10/17/12

BEST OF WEEK: THE ZAUCER OF ZILK #1—So, I don’t read the solicits, and this resulted in the glorious surprise of walking into the store Wednesday afternoon and stumbling upon 32 majestic pages of raw Brendan McCarthy magic. I had been meaning to track down the 2000 ADs that originally serialized the story a few months back, but this is much better, $4, no ads, nothing but the magic. I can’t honestly say there are really any surprises in here, as McCarthy has trained us to expect fantastic explosions of polychromatic glory and otherdimensional madness at every turn, and with that as a given, there’s not really much that’s out of bounds unless he just like upends his palette and goes in a completely different direction. Which I’m certainly not asking for, more of this until the end of time will be fine. Our protagonist is kind of like The Doctor if The Doctor was a narcissistic aristocrat dick of a prince, and then he’s got to save his little text-message-speaking shorthand-named 2+2 (“Tutu”) from his nemesis. Across time and space, no-worlds and un-time! This story is certainly not for everyone, but if you’re the sort who thinks taking psychedelic mushrooms watered with Grant Morrison’s blood might at long last earn you access to the secret omni-dimensional garden of great ideas, then this is for you.

CHEW #29—Yet another installment of one of the most original and entertaining books on the rack, these boys still seem to be ramping things up even though they’re almost to the halfway point. Once again, Poyo manages to steal the entire issue with only a double-page splash to his name. POYO! Layman continues to just barely ease the title character back into the fold, actually giving Tony a page to himself this month out before tossing him back off-panel to let the supporting cast shine. It really hurts me when twin sister Toni takes a bite out of people’s shoulders, I can’t believe that keeps happening. And we get yet another power-set. At this point, I’m really curious as to whether or not all of these diverse and very inventive attributes are going to coalesce into any formal sort of factional situation or if they’re just going to remain plot drivers for these very entertaining one-offs. Next issue will be massive.

GLORY #29—Strong characterization this time out for little sister Nanaja, which really ramps this series up, the conflict between the two of them. Keatinge tones down the action and really digs in to the characters. It’s a risky call but it works for me, I’m a bit more invested in not just the hybrid girls but good old Henry and Glory’s new boyfriend. Though I could maybe stand to unsee that shot of them in bed together.

WONDER WOMAN #13—I was hoping to get just a liiiiiittle more follow-up on the big last page of #12 after two months of waiting, but of course Azzarello is happy to keep stringing us along with next to nothing on the Fourth World front. Tony Akins continues to turn in very competent work that would be perfectly satisfactory on its own merits if he wasn’t filling in for Chiang. This was solid but a bit of a letdown after waiting through the zero month for just a bit more Kirby in my Wednesday night diet.

BATWOMAN #13—I stumbled into a perfect little Amazonian hat trick here without even trying to program it. This is again nothing less than breathtaking art, every single page. Or double-page spread, I should say. Big respect to DC for not breaking up the flow of the story once with ads and letting the narrative run uninterrupted. You could burn a thousand words on each and every double-page spread, there’s a ridiculous amount going on in all of them. That labyrinth might be my favorite, though the black one where they’re covered by worms and there are many more words than should ever in all rationality be on a comic book page is a good un. It’s going to be a shame when Williams quits doing the art on this book, but I won’t be able to look away while he’s still on it. Just ridiculous work.

MINUTEMEN #4—All right, yes, this is clearly the tale of the team’s loss of innocence and transition into the retired broken-down husks chronicled in Hollis Mason’s bestselling UNDER THE HOOD, which of course gives the framing device much more resonance. This is all pretty well done, writing and art are top-notch. You just come away from the reading experience feeling pretty dirty. Not unlike the effect hypothetically produced by stumbling across the P.I. concealed camera photographs of the cast of THE NEW FRONTIER’s raunchy sex lives. I didn’t really need to know the secret origin of The Silhouette that badly.

NEW AVENGERS #31—Well of course, I should have known that Bendis wouldn’t be done with Cage/Jones until the very last page of his run on this title. Which hopefully will not bring the couple full-circle back around to ALIAS #1. Though you have to wonder/worry with old Gaydos suddenly back in the fold. Even though we get the two main Bendis tics here, our heroes sitting down to a meal with heaping side-orders of dialogue, as well as fifteen static-shot panels in a row while two guys have a conversation, this issue feels a bit more substantive than last week’s issue of the main title.

DAREDEVIL #19—This is that rare book that spoils its last page on the cover and still manages to take you completely by surprise. Waid begins his second year on the title with the same breakneck pace to which we’ve grown accustomed. Samnee/Rodriguez continue to provide gorgeous vistas that never stop pushing the narrative forward, as much as the reader wants to stop and just take a bath in them. It is interesting to note that for all the talk about this title’s tone surfacing from the abject misery that has dominated the character since Frank Miller first brought us the ballad of Elektra Natchios, lo, these thirty-two years ago, as bouncy and fun as it was when it started, at this point we’ve got Matt just barely recovering from doubting his sanity, Foggy convinced enough that he’s craaaazy to have not only terminated the partnership but sell him out to his Assistant DA girlfriend so that she can set up a citywide manhunt and Ol’ Hornhead’s head disembodied and at the mercy of a former C-list villain. Macabre!

HAWKEYE #3—I didn’t think this one had any room to get better. Everyone involved continues to absolutely murder it. The tone is perfect, Clint’s voice really shines through in the narration. Fraction builds an entertaining yarn via the countdown of bad decisions playing against the goofy wonderfulness of all the trick arrows and how these things affect our dynamic duo, who remain simultaneously one of the best and most forehead-slappingly obvious ideas for a pairing that anyone has had in some time. Aja is a force, perfectly complemented by Hollingsworth, whose restrained palette suits the stripped-down tone of this book to a tee. Believe the hype, people, all the people screaming from the mountaintop after two or three issues aren’t just raving madmen, or they have a really good reason, I should maybe say. Most schools of thought will probably put this as BEST OF WEEK, though I stand by my omni-d phantasmagoria. But, come on. The single-panel return of his most famous costume, alone. 

