3/06/13

BEST OF WEEK: NEMO: HEART OF ICE — (coming soon, just too much to write about here alone, never mind all these issues and my birthday/SXSW week, sorry for the cop-out, but here's a peek. It really is BEST OF WEEK, oh my!)

DETECTIVE COMICS #18 — Now, this one made me wish that Editorial was just keeping Morrison’s INCORPORATED run contained in a post New 52 pocket universe of some sort like I assumed was the case, because this issue’s motoring along kicking as much ass as it has since the first issue of the run and then all of a sudden we’ve got to crash to a halt and mourn the dead son, suddenly bringing everything into continuity and making us wonder, okay wait, so this is happening after BATMAN INCORPORATED #8, but the first thing Bruce does is go mess with all the Cobblepot/Emperor Penguin mess? But is Talia/Leviathan still running around? Or does all this take place after Morrison and Burnham are done? I’m usually great at distancing titles from one another, Wolverine can run around with however many crews he likes, but when we’re specifically referencing the Snyder/Capullo thing that just got done crossing over here and then it’s like everything had to pause for the last three months of Morrison/Burnham to happen and now we're back with the Layman/Fabok greatness, only then we finally get the proper Morrison/Burnham aftermath I hope pretty soon, I’m just not really seeing the synergistic gain in fusing all of those stories, it completely interrupted the flow and took me out of the greatness that these guys in this title have been delivering since Page One of #13. Also, while I’m bitching, how dare Mike Marts drop an OMG in a footnote to this august title? I cannot envision Mr. Schwartz accepting this in good conscience and must therefore also condemn such an act.

ANIMAL MAN #18 — This cover has a melodramatic promise to keep! Especially considering what’s gone before. But these guys deliver on all levels, providing almost tidy resolution to all of the madness that has befallen the Bakers thus far. Great to see the thing reversed with Maxine, but then of course, somebody’s got to pay the price. So terrible. And odd synchronistic parallel to what’s unfolding elsewhere in the DC Universe. I won’t go into further specifics, but suffice it to say that Lemire/Pugh/Kindzierski turn in probably the best issue of this volume yet, which is really saying something.

SWAMP THING #18 — And but that’s just the warmup for Snyder/Paquette’s swan song on this title. I barely know how to talk about it. What a stirring, emotional climax, as well earned as it was absolutely heartbreaking. This ranks amongst one of Snyder’s very best scripts. Paquette is a god. I honestly don’t think I can pick up the next issue because I just need this one to be The End so badly. Perfect.

GREEN ARROW #18 — All right, I’m starting to break up a bit, here. Leading off with an hour’s worth of new Alan Moore/Kevin O’Neill business might not have been the call for sustained longevity. Andrea Sorrentino draws real good.

GREEN LANTERN #18 — Wait, didn’t #17 just come out? Was it late? Or is this early? Or they wanted to synch up the Green ______ books because that worked out so well for the Vertigo expatriates? At any rate, we finally tune in to what’s going on with Hal and his buddy SInestro in the death dimension chamber of shadows or wherever with Ardian Syaf and Mark Irwin providing suitably ominous visuals. Though that is some kind of weak cliffhanger, who in their right mind is supposed to feel the least bit of tension or high stakes about that? Unless it’s a joke? Cliffhanger? Do it, Hal! Jump!

RORSCHACH #4 — Rorschach gets the shit kicked out of him by disco. I guess that sounds about right. Lee Bermejo’s work is absolutely glorious in sequentials, we are lucky that he takes the time to produce pages instead of just getting rich off of covers and prints. Azzarello delivers a script that is completely tonally consistent with the in-between Rorschach of its time period, neither Kovacs pre-dead-dog nor the character we encounter on the first page of the original series. But there’s really not enough weight to this narrative, no apparent reason that this story needed to be told (not counting just getting to see Bermejo’s art). It took until the last issue of Cooke’s MINUTEMEN for that one to earn its keep, he and Conner’s SILK SPECTRE was of course perfection from the first page, and I have hopes for the final issues of OZYMANDIAS and COMEDIAN, but this one, while managing to in no way contradict a single shred of extant characterization of this beloved vigilante madman, also doesn’t reveal anything about him that we didn’t already know.

FASHION BEAST #7 — This one definitely left me a bit cold as a single issue. Too much of the camera work is stiff in a way that it either didn’t or I failed to notice earlier on, like Percio’s running out of gas. The static staging felt a bit stiff. Am still interested to see where it’s going to go but am now fairly certain that it would make a much better single-sitting read, as it was originally intended (single-sitting viewing, if you want to split hairs, but same difference).

