8/25/10

AVENGERS #4 – Another week, another $4 issue of AVENGERS, and it’s still time for me to bang my drum about how much ass this is kicking. Of the three main titles (does AVENGERS ACADEMY count as a main title? I’m not reading that. No disrespect to Gage, just didn’t fit it in, there), this one’s my favorite, which I guess is maybe a no-brainer, this being the premier team and all, but there’s a perfection in the way Romita/Janson/White give us Marvel’s heavy-hitters with Bendis just nailing and knocking out of the park every single beat, and, you know, time travel, so yeah, I’m pretty comfortable listing this and FF as what I’m absolutely adoring most from Marvel at the moment. And by moment, I mean until these creative teams change or die*, I’m looking forward to this marvelous output the most. What else have I not already said? Bendis writes Spidey dialogue maybe better than anybody? Nope. The cover shouldn’t have given away the last scene of the issue? Eh, surely that’s happened before now. Bendis is still killing the oral history and it’s really obvious that he’s got some serious Mamet affection going on? You’ve heard it all before. Buy this book. As solid as the first volume of NEW AVENGERS was, this is the first time that I really feel like this is the Marvel equivalent of the Justice League, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Horrifying cliffhanger, by the way. I mean, just list the principals and what they’re doing. Can’t imagine what’s in the hopper for the next arc after (I presume) we shut this one down next time.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #609 – Ah yes, in which everyone tells Bucky not to charge headlong into the trap and then it takes him literally two pages to fight through all of that common sense wisdom (dispensed, incidentally, by Miz Romanov. Dude! Did you skip IRON MAN 2? Meditate upon last night and do what she says! She’s meeting you at the safe house. Where there’s nothing to do. Think about it for another couple pages and stand down, Boss, and then get your ass right on down there). You’ve got to love the panel after Steve crushes Hauptmann’s hand, Guice does a fantastic job of evoking Kirby (most of all on Natasha’s face). If Sam Wilson is flashing the Not Cool sign, then you had better stand down yourself, there, Mr. Rogers.

I don’t even read the NOMAD strip anymore. That extra dollar is just a little monthly donation I like to make to Marvel. Thanks for signing up Whedon! It’s going to be great!

JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST #8 – Is this the first time Giffen hasn’t been in the credit box? It’s the first time I’ve noticed, and my spider-sense is tingling. Though Winick holds it together well enough. Glad to get Lopresti back. I’m now exactly halfway through hitting the original JLI run, so it’s a bit wacky to see these folks running around in the Brightest Day and all that. It’s good that Captain Atom’s mullet has not made the transition. Crucial, even. THE EVENT adds are still driving me crazy (plus, I need a mirror-effect on my keyboard so that the appropriate E can be flipped when I type it)(and, am I just blind, or is it insane that it took me until this week and, candidly, mid-rant for Blessed Wife to point out that the dude on the fourth page is the ubiquitous Zeljko “jel-ko” Ivanek? You know what, though, I guess these ads are working, because as much to say about a TV show I haven’t seen a minute of than this issue, so huzzah). Fire’s insight about the “right as rain” coming from farming seems really right on. Solid effort, Bea. It’s maybe time for Maxwell Lord to change clothes, he’s already beaten the Jack Bauer record, I think he killed Beetle in that outfit, did that whole 4-parter runaround with Superman and Wonder Woman, got his neck broke, got resurrected at the end of BLACKEST NIGHT, and has been running around for at least nine issues, all while rocking the same duds and, I guess, finding the time to pump some pretty serious iron throughout. Dude’s got some guns. Hey, where the hell is Oberon? And Scott and Barda, for that matter? I’m almost afraid to hear the answer, but I just realized that I haven’t heard a peep out of them all this time. Did Barda even sit out FINAL CRISIS? Mm, this is not good. Let’s move on.