10/10/12

BATMAN #13—You know, I didn’t realize that it’s been three months since I read a Snyder/Capullo BATMAN comic, but that’s what happens when creative cranks out eleven comics in under eleven months. The batteries need a chance to recharge and, oh, the machine is humming along faster than ever. Capullo/Glapion/Plascencia are monsters, I’m not sure there’s an art team working today hitting every single storytelling mark with such precision, intensity, and consistency. Old Mayor Hady’s attitude doesn’t indicate that much intelligence, I feel like I’d be a lot more grateful for police protection if the Joker was calling me out. And on the other end of the intelligence spectrum, you’ve got to give respect to the Clown Prince of Crime for leaving a clue in acrostic additives found in Joker Venom, that’s some crazy kind of taunting. And Jock on the backup, editorial can’t expect to pull in more serious talent than that. This was a very very good Batman vs Joker comic. And the fun is only beginning.

BATMAN AND ROBIN #13—Zombies? That is a stretch. Not that it can’t happen in Gotham, I mean, obviously, anything can, our boy was running around as a vampire just a few years ago, seems like, but for all the depth of the rogues’ gallery, as well as this team’s obvious gift at creating new additions, just going for zombies feels pretty rote. The undead fellow I want to see this duo fighting was born on a Monday. The opening scene just about makes up for it, though, watching the solar eclipse from orbit is rock-solid characterization of Bat-parenting. And it’s amazing how devastating it is, that one panel when Damian does something as simple as just thank his father, because he’s come so far, it’s so crazy just to have him expressing straightforward gratitude like that. This creative team is still tearing it up and I’m willing to give them some slack about the zombies, but there better be one really charming motherfucking pig coming up here next issue.

FRANKENSTEIN, AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E. #13—It never occurred to me with what great ease one might fold this one in to the whole Red/Green situation going on over in SWAMP THING and ANIMAL MAN because, of course, Frank is the Anti-Rot. Just like over in those other two books, Rotworld appears to be smashing the status quo for this book to pieces. I hope Nina makes it. Frank deserves a chance at happiness in companionship! Ponticelli/Faucher/Villarrubia continue to turn in the same caliber of work that has made this title such a slam-dunk since September last. My favorite image is Page Seven, The Leviathan surfacing, particularly that last shot with the teeeeeeny-tiny protagonist steering the beast with sword and force of will. Am looking forward to seeing how this interweaves with the other two Rotworld titles going forward, it’s a wonderful thing when books you already enjoy on their own individual merit intersect organically. With a little bit of science to help them along.

MORNING GLORIES #22—Another solid outing, no real shocking moments happen, but I guess you can’t drop those every single moment. I guess the return at the end is a big deal. I had just seen LOOPER right before diving into the evening’s comics so was very much screaming that at the page during the 12 MONKEYS/PRIMER/BACK TO THE FUTURE listing. I really need to see PRIMER again, one time isn’t even close to enough.

CONAN #9—The Cimmeria trilogy comes to a conclusion and is resolved in a manner to my liking. Was fully acclimated to Vasilis Lolos’s art style by the start of this issue and found it to be a better fit for the series than last month. I will be glad to get back out on the open sea, though.

THE MASSIVE #5—Wood benches 2/3 of his main characters and we zoom in on someone we haven’t met yet, a girl named Ryan who’s the sole American onboard The Kapital. As has been the case thus far with this series, Wood does a deft job juggling rapid-fire characterization for people we’ve just barely met with enormous ideas in keeping with the global scope of this series and its premise. In most ways, this is a lot like what Kirkman’s got going over with THE WALKING DEAD. Of course there are no zombies, but this story is all about survival in the face of worldwide disaster and the lengths to which a given group of characters are willing to go in order to keep living. Compelling material.

THE AVENGERS #31—This felt very very slight. I do hold these $4/20-pg Marvel books to a higher standard, certainly don’t have a calculator out while reading it but it would be nice if I felt roughly 133% as entertained as I do reading a DC title. Or DD or FF, for that matter. Not happening here. This is the first part of Bendis’s endgame and it’s nothing more than a few widescreen decompressed pages of some-mysterious-person-who’s-surely-The-Wasp having big adventure, her identity all but confirmed at the end when we learn that her scenes are taking place inside the Microverse. The rest of the book is basically clean-up dialogue from AvX. I guess the 100K or so kids will buy anything but I wish old Bendis was packing the individual issues just a little bit tighter here in his home-stretch. Which I still fully expect to be crushing when all is said and done, let it be known.

UNCANNY AVENGERS #1—All right, that was bananas. I wasn’t planning on giving any new Marvel relaunches a shot except for Hickman and Fraction, but I seriously regretted not picking up Remender on UNCANNY X-FORCE once that got going, plus I was really lying to myself if I thought I was going to be able to resist my boy Cassaday on interiors. And I’m glad I did, this is nothing less than summer blockbuster explodo fun, and I mean that in the best possible way. This is, at its heart, such a ridiculous cash-grab premise for a title that the only way to way to make it work is to paint it just as ludicrous as possible with the absurdity factor dialed all the way up. And that is exactly what happens here. Which is never expressed more perfectly than that last page, hilarious and absolutely stark raving batshit, I am for it in a big way.

BEST OF WEEK: FANTASTIC FOUR #611—I really don’t know what to say. I’ve loved this run so much. A celebration of family and the importance of the relationships with our loved ones and the effect that they have upon us, all played out against the glorious crackling science-fiction backdrop that Jack Kirby stocked with all the impossible hyperdense imagination the narrative could stand over the course of nine years. Given the massive ensemble that Hickman has painstakingly crafted over the course of the past four years, it’s a very interesting choice to limit this final issue of the flagship title to only four characters, only one of whom is eponymous. But it works. In the course of these twenty pages, we see a universe created and then turn on its creator on the seventh day because He crafted the place so perfectly in His own image, who must then be rescued by his surrogate daughter and the man he hates most in all of creation, his best friend, all effected through the course of powerful and pitch-perfect character work that resonates throughout all space and time.

