1/28/15

BEST OF WEEK: THE MULTIVERSITY GUIDEBOOK #1 — This was devastating. I was expecting like a straight dossier-type book more in the vein of WHO’S WHO IN THE DC UNIVERSE but should have known better. Never mind what’s happening in a couple of months, the convergence is right here! We open with a shot of that scariest Lecter-type Sivana from THUNDERWORLD right before he turns his flamethrower on a cute li’l version of J’onn J’onzz from Earth-42. Nice touch for Morrison to have Li’l J’onn’s last word be calling out his wife’s name just the way he did way back in FINAL CRISIS #1. Still so cute, even in his death throes! There’s wonderful tension here with this li’l Batman’s cuteness thrown into stark juxtaposition with the mortal stakes that have suddenly erupted on his earth. I missed it on the first read-through, but that Lecter-Sivana has a copy of this very guidebook in his pocket rolled up in his pocket there on the first page. There’s a weird deal on the third page where Batman tells Li’l Hawkman and Green Arrow, who are all that’s left of this earth’s League, to retreat and then they just immediately disappear without comment, never to be seen on-panel again. And not like disappear-in-a-flash-of-light disappear, just suddenly gone. It’s a little abrupt. That’s all right, though, because we get the Atomic Knight Batman from Earth-17. I read his specialized dialect with a Scottish accent. Marcus To does really terrific sequential work in this sequence. He’s leveled up his situation a bit since doing fill-in work a couple years back over on THE FLASH. It isn’t long, though, before our heroes run across one of those picture books, and who amongst us wouldn’t crack open some random comic that we find strewn about a laboratory containing a word-controlled transmatter array? This leads, gloriously, into a tale of Earth-51, which is apparently just straight Earth-Kirby. Kamandi and Tuftan have a new friend who turns out to be a BiO.M.A.C., and the confederacy stumbles across the empty tomb of Darkseid, which is as grim of a deal as it sounds, footprints emerging from the grave and all. Paolo Siqueira absolutely murders the interiors on this section, to the point that I was positive that Ryan Sook was reprising his run on the character from WEDNESDAY COMICS. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Atomic Knight Batman says that he came from the Dark Tower of Luthex and then Kamandi is looking for a girl named Flower who apparently causes roses to grow in her wake. These are pretty much direct references to Stephen King’s THE DARK TOWER cycle of stories that takes up around half of his total written output in the past forty years. An entirely different multiverse! But back to Kamandi, it looks like Highfather and the rest of the New Gods are watching his efforts and talking about how dire the situation is with multiple Darkseids rampaging throughout the multiverse. Barda’s comment about all of these worlds hosting multiple versions of the New Gods seems to indicate that these right here are the folks who are actually on New Genesis in the Map of the Multiverse, but that the crew who’s in the Didio/Giffen book FOREVER MAN AND THE INFINITY PEOPLE are just Earth-0 analogues? I think that’s what it means, anyway. Of course, Kamandi and his crew happen upon the equivalent of cave paintings, which takes us down another level of fiction into a six-page recap of all DC multiversal crossover crises ever, beginning, as it must, with good old Barry Allen. That first page that opens with AND THEN! and introducing Monitor-Mind the Over-Void is some pretty heady business. Morrison has done incredible work drawing a through-line through all of the multiversal DC insanity that has stacked up through the decades all the way back to the simple fact that Barry Allen took on the mantle of The Flash because he grew up reading Jay Garrick’s adventures. The simple conceit of comic books as not only idea-delivery mechanisms but portals between alternate universes is brilliant. It’s a hell of a montage with a narrative tone that doesn’t mind a couple of in-jokes. Labeling the 1986 post-Crisis DC Universe “post-traumatic” is just funny. And we follow that up with the nineties silliness. “And so it was reality changed AGAIN. And changed AGAIN.” And I love how Morrison slides Hypertime right back into the mythology in a manner that borders on sleight-of-hand with all of this other insane shit going on. “And The Flash--always there at the electric heart of EVERY momentous transformation,” is a really nice turn of phrase.

