8/07/13

THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS #13 — Okay, wow, and now we’re into the ONE YEAR LATER blister-on-through. Hickman really lays down on the gas here as we hit the fast-forward button and check in with the progress of all of the various projects envisioned by Oppenheimer. I was surprised by how affecting I found Yuri & Laika’s goodbye. Thirty-five in dog years, indeed. The depiction of JFK is brutal and kind of perfect. And of course Oppenheimer is the next major problem on the horizon, which I guess he’s always been. The art in this issue is particularly good, Pitarra’s found some improbable way to tighten up his hyper-detailed super-fine linework and Bellaire’s colors have never looked better. Thirteen issues in, this book still seems to be on the ascendant, spiking all the way up out of orbit with low to no probability of flaming out and tumbling back down to earth.

PROPHET #38 — I love how this book just starts on the inside cover now. We continue our tour of the far-future Awesome universe as Old Man Prophet takes tea with the evolved form of Suprema while in search of Badrock. And what’s that you say, Glory is still out somewhere running around? Paging Ross Campbell! And a lifebomb detonates, freeing the sleeping celestial body of Moorrock, son of Badrock, from the gravity well of a nearby star. This book is oooooouuuuut.

BEST OF WEEK: TRILLIUM #1 — I picked up SWEET TOOTH #1 the day it came out. It was only a buck and a new Vertigo and seems like the first issue of THE UNWRITTEN had just blown me away in the not-too-distant past with the same deal, so, you know, not such a gamble, those four quarters. It was the first Jeff Lemire book I had ever read, and while I certainly did not find it offensive, I didn’t love it. I wasn’t crazy about the art and, more importantly to me at the time, the last few pages of the issue had also been reprinted in a preview that was running around in the back of Vertigo books the previous month, all of which to say that I concluded the first issue distinctly underwhelmed and quite certain that I would not be picking up #2 at full price in four weeks. But then I kept hearing about how great THE ESSEX TRILOGY was, and when I saw it at a deep discount not that much later, I picked it up and was blown away. It was like Top 10 Graphic Novels I’d Ever Read good. And of course caused me to reevaluate Lemire. I eventually started picking up the SWEET TOOTH trades and—like most folks, I suspect—cried my eyes out all through #40. And went back to hit THE NOBODY and picked up that LOST DOGS reprint that Top Shelf did a little while ago and of course THE UNDERWATER WELDER is brilliant as well, and so no one was more excited than me to hear that he would be writing mainstream DC books with the reboot, and ANIMAL MAN has held up as one of my favorite monthlies these past two years, and how insane that we can even live in a world that someone can string those words together, and but so all of which to say, I came into this issue with some serious positive emotional baggage with regard to Jeff Lemire, particularly on his creator-owned work that he also draws.

But this one really just blew me away. The flip-book format is perfect. Both chapters are immediately engaging and manage to seem fresh and original while still dealing in fairly standard tropes of the science fiction and war genres. So but of course this is a love story. Or will be. It’s hard to believe that this was all essentially prologue, we won’t be privy to the supercollision of all that we have come to know until next issue. Even after three passes through this thing, I’m still reeling, it’s hard to talk about it coherently. Clearly. Let’s see. There are two fourteen-page stories. Lemire writes and draws it and shares coloring duties with his boy Jose Villarrubia, and the nearly one thousand pages they spent together on SWEET TOOTH is apparent, the shorthand between longtime collaborators who by now are intimately familiar with the minutiae of the other man’s craft. Our protagonists are a scientist from the end of the 38th century who happens to be the last person convinced that diplomacy with an alien race is the key to humanity’s survival, and then we’ve got a shell-shocked WWI veteran cutting through the Amazon jungle searching for meaning from the Lost Temple of the Incas. It’s not horrifically reductionistic to say that this entire glorious flip-book premiere issue amounts to one of the most compelling and intricately composed meet-cutes of all time, one that traverses time, space, and genre with the graceful ease of a sprinter barreling over hurdles. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

SATELLITE SAM #2 — If anything, I liked this one a little bit better than the first issue, with which I was quite taken. But this is clearly one of those narratives that’s going to accrue momentum by the installment as we have more and more time to get to know our ensemble. Fraction’s writing is nuanced and much more like CASANOVA Fraction than THOR Fraction, and Chaykin’s art looks just impossibly damn good in black and white. If I can just get used to the no-word-balloons thing, then I’m all the way in. This is definitely another one of the new Really Great Books that Image seems to just be shoveling out every few weeks, now.

FATALE #16 — Josephine decides to call herself Jane Doe and start sleeping with everybody, which is clearly her default setting. The art remains fantastic and Brubaker’s prose is leaner and sharper than ever.

KICK-ASS 3 #2 — This one was really kind of filler. The Motherfucker’s mother goes to kill him but then inexplicably kills a hit-man who was already in the process of killing The Motherfucker. Hit-Girl is nowhere to be found. Millar remains an evil douche and I ingest and retain an infinitesimal percentage of that evil by giving him money. I like to tell myself that I’m on a self-prescribed vaccination program but I know that I’m lying.