10/3/12

ACTION COMICS #13—And after an interlude of zero issues, Year Two gets a proper beginning in grand and glorious fashion. We begin, as ever, with ACTION. Morrison is never one to miss a numerological trick and so sets this thirteenth issue released during the month of October during a pair of Halloweens, with the Phantom Zone taking its first prisoner twenty Halloweens before the destruction of Krypton, a very ominous little fact/retcon that just gets tossed off in a single caption and never addressed again. Is the fact that Dr. Xa-Du’s first parole hearing took place the day the planet exploded a coincidence? Hell of a thing to just drop in, there. Travel Foreman shows up with a style that’s far less scratchy and jagged than his ANIMAL MAN run, which is a good fit. I wish they’d do this every time, rather than pile on three pencilers and four inkers in a mad dash to make deadline, just have single pencilers or penciler/inkers lined up with as much cushion as they need and then hitting their marks. It sounds easy, but I’m sure it isn’t. Sholly Fisch and Brad Walker provide another solid back-up. I’m always a sucker for the Krypto stories, though I think the prize will always go to that fill-in of Busiek/Leonardi’s they finally published last year, #612, I want to say. That business laid me out.

DETECTIVE COMICS #13—An incredibly auspicious debut for the Layman/Fabok team. I was overjoyed when these guys were announced, Fabok’s been killing it every chance he gets in the occasional fill-in I’ve picked up, and of course Layman is the initial mastermind behind one of the most original and entertaining books on the rack, CHEW. I couldn’t wait to see these guys’ take on Gotham hijinx and it’s nothing but by-the-book excellence. They don’t try to overload the boat the first month out, we just get pitch-perfect characterization with Batman trying to overcome any and all distractions in order to make it to the dedication of the wing named after his mother. Only, of course, the Penguin’s taken out a hit on Bruce Wayne and is trying to usurp him in the philanthropic sector. Just another week in Gotham! This is nothing more or less than an excellent first issue that bespeaks great things to come. Also, it’s very cool to have Layman writing the back-up feature as well, it really justifies the extra buck on the price-tag, as opposed to ACTION up above, where the stories are passable but never really manage to hang next to the main feature. I can’t believe Martin from Miami wasn’t Bruce in disguise! Actually never saw that coming.

ANIMAL MAN #13—Rotworld is at last underway and, goodness, it doesn’t bode well for our heroes. I mean, I guess this has to get undone at some point, right? You can’t take out Flash and have zombie Supergirl impaling Batwoman during the recap montage and expect that this kind of thing is going to take. I hope that’s the case, as dumping the family tosses aside the character dynamic that really makes Buddy Baker stand out. Timothy Green III does a fine job blending in with Steve Pugh’s work, tough gig.

SWAMP THING #13—Dire times here, as well, and circumstances that completely torpedo this book’s status quo if they are allowed to remain when all is said and done. I actually quite like the idea of this book and Animal Man staying in some kind of post-Rotworld future. That would definitely be having the cake and eating it too, in terms of the difference in tone between setting these books in the Vertigo or DC universes. I guess that would kind of negate the point of folding them in in the first place. At any rate, one year in and this is the most entertaining the character’s been since Moore took a walk. Great to see Paquette back in the fold, tearing it up.

RORSCHACH #2—This is all terribly authentic, Bermejo’s lush art is breathtaking and Azzarello has, in particular, done an incredible job capturing the narrative voice we know so well in a -8 years state, meaning he’s got Kovacs leaving in some words in the journal that we absolutely know shouldn’t be there, but it’s only because we’ve internalized the 1985 version to such a degree, and this guy hasn’t quite chunked all the superfluous and codified his jargon just yet (Example: Page 3, panel 2: “NAME DOESN’T MATTER. ONLY FACE DOES.” There is no way in all the whispering hells my man from ’85 leaves in that “DOES.”). So far, though, here at the halfway point, Azzarello hasn’t hit the alchemy for me that he does over on COMEDIAN and manage to lend new insight into the character and make him compelling in a new way. We’re still pretty much going through the beats. There are no surprises. Maybe he’s going to drop the hammer next issue, I certainly hope so. Poor old Walter deserves better treatment and new insight into what makes him tick before his own true and personal end is nigh.

THE BOYS #71—Good lord. Never in the history of the medium has there been action of greater import taking place in the gutter in-between the cliffhanger of one issue and the first page of its next installment. The first page of this issue is so shocking, I stared at it for at least two or three minutes, marveling at Ennis’s audacity, not wanting it to be true. The symphony of the trademark over-the-top violence at the top of the page underscored by Butcher’s typically understated and so very hard-man report as to what exactly has transpired in the four-week real-time-flash since we were last granted a window into this world. But my favorite thing about this issue is how it manages to avoid the pitfalls that seemed inevitable to me all this time. I was sure at some point this was going to have to degenerate into a relatively melodramatic good vs evil sort of situation, but the manner in which Ennis manages to subvert that expectation is a microcosm of the tremendous success he’s had with this book. The friendship and respect and even love never take a back-seat to the narrative but instead continue to propel it forward to a conclusion that is of course completely inevitable and perfectly in-character. Tragic, heartbreaking, perfect, and beautiful, this has been one hell of a run. I have absolutely no idea how they plan to hurl us off into the sunset next month, but I expect it will be brutal and terribly terribly funny.

FATALE #8—Oh joy, another interlude! Those parts are my favorite. Of course, you totally see the ending coming but it makes no difference, it’s all about the ride. Except for that one red red dream, this issue is . . . very very purple. Stewart’s muted tones almost contribute more to the palpable thickness of the atmosphere than Brubaker’s remorseless script or Phillips’s lines that are never over- or underrendered, just the perfect amount of detail necessary to push the story forward. This may be a mashup of noir and Lovecraft mythos and Hollywood sexploitation and drug abuse, suspense thriller, horror, pretty much everything except science fiction so far, but these creators are firing at the top of the game so hard, they ram home the point that none of that matters, it’s all just window dressing for the characters, bait to draw us in to care about them and empathize with them and want them to succeed or at least be okay. Of course, then these guys take someone’s leg off and call it a day.

