2/6/13

DETECTIVE COMICS #17 — These guys Layman, Fabok, and Cox are just going for it so hard with such consistency, it’s really starting to freak me out. I can tell that I’m going to run out of things to say about this run pretty soon now, because every single time out, I love every aspect of every page, there really appears to be no room for improvement, I will soon be reduced to simply listing what happened and pointing out the various aspects of how great it was. I guess start pining for a Mason Savoy crossover appearance, maybe. That’s it, this run won’t be perfect until that’s happened.

ANIMAL MAN #17 — It’s all been building to this, the final assault on Arcane from two fronts. Lemire & Snyder keep the action moving and Pugh and Green again both turn in fine work in styles that manage to be unique but not clash. I do appreciate the decision to delegate them specific groups to draw and not expect the reader to reconcile two different versions of the same character when there’s more than enough going on here with this ensemble to not need to pass various folks around. The choice of new Green Lantern is particularly inspired, I would definitely be very much all over any further adventures from that particular fellow. Perfect cliffhanger, everything’s humming along quite nicely here. Over to you, Holland.

SWAMP THING #17 — And but, hell. Where the fuck is Marco Rudy? Nothing against Andrew Belanger. Out of context. I’m not familiar with his work and he turns in perfectly serviceable pages, certainly better than anything I can produce. And he’s going for those organic Paquette panel-border layouts. But it’s impossible to read this as a monthly fan without taking the situation into context. We are at GoTime here. This is the finale of something that’s been organically building with nary a misstep across two titles for a year and a half. I get the whole thing about how you can’t always have Paquette every month, but here’s the deal: don’t send Rudy—who has been nothing but terminating his alternate slot in this title with extreme prejudice since the get-go—his marching orders before seeing this thing through to the end. I just presumed that #15 being his last issue meant that we were solid with Paquette for the duration. I don’t care if Rudy picked up a Spidey book for the other guys. Booting him out of spite only hurts the title and the fans who have supported it all this time. It would be one thing if they brought in someone else who just blew it up. Gene Ha did stellar work over in ACTION and even a lesser-known name with serious proven chops like Eddy Barrows would have been a great fit. As is, I never managed to fully engage with the story due to my frustration with Editorial over the art not quite living up to the insane bar that this title has consistently set for itself since September 2011. Looking to be crushed next month but am not pleased with this hiccup.

GREEN ARROW #17 — Okay, I’m admittedly a bit lost, as this is my first issue, I came onboard with the new creative team, but it appears as though Oliver has been completely rebooted and was another beautiful nameless no-dialogue extra on Seasons 3 and 4 of L O S T immediately before this series/issue began? The questions don’t matter, Lemire provides us the bare bones of a status quo before completely upending it and throwing in the nemesis yang to our hero’s yin. I’ve been a big fan of Andrea Sorrentino since X-FACTOR and these pages are taking it to a next level, reaching for that J.H. Williams greatness with the occasionally uncolored in-panel squares highlighting crucial limbs/weapons in the fight. Also, gorgeous colors. Are any other New 52 people coloring their own work? It doesn’t bode well for a lack of fill-ins, here’s hoping editors Cavalieri/Stewart check back in to the Rudy school of thought in that regard when the time comes, as opposed to what we just got a minute ago in SWAMP THING. This first issue didn’t just annihilate me, but the creators are top drawer and I look forward to seeing what else they’ve got in store.

MULTIPLE WARHEADS: ALPHABET TO INFINITY #4 —I can’t tell if the four-month Graham blister bender I’ve been on this last little bit jamming all of KING CITY and regular installments of PROPHET and then this entire thing too finally like gave me an overdose or if I’m just bummed that Sexica and Nikoli didn’t show up in this issue or what, but this one didn’t fill me up with the usual magic. That’s of course badly understating and kind of terribly taking for granted all the wonder and greatness  and undistilled fun that Brandon Graham still manages to impart upon every single page. The stretch from “Cannibal Run” to “Sphinx to High Heaven” containing the Disbelief Suspension Bridge is maybe my favorite sequence of pun insanity thus far. Until the Marx Men show up. To say nothing of all that absolutely rabid pear nonsense at the end. And I’m a huge fan of the Six Paths Out of Nowhere to Anywhere. I’ll probably sit on this for a few months and work up an appetite before downing all four in a single sitting and finding new things to love about this that escaped me on the first couple of passes through.

