10/29/14

BEST OF WEEK: LITTLE NEMO: RETURN TO SLUMBERLAND #2 — If anything, these guys somehow manage to up their game from the ridiculous level of greatness that they hit in the first issue. Our new Nemo becomes a bit more engaged with his situation, Bon-Bon returns, and Flip Flap finally makes an appearance. Gabriel Rodriguez continues to manage the herculean task of assimilating Winsor McCay’s kaleidoscopic style while still managing to make the pages his own, all beautifully colored by Nelson Daniel and masterfully paced by Eric Shanower. This really is the most magical endeavor. At MorrisonCon a couple of years ago, there was a panel (a very painful Sunday morning panel) wherein the mourners assembled took a character from the public domain and attempted to frame what a reboot would look like. That character was Little Nemo, and as talented and insightful as everyone there was, nothing uttered that morning came close to matching this take in terms of sheer brilliance of both premise and execution. Everyone is firing at the top of their game, yes, but Rodriguez appears to actively be attempting to surpass his work on LOCKE & KEY, which is about the highest that anybody can shoot for. My favorite thing about this is that it’s utterly engrossing for me on every level, but then I can share it with my daughter and she loves it just as much. This is why we have Wednesday nights. Just wonderful.

WONDER WOMAN #35 — This one is slam-bang and done. I would have gladly paid an extra dollar or two to get this story presented with all the ads at least in the back, but it’s kind of fitting that this run ends as it began, on the front lines of the mainstream, ARROW ads breaking up the flow, as ever. Azzarello/Chaing/Wilson’s final chapter does more of what they’ve been doing. And why not? It’s certainly been working out for them. There’s lots of pontificating wrapped up in clever wordplay and fighting and scrambling around to get a hold of Zeke. There’s a great moment when Diana takes off her wristbands and proclaims her various titles if only to point out how little they matter. She’s still going to kick dude’s ass. Azzarello weaves the golden lasso and submission into the resolution in an elegant manner. And then there’s a last-minute reveal that I didn’t see coming and hadn’t feel like we particularly needed, but as soon as it hit turned out to be a great latest reason to slap my forehead. My only quasi-gripe with this finale is that Orion never came back. I would have liked to see him take a final bow under this regime. However, everything pretty much turned into a sitcom whenever he was on-panel, so keeping him on the bench does make sense. It certainly would have broken up the breakneck flow we have going here. This team did more heavy lifting than arguably anyone in The New 52 reboot. Snyder/Capullo have been great, but that whole deal has been very much an extension of what Snyder was doing previously. No other creative team had such success taking an established mythology back to basically a reset point and then building it up into something resembling but unlike what had come before. I’ve never read the Perez issues from the eighties, but this is the best run on the character that I’ve ever experienced, and it has consistently been a terrific ride, month after month. Going to miss these creators but am grateful to them for showing us how it’s done.

FUTURES END #26 — Bruce meeting Michael is pretty grim, given what we know. I guess his important business was really giving the Jason & Robbie that gruff Bat-pep-talk? If all of this Madison Payne nonsense has been a lead-up to her getting fridged, I’m going to be unimpressed, but I guess they also set up her being the glue that brings Firestorm back together for good. It would be nice if she could just save herself. I was kind of sad for poor Fifty-Sue getting betrayed, there. Slade is just the worst in any continuity!

BATMAN ETERNAL #30 — Well. Kind of only one thing happens this issue, but it’s a pretty big deal. That is some pretty grim business with old Batwing, there. And I have got to say, I still really can’t get past how stupid I find the whole Joker’s Daughter business, and any time she shows up, it completely takes me out of the story. This series has been pretty solid based on protagonist interaction, but would do much better with antagonists that were worth a damn.

SAVAGE DRAGON #199 — Magnificent. A tour de force. Larsen blasts out ten double-page spreads and makes it look effortless. Not just the sequential content but the narrative flow. I mean, this must have been a bitch to compose this up out of nothing, but the impressive thing is that you can never see the strings, the eye glides effortlessly across the page. These pages were really over much too soon for my taste.

