1/04/12

BEST OF WEEK: ACTION COMICS #5—All participants here firing at the absolute zenith apex of their game, no matter where you fall on the Reeve/Siegel/Morrison appreciation spectrum, this one’s for you. Because this one’s for everybody. We finally crank it up to the level of ALL-STAR SUPERMAN-level jawdropping situation that is I guess the reason everyone’s been a little bit grumbly up until now or last month, just because this one had to spin its motors up a bit to do for what like the last time. The callbacks don’t hurt. The first page plays like an insane dilation of the locked-in-for-all-time eight-word origin that was the first page of ALL-STAR. The plan, the plan, taking a little bit longer to say the plan, way huh, no Jor-El! No! That’s not the plan! The Phantom Zone is not the plan! Those first four pages are a perfect set-up, ascend into the fifth splash, and then we turn the page to the double-spread, the millionth time we’ve seen Krypton die but it’s all new and precious and perfect again because it’s called Rocket Song. Then, yeah, Jonny and Martha get the treatment that Luthor got back in the last #5, possibly their best performance/appearance yet, really stirring material, here. And then we suddenly catch up to the first arc! And accelerate past? And the Legion trinity? To think that I first saw TINTIN Tuesday night, and was reading this twenty-four hours later, and then started running them both simultaneously, well, let’s just say that it was a pretty wild ride, Wednesday night faithful!

O.M.A.C. #5—It didn’t dawn on me until I turned to the first page what I treat I was in for getting to watch Giffen do Kirby drawing the title character fighting Frankenstein. Slug. Fest. A beautiful thing. Lemire dropping in to co-write never hurts the equation, though Didio’s been pitch-perfect on this all along. Brother Eye vs. Father Time was a cool little side-fight, a bit of strategy to offset the brutality of the main event. This one gets better and better. I hope that Giffen stays on for a long time and that it doesn’t gets cancelled.

ANIMAL MAN #5—Man, isn’t this a horror comic. Nothing here besides more greatness. Great to see Pugh return to the fold for the last four pages. Not sure that Alec is going to be that much help when you find him, though, Buddy, he’s got his own thing going on at the moment. And cue . . .

SWAMP THING #5—Another really good-looking issue, everyone should have been talking about Paquette at least since the first arc of BATMAN, INC and he’s only getting better and better. Composition, page layout, acting through body language and facial expression, he’s really on top of it all. And Snyder continues to pull off the unthinkable, tell a gripping Swamp Thing story after #64 of the old run. Beautiful shot, that kiss. Though, seems, not such a solid piece of strategy.

STORMWATCH #5—I guess we’re not going with the long-simmering plot about Harry. No Claremont pacing here! And no more pesky Adam, for that matter. Or team? I don’t know how they’re going to get out of this one, Georgie. Sorry that Cornell’s not hanging out, this is definitely the best I’ve seen anyone do with these characters since the original Ellis/Hitch greatness. Mm, except maybe Brubaker/Nguyen, that was some goodness, too.

THE BOYS #62—More fun from Ennis and the gang. Hughie confesses to superthumb violation and no one gives a shit, but he might have yet saved the day for the sake of a wank. What’s not to love? Merde!

FATALE #1—Really, really gripping opening, here. It’s not like the first issue of CRIMINAL was anything less than sequential noir perfection, but Brubaker/Phillips have come so far since then, it kind of makes you sick. Terrible things happen to people who might not even be that good, but the narrative voice makes you care, even though you’ve only known them for a few pages. And then Jess Nevins delivers an essay on Lovecraft. Cthulhu preserve us.

AVENGERS ANNUAL #1—It’s not painted?!?!? That threw me a bit, but of course Dell’Otto blows it up, no matter how he presents himself. Bendis did a great job making Simon’s point-of-view not seem raving or megalomaniacal but actually pretty rational. What if the bad guy was right? Overall, very solid, from top to bottom. Though I don’t get what happened at the end, there. He just . . . disappeared?

UNCANNY X-MEN #4—Wow, Marvel, didn’t this just come out last week? And #5 is in two weeks? Three $4 singles in four weeks. Squeeze it dry! You know what, though, the work that Gillen and, here, Peterson turn in is compelling enough that I can’t really consider dropping it out of principle. Having the villain narrate and become pretty much a sympathetic character is a tough trick to pull and Gillen executes it well, here. This is as consistently rewarding as this book has been since the halcyon days of Claremont.

DEFENDERS #2—All right, at first the footer ads started annoying me, but Fraction was just messing with us, confounding expectations. Promising that the universe will break on second page following was funny enough, but promising the same thing would happen on single page following later in the issue was the lolz, you guys. Nothing beats the last one, though, too great. So. There’s this weird thing going on back and forth between the main narrative and these footers that, combined with narrative captions from multiple sources, really makes for a dense, head-spinning, and sometimes confusing reading experience. Which I believe to be the point. The art makes it even crazier, because the tone of the script seems to call for some rough sketchy more 70s-looking business like Ponticelli’s got going on over in FRANKENSTEIN or, really, talking classic Gerber updates, like Dalyrymple channeled to tremendous effect in that OMEGA THE UNKNOWN mini a few years back. Instead, we get the Dodsons’ super-clean lines and Oback’s lush tones, a bit of sweetness to make all the crazy go down that much easier. This book is subversive. Real good to see Fraction’s engines spinning up a bit higher in the 616 proper.