Another weird deal with that first page back in the Batmen of Two Worlds story. The Li’l Batman busts out LI’L GOTHAM #12 and says that it “tried to warn us of an approaching cosmic invader.” However. I went back through the issue and could find no evidence of such a thing. But also, that blurb on the cover of the issue that he holds up isn’t on the comic published on our world here on Earth-33. The book that we got contains Thanksgiving and Christmas stories while the blurb is Halloween-themed, which more than implies alternate interior content. Also, Batman refers to the issue as “the latest” while in this world, it was also the final issue. And “local multiverse?!?” Does that imply an omniverse?

And but then the actual guidebook itself. A quick paragraph and team shot of 45 out of the 52 Earths. This is a lot to take in, of course. A few bullet-points:

-Not having Jim Lee do the Earth-0 art, or even re-purposing an old pin-up, seems ridiculous. The smirk that Brett Booth gives Superman, the current in-canon Man of Steel, for God’s sake, is wrong wrong wrong.

-Gary Frank & Nathan Fairbairn are monsters on that Earth-1 shot. Just perfect.

-The Earth-3 shot of the CSA looks nothing like any Finch/Oback art that I’ve ever seen.

-Juan Jose Ryp did a pretty good job copping a Quitely vibe for the crew of Earth-4. Though it really is a shame not to have Quitely, of all people. Calling The Question a “rogue crimebuster” is an amusing tip of the cap to the source material by The Original Writer.

-As much as I adore Cameron Stewart doing layouts on his new BATGIRL book, I would be more than happy for Babs Tarr to just provide full art and leave Stewart time to bang out that THUNDERWORLD series that everyone wants him and Morrison to get on. Please!

-The Just Imagine Stan Lee one-shots get Earth-6? That’s a bit surprising.

-Is that a typo in the Earth-7 write-up, saying that “the sole survivor of Earth-4 is THUNDERER, an incarnate storm god.”? Got to be a typo, that would be a really strange place to put that information, even for this series.

-That’s the Tangent Universe on Earth-9? My multiversal DC knowledge over the years is not as sharp as I might have thought.

-Earth-10, that’s the Jim Lee book for next month? But we saw this Overman guy bak in SUPERMAN BEYOND 3D, right? Having an Underwaterman is hilarious.

-Giving the Beyond universe its own Earth-12 instead of just stating that it’s in the future of Earth-0 is an interesting move. So, the past of Earth-12 is where all those fucking awesome Timm cartoons took place?

-And wow, that cosmic grail that Atomic Knight Batman’s mentioned is all that’s left of Earth-15 after Superboy-Prime’s rampage back in INFINITE CRISIS. Comics are crazy, y’all.

-Earth-16. While I enjoyed the hell out of that issue, these kids really do come off like the douchbags they are when cast in juxtaposition to all these other folks.

-Where’s the Earth-17 one-shot? Why can’t THE MULTIVERSITY be like an eight-year event?

-It’s a shame they’ll never be able to lure Mignola back for an Earth-19 one-shot.

-Of course Cooke’s THE NEW FRONTIER deserves its own Earth-21. Nice contrast to see that one hanging out next to Waid/Ross’s KINDGOM COME. I might have positioned those splitting the whole deal right down the middle at Earth-26 and -27.

-Is the Earth-23 Bruce Wayne’s identity Amazing Man? Why is he still white? I want an ongoing with this Earth more than most.

-Is Morrison going to pay off these “7 Unknown Worlds created by an Inner Chamber of Monitor Magi for a mysterious purpose” here in a just a couple months with the end of MULTIVERSITY, or is he seeding business for the rest of the decade and beyond?

-The Unjustice League of Unamerica are horrifying. Green Lantern’s slouch possibly most of all.

-This Ultra Comics character is a native of Earth-33, that’s an interesting new wrinkle, there.

-Earth-34, man, I’m familiar with most of these other ones but have no idea about these jokers.

-So, those comics that Barry Allen was reading back in 1956 were depicting adventures from Earth-38 instead of Earth-2 in this revised system of numerology? I think?

-“Repeated use of this technology might be addictive and ruinous,” is a terrific line from Earth-39.

-And wow, that Savage Dragon analogue rates an entire Earth-41? Morrison must be a fan. How could he not be?

-Could the great and terrible secret hidden on Earth-42 be that they are, in fact, robots created by The Gentry and controlled by The Empty Hand? And doesn’t The Empty Hand belong to Krona? I thought that was a well-established deal.