DETECTIVE COMICS #23 — The plot thickens between Bruce and his new antipodal arch-nemesis, escalating to the point that even letterer Jared K. Fletcher mixes them up and has each man delivering his opponent’s lines on the bottom of Page Ten. Jason Fabok continues to absolutely throw it down, that double-page splash of Caldwell’s arsenal might have made Jim Lee Himself shudder. Really looking forward to the finale next month.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #015 — mm, David Lafuente’s highly stylized art was a bit jarring after the more photo-realistic smackdown insanity we’ve grown accustomed to from Immenon/von Grawbadger/Gracia (with Marquez pinch-hitting). I wasn’t really feeling it at all at first but warmed up to it after a few pages. Jean’s thought-bubble of rampaging Wolverine is maybe what sold it for me. Also, really well crafted moment by Bendis with Hank(s) and Jean. I am really on the edge of my seat wondering how this is all going to resolve itself when they finally have to go back. Which is of course the point, well played, all.

AVENGERS #017 — This is the end of the beginning, I guess? The narration certainly seems to indicate as much. And that there might be Real Actual Consequences stemming from the INFINITY event. I know we’re approaching fool-me-ten-times sort of levels here, but I can almost believe that Hickman will deliver. Hopefully, he will not be lobbing the script off to Spencer next month and actually be scripting the run that they are double-shipping. As an acolyte of the old New Universe, it was beyond cool to see the new Nightmask and Star Brand guys join the ranks. Also, a very unexpected development to see Ex Nihilo just fall into line, makes the character much more intriguing and will certainly lead to interesting team dynamics. For as long as they last. Bring on the hypercosmic infinite madnesses!

7/31/13

BEST OF THE WEEK: BATMAN INCORPORATED #13 — I started back in on that first arc with Andy Kubert, BATMAN & SON, three weeks ago and since then blasted through Morrison’s entire run. I can’t believe it’s been seven years. Three different ongoing series, two self-contained event mini-series, and three different men wearing the cowl. Actually, more than that. Many more. We even got Robin, the Toy Wonder, for God’s sake. The driving force, the engine behind the massive sprawling story Morrison crafted over the years has always been legacy. Lineage. Batman and his sons. At the close of the second act, upon his return, Bruce Wayne explicitly states that he is going to fight the idea of crime with the idea of Batman. And, as a certain terrorist in a Guy Fawkes mask once famously said, you can’t kill an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Which makes perfect sense, the idea of Batman is the cloak that young Master Wayne wraps around himself to cope with the primal tragedy of witnessing his parents’ murder, to not only not let it destroy him but instead serve as fuel for his survival, inversely defining him, inspiring him to construct an identity and belief structure so resilient that it turns out to be immortal and that, Morrison hammers home repeatedly across space and time, will outlive him by centuries.

But it’s so easy to get lost in the web of this entire grand tapestry. This is, by my count, the eighty-fifth issue of Morrison’s run*. Legend has it that Dan Didio asked Morrison if he wanted to write Batman and right away threw out the title R.I.P. and Morrison dove right in with the novel high-concept that Everything Counted, all the pulp madness of the forties and romance of the fifties and weird Silver Age science madness of the sixties and, significantly, O’Neil/Adams’s hairy-chested love-god dark knight detective of the seventies, and Miller’s raging semi-psychotic DARK Knight of the eighties, grimmer’n’grittier than them all, and I guess the shoulder-pad-popping excess of the nineties kind of surfaced in the new Batmobile and at least the art style when Tony Daniel showed up? But at any rate, Morrison constructed a timeline in which every published adventure of Batman since 1939 could be said to have actually taken place to this incarnation, this particular character, Crises and multiversal revisions be damned, and that the first Big Bad was not The Joker, as ever, but a character who first appeared in the second of a two-part adventure published in BATMAN #156 with a cover-date of June 1963, which I think means it came out in March, which is the same month that Parlophone rush-released The Beatles’ debut album Please Please Me in the UK to capitalize on the success of the singles of the title track and “Love Me Do,” but oh, you see how this entire latticework spins you around and starts trying to pull the whole wide world into its tapestry? “A network of interlinked strands,” indeed. But so, all right. The only way to do this is linearally, page by page, or we’re going to be here forever:

Of course we open with Gordon arresting Wayne, the first scene from this second volume, Morrison’s third and final #1 writing this character. Now we’re all caught up, the kid was dead during those first couple of pages we read a year and a half ago. Still makes me so sad. The Gordon narration initially comes across as a terrific throwback to YEAR ONE. Has that ever happened during this run, Gordon captions? Doesn’t seem like it, off the top of my head. I am an insane fan of the payoff to the Page 3à4 page-turn confirming once and for all that Gordon knows. Of course he does, he always has. But, dig deeper. All the way back to DETECTIVE COMICS #27, which opens with a conversation between Commissioner Gordon and his young friend, millionaire Bruce Wayne. For his finale, Morrison takes us all the way back to first principles on every level. And but it isn’t until we first jump back to the confrontation in the cave that I realize that Morrison has now reached all the way back into the past to also subsume what's become a straight Bendis trope, having two guys sitting around talking about the climax of the story after the fact, but just killing it so hard that I don’t mind and didn’t even realize until the cut back. Just in time for Talia to let us all know that it’s the grand finale, as if we didn’t already. A bit jarring a couple of pages later, that flashback to Lieutenant Gordon there with Bruce right at the first consoling the brand-new orphan with Leslie. Is that a Snyder addition to the mythos? Seems like. You have to respect Morrison’s unflinching commitment to make everything canon. And but then wow, the title page. The stakes. Batman must kill the mother of his dead son to save Gotham. That is certainly just putting it right out there. And what a one-two punch, Bruce telling Jim that his parents’ murder made him incapable of loving anyone ever again followed by his apology to Talia for same. I had to send that particular page with no context out into the night to a dear friend, could not keep it to myself. And what a masterful resolution to the confrontation with Talia. I was thinking ahead of time that of course she had to die but Morrison really takes Goyer/Zack Snyder to school in that regard. And surely most folks figured out who the headmistress of Spyral was, it’s not like there were that many candidates, but her entrance and exit five panels later was still very well executed. I particularly enjoyed her line about it all coming full circle. I believe that Burnham’s first issue was #4 of the first volume, which was all about her.  And then, man, right up to the minute, Gordon even just goes ahead and mentions Zero Year, which, in any other context would just seem like corporate shilling but it’s almost heartbreaking how well Morrison unflinchingly roars through, tying it all together. Everything Counts. Even and especially the storyline that Misters Snyder & Capullo are good enough to be providing us across the alley in monthly installments. Only two issues have come out so far and they still get threaded in here, on the way out. And then the parting Gordon monologue is absolute perfection.  Of course it never ends. And like any truly great story, this one concludes with both resolution and the promise of so much more. Because it isn’t like these people’s lives come to an end when we run out of panels. It keeps going. It always does and it always will.

The art on this was wonderful throughout, possibly even a notch higher than the greatness to which we have grown accustomed. Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbarn outdid themselves, as ever, but I especially loved the askew angle canting back and forth panel by panel in that last scene, invoking both the Adam West series and that kind of horrifying first reveal of Batman as Bruce Wayne coming out from behind the clock on the eighth and final page of DETECTIVE #27, again. The fractal cover is also a dead-on fit with the themes that Morrison’s been playing with, Batmen within Batmen. And but that epilogue. So much work done in two pages. Setting up another adventure/last battle that will surely only play out in our imaginations (because, really, who in the whole wide world has the balls to pick this one up and run with it? I can't believe Morrison gives us those empty graves, just horrifying) but then also invoking the phrase “Sons of Batman” to further solidify the act of reaching into the future and treating Miller’s revered THE DARK KNIGHT as canon that was begun with the Mutants’ first appearance. And if all of that wasn’t enough, the last word of the entire series**, a single syllable, just goes ahead and folds in Nolan and Bale and all the rest. Everything Counts. It all happened! Rise! “What if it was all real?”

This run has not only been one of my favorite stories that I have ever been lucky enough to read in a lifetime spent devouring stories, it has also been a constant in my life through a period of great change. I remember reading the first issue in May 2006 a very few weeks after moving back to Austin and tantalized with the possibilities of where Morrison might take us. Months later, I was thrilled beyond reason to discover that #663 was illustrated prose that took me an hour to read. Just about the best three dollars I spent that year. Three months later, #666 came out the week of Comic-Con and I was so in love with that flash-forward that actually and instantaneously (SUDDENLY…!) made shitty terrible Damian a great character that I brought it along to San Diego just so I could keep rereading it on the plane, not realizing that just because he didn’t have any autograph sessions scheduled didn’t mean old Morrison wasn’t happy to sign a book and so that was the only one of his I happened to have on me when I got to shake his hand and get charged up with the uncut narrative energy right after finding out at the J.H. Williams III panel that the pair of them were going to be producing the very next arc of the series, THE BLACK GLOVE, it was already all drawn, and reading even the kind of terrible #670 just apocalyptically drunk in the Omni hotel down on 8th Street where we were staying because Catherine had a conference and it was Halloween, or oh then, we got pregnant and had a little girl and she had to spend the fifth and sixth nights of her life in NICU and I read #682 over and over to her while she was had to stay down there passed out under those lights that were reducing the catastrophically high amount of bilirubins in her blood, and then FINAL CRISIS finally finally finished coming out, like one week after another, #6 and then the next week SUPERMAN BEYOND 3-D #2 and then #7 the week after that, but so just to read #6, I am never going to forget this, I was dealing with like a three-week-old at this point, who needed something pretty close to constant attention, which was all well and good until we got to Wednesday night and her mom was asleep and there were new comics to read, so as soon as I got her back down at midnight or whenever it was, I ran for the fridge and popped my Lone Star and started devouring FINAL CRISIS #6, no saving the best of the pile for last that night because the reading could end at any minute, and I didn’t make it ten pages before she woke up and needed to be rocked, well, I didn’t even break pace, just ran over, got her and rocked her and shushed her while still reading, only when it got to the great Batman/Darkseid showdown, when our boy shoots the living embodiment of evil dead with a time-travelling god-bullet and just, in the understatement of the millennium, says, “Gotcha,” right at that moment, my sleeping daughter let out a long burp and seriously crapped her diaper, could not contain the situation on either end, and all I could do was nod, that was exactly the appropriate reaction to what was going down there, and oh, on and on, I wish Dick & Damian could have had their own Dynamic Duo series forever, that’s really what they maybe should call it, THE DYNAMIC DUO, just when it seemed like Morrison had said all he had to say, everything went sideways, and but then of course the status quo had to be reset, but still in a way that we didn’t see coming, the franchising, the incorporation, and then that dear boy who worked so hard to overcome the dark side of his heritage struck down . . .

