1/02/13

NEW AVENGERS #1—Memento mori. “Remember your mortality,” or literally “Remember to die” in the future imperative. Old Hickman is certainly opening up his sister title here with something a bit weightier than just what the hell Luke Cage and Jessica Jones and friends are getting up to.  He builds on a single page way back from that first Bendis/Maleev ILLUMINATI special when T’Challa bails after telling the rest of them that they are getting too big for their britches. We actually get that page in flashback sepia, which I really appreciate because have really not been carrying that one around with me all this time, and then open with a scene that it looks like serves as a catalyst for a reversal of that opinion. And it is The Business. During that brief sojourn in Wakanda toward the end of the FF run, Hickman seemed to immediately have so much fun with both king and country itself that you really wanted him to go back and explore that territory a bit further, and it looks like he’s doing exactly that with this title. Former FF collaborators Steve Epting & Rick Magyar return to the fold with Frank D’Armata on colors to illustrate the story of three of Wakanda’s best and brightest coming of age and the horrible consequences that result. This is basically one of the tightest plotted and beautifully rendered Black Panther issues that I’ve ever experienced and it’s just the very beginning of what’s on the horizon. Don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed Hickman’s graphic design madness more than when he answers to the question “Who answers the call of desperate men?” herein. This kind of reading is immediately addictive and kind of wants to ruin you.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #5—Well, it’s official. In a single arc, Bendis/Immonen/von Grawbadger/Gracia have produced the most memorable and entertaining X-Men arc I’ve read since at least Whedon/Cassaday finally finished up over on ASTONISHING, and frankly, this gives even that a run for its money right out of the gate. They make the return of Jean Grey (albeit the teenage version from long before the adjective “uncanny” became synonymous with “serial mutant soap/space opera”) not the exercise in tedium that it should be by now but instead quite a riveting character study of someone thrown into a terrible situation, having to process all of the awful business that the Marvel 616 has had to throw at Jean Grey since she boarded that shuttle with Peter Corbeau and the X-Men way back in the summer of 1976, our time. While Teen Marvel Girl takes center-stage this issue, Bendis remains completely in control of his ensemble, a conductor with an intimate understanding of his orchestra’s nuances and capabilities. Once again, every single character interaction is pitch-perfect, including and especially those featuring the founding members who have made it to the present and are able to interact with their younger counterparts. And all of this while not only embracing all the convoluted Avengers vs X-Men big event madness that has come before but actually letting that plot drive these mutants toward reactions, emotions, and dialogue that never rings false and remains totally consistent with characters who some of us have been reading about for decades. The art is also nothing less than A-list, Immonen and von Grawbadger’s lines rendered in Gracia’s evocative palette that manages to be breathtaking while not totally drowning out the narrative with its gorgeous lush tones. The Jean Grey double-page splash montage alone, my God. If I was the editor trying to find the colorist for this and Laura Martin wasn’t available, I can’t imagine what a godsend Marte Gracia must have seemed like. An indispensible title in the new Marvel stable. I feel like I’m home, home at last after all these years, and even though Logan changed the name to The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, this is the place where I’ve spent so many months and months and months with characters I adore, watching them live and fight and love and die, all the while training to make themselves the best they can possibly be.

DAREDEVIL: END OF DAYS #4—Just when we can’t up the stakes any more on how bleak and horrible this future really is, they drop the Presidential ticket there on the first page. The Falcon’s veep is Norman Osborn. I guess that’s about right. If it was Harry, none of this would be happening. As absurdly high as this all-star creative team of Bendis/Mack/Janson/Sienkiewicz/Hollingsworth has already raised the bar for themselves with the first three issues, they go us one better right out of the gate with Ben Urich’s keen analyzation of Bullseye’s crime scene, which is a such a meticulous and well-conceived reflection of the former’s character, it almost makes you weep for the horrible bastard. So damn perfect. Fortunately Alex Maleev is on-hand to jostle Urich’s powers of observation honed by a lifetime of slogging through the shit of the 616. And then Turk. I was surprised by how good it was to see him. I’m glad he got his own place. But that last scene. I’m not going to just recap it here because you really have to experience it, but clearly the word “Mapone” is a weapon, right? If the cover to next issue is any indication, it triggers a death-wish for everyone who has thus far heard it. I can’t imagine what set of circumstances could weaponize two syllables to that extent amongst such a varied group of individuals but am completely confident that this team is going to deliver an answer that provides impossible satisfaction. I just hope we all survive the experience.

THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS #8—Spectaular. Nuclear. It’s all been building to this since the first issue, and these pages are from the get-go some of the most scratch-your-eyes-out balls-to-the-wall insanity ever visited upon this shallow mortal plane. I feel like even attempting to summarize the contents of this issue will get me institutionalized by the Google Police or that maybe just running through it all will be the last thing to trigger the spell and I really will scratch my eyes out. I barely made it through the issue. Three times. But, um . . . highlights, maybe? Quick flashes for all of our sakes. Yes, let’s.

1) Nehebu’s hieroglyphic speech is a treasure but I’m struggling with the translation. That second character on Page 2, Panel 2 is an “n,” but there don’t seem to be English alphabet equivalents to the ankh and the dude with one arm raised. AS unlikely as it is, I’m positive this was covered during Hickman’s panel at MorrisonCon and it just hurts my heart.

2) Retasking complete? Who will draw the next 70-something issues of MORNING GLORIES now? He just had a BAY-bee! And THE STUFF OF LEGEND? And, oh shit, this very book?!?!? I guess rumors of a fill-in on the next couple issues are making all kinds of since now. Poor Hickman.

3) An Einstein/Feynman bro enforcer arc would be the best thing ever.

4) Having Yuri & Laika pump up Wernher for the suicide mission is I guess the best thing until the Einstein/Feynman bro enforcer arc.

5) FDR: A.I.’s employment of “horseradish” as an epithet is truly one for the ages.

6) I think Feynman on that last page is standing in for every single reader and maybe even creator there with that reaction to the preceding twenty-four pages. Jesusfuck. And Infinite Oppenheimers ever looming.

PROPHET #32—The first Brandon Graham-less issue of this title is released and, you know I wasn’t really worried, but the quality level doesn’t plummet like you might fear. Simon Roy produces this entire thing by himself aided only by Ed Brisson on letters and it’s yet another origin story, this time of Brother John Ka, a female version of the Prophet clone whose nomenclature apparently does not bow before gender. It’s a fairly straightforward tale with the mad science fiction we’ve come to expect seasoned by a liberal dose of social commentary vis a vis a cloning technocracy vs alpha-based primitives topped off by a nice character moment that I was hoping for but doubted was actually coming. And yet again, another soldier is folded into the band. This book is very exciting, providing serious amounts of mind-bending science pulp month in and month out while organically building toward something greater, accruing narrative weight all the while. This past year, anybody who wants to snort about the way Liefeld draws feet, I just tell them I’m real real grateful to the man for hiring these guys and the ones next book down to relaunch his properties, because these are some consistently damn good comics right here and that is not something that should ever be taken for granted.

GLORY #31—These boys really kick it into high gear here with the whole damn family. Gloriana and her beleaguered troupe finally come face-to-face with her father and the result is far more culinary than everything up to now would lead you to expect. Nanaja continues to steal every scene she’s in with blacked-out curse words even more deadly than all her predatorial fighting acumen (she breaks off seven alone on her first page this issue, possibly a record?). And Ulises Farinas proves more than up to the formidable challenge of dropping in on the middle of all this madness to pencil and ink an eight-page flashback scene with series regular Ross Campbell showing back up at the end to deliver a last page that’s downright cathartic after all of that breakfast nook conversation. At least one character won’t be delivering so much dialogue next month.

FATALE #11—And now, the Brubaker/Phillips/Stewart triumvirate eases back a little and makes themselves comfortable. This is suddenly not a mini-series, or even a collection of mini-series but a monthly. I presume this puts both CRIMINAL and INCOGNITO on indefinite hiatus? That kind of hurts, especially when you think about how much CRIMINAL would have potentially linked across the family dynasties and really opened up by now with another eleven issues in the can, but you know, you’ve got to go where the muse takes you and I’ve certainly enjoyed every issue of this series, as well. This issue is our first stand-alone of three and very reminiscent of those old CREEPY and EERIE EC Comics, I was already thinking, before Brubaker was good enough to cite for me right there in his text-piece. As usual, these guys mine themes and tropes that have been done to death a thousand times and somehow make them sing anew. I mean, if you describe the plot of this story, not really that incredible, seen it all before, but it’s all in the execution here. Masters of their craft. Looking forward to experiencing whatever horror they mined next month. Or for Brubaker to announce a new different series. That would actually be hilarious, suddenly a Borges story, the same creators tunneling down a never-ending series of trapdoors, going on and on, starting new series after new series, never to return to complete any of them. Actually the Borges version of that story would probably be a description of the unwritten final issues of all those series. Okay, I’m going to go write that now.