-Of course Kelley Jones had to draw Earth-43, but holy shit, screaming vampire Batman is terrifying. Pretty much one sentence is all you need to accompany that horror. It would have been funny if there was no copy at all, just that image. You can hear that vampire shriek all the way from three Earths over.  

-Bring Duncan Rouleau back for an Earth-44 series! I just finally made it to those eight issues of METAL MEN he did a few years back and they were stellar.

-Cool to see Superdoomsday positioned on Earth-45. I really did enjoy that ACTION COMICS #9.

-And wow, the alternate world from the Timm JUSTICE LEAGUE series when Superman avenged Flash’s murder by killing President Luthor even rates an Earth-50. That’s a deep cut, right there.

-And Earth-51 is indeed Earth-Kirby. Maybe Paolo Siqueira should start drawing a nothing-but-Kirby series set on this Earth. Didio can write it, even.

And we’re finally through all of that. Very comprehensive! I suspect that the first issue of THE MULTIVERSITY is going to make a whole gang more sense now, at least those crowd scenes. Of course the sky is red, Tuftan! “We all got drawn here, just like you,” is another classic line. The final couple of pages seem to confirm my suspicion about the cute little Earth-42 heroes. This was really such an incredible reading experience, the levels of fiction trapdooring down, us reading about Earth-42 Batman reading about Earth-51 Kamandi reading the cave paintings about the history of the multiverse. This issue is a hyperdense microcosm of everything that makes the DC Universe great. 

BATMAN #38 — Boy, that Scott Snyder likes him some mythology building around those old Gotham neighborhoods. It’s a cool element of a monster run like he’s embarked upon. The reader’s eyes are going to glaze over pretty quickly if you go on and on and on about all of this hundred-year-old architecture and dynastic history, but sprinkling in little bits here and there goes a really long way. And that is a stark way to kick things off here, Jim Gordon takes out the ax that the Joker buried in his chest and wields it at Batman while grinning manically. That is a terrific page with the five panels zooming in on Joker swimming through uncharted waters. Capullo/Miki/Plascencia continue to be basically unstoppable on this title. Oh, and on the previous page, it’s very cool to hear Bruce appropriate Clark’s “There’s always a way” catchphrase from ALL-STAR SUPERMAN and tag “out” onto the ending. Really nice little touch there. And then we just get plunged headfirst into this deal with the jellyfish guy, Paul Dekker, who isn’t afraid to get totally meta on his third page with the “doesn’t feel like a Batman story anymore” comment. Snyder does terrific work stitching Vandal Savage to Ra’s al-Ghul’s Lazarus Pits to The Demon to our own charming White Duke of Death. It’s starting to be a shame that this run is in monthly continuity, as this is really shaping up into a potentially very excellent Last Batman Story. And what a hell of a last page. It makes me afraid that Snyder/Capullo are going to bail pretty soon. The stakes have never been higher and they seem to be circling back around to where the run began. Crushing. As for the backup, it’s once again a bit anti-climactic after the main feature but perfectly respectable when taken on its own merits. You’ve got to love it any time that Sam Kieth is drawing some Batman.

GOTHAM ACADEMY #4 — Kerschl continues to blow it up on art. The acting with his characters’ facial expressions is, if anything, an improvement on his previous terrific work. The pages came through a bit dark overall for my taste. Of course, that’s a solid way to evoke the mood and atmosphere that this title is going for, but it was hard for me to make out the action on some of the pages. Cloonan & Fletcher continue to strike a great balance doling out hints on long-term mysteries like Olive’s lost summer while advancing the narrative in palpable ways every month. Though I have to say, I hope that that isn’t going to be the end of Millie Jane’s ghost. The interpersonal relationships drive this story, as they should, but big moments like the splash on the next to last page certainly don’t hurt. Recommended for Bat-fans of all ages.

BATMAN ETERNAL #43 — DC poached the LaFuente from the Marvel! It’s almost always the other way around. He sure does a terrific job throughout. Opening with the aftermath of rescuing Stephanie very much confused me, I was positive that I had just spaced on the rescue last week. Weekly series are hard! Where FUTURES END feels like it’s losing momentum, this one is picking up steam as our guy dumps Stephanie in Harper’s lap and they totally bond over the fact that Kingpin Selina doesn’t have buttons on her shirt. Which actually sounds awful but plays well.

