12/17/14

THE MULTIVERSITY: THUNDERWORLD ADVENTURES #1 — Of course, I was looking forward to the return of Morrison/Quitely the most when some of these were announced (and typing that, I realize that I don’t actually know some of the remaining creative teams for THE MULTIVERSITY; Jim Lee was recently announced on the next book after the handbook, I believe, and that certainly looks like Frazer Irving art on all those terrifying Frazer-Irving-looking characters in the ads this week, but I’m not sure who’s left; I assume Reis will be returning for #2 a la JHWIII in SEVEN SOLDIERS?). But a reasonably close second was regular Morrison collaborator (SEAGUY, BATMAN AND ROBIN) Cameron Stewart on this Marvel Family riff. And what a riff it is! Why can’t this just be a book or an eight-issue mini, at least? I keep wanting that to happen. We open with some self-aware narration by a Wizard Shazam who seems a bit more meta-aware than usual, but that isn’t enough to hold off Dr. Sivana’s technological Rock of Eternity. Sivana soon has his three kids all powered up and down in the middle of Fawcett City, and Stewart’s economical lines convey the action perfectly, not too fussy, just bold fluid superhero dynamism. This is easily the most straight-ahead of the THE MULTIVERSITY issues so far. I think it’s the first one in which the ULTRA COMICS issue doesn’t make an appearance with Sivana instead getting the idea to form basically a Sivana Corps from the S.O.S. issue starring pulp Doc Fate and all those yahoos. I’ve been finally working my way through a reread of Moore’s MIRACLEMAN to get caught up on the Marvel reprints, so this was a cool juxtaposition. I guess the fact that I was doing that along with this following PAX made me expect this to be more of a commentary on the MIRACLEMAN run than it turned out to be, but I suppose Morrison drew the line at making more than one of these essentially a cover version of Eighties Moore work. “All of this was my idea.” I love the slightly updated redesign on the Lieutenant Marvels reporting for duty. Cap hitting the multiversal subway station has got to be the double-page splash of the week, what a gorgeous piece of pop art. Well, Stewart is certainly giving old JHWIII a run for his money, anyway. I have to tell you, though, given the way that every single one of these issues has ended, I was a pretty concerned reader once it was Black Sivana time. But what a stunning sentiment at the end. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but I really loved the last three pages on this about as much as any ending I’ve read lately, particularly the way that it blasts through all of your preconceptions that everything about this series so far has taught you to have. Absolutely terrific.

BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN AND ROBIN #37 — And now, that is how you do THAT. Tomasi/Gleason/Gray/Kalisz /Mangual bring eighteen months’ worth of narrative to a payoff that is heartfelt, action-packed, gripping, earned, and even manages to maintain its suspense despite this industry’s short-sighted and stupid proclivity to ruin almost any significant plot twist three months ahead of time. Every beat of this, every page does exactly what it’s supposed to do and then goes the distance past that point. This holds true on a narrative level from every single collaborator. The scripted beats fall right where they should. The layouts are dynamic and do indeed crackle. The finishes provide an ideal contrast between light and dark, and then the colors throw the entire climax into sharp relief as the words carry the reader effortlessly along the way. This is the first time since the reboot that Darkseid has projected the weight, menace, and intrinsic danger that Kirby embedded in his DNA almost half a century ago now. It’s hard not to just run through this thing page by page, panel by panel, and explain why this entire thing is perfect, from the Giffen “The Great Darkness Saga” homage on the first page to Ace growling on the next page followed by Darkseid’s pitch-perfect line about the Mother Box while crushing it before the monster payoff of that double-page splash. Really, the shock of that page-turn to Pages Four and Five is as close a thing as I’ve seen to original “Fourth World” material as I can recall in a long time, the breathless sense of dynamism and anything being possible as the action seems about to leap off of the page and into this very set of “three-dimensional spatial coordinates.” On Page Six and then again on Page Nine, Gleason does a terrific job capturing the depth of Barbara’s panic at the thought of being stranded on Apokolips through just her eyes. Terrific fakeout on Page Seven, I really did think it was going to be that easy. But of course, Bruce has to work for it quite a bit more than that. Another stunning splash on Page Eight. Terrific escalation in the fight between Batman and Darkseid until that perfect blast on Page Fourteen that leaves the scalded Bat-shadow from the emblem’s blast on the wall with only the Darkseid silhouette. But, all that was only preamble. This issue is so incredible that Batman in Hellbat armor vs Darkseid is merely the opening act! The climactic sequence of this book might be the most gripping that I read all year long. Bruce roars into the cave with less than four minutes before his armor overloads and only that amount of time to save his son with a sliver of the Chaos Shard in a nail-biting sequence illustrated to perfection by Gleason/Gray/Kalisz. And even though DC and even some of the book’s creators themselves spoiled the outcome two months ago by pasting next month’s solicits all over everything, that last scene plays out to perfection and really just about broke me down. It was the callback shot that really did it, that same shot of the father/son embrace at the end of #14 that they used to just batter us into submission already once with the shot of Bruce holding Damian’s lifeless body at the end of #18. This was the best possible way to bring him back imaginable. The looks on Barbara and Alfred and Tim’s faces threaten to steal the show, but nothing can trump the smile on Bruce’s face as he scores the biggest win of his entire tortured and really quite sad life coupled with the momentum of the son hurling himself toward his father, arms clasped around him. 2/27/13 is a day that will forever live in infamy in my heart, and I have always vehemently argued that to undo that death would cheapen the story and its impact upon the reader. I am so happy to have been proven wrong. Maybe the best is still yet to come. Which is an amazing thing to feel in the caves beneath Wayne Manor as opposed to soaring high above the skyscrapers of Metropolis.