AVENGERS VS X-MEN #12—And we’re done. It was better than I thought it was going to be but not as good as I had hoped, given the magnitude of the creative talent involved. I was hoping that all that synergy would crackle together and push this past the land of editorial-mandated corporate comics, but that was a pretty foolish amount of optimism to retain after the past ten years. Kubert’s work is a bit rushed but he still delivers thirty-five pages of slam-bang-um-up finale. I particularly liked that spread of vertical panels across pages 9 and 10. Laura Martin’s deft hand with her palette enhances the work as a whole without calling attention or distraction to her individual contribution. I don’t know, something like this would work better or at least might be more satisfying if we didn’t already know there were midnight parties for UNCANNY AVENGERS the next week, if it was actually a Holy Shit moment when Cap said, “Uncanny,” instead of everyone just being like, “Check,” and oh, there are only two pages left, Thor’s got to invite Nova to join The Avengers, “Check,” these days too many of the repercussive beats get spilled before the story even finishes. Curse you, three-month solicits! Marvel’s made it very easy to reduce the majority of my consumption of their monthly superhero fare, will always hang with Hickman on his AVENGERS and going to see Bendis out after all this time and going to give Fraction a shot on FF and got to hang with Waid DD, but that is really and truly it. Ah shit, I’ll probably give UNCANNY AVENGERS a shot. They double-shipping that, too? (oh wait, and HAWKEYE, too. I am an oak)

BEST OF WEEK: DAREDEVIL: END OF DAYS #1—Man, Waid and company have been cruising along here so impressively with such regularity now, you wouldn’t think there would be room for anyone to come in and blow everything up with an ultimate Daredevil story, and by ultimate, I’m not talking about anything to do with Jemas or Millar or reboot or resetting but of course very much with Brian Michael Bendis, but what he and David Mack and Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz and Matt Hollingsworth manage in just this first outing alone is a such an uppercut to the face that you suddenly realize you’re in the middle of another mythic Daredevil story, it’s the eighties again, the bad times, the lean times. Miller & Mazzucchelli are back together for this one last seven-month run and nothing will ever be the same. Sure there have been good runs, great runs, since. Nocenti/JRJr, Mack’s arcs, Bendis/Maleev, and Brubaker/Lark, giving way to the aforementioned greatness of the current team turning in thrilling adventures starring The Man Without Fear more than twelve times a year, but none of them manage to come close, because this one is really The End. And it actually really and truly feels like this time it’s going to matter this time. To be worthy of the character. The blind arrow shot to mark Robin Hood’s grave. King Arthur drifting out to his final watery rest. Crafted for people who love the character by creators who feel that same sense of respect and devotion, who want to do right by him. I don’t want to discuss the plot at all, I had no idea what was coming and it blew me away. But this Sienkiewicz painting tells you all you need to know. This is not a discarded panel from ELEXTRA: ASSASSIN, though it feels like one in all the right ways. This is the last Daredevil story. And it’s only beginning.

(To be honest, BEST OF WEEK is too close to call between DD and THE BOYS, but I gave it up to the former because at least I could provide an image to back it up, something you can’t really roll with in the latter for a single panel without massive spoilage, now you know!)

9/26/12

BATMAN INCORPRATED #0—What a gorgeous issue. Frazer Irving’s very distinctive style carries us through several scenes we’ve experienced before (including a perfect recapitulation of the ringing-the-bell scene from YEAR ONE), and then does nothing more than flesh out the recruiting process that Bruce did for the Incorporated rollout. Real dense work. The three panels in Russia are priceless. You’ve got to love the Dark Ranger and Beryl the Squire holo-Skyping. But the former trading out his boomerang for a batarang is even better. And then a perfect last two pages between Alfred and Master Bruce. I could read Morrison Batman comics for the rest of my life and never get tired of them. And good on Burnham, whatever his contribution to the script was, very cool to see an artist punch through and get a co-plotting credit, not sure that’s ever happened before with Morrison.

HAPPY #1—Robertson’s work is on-display in all of its finely rendered hyperdetailed glory. Maybe the style just already cues THE BOYS up in my head, but from the very first page, this very much reads as Morrison riffing on Ennis. By way of JOE THE BARBARIAN, I suppose, there is a healthy dose of imagination crazy in at the end, there, with the introduction of the titular character. I guess the deal is, in this world of bastards, assholes, dicks, etc, can one little girl’s imaginary friend redeem the hard man who is the worst of the lot? Morrison’s super-short self-contained work (WE3, SEAGUY, VINAMARAMA) is always a pleasure and it looks like we’re in for more of the same, here.

FLASH #0—This one’s beautifully drawn and well constructed and all, but I’m still just having trouble getting onboard with the whole Dead Mother scenario. Barry Allen works just find without inserting that as a driving characterizing motivation. I wish Geoff Johns had grown up in The Silver Age instead of The Bronze. (I want Captain Marvel back, too.)

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #0—This is all well and good, very much the secret North American origin of Constantine in case the 200-odd issues by the very best of the UK talent pool had by chance left some itch that you needed scratched. I love Lemire and Garbett provides more-than-capable fill-in work here, as ever, but Constantine’s infiltration of the DCU proper isn’t working for me in the way it is over across with the ANIMAL MAN/SWAMP THING situation. He can’t be enough of a bastard outside the elastic confines of Vertigo? I’m not sure. Those other two still feel like Vertigo books. This one doesn’t and, I think, suffers for it. Of course, I’m rooting for John and Zee, but in the end, really think Dini should get his way and just have her move her things into Stately Wayne Manor.