FUTURES END #39 — Man, those first four pages with Firestorm aboard the satellite felt like eight. Rapidly running out of fucks to give for this storyline. “All eight-year-olds are vindictive” is a good line. I am okay with burning an entire page on the gin gag, that’s about right. But you can’t really use the phrase “take Manhattan” without evoking the Muppets, so that’s probably not how you want to set up a bad guy’s scary-evil plan. But good on Constantine for still smoking! I’ve never heard of this Stephen Thompson, but he turns in some decent pages. Nothing too flashy, and a couple of the Superman faces look pretty rushed (that’s like the last thing you ought to rush in a crowded ensemble like this, I would think), but overall, solid work.

INFINITY MAN AND THE FOREVER PEOPLE #7 — The Daniel Hdr draws pretty faces, but I sure do wish that Giffen was on interiors, given that our time with this book is far too short. I dig that opening splash of Sad Mark Moonrider on the beach in his New Year’s hat. Big Bear’s Kirby-inflected thoughts on vibrational alignment in the New Year are spot-on and a pleasure to read. Next issue is “Resolutions,” does that mean we’re one more and done? Man, I was hoping that O.M.A.C. would show up in these pages and then Scott Free & Barda could do a quick guest spot and spinoff into their own book, then maybe even Jimmy Olson could start cruising around in a hot new Miracle Machine or something. We need more Kirby in the world, not less! That is a universal axiomatic truth as old as the seething “Big Bang” itself!

THE UNWRITTEN: APOCALYPSE #12 — And so we come to another THE END of another beloved Vertigo series. I have enjoyed the ride along the way, and Carey/Gross/Chuckry do a very elegant job of sticking this landing, which had to be comparable to actually harpooning that white whale, as many rules and wrinkles as they have stacked up for themselves all along the way. Wilson retreating to write the entire finale is, of course, the only thing that makes sense, as is Tom’s final Jonahesque sacrifice down the gullet of that Moby Dick. The farewell between Lizzie and him carried as much poignance as it needed to, but it was the aftermath, the epilogues for each character, that really sold this ending for me. The agent not going for Wilson’s manuscript rings so true, and the misery on Wilson’s face is very deserved. No redemption for you, sir, certainly not. It is nice to see Savoy and Lizzie actually find their happy endings. Pauly “Mr. Bun” Bruckner, even more so. I appreciated the one-panel shots of various other members of the ensemble, but we had to go out with Wilson in what turns out to be this unresolved and actually really unsettling last shot that feels just perfect. There are many more stories left to be told, always, and that is the best truest ending that we will ever, or should ever, get.

FABLES #148 (one week late, thank you, Diamond) — Well, once again, this one’s not that satisfying of a read in singles. It’s apparent why we’re suddenly having an extended flashback to the tale of Snow & Rose’s Mother & All Her Sisters, but it’s more than a little late in the game to suddenly be taking up the majority of the issue with this business. I mean, this is the next-to-next-to-last issue, and most of this is dedicated to a character whose first appearance is in this very issue. That plays a little lopsided, no? Especially for someone like Willingham, who has demonstrated such a mastery of the form all along the way. So, we learn part of the story of the girls’ mother, but not even that gets resolved, we check in on Lancelot and Brandish for a page, that’s not resolved, then Snow has a bad dream and then flies away. Great art, as always, but kind of a frustrating issue again. Surely, the business will start smashing down next month. Surely.

UNCANNY X-MEN #030 — Well now, oh my stars and garters! Our Mr. Bendis is certainly hitting the acceleration at this point! That is a very tense conversation between the late Charles Xavier (c. vol. 1 #5, I believe I read somewhere?) and our Eva Bell. Xavier’s “I am so offended by you being here. You’ve ruined my life,” is so perfectly in character, it hurts. I love how Eva just drops it on him like a dime, the “this is the other Charles Xavier I’ve heard about.” And Matthew Malloy trying to resurrect Scott & Illyana from dusty skeletons is certainly a stark enough B-plot before he just takes out Emma, too? How is Bendis going to reset this business? Not much is crazier than that last page, though. I haven’t heard how much longer this run is supposed to go, but it can’t be much more. We’re running out of room to escalate.

