12/31/13

A 53rd week ripped from the jaws of 2013! We had to cheat a bit and release the books on Tuesday, but all's fair. Instead of slamming a Lone Star and starting right in like usual, there was just a bit more pre-game on this particular New Comic Book Night, glory be!

BEST OF WEEK: NEW AVENGERS #13 — After last week’s excellent first blast of second-act, I was certainly very curious to see where this series would begin, due to its unofficial-though-Brevoort-proclaimed status as flagship title for All the Really Heavy Cosmic Shit in the good old 616 and far beyond. And this one certainly delivers. I’ll admit that they had me going there that first page, immediately found it total garbage to burn an entire page of the same speech from #1 only broken into panels so that Bianchi could put his sweet kiss on them. Why are we back here? But the gag was worth the page, it was indeed the same speech but delivered on Earth-23099 to a halfway different roster of Illuminati right before an incursion that this time leads to the first on-Earth appearance of the Black Priests that our lovely Black Swan was just prophesying about right before the holidays. Of course, they immediately start kicking the holy hell out of everyone, meanwhile back on the 616, all the smartest guys bang their heads together for a few pages of very solid Hickman-comic-book-science talk before realizing that Reed built this thing way back in the very first issue of Hickman’s FF run, and if you have never seen a grown man shouting at the all the guys in the comic book to just think about it for a minute, it’s so damn obvious!, well, it’s a pretty funny sight. And it looks like Matt Smith regenerating has given Stephen Strange a serious inferiority complex, he is making a strong push to supplant Capaldi by selling his soul to Mephisto, perhaps? And of course, all the Black Priests have to do is just utter three characters and everybody turns into Wolverine-skeletons from the cover of UNCANNY X-MEN #142 all over again, they probably missed a pretty good opportunity here, instead of titling this one “Inhumanity” like apparently every single thing has to be called this month, “Everybody Dies!” would have been just a swell way to go. Oh, 23099, you seemed like such a lovely place.

THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS #17 — Is it just me, or is the tone of that blue alien guy’s voice entirely channeling The Dude? I mean, it was hitting me right from the first line of dialogue, man. And I love how Pitarra keeps sacrificing his friends as cannon-fodder extras. Wish we could have at least gotten another Poyo special out of those guys, though. The best part is how the last time we see Pitarra, he’s running away and might even possibly make it, but every other one of these guys has a vicious on-panel execution. Did Pitarra avatar survive? Oh, sweet ambiguity. I dig the cover for this one, as well. Hickman, I’m thinking?

ROCKET GIRL #3 — They lock it back down on this one here to a much greater extent, our girl is off and running from the bottom of the page and the pace never slows down. Amy Reeder continues to be a revelation on full-color art and we get a very solid plot twist in the past/present/future/whatever-the-hell-we’re-calling it world of 2013. Very glad to see this one right its course this issue after a bit of a dip from the initial greatness of #1.

CATALYST COMIX #7 — As I’d hoped, I’m a little bit more into The Agents of Change now that they’ve got a little bit more room for their business to unfold. Frank Wells kicks the hell out of the Redline squad. Brad Simpson continues to do really quality work giving each story its own feel through unique palettes. And Grace gets a little Saving Regan paraphrase from ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #10 before rocketing off into deep space for our final two installments. Should be solid. Can’t believe this thing’s already racing headlong into its conclusion.

THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS #6 — I guess I blame Shaun Simon. Which I’ve already said before but I kept hoping that they’d turn this around in some glorious climax that made the rough early going worth it. Not even close. Becky Cloonan and Dan Jackson did beautiful work throughout and this issue was no exception, but unfortunately the plot is a cliché-riddled bore shuffling uninteresting cardboard characters out of the city and into the desert and back into the city and then the end. I mean, gay Grant Morrison’s running around shooting multiple versions of the same bad guy in the head over and over and I can’t be arsed to give a shit, is how bad this is. Thas low. And the pitiful thing is, I really do love love everything about this property, the album, the videos, I’ve got a damn Killjoys tee-shirt, I can do the Dr. Death-Defying DJ spots from memory, the whole deal. And THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY was one of my favorite comics of last decade. All this had to be was okay and I would have stayed all in. Was looking forward to this for years, stoked by seeing Cloonan get better and better and better and just so ready for her to blow it up on these pages at long last. And she did the best she could. That damn Shaun Simon. Hopefully, the cat book will be a return to form.

FABLES #136 — I totally thought Lancelot was Merlin at first, just because of the beard, I guess. I’m a simple man. Interesting business with the Camelot archetypes, seems really obvious once they come right out and say it, but it certainly never seemed obvious to me beforehand. Is that shot of all the dead guys and Weyland supposed to make him Rose’s Guinevere, here? Grim business with the lady’s reaction to seeing Ambrose, Willingham always knows how to payoff the ominous prophecy material. And Russ Bruan continues to do a bang-up job over Buckingham’s layouts, good show all around.

SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #5 — The plot on this is starting to come into a bit sharper relief and catch up to more what I expect from Snyder. I still can’t imagine what kind of an explanation there’s going to be for this “First Superman” to justify the concept but no reason to report on that until there’s something to report. At first I thought that the whole Smallville flashback sequence was just straight filler so that Lee wouldn’t have to turn most of his pages, but Nguyen jammed out nine of those to Lee’s seventeen, so we’re certainly getting some serious sequential shredding for the price-point. Lee’s shots of the supporting cast accelerating into the future are, of course, instantly iconic, the guy continues to simply terrify with his command of pretty much everything. Since a lot of this issue was talking, it’s a good thing that the conversation between our hero and Wraith was as engaging as it was before everything went nuclear there at the end. And that is the sole misfire that really stood out for me, the sequencing, after you’ve got a Jim Lee splash page of Batman and Wonder Woman, who haven’t so much as shown up in this issue yet, calling in from the Bat-Cave to report that every single nuclear missile on the planet has just been launched, it’s the very definition of anti-climax to flashback-cut to Craaaaazy Old Man Colder unloading his shotgun on ten-year-old Clark in the wheat fields of Smallville. Don’t worry, folks. Clark’s going to be fine. I think his secret is safe. Go back to Bruce and Diana in the cave. Jim Lee was drawing them. Let’s just stay with that, there, and see what happens next.