All leading to this. Which, the one thing I never saw coming was the implication of a tie-in double-sequel with ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. Which is probably not happening, is certainly the best-case scenario, but look at the two epilogues thematically. It’s almost the same ending. Our hero is gone, but his son(s) will live on. To meet one day and team up or fight. Probably not, I don’t actually think that that double-sequel is a story that will be told, but the fact that it’s implied is Morrison’s final masterstroke. I could go on and on and on about how much I have loved and will always love this epic feat of storytelling, but all that is really left to do is express my immense gratitude to the creators involved in bringing it into this world where we could experience it, teaching us not only that Batman and Robin will never die, but as Damian exclaimed when viewing the tapestry of his mother’s web for the first time, “We're at the center of this.”

*give or take fudging it ten or three issues, your mileage may vary, even though our guy is absent/captured for issues at a time, I think you’ve got to consider FINAL CRISIS part of the overall epic due to the events of #6 alone, and you can’t really read the main seven issues of the series and pass up on the glory of SUPERMAN BEYOND 3-D, and but then the trade also includes that admittedly uneven SUBMIT one-shot starring The Tattooed Man that Morrison wrote that has absolutely nothing to do with Batman at all and could be convincingly argued to be maybe the nadir/low point in Morrison’s entire and admittedly vast oeuvre, but anyway, it’s not like I was going to skip it along the way while powering through the other six dozen of these things.

**No TO BE CONTINUED . . . or certainly not THE END to be found here, just a straight cut. That THE SOPRANOS finale pissed everyone off so much but I would have really appreciated just a black page at the very end, it would have been a perfect touch.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

BATMAN ANNUAL #2 — Ah, crap. I should have done better in the due diligence department but just assumed that because Snyder’s name was on the cover, he actually wrote this instead of just co-plotting it. I wonder how many extra units they moved versus what would have sold without the Snyder credit. I certainly wouldn’t have dropped the money on an annual by a pair of unknown talents. But what’s done is done! How is the story? Pretty solid, our narrator is an ASTRO CITY-style civilian on the fringes, the new guy at Arkham who winds up sympathizing with the asylum’s retconned first patient, a lady who checked herself in voluntarily and is more than dismayed about what has befallen the old sanitarium since it became a cage for insane rogues. Wes Craig delivers good-looking pages displaying a surprising amount of uniformity, given that there are six inkers on this thing, and Marguerite Bennett’s ear for dialogue is crisp and never breaks character. This is a well constructed though unremarkable tale, I wouldn’t say you have to rush out and buy it, but I’m not sorry that I did.

DETECTIVE COMICS ANNUAL #2 — Layman continues serving up the Bat-thunder. And it occurs to me reading this one, how crucial Jeromy Cox is to the look of this title. Which is probably an obvious statement, of course the colorist is very important to maintaining continuity of presentation from one issue to the next, but it’s uncanny how close Scot Eaton, crucially abetted by Cox, comes to achieving the high artistic standard put forth every month on the main title by Jason Fabok. And it’s not like The Mighty Layman is phoning it in either. With one of the most successful creator-owned books on the market, Layman has not been shy about tossing in new additions to the Batman mythology just as fast as he can create them. In under a year, we’ve already had an entire Emperor Penguin long arc, are just getting cooking on the Wrath, and now in this title are introduced to Jane Doe, a very unsettling chameleon mimic who threads her way through expired lives, fleecing the recently departed for all they’re worth before moving on. Which is an idea so well suited to a Gotham rogue, it’s surprising that it’s taken someone this long to come up with it. The first back-up is a cool little riff on EC Comics-style storytelling, but the second one felt completely superfluous. Still, all in all, this one’s well worth the cover price.

FLASH ANNUAL #2 — Mr. Buccellato holds down the word-slinging end of things just fine without his usual partner-in-crime, as he has done in the past but the art team of Sami Basri and Stellar Labs on colors did not even come close to providing the incredible artwork we have come to expect from these pages. Flat composition and layouts, colors that also look, well, flat, nothing about this pops. Which wouldn’t be a dealbreaker, this is not a terrible comic, we’re just so trained to expect greatness, this sub-par art team completely capsize the issue. It’s a shame editorial couldn’t rope in Marcus To once again or why not talk the great Cully Hammer into drawing the lead feature? With Matthew Wilson on colors, that would have been the real deal. Which is to say that I enjoyed the ten-page backup a bit more than the main attraction.

