s just how big my goddamned ego is. Kang has the sort of absurd over the top nature that could only be found within the pages of a comic book. I mean that with all the love and respect it entails. Comics as a medium have the ability to take the completely batshit insane and make it work the way that if you tried it on television or on film, you would be laughed at like a gimpy orangutan in a sailor outfit. Oh, the laughs you would garner if you tried to throw a time traveling despot into the workings of even the most out-there television show you could find. If Kang showed up in his purple helmet on the island on LOST, people would groan and punch themselves in the groin. Well, I would make a high pitched shrieking sound and bounce around the room like a walaby on angeldust, but that’s because I like things that nobody else likes.
The fact of the matter is that Bendis has gone back and made an Avengers book for the people who spent the last six years complaining that his books didn’t feel like they were Avengers books. Are those people really going to be able to make those claims when Kang shows up sporting a doomsday device that was supposedly built by a future version of Tony Stark and tells them that the future of the world depends on their new team triumphing over seemingly insurmountable odds? No, those people will have to eat their words like a slice of spongey Avengers Day cake. How does it taste, people? The answer should be chocolate.
ZATANNA # 1
Wanna guess what I love more in comics than Kang? Give up?
Fishnets!
Yeah, I went there. You think I stuck around through all of Green Arrow/Black Canary because I enjoyed the story. Nope. It’s because I am bound by honor to purchase any and all comics featuring a character whose costume involves fishnets. My brain is hard wired that way. Is that shallow? Maybe. How many people bought Power Girl just because of the boobage? I bought it because I love the character. The boobs are only a fraction of that element, so I suppose that makes me better than everyone else. That’s me, champion of ethics.
Anyway, this issue begins with Zatanna in full bondage mode, chained to a gigantic St. Andrew’s cross while the Joker is set to ram a gigantic drill through her torso. Fan service? You bet your ass. It’s all a swerve, of course. It’s a Zatanna book, nothing is going to be exactly what it seems like. But do you think anybody who just flipped open the book to see a hot brunette in fishnets and sexy boots bound and gagged in pure fetish fuel fashion is gonna put the book back on the rack after that? No. They’ll buy it. They have to. Unless they’re a female who can’t appreciate how friggin’ hot that opening page is. But take a closer look femi-nazis, that panel is all about the empowerment of the female form, that when we view a woman at her most helpless she’s truly always in control. Satisfied? I hope so, because I don’t really wantto overanalyze the book. It all really boils down to the fishnets. Let’s be honest.
Weekly Comic Reviews
This week was a monster. I mean, it’s been a while since I picked up this many books in a single week. I normally don’t go this heavy, and I’m trying to pull back on my subscriptions because money’s getting a little tight at this point. But this week I bit the bullet and plopped down a good chunk of change on some comics, so I might as well do an equally impressive review post.
PULL LIST 4-14-2010
ACTION COMICS #888 $3.99
ADVENTURE COMICS #10 $3.99
BATGIRL #9 $2.99
BATMAN #698 $2.99
BRIGHTEST DAY #0 $3.99
FLASH #1 $3.99
GREEN ARROW #32 $2.99
SECRET SIX #20 $2.99
UNWRITTEN #12 (MR) $2.99
CHEW #10 (MR) $2.99
BLACK WIDOW #1 HA $3.99
DAREDEVIL #506 $2.99
DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #894 $2.99
EXCALIBUR VISIONARIES WARREN ELLIS TP VOL 01 $19.99
IRON MAN LEGACY #1 $3.99
NEW MUTANTS #12 XSC $2.99
PUNISHERMAX #6 (MR) $3.99
SIEGE CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 $2.99
SIEGE LOKI #1 $2.99
SIEGE YOUNG AVENGERS #1 $2.99
WORLD WAR HULKS HULKED OUT HEROES #1 WWHS $3.99
X-FACTOR FOREVER #2 $3.99
HACK SLASH SERIES #31 A CVR SEELEY (MR) $3.50
Granted it’ll probably take me a week to ready everything I bought, I still have enough knocked out to bring you the following criticisms…
BATMAN # 698
After an impressive debut arc for Tony Daniel on the mainline Batman book, now comes the part where we find out if he’s worth his salt or if he just got lucky that first time around. I was not a fan of Battle for the Cowl, so Daniel’s showing in the last few issues of Batman has been a nice little surprise. With this issue we don’t get his art to go along with his pencils, and I think that my point made in an earlier review that Daniel writes better when he knows he’ll be drawing the action himself is pretty much on the money, as this new artist, who really is only pedestrian at best, doesn’t really convey the action in the same manner that Daniel did. The story itself seems like filler, which the fill-in artists seems to back up.