OZYMANDIAS #3—I’m warming up to this one a bit. Though don’t really see the need for it to run six issues. Things speed up this time out as Wein/Lee show us what happened the first time the title character and The Comedian fought, Ozymandias’s reaction to Manhattan’s appearance on the global stage (HINT: within the week, he’s got a Master Plan involving an Antarctic retreat!) and we witness the advent of . . . the bank of monitors! Who monitors the monitorman? I’m so sorry!

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #31—Snyder/Albuquerque continue to roar through their best arc yet. The idea of Pearl & Skinner as federally sanctioned vampire hunters is too great, could sustain an entire series, though I suspect we’re only going to maintain the status quo for this one little run, here. And, hey! A big shocking cliffhanger/reveal that doesn’t feature Skinner! That’s a big deal in this book. Though I was going to totally be onboard with it before the page turn, if it had been him, glorious madness.

PROPHET #29—This is again one of the most consistently rewarding books on the rack today. Graham maintains the science pulp adventure tone that makes this seem like a discovery of the long lost best ever comic book from Flash Gordon’s own longboxes while Dalrymple turns in possibly the work of his career. You could stare at the Page 2-3 spread all night long. And this maybe isn’t even the best issue lately, it’s just better than almost everything else. Am really turning to this title in these days of regular consumption of Morrison Batman and Hickman FF flickering out of my life. It takes BEST OF WEEK by a nanometer over those other two.

FF #22—A lovely resolution to the entire Bentley/Wizard conundrum in an issue that’s got just enough room to breathe, the right amount of dialogue and character beats for the ensemble. I also like how it starts out before the main title’s first part, encompasses that issue, then finishes up the story. This is the first time I’ve seen Andre Araujo’s work, but he’s another solid addition to creative, here. Kudos to the editors or Hickman, whoever keeps finding these random people I’ve never heard of whose art all seems to have a similar aesthetic that never makes them just dropping him disrupt the momentum of the title. This one is a happy ending for Valeria and Bentley. I dearly hope it lasts through next month’s final issues. Such a glorious run.

9/19/12

BEST OF WEEK: BATWOMAN #0—While #12 was a welcome return to form, this zero-issue interlude is a devastating suckerpunch that is suddenly the best we’ve seen so far from this series. It practically follows the form of an illustrated children’s book. There’s almost no spoken dialogue, the entire issue is Kate leaving a message for her dad in case she doesn’t come back from her big case with Wonder Woman, which we learn she used to do every time before a mission but has discontinued the practice since the end of her first arc when she learned that her father had been keeping the truth about her twin sister from her. Kate’s monologue, which is full of flashback montage recap, is amplified to tremendous effect by JH Williams III’s illustrations. The guy’s been absolutely murdering it from the get-go, perfectly complemented by Dave Stewart’s colors, and this issue is not only no exception but stands as some of his best work yet. I love how he’s got the one style for the past, Kate as a girl, losing her mom and sister, all the way through West Point and discovering Sophie and then we get that gorgeous iconic painted shot of Batman that’s unlike anything we’ve seen in the book so far, which highlights the amount of impact the experience has upon the character. But what makes this Best of Week for me is the way it opens there at the end of DETECTIVE #857 before Kate takes her dad and us through her entire extended origin, bringing us all the way back to that moment that now has all kinds of new depth in the context of this issue-long montage through her life. Really fine work. When Williams is on interiors, there are very few books on the rack that can hold up to this kind of thunder.

WONDER WOMAN #0—Wow. This issue is improbably presented in the Merry Marvel style, Azzarello dropping a pitch-perfect “The Man” impression while Chiang tweaks his style to be a bit more Silver Age. And beautiful colors by my PHONOGRAM boy, Matt Wilson. But the decision to frame this issue in this retro style is quite brilliant, serving to convey the impression that we’ve stumbled upon some long-lost Golden Age back-issue that will finally give us insight into Diana by showing us an adventure from her youth, not in flashback but as it happened, complete with narrative trappings from a bygone era. Lots of exclamatory occasionally alliterative narrative captions! The first page alone does most of the heavy lifting, letting us know “this magnificent missive that originally appeared in “ALL-GIRL ADVENTURE TALES FOR MEN #41.” As if this wasn’t old-school Marvel enough, we’re also treated to a gang of thought-bubbles featuring our heroine questioning herself and her actions, right up until the last panel. This title is always gorgeous (at least whenever Chiang turns up), but this is the first issue that’s done-in-one, a very satisfying slab of serial entertainment that fleshes out what we know about Diana while entertaining us in its own right. Really close call on Best of Week. Highly recommended.

JUSTICE LEAGUE #0—If you were holding your breath for the secret origin of what Superman, Batman, and all the gang were doing before they got retconned into assembling to battle Darkseid and the Parademon menace, go ahead and exhale. The Shazam backup feature with Gary Frank’s fine rendering takes over and finally gets a chance to get moving along with Billy catching his level-up from the wizard before coming back to Earth to bitchslapping the hell out of some mugger and then cadging a cool twenty-dollar bill from his near-victim. I get what Johns is going for here, the idea that kids today are bastards and that the first thing an orphan would do upon getting all these powers would be to drop some kind of pre-Death of Uncle Ben selfish personal betterment-type behavior. And if he can finally bring it around to that character’s redemption, streetwise Billy learning what it means to be a hero and what not, I guess it’ll be close to the fella we know, but I just miss the Big Red Cheese trying to get the JLI do sing-alongs while J’onn had his hand caught in the Oreo cookie jar.

And the back-up, I love me some van Sciver interiors but this whole Pandora/Trinity War thing, so far there’s absolutely no narrative hook hung on it, no reason for me to care at all about what’s coming. I want to be excited, but the engine’s not firing quite yet.

THE UNWRITTEN #41—This one’s pretty much The Ballad of Richie the Vampire. The revelation as to what’s really going on in this series with regard to how Tom’s perception shapes the situation leads to a very interesting new set-up that will surely see us through these last few months’ worth of stories. You’ve got to respect the dissolves-into-bats exit.

