BEST OF YEAR: THE MULTIVERSITY: PAX AMERICANA — That last
issue of ASTONISHING X-MEN that turned out to be giant-sized. PLANETARY #27.
There have been a few comic books that I’ve waited for so long that months
turned into years, but I don’t think I’ve ever been waiting on a single defined
issue for as long as four years. Certainly nothing that John Cassaday wasn’t
drawing! But here we have it. First announced in 2010, with pages previewed
more than two years ago at MorrisonCon, this installment of THE MULTIVERSITY
above all others has been the object of intense speculation and expectation for
quite some time due to its astronomically enticing set-up: Grant Morrison &
Frank Quitely, the team responsible for FLEX MENTALLO, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, and
WE3, among others, reunite to present their own version of that
still-mostly-sacred milestone of graphic literature, WATCHMEN. Morrison
ratcheted fanboy expectations up to a fever pitch back in 2012 by going into
detail about his conceptual thinking for this issue. One representation of the
harmonic alignment of the different Earths across the vibrational multiversal
plane is that this issue does away with Dave Gibbons’s ubiquitous and famous
nine-panel grid in favor of eight panels to represent the octave-to-octave
musical notes of the Western major scale. Morrison actually went ahead and then
showed us the uncolored unlettered opening pages and I now remember being a
little disappointed that he just went ahead and blurted out, “The book begins
with a backwards tracking shot of the President’s exploded skull as the
Comedian’s just assassinated him from space!” But, if you’re going to get
spoiled, you want Morrison to do it for you like that, only the deal was,
sooooooooo much other shit happened in between that and the time that my poor
body finally gave out on that long ago Saturday night that I had absolutely no
retention of being spoiled until turning the page here and realizing that it
was running backwards and then it all came crashing back in for me and it was really
quite the charming effect. But, let me back up for a moment.
Just like the source material, the cover is actually the
first panel of the issue. Or last, really. There’s already more shit happening
in the first couple of shots than you almost know what to deal with. The cover
appears to be the right half of a peace sign emblazoned on a flag that is on
fire. The section that we can see is not unreminiscent of the DC peel logo in
the upper-lefthand corner of this cover. The reader pulls back the cover to
reveal a series of zoom-out shots whose angles are drawn (or shot, is the
feeling) in an identical manner to those that we know so well from Gibbons’s
groundbreaking work nearly thirty years ago. At first glance, the page hits the
reader with two details: Gibbons’s nine-panel grid is indeed gone and we’re
dealing with four skinny vertical panels on top of another four, giving us
eight as advertised but also, that first shot back from the cover, the actual
first panel of the interior comic, has the peace sign now folded and flapping
in such a way that it also looks like an eight. Or, more specifically, a mรถbius
strip. It’s such a striking visual aesthetic, Quitely’s hyper-rendered linework
brought to glorious life by Nathan Fairbairn’s colors, that at first glance,
the reader isn’t even aware that time is running in reverse. It’s only really
explicit in the jump between the seventh to the eighth and final panel from the
dripping blood’s spatial relationship to the Presidential seal, and remember, I
already knew this because Morrison
told me and a room full of one thousand people himself, but I was already so
overwhelmed by what was happening that it wasn’t until that first page-turn
that I realized that time was running backwards. Oh, and in the fifth panel,
the dead guy who must be the President has a ring with an eight or an infinity
sign or a mรถbius strip on it. But then, we turn the page and any subtlety
about the backwards-time thing is blasted away as we watch the president’s jaw
completely reform after being blown to bits. The same 4 x 2 grid of skinny
vertical panels recurs here, which is enough to set it up as the default before
Quitely violates it on the following page by subbing out the bottom half of
four panels with two horizontal ones instead, possibly alluding to the whole
widescreen comics thing that Ellis/Hitch inaugurated with THE AUTHORITY at the
turn of the century, but maybe that’s reading too much into it. The next page
is the title page and returns time to its natural forward flow, referencing
Steranko’s Fury with that swirly business and explicitly mentioning the
backward and forward flow of time.
