8/27/14

BEST OF WEEK: TRANSFORMERS VS. G.I. JOE #2 — Well, this one’s better than the first two somehow. I really can’t believe I’m living in this time where this is just the hot new young thing. I could really go on about every single page in this thing. Scioli is firing on all levels and gives no indication of even decreasing the angle of his ascendancy. I mean, I’m trying to pick my favorite scene, but it probably starts on the first page and the very soonest I could cut it off is Page Eight when the Joes all fall out of the ripped up Defiant base. But then the next page has Scarlett daredevil-landing her motorcycle on Devastator’s gun, so. I really dig the sine-wave dialogue for the robots on Cybertron. Also, I count a scant four pages that don’t have any Kirby Krackle on them. Which is a good ratio. It seems like maybe Scioli could get that number down a little bit, but certainly not if the plot would suffer. Usually during those Ultimate New 52 reboots, when we’re supposed to pretend that this is the first time that Superman fought Batman or whatever and we haven’t all read half a dozen other versions already, that drives me crazy, but here, I’m loving that this is a reboot where nobody knows anything and everyone really is meeting for the first time. It’s a very cool gradual build that I believe will pay off in the long run. Man. I can’t wait to see where this book is by the time #12 comes out. Tom Scioli is a terrifying monster, co-writing with careful and deliberate consideration while producing all art, on a thirty-day schedule, no less. This might already be my favorite book that comes out every month.

SUPERMAN #33&34 —  VERY embarrassing, my folks didn’t pull #33 for me last month and I didn’t see it and I guess I’ve been so distracted that it never even occurred to me to wonder how this story was going even though I was looking forward to #32 quite a bit and thought it pretty much delivered. But what a night for me, I never get to double-read new titles. The first issue was solid juxtaposition between Ulysses and Clark’s family lives. I love that Johns isn’t manufacturing conflict for them but having them pretty much just get along. Great damn last page. #34, more solid work. I really dug Mrs. Quinn telling him that he’s family, too. THAT’S my Superman, right there. Just a good guy. Oh, but ha, uh oh! I also didn’t make it to the DC weeklies last week, so I had to double down on them as well, meaning I woke up the next day from reading this thinking that the big Braniac reveal over in FUTURE’S END #16 was in this book. All my continuities are bleeding together!

JONAH HEX #34 — Well, I’m the asshole who only drops in from time to time, when Cooke does a one-shot or the one time that J.H. Williams III did an issue or seems like Jordi Bernet was on for a little while, and I got the first few Moritat issues of this volume. But, I wasn’t a regular and now this title is cancelled. And so, I’m sorry for not always being here. But what a hell of a book this is! Darwyn Cooke returns to help Palmiotti/Gray and Dave Stewart send the character off in style, accompanied by none other than Tallulah Black, of course. This is the end of the character’s adventures, for all intents and purposes, and it is a perfect fit while being entertaining all on its own. Palmiotti/Gray did a special thing during their 106-issue run with this character. Highly recommended!

BATMAN ETERNAL #21 — Oh man, I knew if Fabok was on the gig, this was going to be the serious business. Alfred is certainly no joke calling out smacktalk while walking through the mansion and holding out his pistol. I could care less about the villain who comes back this time, but maybe Snyder/Tynion will find something interesting to do with him. And that last page, of course of course of COURSE!

FUTURE’S END #17 — I love that this cover is just total bullshit. Great work by Sook, regardless. Zircher is back to kill it on interiors. Solid jailbreak “survivor horror” and then, DID BARDA JUST JOIN THE CAST OF “ARROW FIVE YEARS LATER?” Sign me up for that business! And a pretty cool double-reveal here at the end of this one. I’m even okay with them mostly cribbing one of them from KINGDOM COME, I guess it’s been close to twenty years. But yeah, very much on the hook to see where this one goes next week!

SAGA #22 — Well, King Robot was certainly impressive enough when we finally got to see him. Marko & Alanna are falling apart far too quickly for my taste! How many pages have they even shared since we came back from the break? Vaughan & Staples seem to still be having fun and not letting running the board at the Eisners go to their heads. Or, wait, how far out do they do these things? Maybe that’s next month.

