5/09/12

BATMAN #9—The T-Rex! Because, of course. How many fanboys wish they thought of that? The crossover gets properly underway this week as Capullo/Glapion manage to not only make their ninth monthly deadline but ship a week early, terrifying, given the quality of these pages. Thus far, this gives every indication of being the opposite of, say “The Resurrection of R’as Al-Ghul,” meaning the links are tight and organic as opposed to tenuous and forced, there are thus far no continuity errors and the writing in general is top-shelf. The Albuquerque back-up, though, man, gives every indication Snyder’s going to retcon the Wayne murder. Dodgy tightrope to walk, but I trust him.

BATMAN AND ROBIN #9—I love Damian in this issue. The one line where he straight up dresses-down the commando, ending with calling him an imbecile, is about the most I’ve ever enjoyed the character, so pitch-perfect. Which is fortunate, as Bruce is now stuck over there with Capullo and the gang and this is essentially a Robin solo-title. The kid can more than carry the weight. Not sure I’ve ever witnessed such an effective character rehabilitation, from his first appearance/return in BATMAN #655 up until now. And speaking of the first volume of Morrison, Lee Garbett clocks in here to deliver solid fill-in work, not quite up to the level we’ve come to expect from Gleason/Gray, but getting the job done. And Lord knows the lads needed the time off after the first eight issues.

FRANKENSTEIN, AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E #9—Oh wow, so he just backtrails Animal Man? That’s . . . that’s wonderful, particularly since it wasn’t like advertised or anything, to the best of my knowledge. THIS is what we’ve been needing, not dozens of crossover tie-ins kicking off every April or May, just solid well-crafted issues that are entertaining enough in their own right and, hey, if they logically progress toward including one another, so much the better. I’d recommend this title, ANIMAL MAN, and SWAMP THING to anyone who’s ever been intrigued by the characters, and it’s a cool thing to see them naturally come together in a bigger story that’s not going to get me one extra dollar out of pocket, as I’m already showing up every month for all of the them anyway, delighted to see What Happens Next.

THE NEW AVENGERS #26—Bendis treads on dangerous hallowed ground here, having the audacity to enlist Hickman’s da Vinci Marvelization into this tie-in. For a couple of pages, there, I was blinded by nerd rage, thinking that the YEARS AGO… caption meant like the 1950s instead of, I guess, HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO…, was thinking that after all of this time having Weaver crank out S.H.I.E.L.D. pages as fast as he could, Bendis was just going to scoop our protagonist up into the present and hurl him into the frontlines of the latest Big Event, because why not? This proved thankfully not to be the case and we instead find the latest issue of this flashback tie-in getting much more interesting. Though, like Hickman retconning the Renaissance (or whatever era it was) to repel a Galactus invasion, suddenly saying here and now that, oh yeah, there was this whole other time with the Phoenix Force on Earth with this redhead in a monastery like hundreds of years ago does kind of take the shine off the original Saga. Deodato, though, man, even manages to channel Weaver with that big gun/sensor thing. The guy is incredible.

FATALE #5—Brubaker/Phillips/Stewart turn up with the last issue of the first part of their Lovecraft noir and do a fine job bringing this initial flashback set-up to a logical conclusion that pays off what’s already happened and, of course, sets up more of the scratch-your-eyes-out horrah. Enough can’t be said about how well these men make comic books together, the depth of the quality of their work. In their hands, most little moments that are no more than “Guy gets out of the car and looks around,” not even character moments but just occasional little flashes of filler you can’t cut to get from Point A to Point C, even these beats are things of majesty. I will say that I find it odd that this series is the one of theirs that’s like the breakout hit, apparently. It made total sense to me that INCOGNITO would do better than CRIMINAL, b/c you’ve got the entire demographic of the latter + everyone who will only buy superheroes potentially signing up for the former, but it doesn’t make sense that this one would come along and blow them both away. Ah, well. We wish them success wherever they find it. I also love Brubaker apologizing for no back-matter, like we’ll just storm his gates when we find out there is none, only to turn around and be like, “I’ve got the best Jess Nevins essay evah here on my hard drive, but we’ll just see you kids in a few months whenever I figure out how to write Issue Six . . .” 

MORNING GLORIES #18—Warn’t this supposed to be the conclusion of PE? Not the case, apparently, as we get the hot and dirty lowdown with a Hisao-centric and the results are . . . well, let’s just say topically relevant? I guess if you wanted to, you could make an argument that this title isn’t “mainstream” since it’s creator-owned at Image and isn’t like THE WALKING DEAD, but I think the trade’s been rocking the NYT bestseller list hard enough, all of this to say that the scene that goes down in here is a bit, ah, progressive for a title with as wide of a fanbase as I suspect this one has. Spencer again executes the Lindelof Manuever to perfection, brings us right back to the cliffhanger of, what was it, #14, confirms the image that we’ve had in our heads all along and then slams the door shut, we’ll see you next month. This remains the best arc of the series thus far, strong stuff.

There was no demonstrably apparent BEST OF WEEK this week. It was all pretty excellent. Sorry. Hey, it’s an election year!