I like just about any Batman comic featuring the Riddler, as I think this private detective revamp has made him into an especially viable character, but in this issue it is painfully obvious that he’s a better detective than Dick, which makes it hard for me to believe that nobody has caught on to him being an entirely different person under the mask. Gordon especially. And if he has noticed, you would think he of all people would be the first to tell the new Batman to bugger off if he can’t add anything helpful to the mix. And when the Riddler is constantly making you look like a schmuck in front of the police commissioner, you really have nothing helpful to add to the mix.
BRIGHTEST DAY # 0
The return to happy-times in the DCU starts with a baby bird falling out of a tree and braining itself on a tombstone. Blood splatters and I’m sure a child somewhere weeps. Sure, a very much alive Deadman resurrects him with white power (Holy shit, white power? I need to find a better term.), but still, that little bit caught me off guard. This whole issue didn’t connect with me after that. I mean, we get Max Lord giving himself a nosebleed, a bunch of yammering with Hawkman and Hawkgirl, who I very much preferred to be left dead, and a scene where Aquaman is afraid to go into the water.
Aqauaman is afraid of the water.
It’s hard for me to defend my love for Aquaman as a character when scenes like that pop up. I mean, come on. I try to prove that he’s not the lamest character in existence and now Geoff Johns has essentially turned him from the brave king of the seas into a little boy who lost his floaties.
Brightest Day just goes to proove that Geoff Johns output for the GL universe outside of the book proper is probably not going to be my cup of tea, and as such you probably won’t be hearing much about it here unless he does something that truly shocks me, either positive or more likely negative.
FLASH # 1
And while Brightest day might have made me give up on Geoff Johns as a writer, Flash # 1 proves that he can still write the hell out of a monthly book. I have to admit that I’m not a big Barry Allen fan. I grew up with Wally. Wally is my Flash. I was going to give this book a pass but picked it up for the sake of doing a review. And I’m glad I did because this book moves at a mile a minute and hits every note that it needs to. Geoff Johns really has a grip on the Flash. This is no surprise given how great his last run was on the title, but that was years ago and that was Wally. He also seemed to care more about the Rogues than he did about the Flash, which gave the book a distinct sort of flair.
Here he is really more interested it seems in showing us how Barry is going to integrate himself back into society after having been gone for so long. He’s bringing back old characters and introducing Barry to a new generation at the same time. It’s sort of like a spin-off TV series in the way everything is set up. There is a striking familiarity but at the same time everything feels so shiny and new.
Honestly, I think this is going to be a book to watch, as I think this is something that Geoff wants to write while at the same time being a book that he needs to write in order to ground himself after spending so much of his talent writing mindless epic event books. I hope I’m right. Dear god, I hope I’m right.
GREEN ARROW # 32
Uh, wow. That was quick. You want to talk about a rushed issue? This would be it. Plots are resolved within the length of a page, what would normally take several issues is condensed down into a few panels, and the book ends with a major tease for the new # 1 issue.
I guess with the timeframe he was given JT Krul did the best he could to wrap everything up in a manner that didn’t completely collapse under its own weight, but jeez, an extra issue might have helped to pad this thing and make the narrative flow better. Ollie changes his mind about life-altering decisions in the span of half a panel. It’s so sudden and jarring that it can’t be described as anything other than a WTF moment.
Oh well, bring on the relaunch.
