10/30/13

BEST OF WEEK: THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE #1 — I really loved the JH cover but had to go with McKean. I mean, why stop now? It should be said right up front that, like most people my age and maybe ten years on either side, SANDMAN was one of my favorite comic books growing up and pretty much cemented Neil Gaiman as one of my all-time favorite writers all on its own, long before the prose of STARDUST or rhapsodic wonder of hearing my daughter recite BLUEBERRY GIRL from memory or just even most recently crying my damn eyes out every every single time I sit through “The Doctor’s Wife,” so this is really in no way going to be an impartial review. This is like them taking some formative chapter of my upbringing that I thought was closed, locked behind the final THE END, and then saying, No, this can still happen for you all over again, it never has to be done, it’s a story about stories, you silly boy, and those never really end, do they? Now, listen . . .

So, you see. But the story itself. Neil Himself goes ahead and builds an entire world for us real quick on the fly right there on the first page, lavishing just the right amount of detail on the situation that I’m still completely sucker-punched by the final panel. Of course the damn huge carnivorous plant with a beautiful mind is dreaming, what else would be the point of any of this? And all that ends in fire and meat-eating Quorian the Plant wakes up seriously disturbed by his brief time with the Lord of Dreams and just when you think you can’t handle much more of what these guys are already throwing at you, J.H. Williams III starts dropping bombs early with a double-page spread in which the twelve panels are actually the teeth in one of the Corinthian’s damn eyes, which of course is such a terrific idea but then the execution of that is frankly staggering, only, oh no, the last panel is clearly Destiny reading the previous panel’s description and dialogue from his damn book, so that just means we’re going to turn the page into something even more gaaaaaaah, of course the only people who were called in to help realize this were Dave Stewart and, naturally, Todd Klein, and everybody is just murdering it, but this next double-page spread is one of those recursion things in which Destiny is holding the book reading about himself and our page on the left is repeated as a page in the book on our right page and it’s all eating itself just fast enough and so then what’s the only way to crank things up but have Death show up, and I have to tell you, it took me by surprise, just to see her again, I almost lost it, I mean, I loved her, you did too, right? We all did, that was kind of the whole deal with the original series or maybe the best part of it anyway, and so but I terribly was in no way prepared for her when she showed up? Serious damage done. But when she’s saying that she took him a hundred galaxies away, is she talking about the end of “The Kindly Ones” that we all know and love? Or did Dream die/regenerate in 1915 as well? And is anyone still missing the Time Lord DNA that Gaiman hard-packed into this thing from the beginning? I never got it until now.

The remaining scenes in this are memorable and entertaining in their own right but all mainly set-up for what it to come. I’m not going to play-by-play them but just say that I expected all creators involved to absolutely knock it out of the park and that is just what they did. I could not have been happier with this issue and then finally made it to the fold-out four-page shot that really reinforces what an utter badass Williams is. Without spoiling the content of all of that madness, I will just say that cramming riffs of at least Kirby, Picasso, Klimt, and Timm into a single splash is a pretty stunning thing to do, and I am very very curious to see what will happen next. At least Williams had plenty of lead-time, so the wait shouldn’t be that long, right?

DAMIAN: SON OF BATMAN #1 — And then but on the other hand, in terms of returning to a story past THE END. I don’t think I would have picked this up written by anyone other than Morrison or Tomasi but with original artist Andy Kubert on board, I had to give it a chance. And it doesn’t start out a mess. The art is terrific, and Kubert fires out an in-dialogue *tt* in the third panel of the issue, so he’s at least mostly on-point right out of the gate. We’re not sure which Batman is supposed to be behind the cowl, and that’s as much on Kubert not giving him a discernible voice as anything. But I got that first sinking feeling when Damian mutters, “Ass.” Kubert is trying to shoehorn in that classic Dick/Damian tension but has no grasp of how to do it with anything approaching subtlety or elegance. To say nothing of Talia’s four panels of talking-head exposition, good night! Really, I’m not going to go on. It is a real shame that Morrison couldn’t be coaxed into blasting out a four-issue coda of his run leading us into some kind of SECRET ORIGIN OF BATMAN 666: YEAR ONE! Or Tomasi has proven that he has the chops to tear something like this apart. And Kubert would have blown up anything by those guys up on art. But this isn’t Damian Wayne running around here. I know that kid, love that kid, am still wrecked by his passing more so than almost any fictional character I can name. And I’m sorry to report that this isn’t even close.

ITTY BITTY HELLBOY #3 — The gang all goes to Heck and it is of course completely charming as hell to adult fans of the mythos and terrific fun for kids who are reading these characters for the first time. All in the Merry Aw Yeah! Baltazar/Franco tradition! For whatever reason, this was the first issue of theirs in the over one hundred I’ve devoured that I realized I would read the shit out of their UNCANNY X-KIDS or what have you.

THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS #5 — I still can’t believe how little I care about a comic book about these mythos with art by Becky Cloonan but the script is just a plodding directionless mess. I guess it has a couple of directions but no narrative hook at all. Except for that giant robot rising up and leveling Battery City. I suppose I will pay four more dollars to watch Ms. Cloonan draw me up some of that. Still, this series is a pretty huge disappointment.

SAGA #15 — The introduction of Nun-Tuj-Nun into the mythos is at the least an entertaining and possibly meta-fictional element. Which is explored here to tremendous effect and made me think much higher of this issue than I did when reading it all by myself. That, and dear BKV was good enough in the letters column to direct his readers to read that LOCKE & KEY finale rather than his “laurel-resting drivel,” so let’s just give this one a thumbs-up and move on.

