CHEW #24—All right, I was fortunate enough to get to sit down with Layman & Guillory last month in New Orleans, and there was no way that I was going to not be up to date on the title, so I got off the tradewaiting bench and snatched up #21-23 and 27 (solid little mindfuck, that), all of which to say that this is the first issue of this excellent series that I read the day that it came out, and I have to tell you, sign me up for 36 more issues of exactly that. Our main character continues to spend almost the entire issue off-panel, but this time the spotlight is on the undercover trio of Olive, Mason, and Caesar. These characters play off each other so well, you want them just to get a spinoff to themselves. We get a new power, courtesy of Hershel Brown, whose opening scene might be the funniest one this issue has supplied yet. Not even counting the Southpark and Kirkmanly Easter eggs. And just when I couldn’t be more pleased with myself for picking this up the day it comes up, McLain McGuire’s right arm makes the letter column, a thrill for all to behold! We are all of us, creators and readers alike, having far too much fun with a series about superpowered cannibal FDA agents.
MORNING GLORIES #16—Man, Image certainly dropped a cluster of bombs the week before the Expo. This is more L O S T than your average shot of MGA, which is really saying something (we even get the word in-dialogue again, page 6, panel 2), but what we have here is a double-flashback, our present-tense Casey time-travelled back to the same military base where she lived with her parents when she was three, getting grilled by some MPs and then meeting that younger version of her dad, then that juxtaposed against a later flashback in the neighborhood of a hypothetical #0 relating the process of Casey getting accepted into the academy, her parents blocking her attendance before relenting, then a last-shot revelation on the part of her father that might have led to the shock ending of #1? Then Miz Hodge reprises her return to the campus from a few issues back, her first appearance, I want to say, but I’m not 100% on why we’re getting, I think verbatim, that entire scene again for five full pages unless it’s to ground this timeline in the Holy Shit! fact that the last page takes place no earlier than just a few issues back and Casey has just been hanging around for that dozen+ years, doing Spencer knows what. Fodder for flashbacks in the 30s and 40s, no doubt. I sense this series might read better in trade, but I just can’t wait! Certainly a gripping installment, here. Fine work, all around.
AMERICAN VAMPIRE #24—On the other hand, this one suffers a bit from the episodic format. I get that you need some page-space to most effectively convey a fight between a vampire and a hunter aboard a dragster hurtling down the road. It just felt a bit, I’m so sorry, skinny by the time I made it through? I’m probably missing the point, but after two years, I want Skinner Sweet to be just like the least bit nuanced. He’s just so nasty, reptilian-tongue-angled-out baaaaad! I’m absolutely not rooting for him the way Harris gets you on-board with Lecter or Hill dials you in to whatever we’re calling the antagonist of LOCKE & KEY now (#1,2 bumper compendium released next week, absolutely cannot wait to finally dive in to Volume 5). Albuquerque, of course, continues to make it happen on every level.
FLASH #6—I couldn’t quite click with this one, either, certainly not as well as with the first five of these. Maybe it just still seems too weird having someone else lay her head in Barry’s lap, maybe it was the stilted boyfriend/girlfriend dialogue, maybe it was actually all the time-jumps (and as an acolyte of fractured storytelling who cut his teeth on Tarantino and adores L O S T, if it’s too jilting for me, then we definitely have a problem, Houston). All that said, the art is still top-notch and they still manage to finally pick up enough steam to roar toward a hell of a cliffhanger.
THE MIGHTY THOR #11—Deplorable art. Even Ferry’s pages look rushed. The lack of this kind of fill-in malarkey is exactly what’s kept me onboard with IRON MAN, you’ve got to respect those guys showing up every month. Just about ready to walk, but don’t want to bail on Fraction and keep hoping the next arc will be a return to greatness. Wait, they’re about to launch into another event, you say?
BEST OF WEEK: FANTASTIC FOUR #603—Man, as tremendous as all that creator-owned output was this week (and I didn’t even get BULLETPROOF COFFIN), Hickman & Kitson continue to do nothing less than simply rocket this thing up out of orbit each and every chance they get. The accrued weight of the narrative is approaching critical mass, it has to be. The fact that the Staple con is this weekend made me realize that we’re coming right up on the end of three years of Hickman’s run and it just keeps building, swollen up now to something almost beyond belief, over a dozen characters who can barely be contained by two monthly titles. The guy is still running with and organically developing threads that he first started weaving in a damn DARK REIGN mini-series that had to drop in out of nowhere in 2009 to pick up the slack because Millar/Hitch couldn’t be counted upon and ultimately failed to deliver 16 issues in a row of the flagship title. Highlights from this glorious issue include Bentley threatening an orbiting Fantastic Five with destruction before getting shoved aside so that Valeria can tell her dad that she knows she’s grounded, Franklin’s reunion with Uncle Johnny, Galactus fighting and killing a Celestial amidst copious Kirby krackle before getting blasted all to hell when his three brothers Voltron up into a mega-Celestial, and then a final page-turn so grand and glorious that it just about has to bring a tear to any parents’ eye. This is the story of a post-nuclear family who loves each other, fighting to save the universe from itself, and it has been one of my favorite things ever. I never want to read the words THE END but really can’t see how much longer this seething cosmic furnace can sustain itself before at long last burning out.
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