BLACK WIDOW # 1
Here’s one I’ve been looking forward to. The Black Widow – Deadly Origin book stoked my interest for an ongoing Black Widow book and now it’s here. I can only say that Marjorie Liu does a bangup job with the character. Artfully taking from what writers like Ed Brubaker have done with her in the Captain America book and moved in the next logical direction.
This book is a lot like Deadly Origin, in that it has a great deal to do with the Widow’s past in setting up the narrative. And honestly, that’s one of the things that makes the Widow so interesting. She’s like the bizzaro Wolverine in that regard. Wolverine is (was) interesting because of the mystery of his past. The Widow however seems to work because we know how integrated with the Marvel Universe she is. That allows for her to organically interact with just about ANY character in the Marvel Universe without it seeming like a gratuitous cameo. Here we get Tony Stark, Wolverine, and Bucky, all of whom should appear in a book like this.
We don’t get that many books with female leads. We were lucky that Ms. Marvel lasted as long as she did and it’s a shame that She-Hulk isn’t around anymore. But between this and Bendis’ Spider-Woman, the ladies of the Marvel Universe are looking damn fine right about now.
IRON MAN LEGACY # 1
I might as well just write a review that says “FUCK YEAH!” and leave it at that, because really that’s all I can say about this book. Matt Fraction has been knocking it out of the park over in Invincible Iron Man, but Fred Van Lente takes a look at Tony’s past and completely nails the character in ways every writer who’s ever handled Tony wishes they could.
I’m not gonna spend any more time on this book. I don’t need to. Go buy the damned thing. If you don’t, you hate being happy. And for that I am so so sorry.
NEW MUTANTS # 12
I have to say, this crossover feels like an X-Men story. I maintain that the holding pattern that the x-books were staying in from Messiah Complex to this moment only heightened the intensity of the crossover and it’s making for some amazing storytelling. This issue is balls-to-the-wall action and it’s all done on such a scale that it can only be described as classic X-Men. I get the feeling this is gonna be one of those crossovers that we look back on with a fond memory, remembering just how awesome it truly is.
PUNISHERMAX # 6
Jason Aaron writes a better Punisher than Garth Ennis.
There. I said it.
There is something about his run so far that really connects with me. I think a lot of it may be how he seems more willing to blatantly show that he has no regard for mainline continuity. Whereas we know that Ennis was writing in another universe, simply by proxy of using no existing characters, Aaron is more than happy to re-define existing Marvel characters like Kingpin and Bullseye with Ulitmate Universe style reckless abandon, and at the same time make it work and not alienate the fanbase.
Not only that, but he seems to get the Punisher in more than a cathartic sadist sort of way that Ennis did. Aaron’s Frank Castle is decidedly human, and we see this through the skillful mastery that Aaron brings to the people surrounding the Punisher. We get precious little insight from the Punisher himself instead getting more out of reactions from people like Kingpin, Bullseye, or an old army friend who comes by to patch up Frank’s wounds.
Jason Aaron is amazing, and so is this book.
Weekly Comic Reviews
Hey folks, sorry the reviews are going up a day later than usual because this week was mid-term week and I’ve been doing a lot of reading and writing that didn’t have anything to do with comics and thus my brain and resolve has been whittled down to a viscous goop.
ARRIVALS 3-10-2010
ACTION COMICS #887 3.99
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #624 2.99
BATGIRL #8 2.99
BATMAN AND ROBIN #10 2.99
JUSTICE LEAGUE RISE AND FALL SPECIAL #1 3.99
POWERS #3 (MR) 3.95
PRELUDE TO DEADPOOL CORPS #2 (OF 5) 2.99
PUNISHERMAX #5 (MR) 3.99
RED ROBIN #10 2.99
SECRET SIX #19 2.99
SUPERMAN LAST STAND OF NEW KRYPTON #1 (OF 3) 3.99
SWORD #5 (MARVEL) 2.99
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #8 3.99
And here’s my piddling excuse for a review section:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 624
Have you ever been walking along enjoying your day and then been smashed in the face by a brick from out of nowhere? That’s kind of what this issue feels like. I knew from extensive spoiler-riffic media coverage last week that this issue would be the one where Peter gets “fired” or some such nonsense, but I didn’t expect it to be such a contrived and out-of-left-field development that left me feeling like I was reading a different book.