CAPTAIN VICTORY AND THE GALACTIC RANGERS #3 — I wasn’t able to lock into this one as well as the first two. I dug all the art. Fox continues to bring the crazy, and both Mahfood and Dalrymple show up with strong work. I just don’t care as much about this series as I feel like I should? I don’t know. They keep putting Kirby’s name in the credits, how can I not support these guys? Solid but not as batshit as I want it to be.

BLACK SCIENCE #10 — Ten issues in, and these guys are only picking up steam. It’s a good call to move Pia more toward center stage. That is one angry young woman! Though I have to say, I was surprised to see her mention dropping out of college. Scalera doesn’t draw her looking older than a girl in her early teens. I’ve been thinking this whole time that she was thirteen, fifteen tops. Maybe she gets that youthful appearance from her mother. She does make a solid new protagonist for this series if Remender doesn’t take her out. I am a fan of the multiple iterations of characters that keep creeping in. You can see the level of complexity gradually increasing as the series progresses. It seems like there will be pretty insane things happening by #25! Respect to the art once again, Scalera/White create such an immersive and beautiful world, month after month.

LOW #4 — This double-shot of hard-science Remender is a heady concoction! After the first three issues pretty much serving as the pilot episode, we get our next installment here, which takes place in the pirate city of Poluma. The mom behaves just the way you expect her to, but it’s nice to see Marik begin to act like an actual human being. Though that’s a harsh deal with his sister, there, not cool! I feel like this book would benefit from doing a one-paragraph recap on the inside front cover, not so much because the reader needs it as I suspect that it would be great fun to both read and write. Tocchini continues to turn in more absolutely gorgeous work. You have to respect Remender, locking down these guys on both of these books with this sweeping European style of art while simultaneously taking his turn running the Big Event over at The House of Ideas. Hickman and he are both doing a pretty incredible job of balancing out creator-owned and work-for-hire and making both seem like labors of love, never phoning it in.

SOUTHERN BASTARDS #5 — The Jasons pull off a nifty little trick here, shifting focus to our antagonist Coach Euless Boss and actually succeeding in making him just the least bit relatable. Flashing back to when he was a scrub at the bottom of the lineup causes the reader to feel a grudging respect for him, despite the shocking events of last issue. Not sure what to make of the fact that Coach Boss’s address is 616, what with Aaron being such an architect of the old Marvel Universe this last little bit, here.

SAGA #24 — After scaling it back for a few months, this title’s preciousness has returned. I don’t know if it’s a function of the massive amount of adulation it gets or what, but I feel like the tone and peccadilloes that I found somewhat annoying back when we were in single digits are really dialed all the way up by now, and I’m just shaking my head most of the way through this. The completely naturalistic twenty-first-century tone of every single character’s dialogue, how often everybody says, “Fuck!” just because they can. I am completely missing what is so cool about Lying Cat and why an utterance of “Lying,” ever ever merits its own splash panel. That page really kind of sums it all up for me. As soon as I turned to it, I was simultaneously hit by how flat it fell for me and the certainty that true fans around the world were throwing up their arms in victory. I don’t know. I’ll still keep picking this up just to be aware of what’s happening and in case it becomes less adoring of its own internal greatness. Staples is still producing some good-looking pages. I liked the gag at the end where Prince Robot’s screen is all red-skies crisis.

FANTASTIC FOUR #011 — The boys keep moving things along and bringing them to a head. Kirk/Kesel/Aburtov continue to produce beautiful pages. I liked Spidey’s dialogue to Johnny. It rings true that for all the shit they sling each other’s way, Parker is there for the Torch in a heartbeat when things start crashing down. And, hey, it’s just cool to have Wyatt Wingfoot in play across more than a single issue. My favorite dynamic in this entire mythology, by far, has to be Valeria & Doom. I would just devour an entire series focusing on only their relationship down through the years, across time and space. I was more than a little disappointed by the reveal that she’s not having as much of an effect on him as seemed apparent, but that is certainly in-character.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #30 — It felt like more happened in this one then in the past few issues. I was already loving the opening scene with Bobby before that Page Six splash page with the hilarious quip, a really nice piece of comic-booking, there. I guess you can always win me over by doing a homage, that is probably the easiest way in. Bendis has queued up some entertaining chemistry in his matchups for everybody. I’m particularly interested in seeing where it goes with Hank and Doom, though of course Miles and Jean are total sweethearts. More terrific work from Asrar/Gracia.