3/13/13

BATMAN #18 — Capullo takes another well-deserved breather, but we keep it A-list with Kubert/Hope and then Maleev on the back end. Just like the last interlude fill-in on #12, this one’s all about Harper Row, who everyone is so certain is just destined to be Robin, I’d say there’s no chance of that happening.  There’s a weird disconnect between the two stories, though. I’ve been back over it and over it and can’t figure out where she gets her nose broken. She seems fine in the last page Kubert drew but then there on the next one by Maleev, her brother’s making reference to getting back at the guy who broke her nose. I like the way they once again threaded the back-up into the main feature to make it a unified narrative, but the title reveal at the end left me a little bit cold. This one manages to be a pretty solid Batman comic and simultaneously the issue of this title that I’ve by far enjoyed the very least.

BEST OF WEEK BY FAR: BATMAN AND ROBIN #18 — And then these guys. I knew it was going to happen, but the Tomasi/Gleason/Gray crew completely nuke every other creative team’s take on the horror. Badly cut me all up open again. I’m ready to move on to another stage of the grieving process. The mark of how good a silent issue is might be measured in how long it takes you to realize that there is no dialogue, how well the story lures you into its rhythms and lulls you into a different reading experience than that to which you are accustomed. It breathes more. There are no balloons obstructing the art. With no words to read, the eye lingers. You stare longer. Time dilates. The entire reading experience expands.

There are so many pristine images of heartbreak packed into this requiem. Bruce Wayne by the fireplace, staring at the palette that will never be slept in again. The naturalistic sketches of a young hand. Who knew he was such an artist? The subjects he chose. The note from Connor recommending literary classics he will never experience. The family portrait that will never be finished. Or seen again. The pole. What can be done about that pole? All of the violence dispensed upon all of those criminals, deserving and un-, that cannot erase the pain, will never fill up the hole. The water that can’t wash anything away. The fallen boy’s last testament. The grieving father holding on tightly, clutching so closely the outfit that defined his son’s identity, the composition of this shot identical to the last page of issue #14 of this title pictured above-left, released just four months ago but now revisited at the climax. It is impossible to fully encapsulate the tragedy of Damian Wayne's death for anyone who has not lived with the character for the past six years and seen him grow from the spoiled aristocrat assassin bastard son of the Batman into a child who is wiser than both of his parents and is arguably the best Robin of all time. But the emotional punch packed in the juxtaposition of these two final pages comes as close as you possibly can.

Bravo, Peter J. Tomasi, Pat Gleason, Mick Gray, John Kalisz, and Taylor Esposito. A finer tribute could not have been composed.

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OZYMANDIAS #6 — This is a pretty strong finish right here. It hadn’t occurred to me this whole time, only hit me when we saw Max Shea that there was only one way that this could end. This one accomplished everything that the Rorschach series didn’t, even though both were diaries, but here we got dialed directly into the mind of one of, if not the, most important characters in the series, and through logical linear explanation of his motives, got a bit of new light shed on the character’s motivations that contradicted nothing from the original. And the original additions made total sense, down to that perfect last line. Fine work, all around.

STAR WARS #3 — These guys are still basically destroying it. There’s not much more to say. That first double-page splash is glorious and hilarious, given what we know, how many years before the station is going to be operational and what an insult it is to be kicked to such a back-water forest moon. So, Luke and Prithi are like doing it on the seven-plot lightspeed jump home? Farm boy got game. But, I mean, it’s so apparent that she’s the mole that there’s no way that can really be the case. I hope? The “Han Solo has a very strong feeling he will not survive this,” caption is golden. This team seems incapable of doing wrong at this point, and they’re still just barely cycling up the engines.

THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS #10 — And I thought this book read fucked up before now. Hickman is officially whack-a-do. This script has the flavor of something written entirely between last call and sunrise in the middle of the nights of 9/29/12 and 9/30/12 in the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas after Morrison gave my man generous helpings of his hash cake. At least that’s how it seems at first, but by the end of the issue, we come to realize that everything makes perfect sense and Hickman is actually Morrison’s Joker, existing in a perpetual state of seething hypersanity, a cauldron from which these ideas have emerged fully formed, though it takes us months to even begin to understand them when presented in linear serial form. As for art, this Ryan Browne fella manages to fill some very big shoes. I mean, when I didn’t recognize the name, I was sure sorry they couldn’t get Darrow or Adams or maybe Quitely if he’s done with MULTIVERSITY by now, okay I’m kidding, but I really did feel like an adulterer admiring the strong clean lines and composition on every one of these pages. This book without Nick Pitarra is like a BATMAN AND ROBIN title where Robin is supposed to be the main character but is actually now dead and/or imaginary. Rough week.

FANTASTIC FOUR #005 — Some kind of perfection that SXSW held me back from reading this issue with Caesar until just after midnight on the Ides. Felt like a really big win when I realized. Fraction creates just a hell of a jawdropping page-turn cliffhanger when he has the Emperor of Rome on the morn of his own assassination quoting the play bearing his name that Shakespeare will write in sixteen centuries’ time. Am always going to remember that one. And what a cool way to introduce a character who’s apparently going to stir up some ripples over in the other book. Still really digging on this ride.

UNCANNY X-MEN #003 — Bendis’s pupil-dilating reign on Marvel’s Merry Mutants continues unabated. Can he be stopped? This one is actually really really good, in exactly the way that I was bitching last week about the crowded Avengers and X-Men ensemble not getting enough character beats, Bendis really knocks it out here. And a fantastic first-page flashback that sets the perfect tone. Can Bachalo please please be drawing the next issue, too?

AGE OF ULTRON #002 — In the hands of anyone other than this art team, that Spider-Man Manhattan Armageddon business might have felt like exposition, but with them is nothing less than heart-stopping, made me feel like a kid getting blown all widescreen open on AUTHORITY back when again. Otherwise, we’re still really just barely cycling up here, feels like Bendis throws it way back into second gear with all these street-level heroes taking up the whole issue. And the page turn before the cliffhanger made me laugh, “Oh oh, this week, boys and girls, Captain America’s going to stand up and say something badass!” At least it wasn’t just a splash-page headshot of him doing same, Mark Millar, we thank you for maintaining your ravenous autohyperbolic distance.

WOLVERINE #001 — I was expecting quite a lot from this creative team. I wasn't crazy about DEMON KNIGHTS, but I really love Paul Cornell’s Luthor run on ACTION COMICS and the gone-before-its-time CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI13. Anyone who doesn’t know how much destruction Alan Davis and Mark Farmer have been kicking up these last thirty years has got thousands of pages to catch up on. And Matt Hollingsworth has been killing it for almost as long, going as far back as the first two years of PREACHER and early issues of THE FILTH and but still knocking it out on an almost bi-weekly basis with DAREDEVIL: END OF DAYS and FRACTION LOVES HAWKGUY(, BRO). The instant I heard about this team, I knew that I would be buying my first WOLVERINE #1 since that one John Buscema scribbled out written by a fella name of Claremont. Sure enough, no surprise, these guys deliver a fast-paced in medias res high-stakes adventure that immediately grabs you by the face and melts it and then you heal up and the whole thing keeps happening all over again only this time there’s a little possessed kid body-checking you with a stolen police car. As much love as he gets, Alan Davis has still go to be one of the most underrated draftsmen in the business, a storyteller of the highest caliber. Riveting high-octane business. Only nineteen pages in, this one’s already right at home in there on the list with DAREDEVIL and HAWKEYE for the People Who Don’t Buy Marvel But… Dept.