Up to this point in the Brand New Day era of Spidey books, the writers have seemingly understood that Peter Parker has bad luck that really only results in an “aw shucks, that didn’t go well” sort of way. Not the “ARGH! MY LIFE IS FALLING TO UNIMAGINABLE SHIT!” kind of luck that I just call “Matt Murdock’s Life.” And this issue falls firmly into the Matt Murdock level of life upheaval. I know that his uncle was murdered, I know that his girlfriend got chucked off a bridge, but aside from that, you don’t see the entire world coming down on Peter that often. Because as Marvel’s everyman character, nobody wants to try to relate to someone who is publicly shamed and maligned for making an error in judgment.
I’m not going to say that what Peter did to get fired was out of character. Not at all. Because Peter is kind of a dumbass who does stupid things on a startlingly regular occasion. It’s the resolution that sticks me as the wrong way to move the character and it feels like all these weeks I’ve been praising the work on this book is worthless if this is what they were leading to.
BATGIRL # 8/RED ROBIN # 10
This is what I like to read. The interaction between the Bat family is something that makes those titles different from other books. You don’t get this kind of interaction with, say, the Superman family. Nor is anything like what you get in a team book like JLA. There is a close-knit togetherness and interwoven history here that doesn’t get played out elsewhere. The closest to it would maybe be the X-Men, but with the revolving door and expansive cast list I would say that it’s too expansive to work in the way the Bat family does.
This crossover deals with the fallout of the intro arc of Red Robin, with Ra’s Al Ghul coming for his vengeance as well as resolving some dangling threads from the time Stephanie Brown spent as Spoiler. Perhaps its the nature of resolution that makes this crossover so worthwhile.
JUSTICE LEAGUE RISE AND FALL SPECIAL # 1
Where to begin? Okay, I only skimmed Cry for Justice. I didn’t care for the first two issues and wasn’t going to invest any money into the rest of the series. The ending, where Green Arrow straight up shot an arrow through Prometheus’ head was both jarring and stupefying. This follow up issue, where the JLA finds out about that event, is better written than the mini-series that established the need for its existence, but that’s like saying that getting shot in the arm is better than getting shot in the leg.
I’m conflicted here, because I pretty much concur with Ollie’s new worldview, but I’m not so sure if I could ever fully imagine him as a character doing these things. With all the continuity established, Ollie doesn’t strike me as the gung-ho killer type. I’m hoping that this is leading somewhere that I’m not seeing, otherwise I might be giving up on Green Arrow after several years of collecting monthly.
PRELUDE TO DEADPOOL CORPS # 2
This one didn’t suck. Mostly saved by Xavier trying on wigs and trying to bang Emma Frost. Reminds me of an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Danny DeVito basically did the same thing. Except Professor X always makes any situation funnier. You know, because he’s a cripple.
SWORD # 5
I hate you Marvel. This book was beautiful and you tossed it aside like it was a bucktoothed hooker. For shame. Just, for shame.
***
And that’s all I have for this week. Next week I won’t have classwork to deal with and I’ll be able to give you some meatier writing, but for this week just be glad I put up anything instead of diving into oncoming traffic.