FASHION BEAST #6 — Wow, there is a ridiculous amount going on in simply those first three pages alone: the silhouette-play crosses over from any pretense of subtlety to have the reader all but reading the dialogue of the Beast/Le Patron in the author’s rumbling baroque Northampton accent, also that bit about the bald ape inventing fashion, and then climaxing in the “for in the image, there . . . is . . . power!” line, which of course has all kinds of resonance in the comic book industry that it didn’t twenty years ago. I know this was written a few years before that, but, especially delivered by his proxy avatar, that line serves to comedically enhance the mythical magus legend that Moore has crafted around his public persona, further makes him seem like this wild sequential Nostradamus of the eighties, scribbling out phrases and throwaway plot ideas that predict or self-fulfill into relatively seismic events and changes in the industry landscape decades later. Glamour, indeed! The face reveal, it was a perfectly executed shot/counter-shot between the odd/even page-turn, but at first it seemed like we shouldn’t have gotten to see his face, not now, if ever. Really seemed like a mistake. But it did lend the following conversation a bit more depth than it would have otherwise had. Perfect last shot, there at the end.

DAREDEVIL: END OF DAYS #5 — Yet another seismic installment of one of the greatest Daredevil stories of all time. I’ve said it before, but I’m so so glad I didn’t wait for the trade on this, even bought #1 with the intention of doing so but just wanting to get the first chapter after all of these years, only then I couldn’t stop, but the tremendous benefit for everyone who’s picking this up serially is we have a real-time seven-month gap between that opening scene and finding out what the hell Mapone means in the final issue. The mystery has weeks and weeks and weeks to percolate and fester in our imaginations, accruing all kinds of weight and poignancy and expectation that is simply impossible to achieve for a reader who just sits down some time next year with a really gorgeous hardcover and jams the entire thing in a single sitting. So, all of that said, what’s my take on this particular issue, the first one of the back half of the series?

Well, I’m certainly a fan of opening with a Sienkiewicz-painted Punisher VS Daredevil splash that tosses out the old crackpot theory that they were really the same person. While we all know that can’t be the case, just the simple idea sent my brain racing to make connections, rewrite exchanges. “I am Matt’s great vengeance and furious anger.” The idea of Matt training his disciple is so spot-on from a character standpoint, I’m terribly embarrassed not to have immediately hit upon it as soon as I made it to that last page of the first issue. And but wow, it’s been cool enough revisiting all the C- and D-list members of the rogues gallery but one of, maybe THE, very first issue of DAREDEVIL that I bought new off the spinner rack was, I wanna say #267, well into the Nocenti/JRJr run with Bullet fighting Hornhead on the cover with his little daughter in the background, so it hit me a lot harder, much more personal emotional resonance, Bullet rushing in like that at the end, as opposed to someone like Gladiator or various other folks we’ve dropped in on so far. And of course the cliffhanger is heartstopping and as good as it could possibly be. Rescue from plummeting to death and potential answers are only four weeks away! I’m really just terribly grateful to all of these guys—Mack, Bendis, Janson, Sienkiewicz, Hollingsworth, Caramagna, even that old Wacker—for producing such a quality product and proving once again that no matter how many great stories have been told about a character (I mean, look at it, the original Miller run, Miller back with Mazzucchelli in one of the greatest Marvel stories of all time, Bendis/Maleev with a little help from Mack, Brubaker/Lark), it’s always possible to dig a little bit deeper and try to pull out maybe the best one yet. Inspiring work.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #7 — Kitty trains three-fifths of the founding crew and Mystique takes a walk with young Scott. Bendis continues to completely nail every character voice. Had talked myself into holding the line against picking up UNCANNY with Bachalo, in some small way rein in this bi-weekly Marvel Now! rampage, but the only one I’d be hurting is myself. Marquez and Gracia turn in pages that put storytelling first but still manage every single time to be a series of lush breathtaking snapshots that you can stare and stare at all on their own without wondering what happened before or after, whatever you’re seeing right there in that moment is more than enough. I am curious now for the first time what kind of a timeframe Bendis has for this thing, I mean, he can keep it going for a while, but seems like this is a finite situation. By definition, no? I’m going to throw a blind dart at the board and say the last issue is #35, due this Christmas.

