1/09/13

ACTION COMICS #16—Pretty wonderful out-of-left-field first scene here in the penultimate issue of the run as we open with adult versions of The Legion of Superheroes risking and in a couple of cases, sacrificing everything to get the founding trio to the last time bubble in order to head back in time and of course Save Everything. Hell of a way to burn the first five pages. Then, it’s all ominous portents and red skies as Lois and Jimmy provide exposition indicating that all of those early-nineties Doomsday death’n’resurrection shenanigans do in fact count in this new continuity, which, leaving aside the conundrum of what that means for the current iterations of Steel and Superboy, not to mention and most importantly, the incorporation of the Super-mullet into New 52 continuity, we head back into the near-future when Superman is getting his ass handed to him by the Anti-Superman Revenge Squad, I think we’re calling them? until loyal Krypto shows up to terrify villain and reader alike. I was looking for a follow-up to the Smallville era of the three-part time-trap from last issue, but I guess he just killed Ma and Pa and that’s it? Going to have to jam through all of these again before next month. The Fisch/Sprouse Legion back-up is crisp excellence.

Miller Says: I have no idea what is going on in this comic book. Why is Krypto so mad?

DETECTIVE COMICS #16—After only three issues, this title turns into a potentially thankless gig for the new creative team of John Layman and Jason Fabok. They’ve got to fall in synch with a line-wide crossover featuring the Joker cranking his malevolence up to the next level yet again. Even more unfortunately, it’s not like this is a book starring Dick Grayson or Barbara Gordon, with a little bit of room to play around. These guys have to engage us with the adventures of Bruce Wayne while he’s attempting to manage all of the chaos, but they’ve also got to work not to contradict or crowd the arguably central narrative that Snyder/Capullo are relating over in the eponymous title. While still remaining entertaining over here. It’s a rough set-up, creatively speaking, but these gifted creators stick a perfect landing, giving us a self-contained story highlighting all the copycat gangs running amok that maintains the more procedural tone that this title’s name implies. We also get an eight-page backup with Andy Clarke on art that further entrenches Emperor Penguin as a formidable foe who will no doubt advance to center-stage in this title whenever we’re done wondering who Joker’s going to kill next.

ANIMAL MAN #16—How is it already Part Four of these? This event is roaring right by. Bold move of Lemire to take out Green Arrow in flashback there on the second page. So much for taking over that one with #17. The Green Lantern power battery hidden inside the Daily Planet globe is an inspired choice. Though I’m a little unclear on how old Medphyll managed to use his ring to just annihilate the decomposed soldiers of The Rot. Pretty rough going with Maxine, there, painful to watch. Full marks to the team of Timothy Green II and Joseph Silver blending the art style on the flashback scenes with what Steve Pugh’s rocking on the present-tense business. Seamless work all around. And, whoa, Flash just takes out Constantine. Lemire doesn’t care! This ending is a fantastic blend with the opening of SWAMP THING and further reinforces this reading order I’ve been rocking since their respective first issues.

SWAMP THING #16—This issue’s second page immediately answers the first question that popped into my head over there at the end of ANIMAL MAN. Where’s Superman? I guess there will be no Kryptonian ex machina-type plot resolutions coming down the pike this crossover. Yanick Paquette and Nathan Fairbairn’s work continues to stun, just when you think they can’t crank it up any higher, they manage. I’m a fan of Man-Batgirl. Girl-Bat? The terminology doesn’t quite survive the leap. Of course Bruce left a tape with a plan. A bat-bot armed with weaponized bio-restorative formula. Naturally. Perfect and classic. I didn’t need to know right away that Batman was lying about the devices planted in Freeze, Croc, and Woodrue’s necks, wouldn’t have minded hanging out with that ambiguity for a few pages or forever. Alec powering up with Bane’s venom delivery system is also a really nice touch. And a suitably macabre ending. I don’t see how she’s getting out of that one, Dr. Holland.

