11/16/11

BATMAN #3—So beautiful. For me, pretty much a perfect comic book. This one continues to deliver devastating material on every level. Snyder’s words are still razor-sharp and Capullo/Glapion continue to imbue Gotham with a vibrance and depth of character that I haven’t seen in some time. Capullo, in particular, guy is just a master draftsman firing on all levels, the choices he makes. Like that one super-skinny vertical panel on the left to set up the larger shot of Batman in the hangglider, stuff that seems so obvious after it’s done because it works so well but that took a truly gifted mind to pull up out of a blank page. Just an absurd level of quality.BEST OF WEEK

JUSTICE LEAGUE #3—The script finally caught up with the art on this one, a rollicking ride. I dug the tone of Johns’s Wonder Woman, just barely a variation of various other takes we’ve seen, but it dialed me right in to the character in that opening scene. Less so, Superman maiming the gang of parademons. That business rang false. Geoff Johns, do not impose your crazy bloodlust on the rebooted Man of Steel, there is simply no need for such a thing. It was a slow start, but this one’s gelling into the great big dumb fun team book that I was expecting. And the backmatter was great fun, I was actually pissed when I finished the foreword and turned the page to find out that was it, I was all on-board with David Graves’ Secret History of Atlantis. Oh, and everybody else hears John DiMaggio’s voice when Aquaman talks, right? God, I’m going to miss that show. Outrageous!

WONDER WOMAN #3—This is another fantastic issue. DC really goes thermonuclear on the third week, these three books are ridiculous. I don’t know if I’m just acclimated to the vibe or what, but this is one of the first Azzarello reads where I didn’t feel like I had to work, crank my comprehension up a little bit to fully acclimate myself with the narrative. And Chiang is straight A-list, turning in some serious pages. That two-page shot of her lighting the fires was gorgeous. I hope whoever they get to fill in is up to the challenge. Tough gig, there. Hell of a week to be a Wonder Woman fan.

BUTCHER BAKER CANDLESTICKMAKER #5—After the total WTF? ending last month, Ennis had a lot of heavy lifting to do to bring us in line and up to speed with the Butcher we know, love, and fear. The fact that he does so entirely through postmortem epistolary form is a testament to his jawdropping facility as a writer. Making your reader weep with only the dead woman’s last journal entry is just a hell of a trick. Of course, Darick Robertson delivers spot-on character work as well, giving us every line of horror on Butcher’s face, mirroring our own, we’re all reading the same words. Hah, Robertson probably just filmed himself reading the script and drew that. This is quite likely the best single Ennis issue I’ve ever read. Top drawer work. Should be quite the final burst next month.

MORNING GLORIES #14—Well, I’ve finally found someone more insane about the L O S T than I am/was, as Nick Spencer pulls a slice out of the old Lindelof textbook on chronology and gives us the second half of what went down last issue. Which is cool enough, but he also makes the unfortunate mistake of carrying over the really annoying bit about repeating what’s already come before, which drove me crazy when it was like twenty (fine, twenty-three) seconds in a forty-two minute episode, but it’s much more egregious when it’s two entire pages out of a twenty-two page book. Not the kind of pacing/content that makes me happy. Still, Eisma’s art remains sharp and carries the story well.

X-FACTOR #227—Feels like I’ve been saying this for a few months now, but Best Recap Page Ever. That business put me down. Just priceless. The tradewaiters have no idea what they’re missing. Another sharp script by David that winks at the reader quite a few times but somehow never suffers for it, because it’s just jam-packed with that much wit. Kirk remains a welcome addition. And wow, trapdoor into the long-teased wedding night. Already can’t wait for next issue.

FEAR ITSELF #7.3—I’m conflicted because on one hand, I think that I’ve enjoyed at least the first two of these three epilogue issues as single-issue experiences more than I did the main title. That’s probably got something to do with expectations. With the proper book, I was expecting earth-shattering momentous events erupting out of every page turn, or at least at the end of every issue. With these epilogues, I was looking for character-defining codas that resolved the core Avenger trinity’s arcs. But really, at the end of the day, didn’t these epilogues each just undo an aspect of the Big Wow that took place in the main title? SPOILER WARNING: Stop reading and hop on down to Brubaker’s CAP now, if you want to remain fresh for plot developments in FEAR ITSELF #1-7.3. Brubaker unkilled Bucky (just like he did with Steve a couple of years ago), Fraction sowed the seeds for Thor’s inevitable return, and then over here he resurrects Paris. Which really felt like the cheapest move of all. I can understand why they went the way they did with the first two, but this one was malarkey. Not that I’ve got anything against gay Paree, but they completely minimize the preceding story by just resetting everything the month after the “final” issue. And I didn’t really buy either of these conversations. Why did Odin bother restoring Paris? Stark would have to make quite a sale to make that happen, which I would have been interested to see, Fraction writing him with the snappy-snap trying to talk old One-Eye into it, but he didn’t even begin to go down that route. And the big inversion, making it to the end of the issue only to discover that the conversation between Tony and Duvall should be read differently than we were reading it on the first pass, well, all it really does is let the wind out of the sails of that entire half of the issue. I’m running out of steam on Marvel twenty-page $4 singles pretty hard. Starting to wish Fraction and Bru would just call it a day and let me off the hook. Because I can’t stop myself!

CAPTAIN AMERICA #4—This one flies right by but is certainly pretty to look at. I’m not sure I see the point of those pages where Steve doesn’t realize what’s going on. Seems like wasted time, and yet again, I got no patience for that in a $4 twenty-pager. It’s been a long haul with Brubaker, but this one’s on the bubble. Unless they bring in Alan Davis after this arc, or something.

AVENGERS #19—Yet another round of Who’s Going To Be On The Team?, a game that’s been going on so long both here and across the street over in various iterations of a certain league championing justice that it’s practically a trope by now and pretty much expected every three or four years. Bendis does better with it than most. I loved the panel of Logan and Spidey deciding not to go out there. As well as the beat between Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Ororo. The rooftop recruitment leading in to the Storm reveal would have been a lot cooler if they hadn’t announced it in San Diego, I mean, how many extra units did they really think that was going to move? One hiccup, Cap mentions Thor by name not once but twice, losing old Goldilocks given as a principal reason that he’s trolling for new recruits. But isn’t the whole new deal with Fraction’s Thor that there’s always been Tanarus? No one except Loki remembers or misses Thor? Tanarus has always been an Avenger, saved the world many times, etc, etc? It’s like Bendis didn’t get the memo. And you could argue that this story takes place before the reboot in FEAR ITSELF #7.2, but it seems a bit wonky to set anything with the latest greatest brand (SHATTERED HEROES) before the epilogue to the last thing. Even weirder, because I think Fraction and Bendis are like Portland buddies, share family dinners and so forth. It does not compute. Anyway, Acuña blows it up on art, beautiful work. And very cool to get Daisy Johnson dropped back into the mix out of nowhere, glad to check back in with her after SECRET WARRIORS, though I thought Hickman had Fury declare that she was irreconcilably broken? Maybe Bendis has a plan.