AVENGERS #5 — Here this book is again! That’s three in three weeks, True Believers. We have here another –centric issue introducing us to a new member of the team and, correct me if I’m wrong, one of the two new characters that Hickman has created for this series. Izzy Dare is an impressive figure, managing to join the Imperial Guard on her own merit, though she’s certainly got the genes for it, since her grandfather’s name can’t be a coincidence. Isn’t he English, though? That screwed me up, when I got to the name at the end, realized I’d been maybe doing the accent throughout? Kubert’s work is commendable as ever but I do miss Dean White on colors. Wonder what team is next on deck. A couple more singles with Kubert/(Frank) Martin first? Is Frank Martin, in fact, married to Laura? If so, is it wrong that I like him better?

BEST OF WEEK: NEW AVENGERS #3 — Holy shit! Those first two issues, as tremendous as they were, definitely seemed to be little more than set-up for some very serious business to crash through into the good old 616, and here we have it. Four days later, indeed. The events that take place in this single issue deliver more drama, shock, and raw seething imagination crackle than anything that anyone writing for Marvel has ever ever managed to pack into any of these so-called Big Events that keep coming down the pike as reliably as spring blooming into summertime. That is not hyperbole. There are two massive plot points that take place in these twenty pages alone that would deliver upon any level of supermassive Internet hype, the kind of which is regularly heaped upon these crossovers. That’s the joy and wonder, I’m not picking this up curious to see what massive paradigm they’re going to shift askew for a little while or who’s going to get killed and then resurrected a few months later, I’m only expecting to be completely blown away by events on a scale that is immense enough to justify this gathering of heavyweights in the Marvel Universe. I really dug that initial ILLUMINATI mini-series that Bendis and Reed banged out a few years back that serves as the jumping-off point here, very intelligent retcons packed throughout, but ever since then, I haven’t felt like the concept was able to translate into present-day events with anything even approaching the amount of weight and gravitas that such an undertaking warrants. Those days are done. What’s happening in this title is, for my money, the biggest event that the House of Ideas has ever produced. I mean, a fifty-word sentence summarizing exactly what takes place in this issue is all that it would take to convince even the most jaded corporate comic boycotter, but I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. Same goes with attaching the best images to this post, even unlettered, just the Epting art alone would give too much away. Just buy the first three issues of this book.

 

This was the first time, I totally missed it last issue, but the connective tissue between this title and the other one is most likely “the event” that happened in a parallel universe and triggered this multiversal calamity in the first place. That’s got to be the White Event that Adam referenced in his encrypted dialogue up on Mars over in #3 of the other title. If the Psi-Hawk shows up, I am going to seriously lose my shit, it will not be a pretty thing. Though, hey, just realizing that getting JRJr to draw Kenneth Connell/Star Brand is more probability than possibility, if the New Universe is actually the place Hickman is looking to take this mad narrative. Wild wild times. The only slightly false note to be found here is that that last page is more than a bit reminiscent of a crucial plot point in a ten-year-old DC event, but I can almost No-Prize myself into reconciling that via the entire parallel worlds/realities conceit of this series and the fact that Captain America and Batman are Marvel/DC equivalencies, if not analogues, pretty much without debate*, so this is just the way all of that mindwipe malarkey played out in the 616. Without the ridiculous amount of color-coded first-person narrative captions that make you spend half the book trying to figure out who the hell is even telling you the story. I am out of my mind for this thing, can't wait to see where it's heading next.

* SEE: “Under the Red Hood” vs “The Winter Soldier”; “The Return of Bruce Wayne” vs “Captain America: Reborn”; the pair’s interaction in Busiek/Perez’s pitch-perfect JLA/AVENGERS