First, catchup! It was a relatively light week, mainly because I’m starting to bail out on more $4 Marvel options, so I was able to clean out my folder and hit these first three. Quick blasts through!_:
THE UNWRITTEN #16 – Some pretty major business goes down here at the end of this third arc. You certainly can’t say that the book is spinning its wheels. Nice stunt with the book release. I’m interested to see where Carey/Gross are taking us next and suddenly curious if there’s a projected number of issues for this story about all the stories. I’m going to guess 50. Oooh, standalone next month, the problem is now I’m expecting that one to be Best of Week. Vertigo continues to dominate the market, in terms of quality.
NEW MUTANTS #16 – This was about as good as a story could be in which, you know, none of the actual cast appears (with a single expection in the last panel, which we’re not going to count). And I mean that as a compliment. I enjoyed it. Even though I’m sure Zeb Wells was gnashing his teeth during INCEPTION for the half hour that car was falling, because he’d already written this and figured everyone was going to think he was ripping the dilated time thing off. Oh, well. I’m glad this title is as solid as it is, the kids deserve it.
X-FACTOR #208 – Too bad the cover spoils the splash page. Why do they DO that? PAD continues to move his cast around with the deftest of ease, I actually didn’t even see that bit coming with Longshot and Darwin walking the ladies home talking about fighting. Was kind of groaning at the last page, thinking we should just maybe let this case go and move on to the next one, but the cover for next month certainly sells it.
**
All right! This week. So, I was going to give the new Aaron/Guedes WOLVERINE a shot, if only because I love SCALPED so much, but then when I saw it next to the other $4 Wolverine one-shot titled in a way that made me think I might need it to enjoy the Aaron $4 book, I just kept on cruising. Will probably pick it up in trade eventually for much cheaper. Though, hey, I still haven’t found any WEAPON Xs at Half Price. But life is long! Also, the first issue of Heinberg/Cheung’s CHILDREN’S CRUSADE-isn’t-it-really-just-YOUNG-AVENGERS-Vol.2? got completely by me, which is a shame because I loved YA and would’ve gobbled this up with a spoon, but the store was sold out of #1 and, you know 9-issue $4 a pop miniseries + between those two talented but not necessarily rapid creators, we’ll be lucky if #9 is out by the end of 2011, so I just figured I’d wait. All of which to say, maybe maybe that’s Best of Week, and I’m letting it get by me. But no! How could it be? It’s Wednesday, let’s go!
**
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #36 – Papa Whedon comes home at last. Interesting way to fold Spike and Angel in. Loved loved the Oceanic reference, if only because two pages earlier, when he looked up and saw the plane breaking apart, well, you know, I’m powerless not to think of that, so nice to see the island madness mixed up in the pop culture stew they’ve been cooking up all this time, with Andrew nowhere to be seen, even. How many Buffy/Angel/Spike threesome joke/innuendoes must the world endure before space-time collapses? I feel like it happens all the time. And check Angel’s facial expression, he looks up for it, man! Wanker!
It certainly is entertaining to get those two in the mix, cranking up an ensemble that wasn’t hurting for chemistry or character depth before they wormholed in out of, I guess, IDW continuity. Absolutely did not care about the reveal on the last page, though, because, I have to be honest, just about the entire first season did nothing for me. You could see the whole thing coming together for a minute during that talent show when the three of them did Macbeth, but other than that, I thought the entire twelve-episode run was pretty thin, even with the finale written and directed by Our Dread Joss & Master, when the theme song kicks in at the climax, mm, just awkward, all of which to say, Mark Metcalf is by far my least favorite Big Bad (ah, actually, that chick in Season 5 was terrible, to the point that I’ve wiped her name from my frontal lobe. Joy? Gloria? Metcalf was maybe better than her, but come on. I’m saying I liked Warren better. And I haaaated Warren)(of course, I rationalize Season 6 away by saying the entire thing was actually a set-up for Willow to be the Big Bad, and that I can live with, love, even). But I’m probably coming across too negative, I enjoyed this and am very interested to see how we bring Season 8 in for a landing, after all this time. And what a Jo Chen cover, my God! What Jeanty must be thinking when and if he sees hers next to his on the rack.
THE BOYS #46 – Yas, this book is cooking with gasoline now and just keeps pouring on more and more. Without going back through the entire run, this might be my favorite conversation involving Butcher, and you know that’s really saying something. The “Heh heh heh. Yeah, all right,” after he susses out the deal with the menstrual blood that went down about three years ago our time, just priceless. Oh man, and then that stunt at the end. Ennis is killing it killing it, and old Russ Braun is completely holding it down, which, never would’ve thought that I’d be loving BOYS issues this much drawn by anyone but Robertson. Carry on!
BRIGHTEST DAY #9 – Mm, I didn’t care about this one so much. Even though a whole chunk of it was J’onn/Ollie. The entire Aqualad thing is turning me off. Maybe instead of Legacy Character Iteration #45, we could just create something new? From whole cloth? If only because I feel like the natural progression from this will be eventually people start caring about this new kid and then in ten or fifteen years, we get the new Johns masterpiece AQUALAD: REBIRTH and everybody falls all over themselves to make the return of Garth a bestseller. Eh, maybe not.
HOUSE OF MYSTERY #29 – Man, the paper quality on this is pretty offensive, given how much more I dig the storytelling than, let’s just say BRIGHTEST DAY since I read that right before. The goblin story with the twist ending was a laugh. The fill-in guy was fine, but if you put Luca Rossi’s name on the cover, you know, I kind of expect to see his work inside. Sturges has always really done a great job with that Alan Moore trick of juxtaposing narrative captions against images that create tension with each other, usually with another layer of dialogue going on in the images. This is a really tricky thing to pull off and so easy to come off as amateurish or precious, but he’s always nailed it on this series. And when I got to the last page, I wondered if this wasn’t his best run at that yet. Good show, boss.
****
BEST OF WEEK: ASTRO CITY SPECIAL: SILVER AGENT #2 – Wow and wonder, I guess that was worth fifteen years of waiting. The only thing about this, it’s been such a while since I’ve reread the first two volumes that I’m not sure how many old old questions this is answering and how much insanity’s just bubbling up for the first time. Not that I really care at the moment, it’s a fantastic read. And an excellent retort to all the sass going back and forth here this week about comics being for kids and artistic hypocrisy and super-dismemberments. Just hand anybody of any age this book, and that pretty much settles all of that. This is for everybody and it wins. So many ideas and flights of the imagination compressed into a single issue. I mean, Ohmerika? I read maybe Greg Burgas’s take that that meant our fair country took up the name of its 44th president and I didn’t get that AT ALL, but it’s a valid read, and an insane notion, and I love that this series just throws that out for a page for us to interpret as we will before barreling on to the next slab of crazy. And the idea that the silver artifact might really be the entire catalyst for the series? Just dropping that in out of nowhere? Incredible.
I imagine JLA/AVENGERS was pretty much an impossible thing to write and draw—so many characters to service, never even mind the fans—and Busiek/Perez hit that one out of the park, and MARVELS was certainly pretty swell, but there’s no question in my mind that this series will certainly stand the test of time as Busiek’s masterpiece, a fulfillment of potential and one of the greatest things that this medium has to offer, an exultation and celebration of the little flutter thrill we feel when seeing or hearing or reading about a man that can fly and thinking, hey, maybe one day, I can do that, too.
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