9/24/14

FUTURE’S END #21 — These DC weeklies were slamming this week! First, Cully Hamner shows up to regulate all over this one. The deal with this issue is it’s like 95% exposition and still wonderful as we finally fill in a whole gang of blanks about what happened when The Big War finally went down. Though I have to say, I don’t see some random Parademon taking Cassie out. Basically, this entire issue is first the Earth-2 Red Arrow Ollie and then our Ollie laying it all out for Barda, and then on the last page, she snarls and is all ready to kick ass in the way that only she can be. And it’s a treasure.

BATMAN ETERNAL #25 — And then R.M. Guera destroys it over here! As many people as have already kicked ass on this title in the past 24 issues, Guera arguably manages to outdo them all. I dug Jason and Tim giving each other The Business while visiting Alfred in the hospital, great character dynamics, there. I’m maybe almost okay with Jason being alive again, is what this makes me realize. It only took, what, a dozen years? I was also into the Batman/Penny-Two back-and-forth. This was pretty much a perfect issue until they fumbled it on the one-yard line with that “We’ve got this,” business there in the last damn panel. I hate that phrase and can let it slide if it seems in-character, but Tim is too smart to be messing up English like that. Alfred damn sure taught him better.

BEST OF WEEK: CHEW #43 — Whoa there, Layman! That is some evil shit to pull, now. I mean Toni-evil. Terrific issue highlighting yet another permutation of this not being the Tony Chu Adventure Hour but instead playing around in a universe where several very entertaining combinations of characters and premises are possible. Who doesn’t want to read a book about Olive, Colby, and Poyo doing their thing with Mason and Cesar in cosplay disguise gently shepherding them through the mission? Even worse than FABLES last week, though, which was awful, I got lulled into this peaceful calm and then just ripped up by the uncaring capriciousness of a soulless scribe. So rough. Hoping it’s a trick. Guillory drew real pretty pictures again.

LOW #3 — Wow, I’m glad I hung with this. Remender takes a real chance here, dragging out the premise set-up of the entire series until really the last scene of this third issue. But, it’s a hell of a beautiful moment and definitely has me now all-in and on board to see what’s going to happen to these people next. Greg Tocchini again just knocks it out of the park. You really can’t believe this kind of thing is happening in regular sequentials. Breathtaking visuals.

SAGA #23 — BKV is a well-oiled machine at this point. He knows how to spin up that oh-so-ironic double-meaning dialogue Alan Moore business where there’s this heartbreaking tension between the caption and the visual and our knowledge of what’s to come because our baby narrator already told us in her patented Fiona-scrawl. I’m simple enough that I was engaged with the narrative to the point that I was simply waiting for Marko to stick it in because that’s where the signposts have been for months and I wasn’t hunting around for any tricky deals. But there turned out to be a twist! Oh, clever BKV! All of the Eisners are for you.

NEW AVENGERS #024 — We open with a very interesting dinner. Dr. Doom and Kristoff are entertaining Namor, which gives the two most prominent nemeses from the early days of Kirby FF time to riff off of one another while Namor sneaks in a little bit of exposition to catch us up on how it’s been going for the past eight months. It turns out that putting together a cabal that’s halfway composed of the folks who were responsible for INFINITY was a pretty bad idea; they’re a bit of an unruly mob to control, which the following scene does a fine job of illustrating for us in the present tense. Then, there’s a whole deal with T’Challa and his sister, and I guess it doesn’t look really good for her, though the one pitfall of having all of these alternate-reality heroes die is that it’s hard to make myself feel like this one actually counts. Ha, which I know is a ridiculous statement. Hickman is smart to not let The Cabal steal the show but remember that the best villain in the Marvel multiverse is not Thanos but Doctor Doom. This final scene sets him up as a major player in all that is to come, no matter how much other crazy shit is going on.