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #34—We head into this book’s hiatus with a stand-alone featuring a couple of relations to characters with whom we’re already familiar. Good Will Bunting’s nephew Gene pays a visit to Felicia Book’s mother Abilena and gets shot full of dimes for his trouble. It’s all perfectly ominous and there’s a short-term prophetic vision that saves someone’s life, but the real payoff this issue is Rafael Albuquerque’s magnificent double-page splash follow-up to the first vision, a montage of characters we know doing things that we haven’t yet seen that is rendered as beautifully as anything within this title’s three-year run and is surely enough to whet readers’ collective appetite until Snyder/Albuquerque/McCaig come roaring back after they get a few issues in the can. It’s exciting to hear this being discussed as a halfway point, it’s honestly never even occurred to me that this thing was ever going to end, but if the storytellers are actively steering the narrative toward a set ending, you know it’s going to be spectacular. Old Scott Snyder has had just a hell of a run at DC these last three years, I suppose it was a good thing there was a shop like Vertigo up and running where he could squeeze his head in the door, there.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #15—The arrival of Ray Fawkes as co-writer probably signals the beginning of the end for Jeff Lemire’s run, while Mikel Janin & Jeromy Cox’s art remains as clean and beautiful as ever, though still quite a stylistic departure for this stable of Vertigo expatriates (with the exception of Amy Reeder Hadley over on MADAME XANADU, this is actually right in-line with that, stylistically). This run has been entertaining enough, though not quite as devastating as I’d hoped when Lemire took the reins with the announcement that these were his favorite characters to read about as a teen. The adventure component is fine, the plot moving along and enough quippy quips, but it’s been a little light on the in-depth character work that Lemire pours into his graphic novels and SWEET TOOTH and even ANIMAL MAN.

FLASH #15—We open with some strong pages with art by Marcus To, Ryan Winn, and (I presume) Ian Herring. The last time To filled in, he did just fine living up to the very high bar set by this title’s regular art department, but it he raises his game a bit here. Really clean lines. But that’s all set-up for an extraordinary sequence of an unconscious Barry activating his “Speed Mind” and flash-forwarding through a myriad of possibilities as to how the battle with Grodd’s occupying army will play out. And you really have to see it to believe it, feels like I’ll have to burn a thousand words even barely beginning to do this justice, but the short version is that the composition and panel layout on this eight-page run of double-page spreads can hang with the deepest sickness that Williams or Quitely has to offer. We follow three lightning-bolt-shaped threads of probability crackling out of Barry’s mind, colored yellow, red, and blue. These are all no-dialogue montage shots averaging eight to twelve panels each per double-page spread and illustrating the eventual outcome of various tactics and ending when first Barry dies, then Patty dies, then finally when it looks like we might have a workable strategy. The very best part, though, it hit me there on that third double-page splash, right before I turned the page, was that we hadn’t yet seen this issue’s title page sequence and this entire thing, in addition to being an incredible visual depiction of a recent addition to Barry’s powers set, also serves the function of being the most badass glorious lead-up to this issue’s most innovative way yet to work the work our heroes name into the art. This business would have brought a tear to Will Eisner’s eye.

BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN INCORPORATED #6—With every issue, the circle closes and the end nears. I’m wild about this issue’s double-reversal on last month claiming suddenly that Damian isn’t the Third Batman, but oh by the way, here’s a kitty-cat who trusty old Pennyworth just rescued from the animal shelter. That two-panel bit where the cat takes a swipe at Damian, the surprise on the kid’s face followed by the look of love/trust/empathy in the next panel when he names him Alfred and potentially confirms and sets in motion all of the events from the #666 timeline first seen in July 2007, well, let’s just say that it was the very threshold of what I was able to bear at two in the morning in the great state of Texas. Not even counting Bat-Cow closing out the page with a resounding moo. But the real centerpiece of the issue is Talia maneuvering her detective through his paces accompanied by ten stages of understanding the parable of the Zen goatherd. The ninja man-bats versus the Iron Batmen was a particularly nice touch, I thought. And oh right, the Oroboro, Otto Netz’s perpetual energy source. There’s kind of so much shit going on here, it’s easy to lose track of a few things. And then it just . . . it all goes really wrong. I simultaneously don’t know if I can handle six more installments of this and am so wrecked that it’s going to be over.