The next page is the first walk-and-talk, kind of a riff on
the trope of Aaron Sorkin television except that instead of the camera
following the speakers for an uninterrupted take, what is uninterrupted in this
case is the long shot of the room with time flowing as the characters walk from
one panel to the next across the same physical space. Which you pretty much
have to see for it to make sense, but trust me, it does. Everything I’m writing
makes perfect sense. This issue has in no way damaged me at all. This page is
looooooaded with that kind of double- or triple-meaning dialogue that Moore
codified to such a ridiculous extent in WATCHMEN and that everyone has been
doing such a sad job of reaching for ever since. The first panel mentions the
light in the interrogation room, nothing subtle about that. Then, we proceed to
talk of Smith burying the American super-hero while they walk on top of the
presidential seal. The next panel, they stop walking and Nightshade rattles off
an emboldened “stop,” followed by her father inviting her to take “the elevated
view” while they walk up a staircase (of eight steps, natch). Subsequent
dialogue references turning a corner and opening a door before the next page
turns out to be a redux of the classic
Clark-interviewing-Luthor-on-the-winding-staircase page from ALL-STAR SUPERMAN
#5, which is once again loaded with multiple in-dialogue allusions to what’s
happening in-panel. Eden’s last line mentions a leap of faith.
So, of course cut to The Question leaping through the air
and asking a bunch of questions to his former partner, The Blue Beetle. Question
mentioning four prominent scientists in conjunction with their four unsolved
murders once again adds up to you-know-what. His mention of these guys and the
disappearance of Captain Adam/Atom in the same context of the Yellowjacket case
makes it seem like the killer might have been President Harley. And Nora
O’Keefe maybe got too close and figured this out, so she had to go, as well?
That is actually a great fit because it provides Peacemaker all the motivation
he needs for then taking Harley out. But, more on that later. As Question hits
the subway after escaping Beetle, he walks past ads for his secret identity’s
news show, but there’s also one for Nightshade’s album futureBOMB, the cover of
which directly references FLEX MENTALLO. It is also worth noting that The
Question first mentions Algorithm 8 on Page Eight, which I have a pretty hard
time believing is unintentional.
Oi. And then comes that insane double-page 32-panel spread
that starts out doing that same Sorkin trick as before, breaking up the same physical
space into 32 distinct bits of time but upping the ante quite severely by
interweaving three separate timelines instead of just keeping it linear. We’ve
got Nora O’Keefe right before getting murdered juxtaposed with The Question
showing up later that night (in homage to Rorschach’s first scene at the
Comedian’s place in #1 of WATCHMEN), referencing the date, November 17th, 2015
(with both 1 + 7 = 8, 2 + 0 + 1 + 5 = 8, natch) and also juxtaposed with Nora
and her husband or boyfriend Peacemaker earlier that day. Dialogue from that
earliest scene indicates that the President has claimed that “Algorithm 8” is
projecting world peace. But later that night, Nora has cracked the algorithm
and possibly knows that she is about to die. We see the murderer crouched
behind the statue in Panel Six of the first page of the spread (or Panel Ten,
if you’re counting across both pages horizontally), then he circles clockwise
around the base of the Pax statue, as Question states. It’s a pretty incredible
moment of the layout coming together in the bottom middle, there, Nora
approaching from the left, the killer from the right, with the actual murder
happening off-panel because that space is taken up by the follow-up scene with
The Question. You could probably write a pretty mean five- or ten-page essay on
just these two pages alone, but we had better press on. Special shout-out to
Nathan Fairbairn, whose colors are crucial to making this spread as
comprehensible as it is.
Oh good, now Captain Nathaniel Adam is reading ULTRA COMICS.
Like my brain wasn’t already hurting. This charming fan-favorite from SUPERMAN
BEYOND 3-D’s first line states that he has “caught sight of a massless
time-symmetrical boson” on Pages 12 and 13. We just came from there, this is
Page 14, but he’s probably referring not to that insane spread we just got done
with but instead to the comic that he’s actually got in-hand. That ULTRA COMICS
is going to be one hell of a thing to read, one of these days. This first page with
the Dr. Manhattan analogue is as perfect an encapsulation that we get all issue
long of what Morrison’s going for with the character’s usage of the second
person in the last panel invoking Buddy’s famous “I can see you!” from way back
in ANIMAL MAN #5. Also, a cool thing here with the layout, Quitely opens up
with the first panel horizontal but only taking up a quarter of the page,
meaning it stacks up on top of the other four half-panels that are then on top
of the other four full-length panels. This seems to imply the way that the character
exists in upper-dimensional space. Even on this page, he’s up above the normal
eight panels that have been established as the norm. The good doctor takes his
leave on the next page after the doomed scientists each push a button, executing
“porti belli,” which translates to “beautiful places.” Quitely does a
mathematical breakdown in the panel when Adam leaves, one in the middle, then
two on each side, then continually having into increasingly smaller columns of
four, eight, and sixteen. That winds up being thirty on either side of the main
one. Which I don’t think means anything other than that Quitely’s a beast. This
is immediately followed by the scientists’ murder by a “sergeant” that they
seem to acknowledge as a superior and whose left arm is metal/bionic just like
Nora O’Keefe’s killer.
