9/15/10

THE UNWRITTEN #17 – Well, I was real sorry to have read ahead of time what the format of this issue was, because I think if I’d gone in cold, it would have blown my mind, but, knowing, I definitely bumped it up to first read of the night. A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure comic book! Presented horizontally with two little pages per actual comic page. Veeeeeery ambitious, and just a hell of a trip the first time through, because you’re trying not to see flashes of all these other pages as you’re thumbing through the book, and there keeping being all these paths not taken. I guess I chose well, because the first pass through took me all the way to the happy ending on Page 60. Then, going back a second time, it becomes apparent that Carey structures it in this beautiful way in which the story still folds back into other options, meaning if you chose Option A the first time and then the next time went with Option C instead of Option D, then when you take Option B on the repeat, eventually it works its way back to C and D so that you can take that other one, too. But then there are these scenes that are exactly the same no matter what, but are crazy because you’ve chosen different motivations for the characters, so one time, Wilson Taylor is hypnotizing Lizzie for altruistic reasons, the next time, you’re pretty sure he’s going to wind up molesting her because You, The Reader demanded it! But then I started wondering about, say the folks that went with Option A but then D, then on the next pass were B & C, so like they were rocking half of my first pass and half of my second all during their first, but missing the complementary halves. Yes? This makes perfect sense to me, but I don’t blame you for losing the thread, it’s a bit nutty. I thought that I’d hit all options on the first two passes (totaling 35 minutes, if anyone’s curious, quite the $4 reading value), but thumbing through now, I’m seeing some thread about an orderly or janitor somebody hanging himself, so I’ll have to dive back in. Not right now!

The only criticism I have about it, and maybe it’s just the choices I made, but once Tommy and Saxon show up, the choices taper off, so that the back half of the narrative is pretty similar no matter what messed up stuff you chose or dodged to have happen to poor Lizzie when she was a little girl. The back end could have been more elegant, but the issue’s already just a hell of a balancing act. Ryan Kelly’s inks on Gross’s art look great. Best issue yet.

MORNING GLORIES #1 – All right, this is a second printing and it came out a month ago, but my friendly neighborhood LCS ordered about 4 copies and they were gone five minutes after opening and I had no chance and just had to go track it down when I saw that I was about to miss the boat on #2, as well. So, does it buckle under all the $40-on-eBay hype four weeks after initial release? No sir, it does not. Great great first issue. It really feels more like an excellent television pilot, and I mean that in the best possible way. Hard to articulate this, the art’s gorgeous, but the beats, they’re just more TV, you know? Like with CASANOVA, UMBRELLA ACADEMY, CHEW (just spitting out here the most recent first issues I adored that spring to mind), you never forget that you’re reading a comic. And that’s not a bad thing. But, here, I dunno. There was more acting? Somehow? Moving on from that mangled thought, I was real impressed with every aspect of this book. The way the opening scene grabs you but then flips it and slips right through your fingers. The economical 2-page opening for each main character. The meet-cute. The pretty shocking last page. This is definitely a ride to sign up for, dug it so much that I immediately bumped #2 down to the bottom of the night, leaving only Morrison afterward to bat cleanup.

NEW MUTANTS #16 – This is excellent New Mutants work, you get the feeling Wells and Kirk are just barely hitting their stride. I hope these guys hang out through #50. What long-time fan isn’t going to dig the moment between Sam and Dani? Or Illyana’s cloven-hoofed arrival? Or drunk New Mutants riding for days in Limbo? Or the babies from X-Terminators showing up and whupping everybody? Just realized reading this, I started picking up UNCANNY X-MEN monthly with #236, just a couple of months before INFERNO got going, which makes that my first live-and-in-person Big Event. And I remember walking down to the 7-11 on 19th & Quaker half a mile down the road from my house and laying down, I think a dollar (hell, Marvel probably had it up at a buck and a quarter) for X-TERMINATORS #1, a title I just had to have, because it contained Important Plot Guaranteed To Lead Back In to the book that I already enjoyed. God knows how many hundreds of times that’s happened since, but I appreciate Zeb Wells mining that 22-year-old storyline so that I could figure that out.