ANIMAL MAN ANNUAL #2 — Oh my word, now this is how you do it. This annual feels not only like an indispensible chapter in the life of our protagonist but is also a hard-charging strong contender for best issue of the series so far. And of course it doesn’t hurt to welcome initial series artist Travel Foreman back to the fold. What devastating subject matter, though, particularly given that the entire reason that Foreman had to bow out of this title in the first place was due to his difficulty illustrating this rather macabre subject matter after his mother’s death. These flashback quasi-retcon stories can be a dicey thing, the whole wait-wait-also-this-happened-TOO all in the service of achieving a payoff that has maybe only just now occurred to the writer. But, man. The story of What Happened When Maxine Was Born is not only a perfect little yarn unto itself and certainly the only way that it could have happened but just a hell of a setup for an emotionally crushing two-page spread that completely tore me apart. Wracking sobs, I mean, without exaggeration. Really, I could see where it was heading with the return to The Spider Queen (and I love love love how Lemire subverts the typical monster-fighting formula with her) but the reveal of the dream, absolutely heartbreaking business.

THE WAKE #3 — Man, these bookend timejumps just get more and more intriguing. This continues to be one of the tightest written and best-looking comics on the rack. Matt Hollingsworth’s muted tones are a perfect complement to Sean Murphy’s kinetic linework. That particular shade of pink/purple he starts using for background on Page Five in particular really pops. I totally guessed that wasn’t Lee after the cut to her going for Bob. What a predator this thing is, though, I was completely unprepared for that venom-induced vision of the white whale feast. And once again, a stellar cliffhanger (though this is the first time we didn’t bookend with a timejump), I really don’t see how the survivors of our cast are going to survive seven more of these.

MORNING GLORIES #29 — I had to go with the Matthew Waite 8-bit video-game variant cover. Though if I’d seen the Lemire one with Casey, that would have been a hard call. I hear the 8-bit version of Sex Bob-Omb’s “Threshold” every single time I look at this thing. So it’s got that going for it. This is, I believe, the final part of the Season Two premiere, which, of course it makes all kinds of sense that that is the structure these guys would go with, breaking it up like that (see L O S T, episodes 2.1-2.3). But what we have here is kind of, almost, Spencer and Eisma putting the genie back in the bottle, at least as much as is possible on a title that has run off the rails from its initial premise to such a batshit degree (I mean this in a good way), much much more than I ever would have thought they could have managed. But for all the insanity that’s gone on in the woods and underneath the school and, you know, throughout space and time, we’ve got most of our original cast back in the halls of glorious old Morning Glory Academy with the Truants at least temporarily out of the picture and something like the old status quo miraculously and improbably back in place. And of course, just when we’re lulled into thinking that we’re about to get out of here without a massive WTF?, the lads drop a doozy on us. Quite possibly the gnarliest one yet, in a book whose regular stream of cliffhangers would give even poor Yorick & 355 a run for their money. This is yet another issue that hits the reader quite hard upon first pass through but that I’m sure will be much more devastating when binge-read in sequence with the couple of dozen issues that have come before. And the back-matter, I’m a bit horrified to discover just this very minute that Matthew Meylikov is a real person, I just kind of assumed Spencer was doing an Alan Moore-type back-matter thing laying out and breaking down all of the non-linear madness for the readers, and that premise was cracking me up more and more. The guy speculating on how it’s going to go and what this and that could all mean and such. Now that I know he’s a real dude, I’m certainly grateful to have someone walking us through the crazy, but it’s just . . . I actually can’t believe that he’s a real person. It shouldn’t freak me out so much, but there you go.

FF #010 — And in the noble Merry Marvel tradition first codified in #10 of the original volume, the creators crash down through the fourth wall to take direct part in the on-panel antics! Am a big fan of Fraction’s constant Q-Bert-filtered epithets. But Allred’s double-shipping crack followed by Fraction’s shot at Brevoort’s Formspring account is just too much, the greatness. Which only gets trumped by Allred telling Medusa that he’s always loved her. And Brevoort whacking Fraction upside the head after the breakdown on satisfying tragic-comic endings. This book has too much wonderful to be contained. I guess it’s too much to hope that the creators will just get folded into the regular cast, though there was that line about embedding Fraction & Allred. We live in hope!

DAREDEVIL #029 — Javier Rodriguez continues to prove that he’s more than just a pretty palette-slinger. We open with a really interesting about-face from Waid, all of the eyewitnesses immediately start lying about the insane cliffhanger and there’s nothing Matt can do about it. I can’t see a bird’s-eye angle shot of a stairway like the one on Page Thirteen without thinking of those opening pages of the second chapter of SIN CITY, first volume. And what a killer long shot on that penultimate page there, love the linework but the colors especially pop. And that’s got to be Kristen the Assistant DA in the chair, there, right? Matt’s half-smile at the end seems to confirm it.

