10/23/13

FF #013 — Scott HAD to bring up the space monkeys. Man, that’s just asking for it. This title continues to weather the loss of Fraction to much greater effect than the other one. I still had to sequence the books this way to make a Fraction bookend of sorts on the evening. A quasi-Fraction bookend.

DAREDEVIL #32 — Waid’s Jester has a distinctly Arcade vibe about him. And of course the Sanctum Sanctorum gives Matt the creeps. That Mark Waid has thought of everything! It is good fun to turn this into a monster’s romp just before Halloween. And yet another rock-solid cliffhanger, this business is superhero funny-book science. All drawn to perfection by Samnee/Rodriguez. I hope these guys never leaves this book.

UNCANNY AVENGERS #013 — Well, it wouldn’t be Banshee dialogue if Remender wasn’t aping that Claremont written dialect madness. “Some part o’ ya knows I’m RIGHT!” Extensive Hearing Damage/Screaming Captain America, though, in his first appearance staggering on-panel, feels like at least the sensational character find of 2014. “SHE LIKES YOU.” Really, I could do four entire issues of him just running around with Havok, repeating every line of dialogue without realizing. And we cliffhang with a Wolverine-powered Rogue running off to be the best she is at what she does. “Once and for all, Shugah!”

YOUNG AVENGERS #011 — Watch out for Teen Loki! He is going to be big trouble in the months to come, I have no doubt. He’s not lying to us, now! And neither is Noh-Varr, that sack of shit. And oh but wow, David’s text-web. I swear every two to four issues, these guys pull off some insane trick that has never even been attempted in the medium. Just infrequent enough that I have enough time to forget to look for it and am surprised anew at the power when it shows up again.

WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN #037 — This one once again lowers the bar on the overall quality of this crossover, but Aaron does manage to work in a few more character beats than last time, Wolverine’s muttered vow of abstinence being the leading contender. And you’ve got to love/groan at taking everything back to Cape Citadel. I guess the block Kirby grew up on would have been too on-the-nose. Also a fan of Quire’s “MAGNETO WAS LEFT” shirt. Camuncoli’s work here is perfectly serviceable but just a dip from what we’ve seen over in Bendis’s books. That double-page everybody-foightin’ pin-up, all it made me wish was that they would have tapped Art Adams for these interiors instead of a couple of covers. And can Storm really be so shocked by that “Mother?” Aaron does a nice job capturing Maria Hill’s voice, I will say that. And of course we’ve got to trot out the old “Hope you survive the experience” bit. I liked it better when Morrison’s version of this stuff was trying to eat and shit out everything that Claremont did for sixteen years all Ouroboros-like.

THE FLASH #24 — Ha, Barry hit the reset button. Not THAT reset button, fanboys! Wally West is not waiting for you on the next page. I wonder if they put that line in as a deliberate taunt. This is, for all intents and purposes, the swan song to the Manapul/Buccellato run that this title has been rocking for a little over two years, now. I believe they’re going to do an epilogue next month for ZERO YEAR but this is the end of the modern-day adventures of Barry Allen. And it looks gorgeous. As ever. The energy is crackling off the page, the body language and panel layouts are dynamic, and the colors are rich and striking. I’m not sure that the resolution of the plot is earned, unfortunately. Daniel basically freaks out when he sees his younger self and sister, then Barry grabs him and uses his power to run back to the future and, presto, everything is all right. He doesn’t even seem to have to run very fast, relatively speaking, just bop on over to the opposite facing page and the entire arc is pretty much wrapped up, no problem. Half an issue of narrating everything he’s learned doesn’t really wrap it up that convincingly for me. But the set piece with the crashing plane is a charming enough way to sign off. What we’re left with by issue’s end, however, is unfortunately all flash and very little substance. I’m sorry.