BEST OF WEEK: STAR WARS #1—I’ve been really really looking forward to this since the afternoon it was announced, even had to call a couple of people and scream the news at them over the phone right away. Recruiting Brian Wood—who has proved so adept over the years at strong character work that makes you immediately empathize with brand-new protagonists during their first and in many cases only appearance in a given issue (see: DEMO, LOCAL)—to craft the adventures of the Rebel Alliance versus the Empire in the days immediately following the Battle of Yavin, that’s such a jackpot combination of premise and creative talent. Months of expectation leading into this, even further heightened by this beautiful Alex Ross cover. And this first issue, with one ruinous exception, completely delivers. The voices of the characters who we know so well are not only intact, but positively sing. You can hear the 1977 incarnations of Hamill, Fisher, and Ford delivering their lines, which goes a long way toward making this right away feel like the most in-canon experience one could possibly have in this universe via any other form of non-cinematic medium. "Out here, I'm just Leia," is a perfect perfect character beat. Moreover, we’ve already got several intriguing seeds of long-arc plot to come. Leia running a black-ops Shadow Council within the Rebellion in order to root out a spy or find a planet to set up the new base is a tremendous idea, even if there is zero suspense as to who she might recruit to join her. The Vader angle is even better, I love the idea of him not knowing who he is and just now feeling initial rumblings, the stirring of familiarity from that name, Skywalker. Just a hell of a ret-con. Lots of solid groundwork laid here. Also, an interesting little aside, Mon Mothma’s reference to it seeming like the stormtroopers were coming out of a factory sent me down a whole tangent, because of course the Rebels would know that the Stormtroopers are just later-gen clone soldiers, right? That seems apparent. But her comment makes it seem like there’s no way that’s going on. Which makes sense if you remember the actual premise of this: Only EPISODE IV counts. Of course, there’s no EMPIRE or JEDI, but you know what? Even better? There’s also no prequel trilogy. No midichlorians or Gungans or even dozens and dozens of episodes of Clone Wars. These characters are being written like none of that happened. Even if it takes place in their past. And I think that’s pretty swell.

I should mention the art. Fine work from Carlos D’Anda and Gabe Eltaeb, who manage to perfectly straddle the line between making the characters resemble the actors without venturing so far over into uncanny or ghastly photorealism that they sacrifice dynamic motion or energy within the panel. I had some concern about that after making my way through forty issues of Jeanty over on the eighth season of BUFFY from this very publisher, but all is well here on that score. The only reason this isn’t a five-star slab of sequential perfection for me boils down to one word. “Literally.” Of course, it’s nothing more than a pet-peeve, but I am so. Damn. Sick of everyone saying “literally” all the time. It’s very much a twenty-first century malapropism, in the same way that “awesome” and “epic” are. It doesn’t even mean anything anymore. Just subtract it from your sentence and not only does your sentence mean the same thing, it’s invariably stronger. I was pretty bummed to see Wood fire one off in the very first panel of this issue. But, you know, it wasn’t a dealbreaker. One got by, that’s cool. Everything else was so spot-on, I was more than willing to make allowances for my own peccadilloes and just roll with it. But then Mon Mothma says it. And then the narration drops a third one toward the end. Talking about Darth Vader. Is it more imposing for the dread Lord of the Sith to make his officers shake with fear or literally shake with fear? Terrible terrible, I don’t understand how a writer with as much experience as Wood, who is so prolific and obviously gifted at his craft can allow three “literally”s to creep into the script of the very first issue of a project of this magnitude. The second one snapped me out of it pretty bad, but the third just had me heckling the pages. Which nobody wants. A disappointing flaw in an otherwise superlative issue.

THE SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #1—It’s pretty good, man. Slott negotiates every beat of OttoParker’s first issue with all the professional acumen and finesse that we’ve come to expect and Stegman/Delgado show up with an energetic style that is reminiscent of Ramos’s hyperkinetic manga-heavy imagery but dialed back just a bit in terms of overemphasized cartooning, a balance that works perfectly for me. This is compelling material. Doctor Octopus has certainly never been more interesting, and I find myself invested in what’s he’s going to do next, how he’s going to straddle the line between who he was and who he’s become. I completely understand why Slott/Wacker elect to give us the last-page reveal this first issue out, before this title bleeds thousands of readers over the course of the next few weeks or months, but it might have been cooler to dole it out just a little bit more, allude to it with a few out-of-character actions of mercy for Otto before going with the full reveal at the end of #5 or #6, wherever the first arc falls. Kudos to the entire creative team, this is already one of the most entertaining Spidey stories in recent memory, and we must remember that it’s really been a hell of a ride since Wacker came on-board.

FANTASTIC FOUR #3—The fifth installment in Fraction’s run is fairly boilerplate FF, meaning we’ve got Ben being grumpy, Johnny playing pranks, Reed lying by omission For The Good Of The Family, Sue saving the day when it really counts and proving for the 593rd time that she’s really the most powerful member of the team, and an unstable planet that looks like an enjoyable New Year’s Day AM field trip but turns out to be nothing more than a “planetary lure for a cosmic predator star-sized consciousness.” Just another day in the life.