It felt pretty good to just be able to walk down 19th Street under my own power at eleven years old and buy a comic book. Though, man, still nothing like that little flutter on 34th between Avenue U and V I’d get every time the car would start to slow down to turn left, just before that old yellow sign came into view.

X-FACTOR #209 – Again, they blow a great splash page by putting it on the cover. That would have been a killer beat. PAD and company deliver another solid installment. Though, the best page of any Marvel comic this week is that freaking Thor promo for Fraction and Perry. I’ve been really working myself up over it the longer they’ve pushed it back, and I’m about ready to just start grabbing people in the store by the shirt and screaming at them that the God of Thunder is coming, he’s coming next month, at long last, hail and well met! Even pulled #337 out right before putting the little girl down tonight, fuck it, I’m jamming as much Simonson as I can between now and then. Context, son!

BRIGHTEST DAY #10 – My interest in this one’s been flagging, but they reeled me right back in with the Firestorm Matrix Big Bang retcon (killer bandname, there)(or, more likely, a song by those Kirby Krackle fellas up north) and then the sheer stupid ridiculous audacity of that last page. And the knowledge that this will probably sell more than Bendis’s AVENGERS again this month. Yeah, sheer stupid ridiculous audacity sums it up for me. Entertaining, though far from transcendent.

DV8 #6 – Mm, I need to go back and read these in one sitting, I guess in two months to get ready for #8. I haven’t held on to my grasp of who these characters are, though I remember it being pretty well laid out in #1. But I was more like, “Now who’s Hector?” than dialed into the scene. Maybe Isaacs’s best work, though, she can certainly make a redhead locked up in a room for 8 issues look amazing.

I hate myself for not buying NORTHLANDERS in singles.

STEVE ROGERS: SUPER-SOLDIER#3 – Brubaker/Eaglesham are killing it. This has been a great idea, showing how much of a hero Steve is, even without the formula coursing through his biceps. Makes me miss the first couple of years of Brubaker/Epting, but plus ca change . . .

SUPERGOD #4 – All right, this is another that came out forever ago, but I just got my sweaty little hands on it, and I’m glad it went this way, much better to have a longer break in between #3 and #4 than #4 and #5. Um, Ellis is still a snarling madman and we should probably just creep on by lest he hear us. Gastonny is really making it happen, as well, easily some of the best interiors I’ve ever seen from Avatar, smokes everybody except Ryp, I’d say. Ah, though Burrows was great on that first issue with Moore. The three panel shot when Perun activates his hammer, followed by, well, really just call it the whole opening six pages, that’s worth the $4, right there. Can’t wait to see how this one ends up. Ellis gives you more concept density in a single-digit run of creator-owned mini than you get in years worth of most serialized entertainment from the Big Two. Hickman’s FF being the notable exception.

MORNING GLORIES #2 – And now we’re back to you, my lovelies. This one was entertaining enough, though not quite such a concentrated blast as the first one, though I’m thinking we can chalk that up to a standard page count (not checking that, though). That RA Pamela chick is pretty damn annoying. And I guess this is the next day? We kind of need a caption at the top, it totally seems like it’s still their birthday, the day they showed up, but then everyone’s in detention and we get all of this NIGHT BEFORE flashback business, even though they would have had to keep Casey overnight in between issues for all of that to make since. Some rookie continuity malarkey, there. The covers are gorgeous, but it seems like colorist Alex Sollazzo should get his name on the cover before the guy who, yeah, drew an amazing picture. End of the day, a slight dip after the focused glory of #1, but still very engaging, and I’m in for the long haul.

****

BEST OF WEEK: JOE THE BARBARIAN #7 – It’s been quite a little while since #6, yes? More than worth the wait. Really quickened my heart to get that double-shot of Superman there on the opening splash, knew that the ALL-STAR chasm wasn’t about to open up or anything, but we can always hope. Totally made me miss the Dynamic Duo on the first pass through. We’re racing through pretty fast here, now. For insane panels this week, I’m pretty sure this book takes the top five. You’ve got the They’ve got zombies! call to arms, the hilarious cut to Smoot’s dad’s blue crab Renewal of Kingship ordeal, and every other one that Robin’s in. Sheer brilliant madness, I’ll be quite sad when it’s over, but so so grateful for all of the imagination fuel. Sean Murphy is a force.