1/25/12

JUSTICE LEAGUE #5—It’s against my upbringing not to be digging on Jim Lee drawing a bunch of Justice Leaguers going toe-to-toe with Darkseid amidst the stygian wasteland of Apokolips, but man, this thing is so light on character it’s about to blow away up out of the atmosphere. And the thing is, we know that Johns is capable of it. It’s certainly in vogue to malign him, but his JSA run did an immaculate job developing and making the reader invest in a bunch of Golden Age characters that many felt had no place still having adventures on the rack. You know what, I like his Wonder Woman here, but she’s really not doing anything but providing a couple beats of comic relief per issue. And I know I shouldn’t care, because you just can’t let yourself, absolutely cannot fall into the trap of trying to reconcile a single thing about the DCs that were and the one that currently is right here in this one fleeting moment, but when Hal starts arguing with Bruce in just like the most lowest-common-denominator summer-blockbuster-for-the-masses kind of way, then my inner continuity authority starts dialing back and whispering disturbing things like, This is still the Hal from before the reboot, the one that Johns has all the man-love for, the one he’s been writing since 2005 and it’s pretty much a given that the pre-reboot GL continuity still counts, but so does this guy remember that Bruce died during Final Crisis and that Dick was Batman? Or wait, this is in the past, right?so this is like after the Secret Origin arc from the last volume so it doesn’t matter right here, This Hal, but as soon as we get to “The Present” tense of this league then, I mean, Blackest Night has to count, right? and on and on like that and it’s just a mess and with Lee no longer going to be able to make the monthly deadline, I think I’d bail except I’m a little curious about Johns & Frank on Shazam, because their time together on ACTION was quite strong.

FLASH #5—Not only a solid finish to a very strong opening arc, but Manapul & Buccellato drop us right into the next situation with a cliffhanger that raises the stakes just exactly the way that it ought to. The origin of the EMP is perfect and head-slappingly obvious in hindsight but really, the way they set us up for what’s yet to come is very encouraging that this team will be able to go the distance with a long and much-beloved run on this character*. Manapul joins Paquette over on SWAMP THING in really really giving old J.H. Williams III a run for his money on layouts, just a ridiculous mountain to attempt scaling. My favorite part of the whole thing is probably the Eisner titles double-page spread. Fine work.

THE UNWRITTEN #33 & #33.5—I picked up #33 late because it was underordered, which seemed like a cool thing, getting to read these back to back instead of two weeks apart. So, wouldn’t you know it, this was the first done-in-one that I wasn’t crazy about. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood to read about a little tiny girl get molested and impregnated by her father (even taken through this book’s storymagic manipulation filter). But I have trouble seeing how this is going to ever come around and fit into the big picture. I mean, obviously those two characters could go on to perform come crucial act that sets the stage for a series climax, but it’s not like they’re the only ones. The thing about dropping all these monthly .5s is that now there are so many plates spinning, it doesn’t seem possible that Carey’s going to be able to fold them all back into the main narrative. And at this point, it feels like the threads on this book should be starting to converge, not spin them out farther and further. The main title, Tommy hits a snag that will hopefully lead to him and the readers getting some information while he’s in captivity that cranks things up just a bit, here.

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #23—Baaaaahhh! Snyder gets us again! It’s been long enough that I totally wasn’t expecting the same cliffhanger that he must really have trotted out like at least four times now. I mean, great job, it worked again, after a few months, maybe a year off. But once again, he’s done such a solid job creating a character whose captions help the reader at once dial right in to their situation that we feel like we’ve been reading about him much longer than only two issues. And Albuquerque continues to do nothing but blow it up, gorgeous work, such dynamic energy crackling off the pages.

KIRBY: GENESIS #5—Well, it’s just as gloriously Kirby clusterfuck batshit as ever, so put me down as satisfied. Haven’t been interested in trying to snatch up all the spinoffs tentacleing out of this spinning madness mainly because the point of this series seems to me to be all of these insane discarded flashes of the great man bouncing off each other, with most of the fun being watching Busiek & Ross try to make just barely coherent sense of it all. Plus, it is always a fine thing to turn the page to discover an Alex Ross painting of a Kirby Supergod reaching out at you. The best part was them emboldening “MELTDOWN” and putting it in quotes. Could have even made it two words. Maybe this will get old, but it hasn’t yet.

SECRET AVENGERS #21.1—Well, I went ahead and picked this up, if only for the rare thrill of a Remender book that Marvel isn’t charging $3.99 for. Certainly a well-constructed two-man assault on a random foreign country, the entire affair built as a bridge between Ellis’s surgical sickness and whatever comes next. Killer art from Zircher. Solid issue, but probably not enough to make me stick around on the monthly once this jumps back up in price.

THE MIGHTY THOR #10—Mm, we get a fill-in on art and it’s still not quite enough to make me cut the cord. I dunno. Fraction’s just almost not doing it for me here in singles at the moment. I think I want to like the run more than I actually am.

BEST OF WEEK: FANTASTIC FOUR #602; FF #14—These two are truly flip-sides of the same coin and the engaged reader is doing him- or herself a terrible disservice not picking up both issues, particularly at the $2.99 price-point. We open with Kitson/Mounts on the flagship title, delivering what amounts to Part 4 or 5 of, really, my favorite Big Event that Marvel’s put out in at least the past decade+, all the more satisfying due to the fact that it’s taking place organically as part of a monthly series and spawning only a single tie-in that’s every bit as wonderful as the original. But yeah, it is blitzkrieg go-time from page one, we’ve got Kree Invaders in orbit, Cap and Iron Man and a couple of Hulks about to be overrun, Ben & Johnny & Spidey opening up a can of whupass before Sue completely steals their thunder and reminds us for the umpteenth time why she’s the most powerful member of the team (even though Johnny is, yeah, still a lot scarier since he came back), and then Reed and Sue call Galactus and he slaughters the Kree armada and then the mad Celestials who’ve been hanging out over in FF the past couple months show up . . . and MEANWHILE, IN FF: we flashback cut on over to the kids in the Future Foundation holding off those self-same Celestials with the help of Nathaniel Richards and especially the final surviving alternate Reed Richards and the one true Victor Von Doom. And. Um. They do. I think I’m too sad to talk anymore about it. But the profound relationship between Valeria and Doom is my favorite thing in a long list of things that I absolutely love about Hickman’s run. My man continues to do nothing but drop the thermonuclear devastation all over the place with these. Great fun.




*OH no, just real sorry about that, double-unintentional but no time to change it