The following page is a reprise of the Sally Jupiter/Laurel Juspeczyk
scenes from the source material with Nightshade visiting her mother and sharing
that her father, Dr. Eden, is working with Allen Adam on harnessing black hole
energy to reduce America’s dependence on oil.
The spread on the next page is more confusing than even what
we’ve gotten acclimated to by now. Across the top row, we’ve got four panels of
Peacemaker and Nora in the very room that she will later be killed, discussing
the ULTRA COMICS story that apparently Harley’s dad wrote entitled “Janus the
Everyway Man,” which was the inspiration for her piece of art that will later
be used to bludgeon her to death. Peacemaker clearly states that Harley has the
algorithm but will not share it. All this while they let a pair of doves loose
to fly off into the sky. This scene jumps to the bottom row of the page with
the camera tracking the two doves. Peacemaker explicitly references all that is
to come, he will “do what has to be done” after Harley wins the 2015 elections
(why are there elections being held in 2015?) and then he and Nora will “go
where they’ll never find us.” This is one shot when the doves are flying away,
good to go. The next panel is a series of droplets of blood in a loose
implication of a mรถbius strip. Then, there are just two feathers. Did Captain
Atom pull the doves up into upper-dimensional space? Meanwhile, the sequence
across the middle of this spread is laid out to echo the two-headed piece of
art up above it with someone beating the hell out of Peacemaker
post-assassination while the newly inaugurated President Dr. Eden asks him why
he killed Harley. The person beating the hell out of Peacemaker’s face is the
metal-armed killer. We’ve seen Eden’s hands and they are fleshy, so this just
means that the killer works for Eden? Shit, I thought it was Harley.
Then, we’ve got Question reprising the famous
Comedian-in-Moloch’s-room-from-Moloch’s-POV scene from #3 (I think #3). There’s
another FLEX MENTALLO bomb allusion with the lighting of the fuse. Our hero
goes on to reveal that he does not have a black-and-white worldview similar to
one Walter Joseph Kovacs but is instead in favor of breaking things down into
a, wait for it, eight-stage color-coded system. The high-level mob fixer
playing the part of Moloch is apparently a “dirty cop in the pay of a corrupt
vice president,” (who I think is supposed to be Eden, here). And this guy
claims to have been taking orders from “the Sarge,” who I believe that we can
correctly identify as Nora’s killer, whoever he really is.
Oh God, we’ve only made it as far as the staples.
Next up is the redux of Ozymandias’s failed 1966 Crimebusters
meeting. The guy doing the talking, significantly, is one Sergeant Lane and
HOLY FUCKING SHIT, I JUST FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER TEN READ-THROUGHS NOTICED
THAT HE’S HOLDING UP THE EARTH-2 GRAPHIC NOVEL AND ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #10. Um. I
can’t really deal with that right now.
Then, Harley gives a press conference in 2008 announcing the
formation of the Pax Americana, a super-team comprised of some martial-arts
based character called Tiger, the second Nightshade, Blue Beetle (now in the
Dan Garrett outfit, having been seen rocking the Ted Kord duds in that future
confrontation with his partner), The Question, and Peacemaker, who is even drawn
in that scene leaning against the desk just like good old Eddie Blake, God rest
his soul. But at that press conference, Captain Atom makes some new towers to
replace the ones that fell on 9/11. There’s some assassin who’s rushing up to
take out Harley but Adam teleports him to jail without even appearing to notice
that it’s happened. That seems significant, but I can’t tie it in to anything
else at this time.