Weekly Comic Reviews
Hey, guess what? I read some books! Just like last week? Aren’t I unpredictable? But seriously folks, I got my books yesterday, though about six hours later than usual so I actually stayed up late reading comic books to ensure that I would be able to get this post up in a reasonably timely manner. You guys should send me a gift basket.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #622 GNTLT 3.99
AVENGERS INITIATIVE #33 SIEGE 2.99
BATMAN AND ROBIN #9 2.99
BLACK LANTERN GREEN ARROW #30 (BLACKEST NIGHT) 3.99
BLACKEST NIGHT #7 3.99
BLACKEST NIGHT JSA #3 (OF 3) 2.99
CAPTAIN SWING #1 (OF 4) 3.99
CHOKER #1 (MR) 3.99
DARK WOLVERINE #83 SIEGE 2.99
DEADPOOL #20 2.99
FALL OF HULKS RED HULK #2 (OF 4) FOH 3.99
FANTASTIC FOUR #576 2.99
GI JOE TP VOL 02 19.99
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #9 2.99
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #36 (C: 1-0-0) 2.99
MS MARVEL #50 3.99
NEW AVENGERS #62 SIEGE 3.99
SUPERMAN #697 2.99
THOR #607 SIEGE 2.99
TRANSFORMERS ONGOING #4 3.99
WONDER WOMAN #41 2.99
X-FACTOR #202 2.99
X-MEN LEGACY #233 XN 2.99
That’s a pretty healthy haul. So what did I think?
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN # 622
For the last few week’s I’ve really been boosting up ASM as a book. I think it’s been consistantly good and that the naysayers have been blinded by their own biases. This issue however is a bit of a mixed bag, in that the lead story with Morbius is actually quite fun if a tad on the light side, not actually being full length and thus appearing somewhat rushed, while the second story with Flash Thompson is just sort of a discombobulated mess.
I am willing to bet that the secondary tale is in there because they need to quickly set up Flash’s new status quo for when he inevitably comes back into the fold of the supporting cast on a regular basis. It feels like the writing team’s attempt to get us re-aquainted with Flash and let us know that by featuring him in such a beefy role in what amounts to a backup story, he must be important enough to care about. Continuity wise, at least.
Like I said, the issue is a mixed bag, but it’s only a slight hiccup in the road as far as I’m concerned, because it’s a one-off story meant to act as an interlude anyhow. I don’t blame them for trying to cram some exposition in there that might have gotten cut short if it were rammed into an ongoing storyline. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have…Amazing Spider-Man.
CHOKER # 1
It’s like Sin City meets Blade Runner with enough of the classic Marlowe noir not to feel cheap. Choker is Ben McCool’s debut creator-owned story and damned if he didn’t knock it out of the park with this first issue. The dialogue is crisp and feels as solid as noir dialogue can, which admittedly can sometimes come off as really cheesy. Remember Frank Miller’s script for The Spirit? Yeah, it’s nothing like that.
I’ve admitted that I’m not normally a fan of Ben Templesmith. His artwork is hard to critique because any complaints can be attributed to his wanting to add a sense of style. And luckily, in the case of this book, the style works. Whereas I felt it actually hindered the story in something like 30 Days of Night, here it feels like any other type of art style would have seemed…off.
Do yourself a favor and pick this one up. I’m always telling people that there’s great new stuff out there and this is no exception. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you pass it up.
CAPTAIN SWING # 1
Speaking of original material, fuck you Warren Ellis. How the living hell do you manage to crank out so many titles in such short periods of time, and all of them be thoroughly entertaining? Where is your off month? When do I get to read something from you that sucks. That would be a surprise. I would actually be shocked if I picked up an Ellis book and didn’t like it. The man has such a vivid sense of world-building and setting that he could tell an infinite number of stories simply by interchanging the characters and plots from his different endeavors into each other’s locales. In this case, we get a pre-industrial revolution London in the time of the formation of the Metropolitan Police (aka the “Met”) and a mysterious steampunk villain(?) who fires electric bullets and cavorts around town in a flying airship.
Once again, fuck you Warren Ellis. You creative prick.
MS. MARVEL # 50
It pains me to say that reading this final issue of Ms. Marvel, I understand why it’s going away. When your grand finale is so astoundingly anti-climactic that it makes the reader’s chest hurt, you probably should thank your lucky stars that you made it to issue 50. Now, I’ve followed this title since # 1, and I’ve tried to get people on board, because I think that it’s been a really damn good title for the majority of the run. But I see the final arc as sort of a missed opportunity. It seemed…I guess rushed is as good a word as any. Like this is all Brian Reed could come up with because the weight of delivering a final issue was weighing on him so heavily.