UNCANNY AVENGERS #1 — I don’t knooooow, man, the first volume of this series started out slinging such dynamite with Cassaday/Martin and the Red Skull eating Charles Xavier’s brains or whatever, and then Remender managed to sustain it for all those issues and escalating arcs, and it was better than any proper Marvel event, only as soon as it bloomed into a proper Marvel event, that AXIS just wasn’t as much fun, and here we are in the afterflow of that, such as it is. It’s not offensive, but this feels like just a random grab-bag of more folks flying off to save Wanda yet again, and winding up on Counter-Earth is not that compelling of a deal. I’m not in the zone of considering dropping it yet, but I hope that Remender was being a scamp and holding back quite a bit in this issue that he’s going to lay on us ASAP. It’s certainly always a pleasure to hear Rogue call someone “Sugah,” I will say, but that’s not really enough to justify cover price.

NEW AVENGERS #029 — Huuuuh, I didn’t even realize that the cover contains a quasi-spoiler about not only the end of this issue but maybe potentially also what’s going on with the returning character’s true allegiance? Wacky times. There is a massive payoff in this one as a character last referenced in conversation waaaaaaay back in #008 finally shows up brings some friends. This is another issue of a lot of heroes and not-so-heroes-any-more standing around talking, but once again, Hickman’s done so much to set it up and has so many massive plot points knocking on the interdimensional wormhole that it’s all compelling as hell. The air of finality in Reed & T’Challa’s one-page conversation is chilling and really just quite sad. Crazy news about so many universes suddenly winking out of existence, but it does raise the stakes quite dramatically. This goes quite some way to potentially setting up SECRET WARS. We know that there needs to be a Battleworld on the horizon, and it’s getting closer every day. For all of his great work, Bendis’s greatest flaw is that he occasionally pushes things to a really interesting point and then the next month just knocks it out by flash-forwarding and giving us resolution via exposition. Here, Hickman drops the opposite of that with a two-page six-panel montage in which the Illuminati crew relates what could have been a year’s worth of stories just as fast as they can (okay, six months’ worth of stories at this publishing rate). Really. In two pages and six panels, we have (deep breath) T’Challa, Reed, Hank, and maybe Shuri using a cosmic cube to fucking create a new planet to use as an exodus world for the entire 616 Earth. Then, that goes south and they lose the cube. Then, Hulk and Reed and T’Challa parley with Galactus and a couple of Celestials to try and get some help. But those guys disappear. Then, they try “multiversal solutions” (which you just really keep wanting to involve all of the business that Morrison has cooking up across the street), but that goes south and is why Captain Britain got his arm jacked up, apparently. And so then, they strapped poor Franklin into some sort of Kirby engine and presumably got him to work with either the Heroes Reborn he’s got stashed in his closet or another one that he made from scratch (because why not?), and that went worst of all, and I hope the poor kid’s not dead from the way Reed was losing his shit hugging him in the final flashback panel. But, you see? That was two damn pages of shit that we had no idea happened that Reed and crew were just catching Steve and everybody else up on. Hypercompressed narrative glory. And then our mystery guest returns. This issue was really terrific and somehow manages to raise the bar on all of the madness that has already come before.

