Weekly Comic Reviews
It was a hectic week at the shop. UPS lost one of the shipment boxes, and it happened to be the one that contained the packing list in it. Not gonna lie, UPS is about as competent as a brain-damaged snail when it comes to the handling and delivery of packages. When that’s your entire purpose for existing and your that bad at it, perhaps you don’t deserve to be in business. Just saying. Actually, I’m not really saying anything as much as I’m venting. There’s a subtle difference and most of it has to do with the tone of voice I hear inside my head while I type this, which is probably not conveyed very well as text over the internet.
ARRIVALS 5-26-2010
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #632 2.99
BATMAN RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #2 OF(6) 3.99
CHOKER #3 (OF 6) (MR) 3.99
DAZZLER #1 3.99
DEADPOOL MERC WITH A MOUTH #11 (OF 13) 2.99
DETECTIVE COMICS #865 3.99
EARP SAINTS FOR SINNERS #0 1
FALL OF HULKS SAVAGE SHE-HULKS #3 (OF 3) 3.99
FANTASTIC FOUR #579 HA 2.99
FORTUNE & GLORY A TRUE HOLLYWOOD COMIC BOOK GN HC 19.99
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #12 2.99
GREEN LANTERN #54 (BRIGHTEST DAY) 2.99
JUSTICE LEAGUE GENERATION LOST #2 (BRIGHTEST DAY) 2.99
POWER GIRL #12 2.99
PREVIEWS #261 JUNE 2010 (NET) 2.7
SECRET AVENGERS #1 HA 3.99
THOR #610 SIEGE EPILOGUE 2.99
THUNDERBOLTS #144 HA 2.99
WOLVERINE WEAPON X #13 3.99
WONDER WOMAN #44 2.99
X-FORCE #27 XSC 2.99
X-MEN ORIGINS EMMA FROST #1 (MR) 3.99
And because I have access to the internet, now come my opinions:
DAZZLER # 1
I freaking love Dazzler. If ever there was a character who deserved more respect, it’d be her. She pre-dates Jubilee and has enough of a sob-story background to appeal to the angst-happy comic reader of the modern generation. It would be a dream come true for me to write a team book led by Dazzler and Boom-Boom that goes off and fixes all the problems that the A-Listers can’t because they’re too busy dealing with a crossover or something.
The issue picks up on the threads left in the Necrosha crossover following Dazzler’s run-in with her sister, a mutant who can kill with a single touch. She and Rogue should have a pow-wow. Anywho, Dazzler’s feeling all misdirected and shaken up after the events of Necrosha and then has to deal with Arcade kidnapping her and dropping her into Murderworld, which honestly needs a new name as I’m not sure anyone has ever been killed in Murderworld. It sounds all ominous and scary but Arcade is probably the least successful X-Villain with the best ideas for marketing.
Here’s the sad thing about this issue; it’s really good. But not a whole lot of people are going to pick it up because Dazzler has essentially been reduced to a one-note joke and nobody realizes the potential there is for good stories with her in the lead. I’d rather read a story with Dazzler than Cyclops, honestly. But then again, that’s just me I guess.
EARP : SAINTS FOR SINNERS # 0
I love proto-futuristic, psuedo-apocalyptic stories. The environment presented in those types of books usually do it for me. They just suck me in and I don’t want to leave. Earp has the added bonus of transplanting famous historical gunslingers from the past of the American west and dropping them into the future. Is there any reason why they couldn’t have told this same story with new and original characters? From what is presented in the pages of this zero issue, the answer is pretty much a solid no. There’s not any real impedus given for the characters relation to historical figures, it just works with the story they’re trying to tell.
Radical publishing is hit and miss with me. I love Last Days of American Crime but I never quite got on board for FVZD or Hercules. This book seems to fall within my sensibilities. I think that’s why I added it to my pull sheet when I saw the ad for it in Previews. It takes a lot to get me to jump onboard a series nowadays, so it’s high praise when I say that something will keep me around for the next issue, which is the case here with Earp.
POWER GIRL # 12
This issue was darn near perfect. It was a great send off issue for the creative team that has kept me onboard for the last year and made me punch a wall when I heard they were leaving. This issue we get all the major players from the series coming back and tying up the loose ends so that anybody who doesn’t want to stick around can feel like they had closure. I’m still not sure if I’ll be sticking with the book when Winick comes on. I feel like I have to because I don’t want DC to think that the demand for Power Girl isn’t there.
But seriously, if you can find the issues still on shelves, pick them up. Or barring that, be sure to pick up the trades. Because this run was seriously some of the best anything that DC put out in the last year. For sure.
SECRET AVENGERS # 1
Ed Brubaker. That guy is something. I feel like if GI Joe had never left the Marvel umbrella all those years ago, this would resemble his take on that particular property. Brubaker knows how to utilize characters to their fullest extent, and here he meticulously points out how every member of the new covert ops Avengers team fits into the mold and makes sense in their appearance in the book.
I also get the feeling that he’s gearing up to write something that has the same scope and over-arching intricacy of his Captain America or Iron Fist runs. It’s easy to see that he’s hitting the ground running a little faster than Bendis is over in the flagship title, where by the end of the first issue we’ve already seen the team operating on multiple levels and we have an idea of what kind of foe they’ll be up against.
I won’t argue which of the two writers is better, as they’re working in two entirely different arenas, that having been said I do believe that Secret Avengers sucked me in a little better than Bendis’ mainline book, simply because of who they have on the team and the manner in which they were utilized. With Nova’s book off the market, this seems to be where I’m going to get my fix and I like the way Brubaker handled him in the overall context of the group.
This is going to be a series to keep your eyes on.
X-MEN ORIGINS : EMMA FROST # 1
I almost didn’t pick this up. I’m not going to lie. I’ve mostly ignored the other installments in this little expirement, but I like Emma Frost as a character. I think that she has the most potential for interesting stories out of any of the high tier X-people on the roster right now, with the possible exception of Rogue, who has been proving her value in X-Men Legacy for the last few years.
Having read the issue, I would like to say that with all the books that came out this week, only two inspired real gutteral emotional responses from me. One was War of the Supermen, where (***SPOILER***)Krypto took a kryptonite knife to the spleen to protect his master (***END SPOILER***) and the other was this issue, where Emma’s struggle to deal with her father twisted my stomach into a pretzel. I think that we all have a sort of undying need to please our parents, but the extremes presented here with Emma’s dad exemplify the sort of worst-case-scenario that every child fears. Emma’s father is presented as the physical embodiment of the no-win scenario, and the manner in which she deals with his abuse, and let’s face it, whether his intentions were pure or otherwise, such treatment of any child is abuse, forms Emma into the character she is today.
Most of the best X-Men stories revolve around family. The X-teams are essentially the family that most of the members never had. This issue ties into that by showing how important family is to the development of certain characters. Emma has a family in the beginning that offers no solace and she drifts from the Hellfire Club to the X-Men later in life, all in the search of the acceptance her father never gave her. Such a story could have come off as overwrought or melodramatic, but this particular issue handles the situation well and seems organic to what we know about Emma overall, which is the true test of validity for a story like this.
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I’m done for now. Have to get some rest before the weekend, as it looks like it’ll be a long and tiring road ahead of me. Cheers.
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.
Comics Con Queso 