GLORY #34 — Oh, okay, wow, I didn’t realize this was ending. I mean, I kind of had a feeling, the way it’s been going here, but it was really a shock when a couple of those beloved characters just totally ate it. Keatinge wrings as much emotion out of that camera collection as possible, nice work. The real star of the show here, though, of course, is Ross Campbell, who lays waste to page after page of magnificent battle wreckage. And I love how Keatinge brings back the ripping-off-arms motif again, it started off as almost like a parody of the hyper-violent ultra-gory Image 90s and how that kind of got homogenized into the mainstream a bit by way of the Geoff Johns DCU of the 00s, and that was enough of a joke for me, but its return here suddenly feels like the only way this could have gone. “You rip off my arm? I rip off YOUR arm!” This has been a hell of a run.

DAREDEVIL: END OF DAYS #6 — The tension is becoming unbearable. Urich’s exchange with his son is a strong bit of character work to kind of ground this whole thing before it surely spirals off completely out of control. Could the new DD be the redhead playing pool in the bar when Ben’s talking to the Bugle? It certainly doesn’t look like a woman in costume, but then they do make a deal out of backlighting him/her, and the redhead is certainly prominent in the layout, up in the top left corner, the first thing we see in that crowd scene and then also the last, reflected there in the far right of the last panel on the page. Or is it Natasha keeping tabs on him? Or Matt’s daughter with same? I thought the Owl had Matt’s entire head the first panel when he busted out that mask. Not what you want to keep in your desk drawer, Leland! And another cliffhanger that ratchets up the stakes a few more notches. These last two issues are going to be madness, I have no doubt.

AGE OF ULTRON: BOOK ONE — Am only just now much later seeing Hawkeye there on the cover and feel kind of foolish. So this is the batshit insanity that they dropped on us last Free Comic Book Day. This thing has been in the can for a while now! The full issue doesn’t give us any more exposition as to exactly what happened other than Ultron Won, and that’s maybe a good thing. The Hitch/Neary/Mounts artwork is exquisite, no one can give you grandiose metropolitan superheroic shenanigans like these guys. I’m so glad Millar isn’t scripting this. This is a pretty successful first issue that drops you right in the middle of the horror and doesn’t let up until the last page. Though I wish Bendis wouldn’t have hyped up the insanity of the ending so much. It was perfectly serviceable but kind of a quiet thing, a bit of a letdown if you’re looking for some mind-blowing last page. Maybe I just can’t stand the sight of Steve Rogers pouting in the corner. But at any rate, I already feel like for me this is going to mitigate my feeling that Bendis’s AVENGERS run didn’t go out with anything approaching a bang, just a straight lateral to Hickman, but the thunder is here in the near future and it should be a hell of a thing.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #008 — As beautifully as Marquez stages every page, in terms of solely narrative content, I am damn sure we did not need half of this book to be two Angels versus H.Y.D.R.A. agents at Avengers Tower. I guess you can counter that if one goes ahead and signs up to pay eight bucks for forty pages of a book per month, then they can do whatever they want and you just have to eat it, but with this fantastic ensemble of characters whose beats Bendis has thus far been nailing scene after scene, it was a damn shame to suddenly just be hanging out with a couple of Angels for over half the book. Especially if you’re going to go ahead and throw in the Avengers, too. That’s like thirty characters you’re neglecting in favor of our present-tense Warren flying around basically going “Woo-woo!” at his teenage self. Even if it’s all in service of setting up the last scene with Jean, that’s still just a woeful lack of balance. Of course, Kitty & Bobby providing dialogue for the Captain America/Beast exchange turns the entire thing around and still leaves the reader with his or her money’s worth, just that page alone. Hilarious.

AVENGERS #007 — The return of 616 nomenclature! Thank you, Hickman, I’ve never understand current Marvel editorial’s disdain for it. Let me just get the obligatory If-Dustin-Weaver-had-time-to-draw-this-then-where-the-hell-are-the-last-two-issues-of-S.H.I.E.L.D.?!? question out of the way and move on. So, I was thinking the White Event was the initial inciting incident that set off the chain reaction over in NEW AVENGERS, but they happen all the time across the multiverse? Maybe it’s still the original one from the New Universe, though it is doubtful that Kenneth Connell or our beloved D.P.7 will make an appearance. Hickman is cribbing a bit from Ellis’s aborted relaunch of a few years ago, setting up those certain characters as archetypal roles that must be filled, universal ushers. And maintaining the Psi-ForceàCipher switch. I’m never going to read a comic book about Psi-Hawk again, am I? This one reads a little skinny with those single-page red herrings that I guess are intended to only highlight that the actual new Star Brand guy is kind of an asshole. Because all those other people got toasted? We’ll see. I dug this, but it really just made me want to read the next one right away. Which I guess is the point. And the wait will not be long. NOW!