FABLES #121—Twisted and evil, this. Man, what a dark way for things to resolve on the old Island of Toys, there. At eight parts, this arc went on maybe a couple of months too long but now that we’re through it, it seems like it was entertaining enough. Probably another example of this reading better in trade. But I can’t bail out on monthlies now! Bring on the new story.

THE AVENGERS #30—It is great fun still to have Simonson onboard, even when he gets saddled with seven panels of walk-and-talk across the bottom of the page. But where Bendis has always nailed the tone of give-and-take between Luke Cage & Jessica Jones, he’s not doing it for me with the chemistry between Clint & Jessica. Hawkeye’s fine but Jessica comes across as shrill and bitchy. Spider-Woman shouldn’t convince the reader that she’s absolutely PMSing every single month, you know? I get that that’s part of the arc of this story, but that was a lot of exclamation points to hurl at ol’ Hawkeye in twenty pages. Sorry to say I dug this one about as little as possible with Simonson on art the only thing making it in any way worth a look. Total AVX filler. Let’s get this End Times business going.

DAREDEVIL #18—This continues to be nothing but gorgeous brilliance. Just the panel of nothing but DD swinging through the city on the bottom of Page 11, alone. It’s insane this book’s already moved through Martin and the Riveras and it still looks this good. Samnee/Rodriguez are a force. Waid doesn’t push the overall arc forward too far and it isn’t a done-in-one but we get a little scene with Matt and Kristen that’s cut too short before he possibly hallucinates Milla back in his apartment and then swaps cases with Foggy, off to a gangster’s building to solve a murder mystery. Really, it doesn’t sound that incredible in the recap, but the outstanding level of craft painstakingly put into each page is what sets this book above almost everything else that the House of Ideas is putting out at the moment. The smartest thing they’re doing this year is not giving it the Now! treatment. Looking forward to years more with Waid, Wacker, and hopefully Samnee/Rodriguez. This is a hell of a good time.

9/12/12

BATMAN #0—The usual suspects return for this pre-Year One tale and it’s of course beautifully drawn and the characterization is bull’s-eye pitch-perfect, as ever. The back-up is even stronger than usual, a real engaging seven pages dropping in on all three Robins-to-be and young Miss Barbara Gordon immediately before her dad turns on the signal for the first time. Tynion does a fine job juggling all four characters and giving them scenes that feel fully formed in a way that actually almost shows up the headlining crew. Not a knock, but that back-up is a complete story that cuts back and forth between four characters and gives us a beginning, middle, and end. The main feature has shades of Nolan throughout, opens up with a Red Hood Gang robbery, which of course, since everyone in the world knows who’s coming back next issue, we’re all primed for Snyder to drop some kind of deft retcon tweak that will pay off to tremendous effect next month. This doesn’t happen, at least in this issue, as far as I can tell, but then we get Bruce and Alfred eschewing the manor and holed up in the tower, more Nolan, before the only real meat of the story, the tension of Bruce and Gordon up on the roof with a ticking batarang, timed to return in under four minutes and blow Bruce’s cover before he ever even puts on the cowl. Gordon certainly already does seem suspicious, his taciticity an interesting potential retcon, given that Snyder all but had Gordon calling Dick Grayson by his first name while wearing the cowl over back in THE BLACK MIRROR and here it feels like he’s establishing that Gordon always knew, almost even before Bruce did. But then that’s it. A cliffhanger, the Red Hood’s coming for Bruce and we’re To Be Continued . . . next year. That makes the whole thing seem a bit slight. It’s all very well done, but at only two pages less than the standard length, this feels like much much less of an experience than, say #1, which was a revelation. The problem is these boys have set the bar very high for themselves. Bring on the Clown Prince of Death.

BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN AND ROBIN #0—Oh man, nothing else even comes close this week. As consistently talented as the boys over on the other book are, Tomasi/Gleason/Gray drop in with this portrait of the martial artist as a young man, and manage to completely annihilate every other book this week. In a scant twenty pages, we rush through a Damian Wayne birthday montage, opening with skydiving Man-Bat destruction before flashing back to his baptism in nursemaid blood a few minutes after being born, then jumping to maybe his fourth birthday, when he learns that he’s got to defeat his mother in single combat before she’ll tell him who his father is. This is a serious and wonderful bit of almost retcon characterization to just slip in here at this point and Tomasi artfully weaves new moments through the years in with references to Morrison’s run, which of course I’m like target-demographic-zero for that, Talia’s got old Otto Netz on the line, threatening an off-with-his-head if he doesn’t get the meta-bomb together before we race through a bunch of birthdays that inevitably end in defeat for our boy assassin protagonist until we finally, perfectly, end up with Damian holding the sword up to his dad’s throat at the London pop-art exhibit that we first saw on the last page of Morrison’s second issue waaaaaaaay back in BATMAN #656. But I love how this deepens what we know about Damian, from pretty much as early as he could remember, he’s been goaded to excel at combat on all levels, driven by his mother dangling the ultimate carrot in front of him, the answer to the question Who is my father? It goes a long way toward explaining why he was such a terrible insufferable asshole when he first showed up and broadens the breadth of his journey from then until now. They squeeze so many iconic moments into this one, that opening double-page spread, the aforementioned baptism by nursemaid-blood, Damian in the cowl at the age of four, really every bit of aerial Man-Bat combat, that panel of the boy and his mother screaming at each other before engaging in the last year of birthday combat, all the way through to that last page that, by God, might even trump what Kubert managed way back when. Before this issue, Damian Wayne was already one of the most nuanced and compelling individuals in not only mainstream comics but just period, and this issue only serves to enhance his depth of his character. Exemplary work, all around.