MANHATTAN PROJECTS #23 — Now this, I found terribly engaging. Does Hickman just have a thing for making everyone from Texas a badass? I guess I can go with that one. The opening scene in the Oval Office was horrifying enough (I loved Kennedy’s girl’s translation of “zeitgeist”), but when Che & Fidel showed up, it actually didn’t occur to me how far they would take it. But that’s brilliant. And of course LBJ is completely onboard with Groves and the whole deal. Are these guys going to take Kennedy out here in the next little bit? If so, that set-up certainly begins this issue.

BLACK SCIENCE #8 — Here comes a Remender hat-trick! But the real star of this particular show, I’m sure he’d be the first to tell you, is Matteo Scalera. Can I get a “Goddamn! Goddamn, Goddamn . . .” on that two-page two-panel zoom-out across Pages 8 and 9?!? And we’ve certainly got to bring Dean White into to take a bow, that’s the best painted work of his career that I’ve ever laid eyes on. These guys are doing a slambang job of building alien worlds one brushstroke at a time. And Remender is doing solid work building up the characters who are still alive after the calamitous events of the first arc. I’m liking this series more and more with each passing issue.

LOW #2 — Tocchini goes hard for Frazetta with that cover! The palette is of course totally different, but still, it’s a hell of a thing. This series is an interesting piece of work. It’s taking its time, but I find myself falling into the languid pace. And maybe that’s got everything to do with the art. You just want to sit and stare at it, and this tendency is reflected in the story beats. It also makes it kind of hard to really judge each issue on its own individual merit, just like you can’t really make a fully-formed critical assessment of a movie or a novel after only making it through the first twenty-five percent. It’s gorgeous, though, and I am hanging out for more.

UNCANNY AVENGERS #023 — Well, I’m afraid that this issue is not a great argument that the series shouldn’t have just shut down once that first mega-arc finally at long last came to an end. Part of that is just the natural ebb that has to result any time you come off a monster story like that, but this one suffers from the one-two punch of Remender not really filling enough in the narrative to make us care and drive the plot forward (I mean, we’re all really sad about the loss of Katie Summers, but as stated previously, he never gave us anywhere near enough on-panel time with her to really make us care) and then also the art by Sanford Greene, while perfectly serviceable in and unto itself, is a serious drop from the ridiculous quality that this title has been pumping out ever since Cassaday showed up on #1. This is not a terrible issue, but it’s a pretty serious dip from what’s come before. Here’s hoping they get it back on track next time out.

SILVER SURFER #005 — Slott is really a master of pacing. Every one of these issues has been completely satisfied in and of itself, in no way decompressed, but then clearly, here we are at the end of the fifth issue, and it turns out this whole thing was the pilot episode. We’ve finally got our premise set, going forward. Now, that is “writing for the trade” that I can get behind. Having Dr. Strange and Hulk guest-star is a solid shot in the arm since we’re not soaring the spaceways, and of course sets up our antagonist for this last little bit. It’s very cool that Slott is making Dawn be such a worthy foil to the Surfer, gender equality in comics, etc, but he’s almost swinging it too hard the other way. Old Norrin is going to have to level-up to hang with Miz Greenwood, it’s seeming like! And of course, the Allreds continue to knock it out of the park on every page. Very much looking forward to seeing how this crew handles the next issue, now that we’re all set up. Not unlike anticipating the second episode of any given DOCTOR WHO series.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #031 — Mahmud Asrar is a beast. Once again, this issue shows how dense an ensemble Bendis is working with here. The teachers all take off to go to the Xavier will thing and after one page’s worth of cursory comments from the new kids, the rest of the issue is nothing but the titular characters going to help another new mutant who is apparently popping up in Austin again. That Austin, am I right? It’s interesting and cool to see Jean kind of take center stage both in the narrative and the leadership role in the group dynamic in Scott’s absence. A year and a half into the run and Bendis is still going strong.

AVENGERS #034 — I just realized that not only is Hickman doing such an intimidatingly formidable job of sinking his teeth into some very solid premises that Bendis banged out a few years ago but never hung around to develop more fully (SEE: the Illuminati, the Cabal), but the payoff of this whole massive set-up is turning out to revisit Millar’s old CIVIL WAR in a much more intellectual and morally driven conflict than the classic “Who would win in a Kirby slugfest, Cap or Iron Man?” It’s a fascinating long game that’s taken over a year to put into place, but it’s resulting in a conflict that has the potential to be one of the most riveting head-to-head matchups that the Marvel Universe has ever seen. This issue is the conclusion of what has been a really impressive millennia-spanning arc that Yu has been ripping up right and left, but, as ever, it’s only the beginning of something much bigger.