BATMAN #37 — Snyder/Capullo carry on the good fun with the rampant Joker virus here. The opening page is a great callback to #17 or whatever that issue of DEATH OF THE FAMILY was that opened with one of the best Joker splashes in all of time and space. Snyder working in the line “My kids both had their tonsils out the day before that roof collapse,” into Gordon’s Gotham Pres recap is the dialogue that we deserve. That whole page between them, really. I also dig Alfred calling this Joker’s masterpiece; that is a pretty nifty way to substantially up the stakes with a single panel. But then, there’s that crazy twist on Page Ten. Capullo drops a bit of sleight-of-hand genius in Panel Five, I straight up thought that that face was ash falling from Gordon’s cigarette on my first pass through, but then the next panel sent me doubling right back. That face! And the line about the Gordon kids’ tonsils slams right back into an almost-immediate payoff. This is not the kind of thing you pull off in the first or second year of a continuous run, Wednesday Night Faithful! These men complete each other’s sentences now, in their own homes, without even realizing that their collaborators are also uttering apparently disjointed phrases aloud. And but what a double-scene finale. You know, I appreciate an eight-page backup as much as the next fella. Especially in this day and age of Merry Marvel $3.99 Twenty-Pagers. But following up the feature presentation with anything at all is almost disrespectful, no matter how good the backup is. Yow.

BATMAN ETERNAL #37 — This is another moving-things-along issue that doesn’t really hold up too well as a single. Andrea Mutti’s art looks a bit rushed and is a dip from the Fabok sickness that I’m still recovering from that happened just a couple of weeks back. I don’t really care about the haunting of Batwing or Scarecrow’s merry band as of yet. It is of course interesting to see Selina bat Bruce around like a kitty-cat with her toy. Here’s hoping next week has some more meat in it.

FUTURES END #33 — Now, that is a goddamn cover. Ryan Sook murders it every week, but come on now. Lopresti shows up to deliver even more thunder. I was certainly sad when we cut away from The Atom encountering the true face of Father Time, was hoping this would be another single-setting issue where all kinds of shit goes down like has been happening. So, is Father Time kin to Mister Mind by way of Lovecraft, or what is the deal here? Cole’s reaction to Fifty-Sue commandeering the call is priceless. Who knew he was so great at sitcom beats? We need an odd-couple book starring him and Azzarello’s Orion, as blasphemous as that sounds. For someone whose sole purpose in this timeline is exterminating that Brother Eye, old Terry is falling down on the job pretty hard and not even blinded by sex. The expository conversation between Madison & Jason on their first page is just the worst. “As you know, Madison, I can’t feel the wind rushing through your hair. That’s why we need to be flying to Columbia now, Madison. That’s what’s making the wind rush.” And Doctor Polaris should in no way be a cliffhanger, we’ve seen that coming all along. That is pretty limp. All told, though, this issue was better than the BE this week, can’t help but compare them.