UNCANNY X-MEN #009 — Man, I just love Bachalo on interiors. And funny to see the cover from DAZZLER #1 there. On vinyl, maybe even? Alison and Illyana’s back-and-forth rings true. Though hopefully we’re going to get more resolution into what happened with the team hijacking the Helicarrier, that’s too big of a deal to just get taken care of off-panel. And shenanigans with Phil “Big Fan” Coulson, this Bendis X-Men business really is the sequential equivalent of just straight crack, I enjoyed the hell out of another one and want more more more right now.

X-MEN #003 — Ah, so we only get this art team for this initial arc. So it goes. Coipel/Morales/Martin absolutely blew these pages out of the water and have set quite a standard for the talented individuals who are lined up to follow. Wood balances the interactions between the ensemble well but the resolution to the action is a bit anti-climactic. It doesn’t happen off-panel, strictly speaking, but it might as well. All of this building to . . . huh. That was it? Not a terribly satisfying payoff but I will definitely be hanging out with this title to see what else Wood has in store.

7/24/31

BATMAN/SUPERMAN #2 — We get Jae Lee for the duration this time and two versions of the title characters. Pak continues to excel at the captions, striking strong counterpoints between the four main characters while managing to keep their voices unique. No mean feat. It makes sense for our guys to be over on Earth-2, the darkness of Lee’s style is practically screaming ELSEWORLDS. This is well worth the cover price, though it is interesting to note that this is practically a Marvel value here, all DC does to ostensibly justify the $3.99 cover-price is include a couple of variant covers as back-matter, no additional story content whatsoever.

FLASH #22 — Another high-quality installment, the likes of which we have become accustomed to from the cosmic Manapul/Buccellato treadmill. I feel like I single it out almost every month, but this title page in particular was the absolute thunder. I think it was the first one with which they tried to be subtle and not so much foreshortened lightning-in-your-face THE FLASH!, the effect of which was sublime, I totally failed to spot the letters in the laundry and buildings, being more concerned with the dialogue and foreground art and it wasn’t until I saw “IN REVERSE PART 3” on that right side of Page 3 that I went back and was thrilled to see how well they’d hidden the main title. Phenomenal work. The issue itself was excellent, of course the art is always spectacular but there was also good character work, some nice tension between Flash/Iris re: Barry and of course the uncomfortableness of our guy having to drop her off with Patty. Not cool, Barry. And Reverse-Flash is terrifying and seems unstoppable. Already can’t wait for next month.

THE UNWRITTEN #51 — I was a little unclear on what happened with our trio of young mages. They made duplicates of themselves to fight Mister Dark? That wasn’t entirely clear from this issue. Maybe I missed it last time out. Carey, Willingham, and Gross, with the assistance of Buckingham on co-pencils and Russ Braun finishing a few pages, continue to produce a pitch-perfect FABLES crossover within the pages of this book. Still very curious and interested to figure out how this will eventually fit in with FABLES continuity but certainly enjoying this ride too much while it’s happening to get hung up on such concerns in the meantime.

BEST OF THE WEEK: THE ROCKETEER & THE SPIRIT #1 — I was going to wait for the trade on this but then couldn’t resist that Darwyn Cooke cover. And why wait? They were good enough to go with the IDW model of presentation vs DC, meaning $3.99 for a no-ad situation as opposed to $2.99 for ten pages of ads. No question what’s better. What top-drawer talent they recruited for this crossover. Of course we know that Mark Waid is going to completely knock the lights out on something like this, or really anything, but wrangling Paul Smith into the fray is a particularly inspired choice. Smith was a contemporary of Dave Stevens in the eighties, both at the head of the movement of the new guard of inspiring young artists at the time who were pushing themselves and the medium as far forward as possible, both at the very top of their game but whereas Smith broke through to serious mainstream adoration through a particularly memorable year-plus on Claremont’s UNCANNY run that saw such highlights as the introduction of the Brood, the initial Madelyne Pryor/Dark Phoenix fakeout, and the all-time classic “PROFESSOR XAVIER IS A JERK!” opening page, Stevens took a serious amount of time honing a somewhat smaller number of pages of his creator-owned property to perfection. And Stevens, of course, was drawing inspiration from a relatively simpler time best personified by the medium-defining work of Will Eisner on his seminal detective hero The Spirit. So, while to no one’s surprise, Waid bull’s-eyes every single character collision/interaction to perfection, even those limited to a couple of panels, it is a real thrill to see Smith go to town on a style that manages to be simultaneously evocative of both artists, amalgamating Stevens’s photo-realism and Eisner’s cinematic layouts and composition. This is only the first twenty-two pages, but the creative talent lays down the basic set-up with such facility and apparent ease that it seems pretty much a lock that this is going to be an optimum-case one for the ages when all is said and done. The only aspect of this book that is anything less than perfect is the title page, the straightforwardness of which is pretty much embarrassing on the same day that FLASH came out.