FRANKENSTEIN, AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E #0—This wasn’t as terribly compelling as Kindt’s first three issues but still doesn’t disappoint, nothing more or less than the not-so-secret origin of Frankenstein, how he met his maker and what not. This issue suffers, I guess, from the character not being an original creation. As beautiful and spot-on as the art provided by Ponticelli/Faucher/Villarrubia is, one still can’t escape the sensation that we’ve seen all of this before.

COMEDIAN #3—We slow down quite a bit here, not quite as crushing as the previous two installments. The entire issue is Eddie in Hawaii on the phone to Bobby delivering exposition as to his role in the Watts riots. The chief of police called all the black folks monkeys, so the Comedian threw some shit in his face. Also, there was clever call-and-response wordplay throughout, as is Azzarello’s wont. A bit underwhelming, this, though of course Jones’s pictures are pretty.

CHEW #28—These prologues just get more and more batshit, don’t they? I love that Poyo’s just a regular member of the supporting cast now, that’s certainly the right call. It’s hard not to dig on a doped-up Tony Chu anthropomorphizing the cast (I assumed the NEXT ISSUE: page on the back of SPECIAL AGENT POYO was a joke). I’m still adjusting to reading this in singles every six to eight weeks apart versus gorging on trades, but it’s always great fun, just a little bit less at a time than I prefer. Exploding cattle. Naturally.

THE ROCKETEER: CARGO OF DOOM #2—More five-star greatness from Waid/Samnee. This is just good fun. We have delightful escalation in the form of aerial on-plane combat with unattached rocketpack, as well as the image of all the creatures from Monster Island potentially running amok through New York with rockets. Chris Samnee and Jordan Bellaire’s pages are glorious and Waid’s script remains drum-tight, as ever. This couldn’t be better. If you ever thrilled to the airborne derring-do of Cliff Secord, then this is the book for you.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN #8—Mmm, I think I liked it better swashbuckling on the high seas or ransacking port cities before leaping off the pier just barely in the nick of time before being cut down by the city watch. This trudging across Cimmeria is kind of a drag. As is more overwrought angst over Conan & Belit’s relationship. It was working for me in the last arc, but now we’ve been there and done that. Also, while I usually dig Vasilis Lolos and I like how they kept in the family and yes he can draw wolves so well, his draftsmanship simply is not up to the ridiculously high bar established for this title by Cloonan and Harren. This certainly isn’t a bad comic book, but it’s a bit of a dip on what we’ve seen thus far.

THE MASSIVE #4—Been listening to a gang of Baader Meinhoff to get ready for MorrisonCon, so it was a bit odd for me to roll up on Mogadishu, here. This one’s a bit more of a slow burn than the first three. Still some interesting character work. Donaldson is, I guess, out and Garry Brown is in, possibly a slight improvement, the facial expressions aren’t as tightly rendered and nuanced but the body language is a bit less stiff and more natural. And the wide shots are still incredible, that bird’s-eye view of Somalia is ridiculous. This book remains an interesting slow build, but it’s starting to feel like it needs to move a bit faster. I need to be quite a bit more invested than I am right now by the time we make it to #10, say. Maybe Anatartica has all the answers.

THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS #6—We completely bail out on the ridiculous ensemble, hanging on to only Wernher for half of the issue as a supporting tyrant keeping poor Helmut Göttrup under his thumb before the guy escapes into the clutches of the Russians. But that’s only the beginning. We’re seriously adding Gagarin and fucking Laika to the cast? You read over the nine character descriptions on what used to be the only THE CAST page and tell me that’s not frothing-at-the-mouth eye-popping lunatic enough for you. This book is wonderful. Delicious madness. I’m horrified to report that I suspect they’re still really only getting started, the maniac machine hasn’t even started spinning up all the way, as of yet.

AVENGERS VS X-MEN #11—Shenanigans! Young Master Summers goes too far. SPOILERS. SPOILERS! Bendis/Coipel/Morales/Martin all show up here with A-game material that is light years better than HOUSE OF M and consists of pretty much everybody dogpiling on Cyclops. In the space of a scant nine pages, Scotty burns Magneto to a crisp, performs whatever power-suck ritual is necessary to soak up Emma’s half of the Phoenix, stone-cold murders Professor X so hard the dude doesn’t even have any pupils at all to speak of, I mean there might as well be X’s in his eyes, and then like disintegrates Wolverine. While I’m sure probably only one of those will actually take, it’s Great Big Event Fun to see the madness unfold. Now! If they don’t kill Cyclops next month and really try to rehabilitate him, it’s definitely the uphill battle of the 21st century.  Unfortunately, at $4 a pop twice a month, I’m probably not going to be along for the ride. Unless he shows up over in Hickman’s AVENGERS, I suppose.

THE NEW AVENGERS #30—This was some pretty meh filler, particularly compared to last month. Some Bible-quoting Purifiers try to hijack Emma from Luke Cage, DD, Mockingbird, and bashful Benjamin J. Grimm. Then, Luke Cage decides to quit on the last three pages, bringing this long-simmering plot to as tame and quiet a resolution as possible amidst all the wonderful Deodato explodo. Bendis clocking out, suckahs, End Times a’coming!

FANTASTIC FOUR #610—Wow. So, instead of putting the toys back in the box, now all of a sudden Hickman is busting loose. A.I.M. buys an island? Achieves sovereign-nation status and selects Reed as their ambassador? This kind of set-up worked out pretty well over with Sue and Atlantis a couple years back, remember. Young Ryan Stegman continues to blow the doors off here in the home-stretch, is rocking kind of a Jim Lee style with the cartoonistic stylization cranked up just a little bit in the direction of Ed McGuiness. Really solid and confident work out of the gate for a guy I hadn’t heard of two months ago. And of course the Wizard’s got to start in with Bentley, that isn’t a shotgun that Hickman’s going to be leaving up on the wall. This is nothing less than more of the greatness we’ve come to expect. Can’t believe we only get three more. Stiff upper lip.