THE DYING AND THE DEAD #1 — But on the other hand. I don’t know, man, this has become the trend. I find Hickman’s balance of characterization and plot really compelling on his Marvel work-for-hire books. He’s probably my favorite modern-day Marvel writer overall, better than Fraction, Aaron, Remender, and even nudging Bendis out of the top spot for me. But then his creator-owned stuff, it all looks amazing, and the insane big ideas are certainly still there, but overall, it doesn’t move me nearly as much. You could argue that it’s of course because I know those Marvel characters so much better, but it’s what Hickman did with the FF that moved me, not how familiar I was with them. Because I wasn’t that dazzled by anything about Fraction’s immediately-following run except Allred’s art. But when that THE RED WING came out, I adored Pitarra’s interiors, but the characters’ story had no weight whatsoever for me. It was all Millenium Falcons and lightsabers but a little bit light on the Skywalker hero’s journey. SECRET, nothing to sink your teeth into. EAST OF WEST, some of the best art on the rack. But that ensemble’s all over the place, and my strongest feeling about this series is that everybody sure likes to talk in italics and emboldened words a lot. It’s a hell of a backstory, but I don’t care about those folks almost at all, even after all this time. Same deal, here. Bodenheim has never looked better. And RED MASS FOR MARS and SECRET weren’t exactly hurting. These pages are stunning. And there are 59 of them! You can’t fault these guys for the value. For just two quarters more than that Hickman AVENGERS book right up there, we get three times as many pages. That’s amazing. And it looks amazing. But once again, I don’t care about this guy. Oh, his wife’s dying, he’s got to go on a quest to save her. Boilerplate as far as character motivation goes, and he doesn’t do one thing to distinguish himself otherwise. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Millar did so much of a better job drawing us in and making us immediately invested in the set-up for STARLIGHT in that first issue. I’m going to keep picking this up for the art alone and hope that the story becomes more compelling.

ZERO #14 — Well, Marek Okeksicki certainly draws a hell of a fight scene that brings Geof Darrow and Juan Jose Ryp to mind in all the right ways. Unfortunately, there still wasn’t enough narrative content to this issue to fully satisfy. I haven’t spent enough time with Sarah Cooke for her blowing herself up to really affect me in any way. Usually, I jump from trades to singles, as I did with this very book, but I might have to go the other way this time, as I’m sure Volume 3 will be a gripping enough read all in one go, but piecemeal, this one’s not really knocking me out the way it was not that long ago.

BITCH PLANET #2 — And we have entered the Fraction/DeConnick portion of our program, delight! That Valentine de Landro is a force. Solid work overall, nothing too flashy, but then we erupt into that double-page splash for the titles. And the five pages with the ladies running on the treadmill are my favorite scene of the book. Our heroine’s body language provides a cool amount of non-verbal characterization, and I am a big fan of the fracas unfolding in the background, particularly the nonchalant manner in which Violet makes her proposal, sees her friend is in trouble and then is just like, I’m out. I’m not like ready to cut open my veins for this book or anything, but it has provided solid entertainment thus far.

SEX CRIMINALS #10 — “und zex und ZEX!” Well, that’s a really ominous first page that we don’t get any follow-up on, but there’s no way that it bodes well for our hero and heroines. It is nice to see Jon on an upswing, anyway. And hey, look at Rachelle and Robert more than holding down their own scene. That’s some pretty well-written chemistry, I could totally hang with an issue of just the two of them, even without the time-stopping orgasms or anything. Sometimes just a regular orgasm is enough, am I right? Jon & Suze’s reaction to Miz Kincaid’s bag of tricks is just about right, and you’ve got to dig the escalation of the weird sex ghost. Another wonderful issue, another incredible letters column. Such a good damn book, man.

CASANOVA: ACEDIA #1 — Well, after the bugfuck insanity that was such a hallmark of the last volume, this is really quite a rational and understandable piece of work, here. Almost a, dare I say, jumping-on point, even. I assumed that was Zephyr when she first showed up, but I’m a little bit less certain after our boy kills/almost drowns her. The “elephant/element of surprise” gag is terrific. I definitely shrugged when I read it the first time, but that’s a funny payoff on the following page. Oh, Fraction! Fabio Moon’s panel work is as glorious and delightful ever, there’s such a sense of play in his lines, regardless of the subject matter. Cris Peter continues to provide absolutely beautiful colors. The headlining twenty pages ended far too soon for my taste. And but how cool to get Chabon pages illustrated by Bá! It really makes me miss the old UMBRELLA ACADEMY, particularly that stack of horizontal shots introducing the non-Imago members of the group. So much detail and crackling energy in those lines. And these nine pages are far too tantalizing and not nearly enough. Brother Chabon’s plot races along at a delightful madcap pace. I am a little shocked that he of all people shorted us on Oxford commas not once but twice (The “Hype, Tits, Auto-tune, and Cheap Nihilism” on Page 7 and then in between the Adderall and the Black Mamba condom in that very last line there on Page 9). That is disheartening and makes me question my otherwise stable world-view. Otherwise, this entire electric b/w combo comes up aces and eights, great American times!