The backup story is passable. I’m not a big Noh Varr fan, so it didn’t speak to me on any real level. But something tells me that what happened there will come into play whenever they decide to focus a little more on that character. At least when that happens I’ll be prepared.
Overall, this would have been a fine issue were it not the grand finale. In that sense, it feels like a bit of a misfire.
Wonder Woman # 41
It’s an extended Power Girl cameo, how the hell do you think I felt about it?
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And that’s it for this week, join us next time when I aim to be even more passive aggressive.
Weekly Comic Reviews
It’s that time again! Time for me to tell you what sucked and what did not. I should caution you that most of what I review will be positive, as I don’t often buy books that I feel I won’t enjoy. However, I am making a point to pick up new books simply to give insight that otherwise wouldn’t be offered on this blog.
THE PULL LIST:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #618 GNTLT 2.99
BATMAN STREETS OF GOTHAM #8 3.99
BLACK WIDOW AND MARVEL GIRLS #3 (OF 4) 2.99
CAPTAIN AMERICA #602 3.99
DARK AVENGERS #13 SIEGE 3.99
DARK WOLVERINE #82 SIEGE 2.99
DEADPOOL MERC WITH A MOUTH #7 3.99
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #44 (BLACKEST NIGHT) 2.99
HULK #19 FOH 3.99
INCORRUPTIBLE #2 3.99
INCREDIBLE HULK #606 FOH 3.99
JOE THE BARBARIAN #1
MIGHTY AVENGERS #33 2.99
PHANTOM STRANGER #42 (BLACKEST NIGHT) 2.99
POWER GIRL #8 2.99
SONIC UNIVERSE #12 2.5
SPIDER-WOMAN #5 2.99
STARMAN #81 (BLACKEST NIGHT) 2.99
STREET FIGHTER IV TP VOL 01 12.95
UNCANNY X-MEN #520 2.99
WOLVERINE FIRST CLASS TP CLASS ACTIONS 14.99
WOLVERINE WEAPON X #9 3.99
YOUNG LIARS TP VOL 03 ROCK LIFE (MR) 14.99
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN # 618
I think that Marvel is doing an excellent job of capturing the feel of classic Spider-Man nowadays. The voice the writers are projecting onto Peter Parker here is highly reminiscent of the best Spidey stories of yesteryear. From the quips to the inner monologue, to the actions of his supporting cast, it’s all very much in tune to the earlier Spidey stories than anything we saw during the JMS years. And while I dug JMS’ run, and think it will be remembered fondly by those who were first introduced to Spider-Man during his tenure, I cannot help but have my cockles warmed by what we have on display here.
The story looks like it will finally tie up some loose ends with Mr. Negative, and his connection to Aunt May, as well as give us the return of Mysterio, who last had successfully scratched an itch in the back of his head with a shotgun. Is this Mysterio back from the dead or another new name throwing on the suit? Given what we’ve seen in Brand New Day thus far with new iterations of the characters, the latter seems possible but given the classic tone of the arc, I wouldn’t put it past the team to pull a full resurrection.
The book lacks the emotional resonance of last week’s Rhino tale, but is a satisfactory story all the same.
CAPTAIN AMERICA # 602
Well, the regular Captain America title returns, and honestly from the pages of this book, aside from a few lines of dialogue referencing it, you never would have known the whole “Reborn” situation ever happened. Bucky is still the central focus of the narrative, and the plot threads from prior to Steve’s return are being followed up on in true Brubaker-ian fashion. The man lives to tell these sorts of stories. They have that Marvel feel, utilizing the eccentricities of the universe with uniformed henchmen and acronymed evil organizations; but every bit of Brubaker’s storytelling prowess in the realm of the hyper-realistic, drawing from his work in the street-level drama that he does so well, is on full display here.
I cannot help but think that we’ve been cheated by having this title sidelined while the “Reborn” miniseries ran it’s course. Brubaker’s Cap book is a serial masterpiece, one that really needs to build on monthly steam. I guess I should just be grateful the train is back on schedule.
