8/07/13

THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS #13 — Okay, wow, and now we’re into the ONE YEAR LATER blister-on-through. Hickman really lays down on the gas here as we hit the fast-forward button and check in with the progress of all of the various projects envisioned by Oppenheimer. I was surprised by how affecting I found Yuri & Laika’s goodbye. Thirty-five in dog years, indeed. The depiction of JFK is brutal and kind of perfect. And of course Oppenheimer is the next major problem on the horizon, which I guess he’s always been. The art in this issue is particularly good, Pitarra’s found some improbable way to tighten up his hyper-detailed super-fine linework and Bellaire’s colors have never looked better. Thirteen issues in, this book still seems to be on the ascendant, spiking all the way up out of orbit with low to no probability of flaming out and tumbling back down to earth.

PROPHET #38 — I love how this book just starts on the inside cover now. We continue our tour of the far-future Awesome universe as Old Man Prophet takes tea with the evolved form of Suprema while in search of Badrock. And what’s that you say, Glory is still out somewhere running around? Paging Ross Campbell! And a lifebomb detonates, freeing the sleeping celestial body of Moorrock, son of Badrock, from the gravity well of a nearby star. This book is oooooouuuuut.

BEST OF WEEK: TRILLIUM #1 — I picked up SWEET TOOTH #1 the day it came out. It was only a buck and a new Vertigo and seems like the first issue of THE UNWRITTEN had just blown me away in the not-too-distant past with the same deal, so, you know, not such a gamble, those four quarters. It was the first Jeff Lemire book I had ever read, and while I certainly did not find it offensive, I didn’t love it. I wasn’t crazy about the art and, more importantly to me at the time, the last few pages of the issue had also been reprinted in a preview that was running around in the back of Vertigo books the previous month, all of which to say that I concluded the first issue distinctly underwhelmed and quite certain that I would not be picking up #2 at full price in four weeks. But then I kept hearing about how great THE ESSEX TRILOGY was, and when I saw it at a deep discount not that much later, I picked it up and was blown away. It was like Top 10 Graphic Novels I’d Ever Read good. And of course caused me to reevaluate Lemire. I eventually started picking up the SWEET TOOTH trades and—like most folks, I suspect—cried my eyes out all through #40. And went back to hit THE NOBODY and picked up that LOST DOGS reprint that Top Shelf did a little while ago and of course THE UNDERWATER WELDER is brilliant as well, and so no one was more excited than me to hear that he would be writing mainstream DC books with the reboot, and ANIMAL MAN has held up as one of my favorite monthlies these past two years, and how insane that we can even live in a world that someone can string those words together, and but so all of which to say, I came into this issue with some serious positive emotional baggage with regard to Jeff Lemire, particularly on his creator-owned work that he also draws.

But this one really just blew me away. The flip-book format is perfect. Both chapters are immediately engaging and manage to seem fresh and original while still dealing in fairly standard tropes of the science fiction and war genres. So but of course this is a love story. Or will be. It’s hard to believe that this was all essentially prologue, we won’t be privy to the supercollision of all that we have come to know until next issue. Even after three passes through this thing, I’m still reeling, it’s hard to talk about it coherently. Clearly. Let’s see. There are two fourteen-page stories. Lemire writes and draws it and shares coloring duties with his boy Jose Villarrubia, and the nearly one thousand pages they spent together on SWEET TOOTH is apparent, the shorthand between longtime collaborators who by now are intimately familiar with the minutiae of the other man’s craft. Our protagonists are a scientist from the end of the 38th century who happens to be the last person convinced that diplomacy with an alien race is the key to humanity’s survival, and then we’ve got a shell-shocked WWI veteran cutting through the Amazon jungle searching for meaning from the Lost Temple of the Incas. It’s not horrifically reductionistic to say that this entire glorious flip-book premiere issue amounts to one of the most compelling and intricately composed meet-cutes of all time, one that traverses time, space, and genre with the graceful ease of a sprinter barreling over hurdles. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

SATELLITE SAM #2 — If anything, I liked this one a little bit better than the first issue, with which I was quite taken. But this is clearly one of those narratives that’s going to accrue momentum by the installment as we have more and more time to get to know our ensemble. Fraction’s writing is nuanced and much more like CASANOVA Fraction than THOR Fraction, and Chaykin’s art looks just impossibly damn good in black and white. If I can just get used to the no-word-balloons thing, then I’m all the way in. This is definitely another one of the new Really Great Books that Image seems to just be shoveling out every few weeks, now.

FATALE #16 — Josephine decides to call herself Jane Doe and start sleeping with everybody, which is clearly her default setting. The art remains fantastic and Brubaker’s prose is leaner and sharper than ever.

KICK-ASS 3 #2 — This one was really kind of filler. The Motherfucker’s mother goes to kill him but then inexplicably kills a hit-man who was already in the process of killing The Motherfucker. Hit-Girl is nowhere to be found. Millar remains an evil douche and I ingest and retain an infinitesimal percentage of that evil by giving him money. I like to tell myself that I’m on a self-prescribed vaccination program but I know that I’m lying.

DETECTIVE COMICS #23 — The plot thickens between Bruce and his new antipodal arch-nemesis, escalating to the point that even letterer Jared K. Fletcher mixes them up and has each man delivering his opponent’s lines on the bottom of Page Ten. Jason Fabok continues to absolutely throw it down, that double-page splash of Caldwell’s arsenal might have made Jim Lee Himself shudder. Really looking forward to the finale next month.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #015 — mm, David Lafuente’s highly stylized art was a bit jarring after the more photo-realistic smackdown insanity we’ve grown accustomed to from Immenon/von Grawbadger/Gracia (with Marquez pinch-hitting). I wasn’t really feeling it at all at first but warmed up to it after a few pages. Jean’s thought-bubble of rampaging Wolverine is maybe what sold it for me. Also, really well crafted moment by Bendis with Hank(s) and Jean. I am really on the edge of my seat wondering how this is all going to resolve itself when they finally have to go back. Which is of course the point, well played, all.

AVENGERS #017 — This is the end of the beginning, I guess? The narration certainly seems to indicate as much. And that there might be Real Actual Consequences stemming from the INFINITY event. I know we’re approaching fool-me-ten-times sort of levels here, but I can almost believe that Hickman will deliver. Hopefully, he will not be lobbing the script off to Spencer next month and actually be scripting the run that they are double-shipping. As an acolyte of the old New Universe, it was beyond cool to see the new Nightmask and Star Brand guys join the ranks. Also, a very unexpected development to see Ex Nihilo just fall into line, makes the character much more intriguing and will certainly lead to interesting team dynamics. For as long as they last. Bring on the hypercosmic infinite madnesses!