Cut to Adam sitting on a park bench with his old dog Butch and
reeeeally out of it as Harley approaches. Adam calls him the president, but
subsequent dialogue reveals that he is just a governor. There’s a crazy deal
here where Adam uses his powers to instantaneously not as much dissect poor
Butch as separate him into his component parts. This of course immediately
recalls Dr. Manhattan doing the same thing with his father’s watch, but that
explicit comparison implies an interesting commentary on Morrison’s mindset to
the material vs. Moore’s in the original. Whereas Moore takes a more mechanical
craft-based approach, Morrison is far more humanistic and willing to roll his
sleeves up, diving into the blood and guts of superhero comics to see what
makes them tick, just as surgical as Moore but far less detached. One comes
away from Moore’s material uncertain how much affection he even has left for
this genre that at least at one time inspired him so much, but Morrison will
clearly still have that big red S blazing under his shirt until the day he
dies. And beyond!
Harley’s subsequent conversation with Adam irrefutably sets
him up as our Ozymandias analogue. He discovered Algorithm 8 at his father’s
graveside when he was twenty-three. He can see the new Dark Ages in the
not-too-distant future. He puts forth the notion that the president has to be
sacrificed in order to secure world peace. This is a very interesting permutation
of Veidt’s plan, all but explicitly stating that the president was in on the
assassination and that Peacemaker was acting upon the Chief Executive’s orders.
Harley believes that Adam can resurrect him the same way he does with Butch a
couple of pages back. All of this is apparently contained within “Major Max
Meets Janus The Everywhere Man,” which it seems like is that issue of Major
Comics that has been wrecking everything for everyone here for this entire
series and which, by the way, was written and drawn by Harley’s father Vince.
Then, there’s a scene of some terrorists trying to get into
President Bush’s White House and getting subdued by Peacemaker and his drones,
all of which is narrated to the terrorist leader by Governor Harley. The
significance of providing this scene to the reader at this point might be to
illustrate the dichotomy of Peacemaker “loving peace so much he’s vowed to
fight for it to the death.” That’s the genesis of the plan, right there. Same
ironic goal as Veidt, the whole deal, this is just Harley putting himself in
the role of sacrificial victim instead of half of New York City. Which makes
the whole deal much more heroic, I believe we can all agree. This is confirmed
by the following scene, the issue’s final post-assassination interrogation scene
in which Peacemaker says that he was trying to “suvva worll.” He gets loose
after that and manages an finger-gun “BANG!” in Eden’s direction before none
other than the metal-fisted man, probably Sergeant Lane, decks him. Cut to that
previous conversation with Nora when Peacemaker says that Harley said that he
should be the victim because the punishment should fit the crime.
Then, we just back up to the early days of the
Beetle/Question partnership and the latter causing a smack dealer to overdose
on his own product at some basketball court. There’s a funny line about
Question having to write something “badass and ironic” on his question card,
but this page doesn’t really seem to contribute any answers to the narrative
that I can discern, and its placement here seems to function mainly as a directional
cue for the reader to show that we are now travelling backwards in time again.
The next scene is Harley visiting his father’s grave across four different
seasons, culminating with the Algorithm 8 revelation, which cranks up the
situation on that panel-doubling pretty seriously, doubling so many times that
there is a row of 256 goddamn panels across the middle of the page. Which I
think means that there are 509 panels on this page. Okay, my brain is about
cooked, now. Not even going to try to interpret that. One more scene to go.
Okay.
Young Harley walks into his dad’s office and goes through a
scrapbook. It’s a bunch of Yellowjacket clippings. The radio drops a long JFK
quote, which you’ve got to do at this point in your WATCHMEN-homage situation.
Young Harley starts playing with his dad’s gun. Yellowjacket (Vince Harley)
comes back in through the window. He forgot his key but startles his son, which
results in young Harley putting one right between Dad’s eyes. This is, of
course, the crime that necessitates the punishment all of those years later.
Young Harley holds up his father’s domino mask and it forms a mรถbius
strip, which will go on to inspire him to see or compose Algorithm 8, as well
as performing a nifty little tuck-in back to the beginning/end of this story, a
perfect marriage of form and content. Oh, and there are the doves.
Okay. So, what I think happened is that Harley does in fact
pull his little Ozymandias riff and orders Peacemaker to take him out but that
he possibly expects that Adam will resurrect him. Only Vice-President Eden is a
really bad dude and has Sergeant Lane coerce the four scientists to remove Adam
from the equation before killing them, thus preventing Harley’s resurrection
and leaving Eden in control, which is in keeping with the rest of the issues of
this series ending in a really terrible place for all concerned. The only thing
that I’m not really sure about is the extent of this that is revealed by
Algorithm 8, how much both Harley and Nora knew before dying. Learning the
secret of Algorithm 8 is clearly what caused Nora to be killed. Did Eden order
this so that Harley’s equation would die with her after Harley’s assassination?