FABLES #147 — This felt a bit like filler for the next-to-next-to-next-to-last-issue. I’m sure the tradewaiters won’t mind because they’ll just barrel on through to the actual Happily Ever After, but this entire thing does nothing but jump back and forth between two conflicts and then refuses to resolve one of them, with the other one never really being in doubt either. The pages are, as usual, gorgeous, but it feels funny for Willingham to drop the hammer the way he did back in #144 or 145 and then just hit the coast for this month. This is mitigated somewhat by the fairly ingenious conceit of resolving the various fates of such a crowded ensemble with these backups that have been running in this arc, and this month’s “The Last Story of Beauty and The Beast” is certainly no exception. Here’s to nothing but thunder for the final three issues of this fantastic long-running series.

WYTCHES #3 — I dug this one all right, but it kind of left me cold in a way that the first two didn’t, and I’m not sure why. There wasn’t enough escalation, perhaps. I maybe shouldn’t hold this one to the same standard as THE WAKE, but then again, all we’re doing is trading out Murphy for Jock, so it’s not like the talent isn’t still ridiculously stacked. I’m sure that it’s intentional and a reflection of the dad’s descent into some kind of panic-driven fever-dream madness, but the absolutely disjointed way that those last few scenes hit on the final four pages put me off. There’s nothing to grab hold of, from a narrative point of view, at least as far as is apparent in this installment. I assume that’s really Sailor there on the last page and that the wytch really has her, but this is the first time all issue that we’ve seen her in 2014, unless you count when she just popped up a couple pages before that, but then the jump-cut on the following page made it seem like that was just her dad hallucinating, so then I’m inclined to think this is just another hallucination, though I doubt it is. There’s no real sense of purchase here in a way that never happened in THE WAKE, no matter how over-the-top balls-out fantastic events got. The art remains immaculate, of course. Hollingsworth’s hand-painted spatters do so much work creating a sense of dread throughout the atmosphere, even back in good old 2011. This is still quality but hoping for a bit of a bump next time.

ZERO #13 — Okay, this, maybe I’d be better served with the trades after all. I think that this is only the second time that I’ve actually heard of an artist before he or she showed up on this book, but I was a huge fan of Ponticelli’s back on Lemire’s cancelled FRANKENSTEIN, AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E. book, so was already all dialed in for the panelwork, but this thing doesn’t pull its weight for me as a self-contained reading experience. There’s a big fight and a lot of blood and a few Fuck Yous, but there’s no emotional heft, nothing to make me care about any of it.

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #6 — I still adore the art. But I also still can’t quite get dialed into caring about these people. McKelvie’s diagram of the bedroom was good fun and recalled YOUNG AVENGERS shenanigans. But our heroine’s decision to bravely get on Twitter and start shilling for con love is not the stuff that dreams are made of, at least not the ones that float through this head. Bring back PHONOGRAM: THE IMMATERIAL GIRL. Please.

EAST OF WEST: THE WORLD — I am glad that they released this thing, not a moment too soon. Hickman’s canny enough not to bail on the sequentials entirely, so we get six pages from Dragotta/Martin telling the tale of those cute li’l horsemen roping themselves a new bronco before we get to the meat of the book, some cold, hard, and sharp Hickman graphics, son, detailing all those things that you always kind of wondered about those territories what used to be these great United States but were always too distracted by all of the eye-popping insanity erupting from these pages every month to actually articulate. Things like year of independence or geographic area or population or GDP or currency or a really handy little bar graph letting you know just how much military or political strength or political stability or long-term viability that The Confederacy or the great fallen of Republic of Texas has (spoilers: not very damn much for the latter). It’s all really quite fascinating and a great way to get your hooks into this insane world just a little bit more firmly.