X-MEN: BATTLE OF THE ATOM #2 — Okay, so, I assumed Bendis was going to bring us home here because this was always his baby, but apparently he’s just handing it off to Aaron and . . . a bunch of artists. I seem to remember some stink getting raised over Frank Cho not making his deadline so I guess this is what happened. Again, why no Art Adams? If he will consent to drawing interiors of a shitty Jeph Loeb Ultimate Ultimate Comics Wolverine reboot, why not punch all of our lights out here? Alas. How is this old Chapter 10, though, in a non-hypothetical sense? Pretty solid. Not as much of a dip as non-Bendis chapters of this crossover have been thus far, which is certainly good news. Old Beast getting Sentinel’d was a terrific beat and the reaction-panel to that was spot-on. And of course because this might be the most serious Ouroboros franchise of them all, we can’t be at Cape Citadel without reprising the famous cover of #1. The art is terrific, but I have to say, all these times, guys sign their names all over damn splash pages, I would have pumped my fist through the roof to see a little “AFTER KIRBY” action snuck in there in the corner. The epilogues by the creative teams of the respective books are a nice touch. Though I don’t buy Bobby calling Professor Xavier “Chuck” for a second, I have got to tell you. Devastating final scene, however. It is a shame, as solid as this issue was, I don’t feel like the writer or artists came close to knocking this business out of the park the way Bendis and his collaborators were before or during this crossover, but all it takes is three pages of the A-team roaring in to completely upset the status quo and I’m right back on the edge of my seat, unable to wait for what happens next. Beeeeeendiiiiiisss!

INFINITY #5 — All kinds of escalation here as we realize that of course this entire insane intergalactic showdown with the builders has just been in service of getting all of our former enemies on our side so we can all go back home and whup the shit out of Thanos. There are some who might find that one shot straight-up quoting “The Raising of the Flag at Iwo-Jima” in the same panel that the phrase “Avengers World” is first uttered a bit heavy-handed but it really worked for me, particularly followed by that montage page. It would have been even more magical if Marvel hadn’t already started pimping out that phrase as the next buzz-branding a few weeks ago but I guess there’s nothing for it. But yah, this is all doing nothing more than it’s supposed to, setting up the big finale while giving us some excellent character beats along the way. Opeña and Weaver continue to absolutely throw it down, terrific work.

AVENGERS #22 — All right, so it seems like halfway through scripting this event, Hickman realized that he was in fact putting too many important beats in these other two tie-ins he’s writing and not packing them all in the main title, so suddenly he dialed it back for the benefit of folks who are only picking up the main title, only that leaves not that much serious narrative mass for those of us who have been along for the ride regardless on this title since #001. Yu’s art is fantastic but basically, Cannonball gets to first base with Smasher, Bobby walks in and gives them trouble but it’s all jokey ha-ha, everything’s cool, that Black Dwarf smashes someone into a spot, the Captains America & Marvel tell Manifold there’s no such thing as destiny, Thor waits until they walk off and says, Whoa, mortal, to speak sooth, your entire life was meant for this day, let us go teach Thanos the oldest lesson of all, and we’re all like, okay sweet, cool, let’s do this, only then the Hickman info-graphic on the last page reminds us that we’ve still got another one of these to get through before that actually happens.

KICK-ASS 3 #4 — This one is actually pretty solid. Had to chuckle at Millar’s chutzpah of cover-blurb referencing his own unfortunate Marvel Big Event, along with the argument about DC Villains Month and Canadian underrepresentation. I will take my meta-laughs where I can get them.

THE FOX #1 — I had to drive to three different stores before finally finding a shelf copy of this when my trusty LCS failed to pull it for me but it was worth the hustle! Emmy-Award-Winning-Cartoonist-&-Animator Dean Haspiel drops some Kirby/Toth justice on the page and then enlists Eisner-&-Harvey-Award-Winning-Writer Mark Waid to dialogue the business, resulting in a comic that feels as fresh and timeless now as it might have in the heyday of the Silver Age. I could stand for it to be a little bit more insane but I suspect they’re going to work up to it. Haspiel does cut loose a bit more in the back-up with fight scenes that are more evocative of Kirby’s work exploding off of the page. Maybe that’s because dude is fighting a building? The only beat about the entire thing that rang false for me was the allusion to the neck-breaking in MAN OF STEEL. I know Waid hated it, and so did I, but we ought not to dignify such travesties with a response. I certainly don’t want any allusion to that movie made in the middle of all this buzzing goodness, right here.

PROPHET #40 — BADROCK AWAKENS. The fact that such a thing is related on a scope of such grandeur and science fiction glory is testament to the incredible work these people are doing with this property. I could go on and on and on but think I will leave it at that. Astounding.

THOUGHT BUBBLE 2013 — I didn’t realize this was only the third one of these ever. That means I only missed the first one! Was a huge fan of last year’s edition and this one certainly doesn’t drop the ball, opening up with more madness from Starkings/Cook crossing ELEPHANTMEN over with JUDGE DREDD, two things that should not co-exist but of course go great together, gorgeous art that sings all the sweeter on the newsprint, followed by a terrific and naturally brilliant two-page collaboration between Cameron Stewart & Brandon Graham that is worth your $3.99 right there all by itself, and all right, I’m not going to just run down the entire list but I dug Ming Doyle’s page and am of course powerless before any product of the almighty Moon/Ba engine but this one little slice in particular, how they tap into the universal aspect of nostalgia for youth, also a very interesting opening page from Ramón K. Pérez (all right, it seems like I am almost listing every one), with David Jumble’s inspirational page yet another simple but charming application of the medium that can’t be done in any other form, and then who amongst us will not raise his or her fist at the final-page headlining glory of twelve panels of Jeffrey Brown’s “I WANTED TO BE A TEENAGE MOEBIUS!” The title really says it all but that’s more than enough, my friends. More than enough.