Did Eden know Algorithm 8? Shouldn’t Harley have been aware of Eden’s
machinations through Algorithm 8? Did everything, in fact, go according to his
plan?
Just zooming in on this issue with this level of clarity has
about sucked me dry, but I want to close by stating that my expectations for
this issue could not have been higher and that they were surpassed. This is
Morrison and Quitely both firing at the top of their game with Nathan Fairbairn
and letterer Rob Leigh doing more than their share of heavy lifting to make
this thing so much more clearer than it otherwise might have been. But, oh, it
makes my brain hurt and my heart sing. It doesn’t get better than this, folks.
BATMAN AND ROBIN #36 — The Bring-Back-Damian arc in The New
52’s strongest and most consistently magnificent title continues. Gleason’s
cover was so great, I had to bail out on the LEGO variant. Seriously, give
those kids their own show on Fox Mondays after you-know-what! Bruce continues
to dispense all manner of badassery in this issue. Dude even turns off the
voice telling him all the horrible things that are breaking down on Page Three,
even. That’s going to come back and bite him later on. A weird moment for me
when our hero happens upon that crazy battle-tank and drops the classic, “I’m
Batman!” For the first time, instead of thinking of Keaton dropping that
seriousness in 1989 or even the Christian Bale cover-version of 2005, I could
only hear it in the voice of whomever says those words for those wonderful “How
It Should Have Ended” shorts. Kind of messed with the story flow for me a bit.
That’s a terrific long shot of the team running up to the chaos cannon. And a
perfect last page. This thing is going to read aces in trade, but it’s pretty
sweet, savoring that shadow for an entire month.
FUTURES END #29 — All right, well I guess this business was
important enough that we quit jumping around and just stayed with one cast of
characters for this week. Would that they didn’t give away the big ending on
the cover. I mean, it’s right there, man! Ryan Sook is so good. Patch Zircher
is once again on interiors and pretty much locking down artistic MVP on this
book at this point, fella keeps showing up and just putting it down. It looks
like all kinds of Arrow & Barda fun next week, so hoorah.
BATMAN ETERNAL #33 — The shit has now really and truly hit
the fan as Batman and newly promoted field agent Penny-Two race to lock down
the seventeen weapons caches before Hush (who even has a stupid name, I’m
realizing all these years later; oh, how that Jim Lee art blinds you!) can blow
them all up and rob more Gotham families of their loved ones. Jason Fabok stays
onboard for another round of finished pencils before jumping ship for the big
show, and he once again turns in nothing but dynamic A-list business. DC really
has found a deep reservoir of talent in this guy who I don’t know anything
about but it seems like he is very much a child of the Lee/McFarlane nineties
who has also studied Capullo’s evolution along the way and matured into his own
style that is reminiscent of these influences but still very much his own.
Character-wise, I love how Julia talks Bruce into letting her come out and then
only makes it to her fourth panel out in the city before starting to question
him and rake him over the coals for the whole underground weapons cache
boondoggle. Which is a hell of a band name if anybody needs one.
JUSTICE LEAGUE #36 — I bailed on this title when Jim Lee
did, was not a fan of the character dynamics that Johns had crackling for that
entire first year. But I do like that Jason Fabok boy and wanted to support his
ascendance to the ultimate big-time, so gave this one a look. It’s solid.
Luthor in the League is definitely an interesting dynamic (and plays much
better than that nonsense Bendis was running a few years back with Norman
Osborne in Nick Fury’s old gig). The premise for this arc is compelling. Fabok
once again knocks every single page out of the park, and his Outbreak Batsuit
is a rocking character design. I’ll be back to see how it all goes down next
month.