THE MASSIVE #14 — There’s a Georg flashback as Ryan defects, then comes back to negotiate Mal’s surrender to the American government, and then it’s time to take in a show on Broadway. Possibly a version of FINDING NEMO got up and running before the collapse?

GAMMA ONE-SHOT — This is great fun, right here. Dark Horse was good enough to reprint this compilation of a three-part serial that ran eight pages at a time in DARK HORSE PRESENTS #18-20. Like LIL’ GOTHAM, this series benefits from having the individual solely responsible for interiors as a co-writer, so the beats line up very nicely. What we have here is a kind of Pokemon send-up by way of the wild west with a dash of kaiju action thrown in, all drawn and hand-lettered in a smile reminiscent of Brandon Graham’s solo material. While Dusty’s road to quasi-redemption might not be the stuff of legend, this tale is a self-contained burst of fun that is more than worth the $2.99 and ten minutes it will take the reader to consume it.

YOUNG AVENGERS #008 — That is a more-than-solid single-page interdimensional montage that kicks things off. Gillen keeps the ideas flying fast and furious and the tag-team art crew of McKelvie/Norton/Wilson provide consistent excellence throughout. No great surprise to see the return of the Oubliettes, can’t believe it took this long. And Miss America is coming into her own as a character, I like how they’re not rushing to spit out her origin but just letting her hang out and develop at a slower pace. It worked for the hairy Canadian. Also very cool to see McKelvie’s stylistic panel-play return, Miss America smashing down on the panel borders for an emergency exit leading to the return of a character who will have fans of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY all in a tizzy. Followed by more panel-play there at the end with Teddy and David running away, strong strong panel work all around. And that last page, this book is making some kind of hard charge for some a sweep at the GLAAD Awards, Kate Kane & J.H. Williams III, watch your back!

UNCANNY AVENGERS #010 — Remender continues digging deep, dusting off Ozymandias, not that Comedian-killin’ fellow who used a secret psychic space-alien conspiracy to save the world from communism and nuclear holocaust, but some Egyptian-type who I vaguely recall running around in the X-books sometime in the nineties, when I kept dropping in to confirm that it was still a train-wreck disaster post-Claremont and dropping right back out. At any rate. This issue. The balance on this title is starting to swing a bit heavier in favor of the philosophy talky-talk than I would prefer. I’m fine with protagonists being characterized via the particular way in which they hash out some kind of issue with one another but it feels like it’s happening every time. Oh, Alex and Wanda are off checking out the Guatemalan temple, it must be time to talk about Xavier’s Dream and our culture’s desensitization to violence as portrayed by media cycles. Wanda seems to be crushing on Alex pretty hard, there. And wow, can’t believe that The Grim Reaper Horseman made a CHEERS reference, that was certainly an interesting call. Logan telling Thor and Rogue to quit ass-grabbin’ is a good time, but I do believe that verb should be a hyphenate. Also a fan of him calling the former “Fabio.” And Shai-Hulud from Arrakis makes a triumphant present-day appearance! Our heroes can’t seem to catch a break.

NEW AVENGERS #008 — Well, that was a whole bunch of random business blowing up, there. This issue appears to take place on a tangent to INFINITY #1 with the majority of Cap’s 18-member squad heading off-planet off-panel and leaving Tony behind to walk around and Talk Bbout Really Heavy Shit with Reed, which is turning out to be this book’s comfort zone. Which I’m fine with. Medusa gets pissed and slaps Black Bolt, the Wakanda/Atlantis hostilities erupt, and we burn four pages on checking in with the arriving invaders in a variety of locales. Deodato/Martin’s pages are beautiful, as ever, but overall, this one felt more like racing down a bullet-point list of plot-points that need to be accomplished, as opposed to the crushing single-issue experience that characterized every month of the first arc.

HAWKEYE ANNUAL #001 — All right, I think I went in with expectations that were too jacked up for this one and it kind of let me down. I guess is what happened? Since her arrival in #002 of this title, I have been a huge fan of the dynamic and interaction between Kate Bishop and Clint Barton, and old Gillen has done fine ensemble work with her over in his book, but when I heard that this annual was going to be a solo story featuring her, presumably following up on the horrifying ending of #011 that we got from Arrow/Lucky/Pizza Dog’s POV, I was really really looking forward to this. And it’s solid, certainly. There’s nothing wrong with it. Javier Pulido drops back in to follow up on the two-parter her illustrated in #s 4 and 5. I was, in particular, a fan of the cartoonish inset-panels that featured Kate’s internal monologue. Matt Hollingsworth’s pretty flat palette continues to be exactly what this book needs, no more, no less. And Fraction does make with the clever while providing a tale of Madame Masque stalking her down-and-out houseguest Kate, who knows she’s being stalked and is stalking in return, repeat ad infinitum on down the line. And like I said, there’s nothing wrong with it, per se, this issue just doesn’t hit that crazy alchemy that is like a regular expected thing in the ongoing where every month, they push the form forward just a little bit further on the page and break our hearts off the page with the story of how these people relate to one another and make their troubled way in a world that might be the Marvel-616 but is really just Bed-Stuy, which stays the same no matter what universe it’s in.