BRIGHTEST DAY #8 – Yah, this came out last week, but I just picked it up now (left X-FACTOR behind, for the record, along with NEW MUTANTS and UNWRITTEN, and, truth be told, probably also going to be picking up Jane’s Riley one-shot that I dodged as well, if only so I can have a hard copy of Scott Allie’s Big Angel Announcement**). Was Reis only on that two-page spread of Hawkgirl? There were some pretty hurting scenes in most of this issue, artwise. The first one with the Martians was the worst. I want to hang on for this one, because I really trust Johns/Tomasi, but the round robin art needs to get better. I hope this was just a slump. I’d never heard of Eddy Barrows or Chris Batista or I wanna say one other guy before, but they kept 52 at a level of quality that we’re dipping dangerously far beneath now, especially with those purty Finch covers.

ACTION COMICS #892 – There’s possibly too much hype going on about this run (I don’t know if this is an “epic-in-the-making” or not, but there’s really no way to read that on the editorial page of the third issue of the run and not have it kind of sour you). But, hey, it is in fact really, really good. Cornell’s decision to bring in a Lois AI as Luthor’s foil is definitely getting more and more brilliant as things progress. Is this arc going to be 12 issues long? Do we know how long it’s going to be LEX LUTHOR’S ACTION COMICS? Because this definitely has the vibe of, say, HUSH, and I’m not trying to be insulting, but there’s this joy that’s been apparent since the get-go, I mean, hell, it’s exactly what I’d do, but every time, it’s like, “And now, we play with THIS toy, and now THIS one,” you know, Slade Wilson and Gorilla Grodd both show up this time. I rest my case. And they’ve already announced/spoiled a huge character who’s going to show up eventually. This is not a bad thing, though, the sandbox diving, as long as it’s hanging upon a good story. And Tommy Elliott never shows up.

Too, man, I thought I could give two shits about Lemire on SUPERBOY, and found the ATOM back-ups not insulting but not spectacular either, but I’m sold and sold on their new book. Fantastic energy. Glad to see that Simon kid Johns and Manipul introduced get put back into play. And the last page is completely insane. Both panels. Really, the back-up is worth the cover price alone. Not even counting the whole meta-textual element to Smallville attacking, because all it makes me think of is the show, and I want there to be a beat where Raven yells, “Smallville’s throwing everything it’s got at us! Everything!” and Connor’s just like, “It won’t amount to a hill of beans. Smallville sucks.” But I’m maybe the only one hoping for that. Killer back-up strip.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #4 – A lot of quality books came out this week! Levitz does a really deft job of splitting up the scenes here, cutting back and forth at points of maximum tension so that no matter where you are, you want to be back in the other place. I appreciate the 30 pages. Sodom Yat speaking in the third person cracks me up, for some reason. Poor guy. I read two comics with Darkseid in them tonight. Though if this is the only return that the Great Darkness has, kind of a limp call-back, I’m sorry to say.

ASTONISHING X-MEN #35 – Man, don’t you just wish this team would go on and on. That’s not a question, I know the answer. Top drawer work, all around. Ellis gives us such a tight and lean script. I love Logan apostrophing out the first letter of Storm’s name. And even paraphrasing Dark Willow, which, you know, the ping-pong levels of that***. And the following “Wheelchair of death here!” really just shocking coming out of Ellis, such a Whedon tone. “Years and years of murder science,” however, is the best line of the night, even beats everything Morrison gives us by way of Wayne. What an odd and perfect last page, too. This whole thing’s almost a black sitcom with Ellis. That works here, but I’m not sure that anybody else could come close to hitting it as well. Jiminez is a god, have really enjoyed his work on this, as ever.

FANTASTIC FOUR #582 – The Anachronauts! Kirby enough for me. “And now for knowledge” is a keeper. Oh man, and those last two pages. I adore the line about Franklin’s favorite hero, pitch-perfect balance between the familial love and cosmic wow that holds this book together. Love it love it.