9/5/12

ACTION COMICS #0—What begins as an entertaining enough early-days-in-Metropolis yarn takes a sharp turn when we are given the title, “The Boy Who Stole Superman’s Cape.” Morrison digs deep, strips through all the continuity and obsessive fanboy concern over what’s been retconned and what “counts” and just tells an iconic story that renders all of these things moot, what would happen if an abused boy got his hands on Superman’s cape and believed that he could do anything? Even the hardest thing in the world, standing up to his abusive father. We also get two pages of White, Lane, and Olsen that are MUCH better than any exchange featuring them since the reboot. I loved the negative space comment and what the S really stands for. But of course the centerpiece of the issue does a perfect job locking back up with the 1938 pulpier roots of the character who, before he could fly into deep space, was merely more powerful than a steaming locomotive. Ben Oliver’s painted work is a good fit for this flashback. Great ride.

ANIMAL MAN #0 & SWAMP THING #0—There’s not much reason not to continue reviewing these two together, even though Lemire and Snyder stay in their own sandboxes for just this month before all the Rotworld erupts. Even though a great deal got streamlined by the reboot last year, these boys are not afraid to drop in some legacy characters out of the sky. Or to have Arcane take them out. Both of these are basically Arcane amok across the decades, murdering avatars of the green and red right and left. The regular team stays on with Animal Man and holds the fort just fine while Kano pinch-hits for the Paquette/Rudy tag team and manages to maintain the artistic quality at the high level to which these gentlemen have caused us to grow accustomed. These issues were all well and good and grisly and horrible, but I’m ready to jump back to the main narrative. Bring on the Rotworld.

BEST OF WEEK: SILK SPECTRE #3—This continues to blow every other one of these minis out of the water with Amanda Conner turning in career-best work augmented by Paul Mounts’s achingly beautiful colors. This is certainly one of the best-looking books on the stands, no problem, but what makes it stand head and shoulders above the rest is how engaging the narrative is, the extent to which it manages to draw the reader in and make us totally invested in what amounts to a Year One arc for good ol’ Laurel Jane Juspeczyk a full nineteen years before we meet her as the chain-smoking jaded concubine of the walking blue penis atomic bomb. One great touch here is how the layout warps to accommodate the acid tip, the familiar nine-panel grid twisting and spiraling into the center of the page to reflect all the lysergic crazy. We close with another beat so perfect, it’s like they channeled it, the root of Laurie’s first heartbreak as a result of her parents’ behind-the-scenes machinations along with a pre-WATCHMEN Easter Egg that might have some folks groaning, though I thought it was absolutely perfect in a way that no one else has as yet been able to manage, finally accomplishing the opposite effect we got from looking at the snapshot Minutemen team photo in the first issue of the original series, a kind of reverse nostalgia here where we see something unfolding in the present tense in 1966 but already know how it’s going to turn out, I mean, it’s the most iconic image of the series. And this is its secret origin and it’s perfect.

THE BOYS #70—Nothing but all kinds of escalation here, which, I guess there’s certainly no place left to take it. This is so so good, pitch-perfect and completely true to the characters that Ennis has spent almost six years dialing us right into. No cackling maniacal world-dominating madmen here. I really can’t imagine how the good guys are going to win this one. Not that they will. This is Ennis. This is one of the most compelling portrayals of an antagonist I’ve ever seen, right up there with the greats, Kirby’s Dr. Doom and Darkseid, Claremont’s Magneto. Two more to go.

HAWKEYE #2—Wow, this issue was better than the first, which I was wild for. I hope old “Crystal Clear” Wacker has just a hell of a fill-in artistic team lined up or has convinced Marvel to improbably suspend monthly publication and just hang out until Aja/Hollingsworth can produce pages at their own pace because, lawdy, are they worth it. The first page alone here is a callback/homage to Steranko in all the right ways and then we’re suddenly thrown into the new dynamic of Kate Bishop as sidekick, a pair of Hawkeyes. And then there’s the perfect time-dilation trick on Page Three, where the act of Clint taking aim stretches Kate’s words out into fourteen panels and her mouth is even making the perfect angle, letter by letter. And wow, a newspaper article with actual text instead of the old standby “kdsjf asdkjf;dj mnddf.” The French/Italian dialogue caption for Ringmaster is a thing of joy. And then the caper ensues and erupts. This is hi-toned streamlined comic book goodness, right here, nothing less than a rollicking good ride starring the best archers in the good old 616, who just happen to have explosive chemistry, I mean, every single exchange between them is pure gold, there are somehow five or six of those sandwiched into the twenty pages alongside all of the jumping and shooting and diving and punching and blinding-bad-guys-for-the-rest-of-their-lives-with-trickshot-arrows. Grim, yes, but also terrific terrific fun. After only two issues, this one’s already on the short list of Marvel books that I can’t live without, with only Waid DD and Hickman FF for company. Gives me hope for Fraction hopping onboard FF, though of course, what a nightmare act to have to follow. If Amanda Conner wasn’t just slaying it, this would be Best of Week and will surely take it for #3. As long as Aja can hold on, fingers crossed.

FASHION BEAST #1—Just when you thought Alan Moore was done with singles, we get an announcement for 48 pages of new LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN goodness next February and this story finally sees the light of day. Originally commissioned by Sex Pistols founder Malcolm McLaren in the 80s, Moore’s screenplay for an update of Beauty & the Beast finds new life in this ten-issue series from Avatar, adapted by Antony Johnston and illustrated by Fecundo Percio. With Moore’s edits and input, apparently. It’s an intriguing affair, doesn’t just grab you and make you ravenous for more, but it certainly does have its own rhythm. We spend a full seven no-dialogue pages meeting our cast in a series of jump-cuts as they get dressed to leave the building where they all pay rent and attend The Catwalk, which is some kind of swanky nighttime debauching situation. Our hero(ine) is apparently a transvestite possibly called Doll who is the individual responsible for coat-checking, occasionally stealing away to vogue for the masses. I’m not just wild about it after this first issue but will definitely hang out and see what develops, who these other people even are. It’s not like there’s just a gang of Alan Moore singles cluttering up the rack.