4/03/13

BEST OF WEEK: LOCKE & KEY: OMEGA #4 — It is nothing less than soul-crushing to make it through a single issue of this series at this point. After laying it on thick with the pitch-perfect masterfully crafted characterization for the first three issues, Joe Hill and the boys pull the trigger and set everything crashing toward the inevitable conclusion. The first page alone is so unfortunate. Hill does a terrific job of scripting drunk-slur and even employing it to comedic effect in a couple of instances, though it still really hurts to see Nina having involuntarily lost her battle to stay sober. Gabriel Rodriguez, as ever, makes exactly the right decisions with composition, following the two-panel bird’s-eye view above the car on Page Three with a six-panel static shot taking us all the way through most of the next page and doing a wonderful job of emphasizing how trapped and cramped Ty and Duncan are there in the trunk. I’m just glad they’re both still with us. Also, I love how even in the midst of this horror, they’re still joking about Duncan’s sexual orientation and doing a figurative fist-bump over Ty scoring with Jordan last issue. Rodriguez once again proves himself master of the facial expression. His characters emote and act better than anyone else on the stands. The man is a force. I mean, you could burn a thousand words per issue on how perfect Rodriguez arranges his page layouts to frame the narrative, angles chosen for maximum impact. So, that’s always going on and I guess I should quit pointing it out every other page. Dodge/Bode’s three-panel zoom-in response to “And why didn’t you use the Crown of Shadows to bring Duncan up here, Ace?” is one of my favorite beats of the entire series, hilarious and dark and perfectly in character with this malevolent thing from another place that we’ve still come to know as well as any of these other fully rounded and completely realized characters. Made all the greater by the following double-page splash. And of course we’ve got to check in with Rufus and May-Hemi, I can see them maybe sitting out next issue for the walk in only to show up one minute before it’s all too late in #6. I love the way Duncan sets the further tragedy in motion by asking the very natural “What do they want?” question. Scot’s final dialogue of the issue makes me think there’s no way he’s gone for good, despite appearances. Of course we leave every single character in an even worse place than we did last issue, which I didn’t think was possible. And yeah, that last page. It’s not looking good. Love this series so much. So badly don’t want it to end and simultaneously can’t wait.

GLORY #34 — So, it turns out that this was just a twelve-issue sprint to THE END, which I had no idea about but certainly enjoyed. Joe Keatinge and Ross Campbell have put together a stellar run, surely one of the all-time great character rehabilitations. And it’s all the more satisfying to see the story brought to a natural conclusion and resolution as opposed to just getting handed off to another team. The jump-cut flashbacks give us Gloriana hanging out with the Fitzgeralds in 1925 Paris, two glorious pages that are a little bittersweet here at the end, knowing that we’ll never get an entire issue of this cast and setting. I also enjoyed how personable and un-creepy Charon was written. It really took me by surprise, the extent to which this last issue made an emotional appeal to the reader. Over the course of this run, I never would have guessed that the final chapter would get me all choked up. The Emilie montage was grand, Graham and the boys over at PROPHET have got me charged to be all cracked up any time Diehard shows up. The whole thing is great, though, the way it calls back and updates the montage from the first issue these guys did, #23. This ending succeeds by providing closure and resolution to everything that’s gone before but also keeping us engaged even past the last page wondering what happened next. Tremendous work from all parties.

FASHION BEAST #8 — A stroll through the night bringing our two leads a bit closer together leads to a fairly substantial cliffhanger. Still interested to see where this one is heading, what kind of statement it’s going to make at the end of the day.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #010 — Bendis and the gang continue to completely knock it out of the park as both books converge when Cyclops’s squad shows up at the gates of the Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning on a recruitment drive, a purpose so obvious in hindsight I feel quite foolish for not figuring it out right away a month ago or I guess it was really just only the past couple of weeks. Man, they sure do jam these things out. I’m running out of hyperbolic things to say about this series. The art continues to look better than just about every book on the stands. Marte Gracia, in particular, is a revelation. Bendis displays deft mastery of the ensemble’s many voices and is still mining the funny from the premise (best exemplified here in Teen Iceman’s innocent and hiliarous “What’s S.H.I.E.L.D.?”) and the last panel is such an over-the-top cliffhanger, it made me laugh out loud. Could not be loving this book more.

INDESTRUCTIBLE HULK #6 — Simonson is the strongest there is! I didn’t want to add another $4 Marvel book, but when you’ve got Mark Waid writing and Walt Simonson drawing the Hulk and Thor, free will doesn’t really enter into the equation. This messed me up before on his AVENGERS arc with Bendis last year, but as a child of the eighties, it’s a bit odd for me to see Simonson’s lines digitally colored and printed on glossy pages. It would have been kind of a swell throwback to knock the price down a buck and print on old school newsprint pages. Still, it’s a real treat to see his work in any context, the man has been a living legend for decades. I love the layout on Page Five, the way that the dimensional portal breaks the panel borders and dominates the entire page, drawing the reader’s eye to the bottom right corner, just the way it’s supposed to. Curious to see where they’re heading with Thor’s retro look, a direct crossover into Simonson’s run, perhaps? Or maybe he just felt like drawing his old school version and Waid tossed it into the script with no problem. Regardless, this is quite a time, just great big fun crackling up off the pages.