WONDER WOMAN #36 — I always reread the issues before writing
them up so that I can blend my full-on going-for-broke Lone-Star-attack
Wednesday night first impressions with a more nuanced pass through with more of
a focus on the actual craft of the thing. For this reread, I waited until I had
what felt like a particularly heavy bowel movement on deck. Because as talented
of an artist as David Finch is, to say nothing of his collaborators Richard
Friend & Sonia Oback, this thing manages to take a dump all over Azzarello/Chiang’s
run in a mere twenty pages. Hell, in the first five. We open with a narrative
caption montage about water. It is essential to life, you know, but too much of
it can also lead to death. With this stunning juxtaposition between grass
growing in the fields and floods destroying a city out of the way, we stop off
at the statue of Hippolyta where the line “evidence of our sorrow” is
oh-so-achingly presented alongside the image of rain trickling down from
stone-Hippolyta’s eyes. As if the statue
were crying, you see. People have got to stop copying thirty-year-old Alan
Moore tricks. And then there’s some guy standing on top of a dam who might have
caused this flood? And there’s Swamp Thing. All of this grand discussion has
been in service of what we’ve been waiting more than three years for, an entire
page of Diana doing nothing but washing blood off of her naked body in the
shower before we turn the page and there she is, a full body shot of The God of
War emerging from that self-same shower wearing a towel. Looking hot, Mama!
This is the Wonder Woman we deserve. Nuanced.
I have made no bones about the fact that Azzarello did a
great job loading this book up with a compelling ensemble, almost to the
detriment of the lead herself occasionally, but it was always a good ride and
they were all (with the exception of Orion, who still mainly hung around here)
unique to this book. Well, Pages Eight and Nine are a double-page splash of the
Justice League. And Swamp Thing shows up a couple of pages later basically so
Diana can have someone to lose her temper against and fight. Because all of
those dead women and children made her emotional, see. Then Aquaman just
straight walks out of the jungle to fly Diana back home. And that’s such a weird
thing. The League was all together, Batman said, “Let’s move,” it cuts to
Wonder Woman attacking Swamp Thing to burn pages, and then Arthur takes her
home. Best part of the issue is that they spend the flight with her holding and
then nuzzling a teddy bear while providing an info-dump of the status quo post-Azzarello/Chiang’s
run for all the folks who had been skipping one of the best books of The New 52
but who are now totally in because of that smokin’ Finch cover. Art
notwithstanding, this comic would be very average without any context.
Following up on what’s come before, it is downright insulting.
FABLES #146—Things are moving right along as the entire gang
pretty votes to kill Bigby with Miss Duglas as his only hope of mercy from the
merciless hand of Willingham. It looks like next issue is going to be really
good.
ZERO #12 — This is an interesting short blast. I didn’t care
too much about the opening scene, but the brief follow-up in the back end saved
it for me. Once again, I’ve never heard of this Adam Gorham, but he comes out
of nowhere to provide interiors that are a terrific fit to everything we’ve
seen in this title before, stylistically speaking. I guess it’s too much to
hope that #13 will just be what Zero is seeing in his file, there.
MORNING GLORIES #42 — This feels like a denser read than
they have lately. Twenty-eight pages for $3.50, that is some quality!
Sometimes, it’s hard finding something to talk about these singles that Meylikhov
doesn’t already cover in the backmatter. It is a little funny, his last heading
quoting one of the catchphrases of that latest BATTLESTAR GALACTICA just a few
pages after Isabel just goes ahead and drops John Locke’s all-time classic
“Everything happens for a reason” into her campaign speech. I guess Spencer had
to mark the #42 somehow. This book has got me so twisted around that when
Georgina first walked in, I thought that she was maybe Casey from the future
and undercover? Those glasses really do make one hell of a disguise.
ASTRO CITY #17 — Well, shut my mouth! When we jump to Honor
Guard having Red Cake Day there on the bottom of Page Three, I thought that Busiek
finally caved and, mysterious first-person narrative captions notwithstanding,
was going to give us just a straight JLA-type issue after all of these years.
Silly me. Of course this story is still about some random dude, even if he’s an
alien. The character design made it a little confusing for me, though, I spent
the entire issue that Stormhawk, whose face we see in the first two pages, is
also that The Assemblyman fellow who’s there with the rest of Honor Guard, like
those Quiqui-A folks were making reparations by somehow dreaming him into a new
identity or something? Maybe it was just me, but there was some disconnect in
the issue when it just turned out that they were two guys who looked very much
alike.