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BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN #702 – You know, I can’t be objective about this at all. Apparently, Grant Morrison can literally take us back through scenes that we already saw less than two years ago, and even trade out Jones/Pacheco/Mahnke for Daniel on art, and all he has to do to make me gobble it up with a spoon is add narrative captions in Bruce Wayne’s handwriting (first popularized by Miller way back in YEAR ONE, natch). I need to track me down a trade of FINAL CRISIS and just slam through it on one sitting, this convinces me it will be a much more crushing experience. But fastforwarding through it like this, with the benefit of Bruce’s surprising but totally understandable doubt and caution, does a fantastic job of not only humanizing the character and showing that for all his iconic status, he, like Ivan Drago, is only a man. It’s also kind of a cool foil for what happened with Turpin back in FC. When it started out, I was thinking he was our street-level POV guy, only he turned out to be possessed by Darkseid, elevated to god status, so, nice turnabout here, way way after the fact, to bring one of the main icons back down to base-level humanity, so much so that he doesn’t even remember his name or who he’s talking to by the end of the issue (that was the one hiccup I had, how did they get that recording? That I guess he was making at the dawn of time? Tim’s presence in the room suggested to me that that’s maybe been the point of RED ROBIN this whole time, like Bruce made the tape and buried it in the Batcave or something). Just so many great lines, the opening passage to Kal, the inner monologue while killing Darkseid (“There were bells” is a fantastic end-of-the-page line), and a final page that evokes the end of SUPERMAN BEYOND 3D and Greatest Single Issue Of All Time ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #10 with the whole never-ending bit. I'm also really a fan of the new scene we get with Wally quoting Neo and Bruce dropping the whole bit about the platonic bullet and the New Gods representing ideals, it makes that shooting in FINAL CRISIS #6 even more resonant. Fine work, throughout. Old Daniel even does his best to make you forget what he’s been doing the last year, I haven’t gone back and checked, but this might be his best effort yet. As musclebound and kind of ugly as it is. The best trick about this issue, though, is that after last month, we’re totally thinking this is just filler, but it pulls off the trick of — while, yes, filling in the blanks to some business that went down while my little girl was still just barely hanging out in the womb — accelerating the overarching Bat-narrative that Morrison’s been killing over in BATMAN & ROBIN and THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE and catapulting us toward the climax of the second act, just as soon as we can get another three issues in our hands, which will then leave us waiting for #16 and #6, respectively, of the aforementioned titles. All of which to say, I can’t wait I can’t wait I can’t wait, and that’s the only yardstick that really matters when it comes to measuring this serial sequential fiction that we all love so much, at least these last couple hundred thousand of us still hanging on.

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*those last three words I can never hear or type without thinking of Gaiman’s foreword to, probably, ENDLESS NIGHTS, when some Italian reporter told him to sum up the 75 issues of SANDMAN in 25 words or less and, legend has it, he thought about if for a minute and comes back with, “The Lord of Dreams learns that he must change or die and makes his decision.” I mean, the compression of that is crushing and startling and really only brings ALL-STAR SUPERMAN to mind as anything approaching a worthy peer (except, maybe, for FLEX MENTALLO, but we all know that shit is inSANE and it’s probably best not to tangent over there, we’re just about to make it through another week with our hearts and souls intact, let’s not push it).

*and I guess Dude’s just got a serious boner for the Angelus, this is the second time he’s dropped some premature business on us about this guy. But hey, at least this time it didn’t spoil a three years and counting storyline. Cheers, guy! (Read my pitch, though! Please!)

***specifically, calling the alternate version of Willow from, I want to say, episode 2.09 of BUFFY (“The Wish,” my first favorite episode of that one, there), calling her “Dark Willow” is of course a callback to “Dark Phoenix,” and Dark Willow’s famous line/catchphrase is “Bored, now,” and, you know, Whedon is the reason this title exists in the first place, also the reason that Ellis jumped on after he and Cassaday were done, so when Ellis has Logan say, “Bored with this crap now,” well, all the geek cannons are aimed at the sky and summarily firing in conjunction and all is right and all is well and Joss is doctoring the Cap script and writing the Avengers and we are In Good Hands, for a little while longer, thank you so much and good night, at long last.