12/12/12

BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN #15—These guys just do not quit. They keep raising the bar for themselves and then hurdling right up over it next time out. That first page alone is a masterful piece of text all by itself but the art certainly elevates it to another level. Snyder does fine work throughout but never more so than in the Cave when Bruce is trying to convince his various charges that all is well, employing logic and rationality only to have all five of them speak for virtually every reader, firing back at him, “But he’s the Joker! None of that means anything!” Terribly gripping as a single installment, this one again does nothing more than leave you on the last page breathless for the next installment. After 23 years, another writer has finally dared to venture back into the ARKHAM ASYLUM premise first set forth by Morrison & McKean, with a fairly economical set-up to get us right back to that classic static shot of Batman heading up the stairs into the black-hole heart of darkness. Terrific work all around.

And having a regular Jock back-up feature, I can’t stop saying how great it is. We didn’t get enough madness from the Clown Prince in the main feature, so Snyder and Tynion rectify that here with the already classic “This ______ is ruined” one-two gag. The Riddler has been built up with some degree of consistency over the years, ever since Dini got a whack at the main title, it will be interesting to see how he comes into play now that they’re bringing him back off the bench, or out of his cell.

BATMAN AND ROBIN #15—Yeah, and these guys, too. Once again, the focus of this series shifts over to the latter portion of its title as Damian takes exactly two pages to decide to disobey orders and only six more to get captured by the Joker himself. Tomasi always does such a great job about seeding this book with all these perfect little character moments amidst all the action and the one on the bottom of Page Four when Damian utters Alfred’s first name in horror is one of my very favorite. Absurdly great work from Gleason/Gray/Kalisz all around. So, is that really Bruce on the last page, there? I guess we’ll find out in three long weeks.

FRANKENSTEIN, AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E. #15—What a brutal sad bit to open with on the first three pages. Kindt is not afraid to mine the big ideas and Ponticelli and friends certainly take the rest of us there. So many breathtaking splash-page vistas. And then suddenly the secret origin of King Frankenstein’s monster army. And a last-panel shocker! There is an air of finality and sadness as this book marches toward its close, but no one involved could have done a better job, every issue has more than delivered on the monster pulp goodness of its premise.

RORSCHACH #3—That was a hell of a trick with the cover there, I didn’t get it at all before opening it up. Bermejo is doing unbelievable work on these interiors, really on a level all his own, here. And Azzarello once again displays not only a total grasp of how this character functions but enough nuance to give us a believable 1977 version of him, which is really quite the trick. While he’s certainly taking Eddie Blake on a journey, that guy’s personality is for the most part fully formed by the time his series begins, but we’re here with Walter two years after he put down the dogs but still just barely on the cusp of truly and actually becoming Rorschach. That’s of course against canon, as Moore has it happening in that single eyeblink instant back in ’75, but I think it’s a little bit more believable, a little bit more imperfect, more gray as opposed to black/white, for him to maybe relapse a little, not as much in terms of humanizing character moments but just not being this unstoppable badass all of a sudden. He isn’t Batman. But wait, was that Travis Bickle giving our hero a ride and pep talk? The usage of prostitutes as examples seems to indicate that this might be the case. It is not a bold statement to predict that this mini-series will not end well.

CONAN #11—The stakes are high as Conan races around trying to find a cure for the plague that has befallen his ship and, most importantly, his pirate-queen. This one is still doing it for me, Declan Shalvey is turning in sparse expressive linework and of course Dave Stewart is one of the very best in the business. The sole false note came for me when Conan told Bêlit, “I got you.” Never in nine hundred years. That’s how Xander talks to Buffy. I have tried and tried to make allowances for how Brian Wood, who has done such fine work on both spoken dialogue and Courier-font prose that reads like it might have been banged out on Robert E. Howard’s own Underwood, to have submitted that line as something that our favorite Cimmerian might ever conceivably have uttered, but I can make no excuse. I’m pretty sure he actually said, “I have you,” but there was some kind of ripple in the space-time continuum, almost certainly caused by the FF’s departure two entries down, messed up that one word.

THE MASSIVE #7—This one really did it for me in a way the others haven’t quite managed. I guess we’ve hit the balance, I’m invested enough in the characters from these last three done-in-ones that I’m ready to head forward with a big old ensemble narrative? Part of it is just the realism in what Wood’s envisioning, as grandiose and wild as the idea of a rig nation might seem at first blush, it rings true. I am anticipating #8 to a degree that this series has not yet achieved for me. Too bad about losing the backmatter for this one, but hey, if Wood is getting ahead on actual sequentials on this or CONAN or something about rebels in a galaxy far, far away, so much the better for all of us.

FANTASTIC FOUR #2—Fraction is three for three and we’ve only just now hit ignition on the great space-time adventure of the century. Once again, there’s not a sour note or mistimed beat in a single interaction amongst the ensemble, from Ben’s warning to the Yancy Street Gang to Reed’s admonition to Scott Lang to Sue introducing Medusa to the kids (with the potential for odd den mother already terribly palpable) to two pages of dead-on Thing/Shulkie banter, to Johnny of course making the offer an issue too late and having to provide the issue’s only time-travel action scene to seal the deal. The back third of this installment is dedicated to the launch, which seems appropriate given that this is presumably the last time these two quartets are going to see one another for quite some time. And the last page is a perfect reversal of the first page of the first issue. Everything is set up, all the character dynamics are in place and we are ready. I’ve read hundreds of Mark Bagley comics and have never enjoyed his work more, he’s broken through to a higher level after his run to and back from DC. Hey, if he had to go burn a year doing the sidekicks JLA with Robinson to get this much better after years and years of killing it with Bendis on ULTIMATE, well, whatever works. Mark Farmer, the other half of Alan Davis’s heartbeat, is probably responsible for that in no small measure, as is Paul Mounts, whose choices here can be called jaw-dropping but never too much, always in service of the extreme circumstances that our imaginaut voyagers craft for themselves. This is the only non-all-ages comic that I regularly read to my little girl because, though it’s not labeled and marketed as such, it really is, embodying the best of what this family should be about, the drama and love of a tight-knit family cast against the heartstopping magnitude of all the cosmic grandeur and fury that can only be birthed in the seething heart of a Kirby.