AGE OF ULTRON #4 — And this thing just keeps happening! The steady stream of new Hitch interiors without abatement is starting to freak me out. And we even open with “Sweet Christmas,” Bendis has been waiting for that his whole life, I bet. Very cool to see the big shout-out to Kirby there on Page Seven, Panel Two, a heavily foreshortened Luke Cage running directly toward the reader. Too great. Not just a whole lot happens in this one but now the pieces are all where they need to be and we’ll hopefully have a fairly substantial throwdown next issue that will flip the status quo around for the back half of the series.

ANIMAL MAN #19 — As the running order will reflect, this is a substantially different first week for me than it has been the past eighteen months. Was already skeptical but the Diggle pre-release exodus left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t even try the new teams on this week’s ACTION COMICS or SWAMP THING. Still plenty happening on the DC front, though. But suddenly, instead of this being my second book of the night, it’s here in the back half. Where Snyder & Paquette dropped the mic with their tragic Rotworld epilogue, Lemire & Pugh dig in deeper, ripping into poor Buddy even more. I just ran through those old Ennis/Dillon HELLBLAZERs where Constantine is miserable and homeless and I’m afraid we’re heading in that direction here, the status quo of this title as “superhero with viable family unit” seems in serious jeopardy, which, I could take or leave Ellen and her mom, but the relationship between Maxine and her dad has been at the heart of this book since the relaunch, so I hope at least she stays in circulation. I do appreciate that both she and Buddy are not ready to let go of Cliff, right away start floating the idea of resurrection. These kinds of things do happen all the time. Pretty tense about where they’re going to take this book, seems like we’re on the edge of a precipice, dark times. And just hell of a painted cover by Howard Porter, he’s come quite a ways since bringing the JLA back to glory with Morrison sixteen years ago.

GREEN LANTERN #19 — Oh dear, we get “literally” in the first panel. Grammatical pet peeve aside, Johns does a pretty excellent job setting up his last issue, sure to be a double-sized all-star art-jam spectacular. It’s been interesting to see how Johns has consistently shifted the focus away from Hal throughout this volume (which is funny, considering this is one of the only continuities that didn’t get a fairly definitive reboot), and this final arc is certainly no exception. At the end of last issue, Hal was wondering whether or not to jump. At the end of this one (SPOILERS), he jumps. But, like the rest of what’s come before, Sinestro is the star of this show. I still hear Mark Strong’s voice in my head when I read his dialogue. Johns has done a fairly competent job making the character compelling, though he’s never managed to hit the heights that he did on his JSA run. Even though there are no less than seven guys holding it down on art duties, the issue still maintains a consistent look, aided by in-story reasons for two different styles. Pencillers Adrian Syaf and Szymon Kudranski turn in work that at least approaches the greatness that we’ve come to expect over the years from Doug Mahnke. Glad I came back to this one and curious to see how Johns is going to put this to bed next month.

GREEN ARROW #19 — I’m getting pretty sick of that old device, start all in medias res in the middle of some insane situation, then cliffhang it and give us the old TWO DAYS EARLIER . . . It can be an effective trick when done really well, but BATTLESTAR GALACTICA really watered it down for me from overusage, to the point that when I see it, it’s got to be like the most insane opening ever to justify it for me when that flashback tag pops up. This was not that. That quibble aside, I’m still loving the creative team on this book. Andrea Sorrentino continues to deliver career-best pages, doing a really wonderful job of copping that deal J.H. Williams III used to such tremendous effect over with Batwoman, highlighting a particularly kinetic piece of action by adding a panel within the panel, further offset by the colorist making some drastic shift.  There’s maybe a little bit too much narration going on for my taste. To be honest, Lemire has put enough work into establishing Komodo that, with the addition of his daddy/daughter dynamic, as of their last panel, I’m pretty much rooting for them at this point. We’ll see how it goes.

DETECTIVE COMICS #19 — No problem one of the most rewarding over-sized issues I’ve ever encountered. All kudos to Layman, ably abetted by his all-star artistic assemblage. Fabok, in particular, continues to produce absolutely slamming work throughout. That opening double-page splash of our protagonist looks like it took about a week to draw and the follow-up spread of the Bat-Cave a few pages later ranks up there with any of the greats, even Lee’s sprawling multi-Batmobile ridiculousness from a few years back over on ALL-STAR. Killer colors from Jeromy Cox, as well. All of the stories look great, but the lead feature in particular is gorgeous. Rough deal about the family, you know we are in a bad place when Dick Grayson responds to a request from Batman to assist Batgirl by driving out of town. I did get a little confused by the ending with Langstrom until realizing that Man-Bat got rebooted out of continuity and this is now suddenly his first appearance/origin. I think? I’m impressed by the fact that Layman takes whatever Editorial throws at him (a requiem for Damian, the idea to incorporate the number 900 into this issue to commemorate the fact that this should by all rights be DETECTIVE COMICS #900, though there’s a small chance that that was his idea) and just tosses into the mix of this Emperor Penguin mega-arc he’s got going that keeps accruing momentum all the time. And then that last story with Strode & Melendez hearkens back to the halcyon days of Brubaker/Rucka greatness back on GOTHAM CENTRAL. Looks like Layman is laying a bit of groundwork for that angle, good news. This is how you do an over-sized anniversary issue, all kinds of value to be found here. Really well done, cheers and appreciation to all involved parties.