THE UNWRITTEN #54 — What a climax! In case there’s any lingering doubt that this is some kind of parallel-universe/soon-to-be-rebooted type situation, Bigby takes out all six of his children and Snow on two adjoining pages. The biggest and baddest of them all. It is chilling seeing Geppetto hang with Tommy Taylor’s friends. And that appears to pretty much be it, Tommy blows Roland or Cuthbert’s horn and unmakes everything into Kirby Krackle, which would have been a solid enough THE END for me, no problem, but I believe that there is still just a little bit story left to tell.

THE MASSIVE #16 — Cal Israel gets a nemesis of sorts for this new arc and Wood does a solid job making him sympathetic enough that we’re not quite sure who to root for. I’m actually leaning in old Bors’s direction, there. Good to get Garry Brown back on interiors.

THE ROCKETEER/THE SPIRIT: PULP FRICTION #2 — I am not sure that it would have occurred to me to dial up the whole romantic lead-swapping with these guys, but it’s a good fit and Waid plays it just right. Loston Wallace does solid work on the interiors, but I must confess to some sadness at seeing Paul Smith gone after only one issue. He was a huge draw on this book for me. Though Waid writing these two guys would certainly be enough. He knows enough to throw down some biplane action early on. One expects Cliff is going to have to survive a battle in a crypt when the shoe’s on the other foot.

BEST OF WEEK: VELVET #1 — A perfect first issue. I was all over Brubaker/Epting’s Cap run and certainly looking forward to this but was still blown away by how seriously these guys knocked it out of the park. I mean, that first page alone. Four panels. That is how you drop in on a story. Colored to tremendous effect by Brubaker’s new go-to talent Elizabeth Breitweiser. The soft glow of the Parisian light really is magical, a perfect contrast to the ugly espionage antics being perpetrated right off the bat. Our protagonist has a white stripe in her hair, more homage to Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine than Rogue, I’m sure. But this right here is everything you want, we’ve got a set-up, a couple of frame-ups, a twist, and our heroine crashing out a second dead agent’s window wearing her stealth suit and internal-monologuing about her previous life of intrigue that had come to an end until now. All capped off by a Jess Nevins essay on spy fiction during the Cold War. What is there not to love about the Brubaker machine? Terrific terrific stuff.

PRETTY DEADLY #1 — I really dug the opening scene and then in particular the rhythm and meter of the Song of Deathface Ginny. Though Beauty giving Death a child did send up some EAST OF WEST warning bells, Kelly Sue might have been gnashing her teeth at that coincidental convergence when she first saw that book. This first issue unfolds like kind of a tangled confusing mess but makes sense by the time you’re done and seems as much a product of its setting as content, the twisting winding singsong way of it. I really dug their previous collaboration on OSBORN but Emma Rios shows up here and really blows it up, more than ably assisted by the nigh-ubiquitous Jordie Bellaire on colors. As much as I enjoyed the book, what I loved most about this first issue was the two pages of back-matter, Kelly Sue’s first-person pretty much flash fiction secret origin of the genesis of this project. What emerges is the voice of a writer not only in love with the world around her but with the gift of observation and journalistic scrutiny to trap it in little fragments and share with us, for just a few minutes, exactly how she sees things (and I just typoed that as “sings things” on the first pass, maybe that’s more what I mean). This book is one butterfly’s eyelash away from my favorite of the week, breathing down Velvet Templeton’s stealth-suit-covered neck.

SATELLITE SAM #4 — This one’s settling into a nice even pace as Mike flubs his lines yet again through a combination of being too plowed/checking out Kara’s ass. I’m curious to know if this is an ongoing or how long of a mini it’s planned to be. While the Chaykin art was as immaculate as ever, this was the first installment that felt a bit light on the character moments.

SEX CRIMINALS #2 — Fraction/Zdarsky prove that the first issue was no fluke as we head over to the backstory of “That guy, that fucking guy,” bookended by some really tense scenes of our eponymous time-stopping couple getting chased through “The Quiet/Cumworld/StopTime” by some kind of StopTime cops or some such. Beautiful work.