Helping me forget my complaints is the excellent Nomad backup story that picks up immediately after the excellent “Girl Without A World” series. I know it’s a secondary feature, and thus it is going to have to be limited in length, but I definately wanted more by the end of the issue. Still, better for Nomad to see publication in the back of a book that will run indefinately, rather than get her own book and get published before a sixth issue like SOME TITLES I COULD MENTION. (***Grumble***)
DARK AVENGERS # 13
Brian Michael Benids has had this weird facination with the Sentry that I just did not understand. The Sentry, as a character, is quite bland and really doesn’t work on any other level than the occaisional joke at his expense. So in this issue Bendis finally reveals his master plan for the character and essentially rewrites the whole book on his existence (yes, again).
I won’t spoil the revelations, but I will say that they’re not even shocking at this point. Just confounding given that for the emotional weight behind them to truly work, we as readers would have to give a damn about the character, and I personally do not. I know I am not alone in that regard either. While the changes Bendis makes open up interesting possibilities for the character, I wager that those changes will not resonate either. Given the character’s history of retcon after retcon, how can we expect whatever change that follows this revelation to be any more valid than the last?
If any word describes the developments of this book, it would be “frustrating.”
DARK WOLVERINE # 82
I have largely ignored Dark Wolverine, choosing to focus on “Weapon X” as my go-to Wolvie title. I decided I would give it a go with this issue as part of my imperitive to follow the event through the majority of it’s tie-ins. I was a little surprised by the book, given that the characterization of Daken in his own title as compared to the Avengers appearances I’ve read seems somewhat off kilter. I suppose it could be the characterization in the Avengers titles that is off, but I suppose that’s a matter of perspective.
The book itself is actually quite interesting, and the ending actually shocked me. I know that what we see is some sort of narrative trick, but damned if it didn’t make me want to pick up the next issue.
DEADPOOL : MERC WITH A MOUTH # 7
Deadpool goes dimension hopping, a bunch of artists illustrate the different worlds. Jokes are made, and oddly enough I wasn’t very entertained. The humor on display here wasn’t really up to the general Deadpool snuff. In fact, aside from one panel, I didn’t really so much as chuckle. I find this extremely odd because the previous issues of the book practically had me dying from laughter. I hope the book picks up with the next issue, because Deadpool has three titles, and they had better all be excellent otherwise I might get bitter about Deadpool having multiple titles that aren’t all that good when OTHER AWESOME BOOKS GET THE PLUG PULLED ON THEM UNDESERVINGLY!!!!
HULK # 19/INCREDIBLE HULK # 606
I admit that I have not been following these titles as of late, and so I’m going into this whole Fall of the Hulks thing completely blind. That having been said, I think Incredible Hulk did a great job of bringing me up to speed with the book’s status quo without feeling like a major exposition dump and Hulk # 19 was somewhat jumbled but not nearly the clusterfuck I had been led to believe Jeph Loeb would be making out of the title.
I’m not big on the format of this event. I would prefer that the books led into each other in some way rather than telling independent parts of a larger story, as I cannot seem to place the books along any real timeline, though I think that longtime readers may have a better grasp on the comings and goings than I do.
Another small note, the art in Incredible Hulk is some of the best stuff I’ve seen in a while. Stylistically interesting while still being technically solid. I wish more books could find that balance.
Joe The Barbarian # 1
Grant Morrison is an amazing writer. Sean Murphy is an amazing artist. Together what they create should be interesting to say the least. Unfortunately not a whole lot happens in the first issue. The idea is presented but we have no real inkling of the direction it will take. I’m going to pick up the second issue, just to get a grasp on where they’re going with this, but if they really wanted to take advantage of that $1.00 cover price, they probably should have given us a little more content.
Power Girl # 8
In this book, the words “Pregno Ray” are used. Beyond that, you really should not need any more information.
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And that’s all I’ve got for this week. Join us next time when I’ll have more than one book from DC on the list (I Hope.)