FANTASTIC FOUR #013 — That goddang Bentley-23 finally shows
his true colors while several guest stars make an appearance. Robinson brings
in Namor to hang out with Hammond and remind us that they are Invaders and then
drops Fraction’s FF team into the mix again, if only for a couple of panels. And
why not the Inhumans, as well? After so much strife, it’s good to get almost
everyone back together. Though I have to say, the red uniforms didn’t last long
enough! So much for “The Man’s” “illusion of change.” I like how Sue took the
time to cut her hair short while they were changing back into blues for that
last page. And really, if that was going to be the final beat for this issue,
seems like maybe they shouldn’t have defused it prematurely and saved the
reveal for next issue’s cover.
DAREDEVIL #010 — Another quality issue from one of the most
consistent teams working today. This is really a pretty painless resolution to
a situation that could have gone much worse. Waid does a commendable job of
once again not stringing anything out but keeping the story beats drum-tight. Samnee/Wilson
continue to turn in absolutely beautiful work. It will be a sad day when this
team decides that they’re done with the character.
AVENGERS·X-MEN: AXIS #6 — It should have occurred
to me before now, but Remender is swinging at Geoff-Johns levels of fanboyhood.
It’s not just a gig to the guy, he knows these characters, as evidenced by
having Kurt & Rogue come after Mystique and then the great inversion of
Sabretooth hiding from them in the Morlock tunnels, of all places. The Dodsons’
drawing Magneto & the kids visiting Vic out in Latveria is very reminiscent
of Cheung’s last romp with that gang back in THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE. And
Inverted Thor vs. Truth-Telling Loki is a pretty great dynamic and could have
lasted a few more pages to my liking. I’m digging this series as it rounds the
bend into the third act. It knows what it is, isn’t trying too hard, and is
telling an entertaining yarn. And seems like Cheung is going to be on hand
pretty soon, so, good fun for all.
UNCANNY X-MEN #028 — Bendis really has no problem not
stacking his singles full of ensemble juggling in favor of crafting basically
one major scene and a brief minor one to vary the tone and flow. It was a nice
touch having Hank pitch a fit say that Scott Summers was right but then pretty
on-the-nose to then just a few pages later have Scott tell us that Charles
Xavier was, in fact, not right. We get it, Bendis! Kris Anka shows up and
provides another round of more-than-solid B-team interiors, but they really
shouldn’t have Chris Bachalo’s name on the cover. That just sets a brother up
to disappoint folks, no matter how talented he is.
AVENGERS #039 — Hickman is just light years ahead of
everybody, man. I know that prior to THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS, he was serious about
outlining everything out beforehand, and I can’t imagine what this must have
looked like a couple of years back or how it’s mutated and metastasized since
then. This issue is nothing but moving more pieces into place. We know about
Old Man Steve’s S.H.I.E.L.D. crew and we know about the Illuminati folks and we
know at least that there is a cabal, but that’s not enough, so now here we’ve
got fucking Sunspot of all people having bought up Advanced Idea Mechanics and
rallying his own contingent, poaching Natasha and Jessica from Steve, and even
having Hank drop by Cyclops’s new digs at the old Weapon X complex to report on
the doings of the Illuminati. Yeah, not much happens here except extraordinary
people in equally extraordinary situations orbiting one another, strategizing
for the imminent endgame. Oh, and now Shang-Chi is infinite, the Masters of
Kung-Fu!
NEW AVENGERS #026 — Ditto. Another really heavy slab of sequentials.
Those of us who read the other issue first had no doubt about the identity of
those two armored folks in the opening scene, but it just heightened the
suspense. It’s always wonderful to see Valeria Richards drop in for a few pages
of Hickman scripting. Bentley-23 offering Doom franchise opportunities was a
really nice touch. But then, that’s of course the only way it could have gone
down with Tony or the ladies. This one is another really powerful single.
Trade-readers in the future are really missing out on watching this elaborate
labyrinthine masterpiece unfold across the months and years one slice at a
time.
ANNIHILATOR #3 — Ray & Max really start sinking their
teeth into it here as Morrison dials up the meta- just a bit, and we get more
scenes of their interaction. It turns out Max isn’t an original creation at all
but an old public domain character from weird stories penned between 1910 and
1970. This whole deal is work-for-hire! Irving does some wonderful work across
a variety of styles while providing the various covers for those prose editions
of the old adventures. There’s even a Simonson riff on some interior sequential
panels for an Italian comic book. But now Makro is in the guise of Ray Spass!
So, this whole deal is probably Ray going all Tyler Durden, we think? The
bottom is starting to drop out in the last pages of this issue. It looks like
next month will be even more unhinged than we’ve already seen.