FANTASTIC FOUR #014 — What an off-kilter way to open the issue! Stellar art, as always, but I couldn’t believe that that wasn’t Victor with his face blurred out. Robinson got me. It’s a pretty ballsy retcon to just introduce a new fella who is not only responsible for all of the trouble since this latest run began but whose influence dates all the way back to the halcyon days of The King himself, but it plays pretty well here, all things considered. That’s a gorgeous double-page splash of all the panels from the past 54 years of FF glory. You have got to love Peter and powerless Johnny swinging around trying to get to the bottom of things. Hickman’s run implied this as well, but I can’t believe Marvel doesn’t just give those guys their own book. You know Slott would write it on the side in a heartbeat. I do think that last shot would have been better served without dialogue, or at least with less dialogue than seven syllables’ worth. Since I’m now searching for total verisimilitude in the dialogue of scenes featuring an invisible, force-field-wielding woman and her rock-skinned companion squaring off against a winged embodiment of the American ideal and the King of Atlantis. But this should be a solid home-stretch here from these guys, I’m thinking. Glad they’re bringing back the original numbering, I really felt like an asshole buying FANTASTIC FOUR #004 in 2014, you know?

ALL-NEW X-MEN #034 — I never got onboard with Millar’s ULTIMATE X-MEN situation, but it’s interesting enough to see how this Jean interacts with the Teen Jean we’ve come to know and love (and swoon over). Just Jeans hugging! I’m thinking Teen Hank alone with Victor Van Damme or-whatever-Ellis-named-him is a reasonably dangerous combination. The Bendis Express rides on!

AVENGERS·X-MEN: AXIS #8 — Well, now it’s certainly getting down to it. And Yu is on hand for increased cup size. I mean, that splash of Doom and Brother Voodoo teleporting in to take out Wanda, you just want to scream at Daniel: “Be careful, you can’t handle the weight, you’ll never stay aloft!” Only Wanda knows how. But as much shit as I love giving the guy, Yu has certainly come a long way, I couldn’t believe how clean those lines on Spider-Man were in the opening scene, very appropriate to the character before returning to his more signature scratchier style that’s more appropriate with Thor cleaving a nice little piece out of Apocalypse. It’s funny now, while this is all hitting the fan, to think about how this sounded in pitch. “It’s like AVENGERS VS X-MEN. But different!” I mean, barely. These are all solid beats moving everything into place for the big finale. You can’t get more old school vs new than Old Man Steve in armor supporting the weight of White Onslaught Skull and telling Evil Captain Falcon to fuck off. That requires some shifting about.

ANNIHILIATOR #4 — It’s getting crazier and more manic by the page! Of course, we need a new character to bounce these two guys off of, enter Luna Kozma just in time for a high-speed chase to avoid hails of bullets. I suspect Morrison is seeding this thing with more self-aware ADAPTATION-style meta-moments than is immediately apparent on the first couple reads. The screenplay segments are certainly getting even further out than they were before. The color scheme is interesting while Ray is sleeping; Nomax turns on the television and the static blue and purple tones are a match for what’s happening with the screenplay pages. Everything’s bleeding together. This is a dark and mean little story that certainly doesn’t make you feel better about the world, but I can’t look away from the whole evil mess, the wreckage of it all.

SANDMAN: OVERTURE #4 — Well, this certainly goes to another strange place while J.H. Williams III continues to give the appearance of evoking the furthest, most fluid regions of dreamspace right there on the page where you can see them shimmer. What a great narrative beat to have the first five pages take place in the gutters of a page late in #3. Only in SANDMAN is that kind of thing not only not cheating but kind of intrinsically expected and appreciated. As terrific as the series has been so far, it has admittedly been a great deal of set-up and folks walking around uttering perfect Gaiman dialogue, so it is nice to see a bit of actual confrontation breaking out here. The story about the cat-creature that was the annulet gave me déjà vu, and I can’t figure out if it’s just the whole deal with Rose Walker from way back in THE DOLL’S HOUSE being a dream vortex or something else. I should have probably reread the original series before this one came out. Ha, I probably have another year to knock it out before this sequel gets done. At least a year! At any rate, this is certainly worth the wait. JHWIII is operating at such a high level at this point that he really has no peer, and I can’t think of anyone who is better suited to not only navigate but depict the winding ways of Morpheus’s doomed journey than him.