7/17/13

BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN ’66 — Man, I just picked this up on a lark because of my affection for the old series but am adding this to the Pull, no question. Jeff Parker completely nails the actor’s voice of every character, down to the narrator’s exclamations. You can really hear Adam West delivering, “YOU DELUDED FOOL! YOU’LL DESTROY YOUR OWN CRAFT!” Just perfect. And the Dracula window cameo is brilliant. Jonathan Case strikes a fine balance on art, a retro feel that is somewhat cartoony but manages to capture the actors’ respective likenesses without being too photo-realistic. And he even gives us the askew angle on that first Catwoman panel. And but there’s an offbeat follow-up joke to last week’s LIL’ GOTHAM backseat gag, strange convergence. Of course Adam West Batman has a Bat-3-D printer down, that makes perfect sense. This issue is a delight all the way through to the last panel. Cue the theme song.

BATMAN AND CATWOMAN #22 — Tomasi/Gleason/Gray/Kalisz continue to do nothing but murder it, scene by scene. Of course it was a given that the way Bruce and Carrie played off one another was going to be great fun to watch but I’m digging the natural affinity that Alfred has for her, which makes perfect sense. Thespian bonding. Bruce’s past tense, “DIDN’T WE ALL.” non-question is a crushing piece of business. Though that is I guess as bad as it got, the poor guy got off about as easy with Despair as was possible, at least on-panel. Really cool dynamic, teaming up with Selina to save the five-year-old. And of course everybody speaks broken gangster Chinese. Almost two years in, these guys are staying neck and neck with Snyder/Capullo over just down the alley in consistently delivering the most emotionally satisfying and utterly beautiful pages that can be found anywhere in the New 52 or about anywhere else on the rack, for that matter.

BATWOMAN #22 — Whoa, “the president’s drones,” can’t believe that Bones went there. And how horrifying to see Professor Pyg again, if only for four panels. The Murder of Crows out of nowhere was a terrific surprise, hope there’re going to stick around and remain part of the program. Some serious validation for Bette, no doubt. Though I do wish this issue ended with a little more weight, it was solid throughout but the dismount was a bit limp. However, this was the first time I turned all the way to DC’s back page and holy shit, I’m in for four out of those five annuals. Looks like I won’t be floating much savings on this particular fabled fifth week!

WONDER WOMAN #22 — And the Kirby Krackle abounds! I do wish we could have lingered on New Genesis a while longer but it was “improbable imagination overload” while it lasted. Zounds, Chaing/Wilson as just monsters! That splash of Diana descending, alone. I dig Highfather’s redesign, very sleek and apropos relative to what’s appeared in this title thus far. I also like the idea that Orion’s exterior visage is merely a reflection of his interior spirit, an update from the original set-up that is actually an improvement while remaining true to the spirit of the King. Terrific about-face from Orion, the whole gang is almost all back together (with one particularly gruesome exception, of course), and then here comes War with that trademark scintillating Azzarelo wordplay on our way out.

ANIMAL MAN #22 — Steve Pugh continues to tear it up, but then here comes Francis Portela with the crazy European fine linework. Just that first panel alone, what an insane level of intricacy. To say nothing of the following double-page spread. And of course it takes Maxine about two issues of being the boss to happen upon that great idea first popularized by poor, doomed Louis Creed something like twenty-five years ago. “Now, I want to play with yeeeeeew.” You just can’t keep a good mullet down. That particular terrible notion certainly ended as well as it possibly could have.

FABLES #131 — An intriguing title for the arc, the issue certainly didn’t go where the cover implied, but all was certainly made clear by the last page. Funny that Willingham devoted half the issue to the doctor and Miss Duglas with such an ensemble to choose from. You have got to respect the fellow’s forthrightness. The aftermath of Therese’s return was as sad as expected. I guess old Bigby is going to be just fine, after all. And of course Prince Brandish doesn’t have a heart, I could have told you that.

PROPHET #37 — Milonogannis is a one-man wrecking crew! Leaner and meaner than Brother John Atum. There is absolutely no bullshit to be found here, just direct-to-the-jugular science fiction goodness, an individually satisfying short whose contribution to the over-arching narrative will be made clearer over time. Still one of the best series on the rack, right here.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN #18 — We open with a well-conceived exchange about boat-naming between Conan and his son. This whole “everything is perfect” set-up always reminds me of an X-Men dream, so it was a little bit surprising/unnerving to see it reinforced by “wee bairns” in the narration, a phrase that I will forever associate with that daft little Rahne Sinclair. There’s a heavy burden on these “it was all a dream” episodes because of course the only plot they’re driving along is what occurs through the character development that they incite or reveal. This issue, or really, the arc that it concludes, passes that test with flying colors as we bear witness to at least the possibility that one day the roaming warrior’s fires stirring within Conan will quit burning bright enough to allow him as much peace and stillness as possible for one such as he. In other news, I found the letter column quest for the correct way to pronounce Bêlit fascinating. I have personally always pronounced it “Beeh-lee” (long unstressed + short stressed) with that circumflex apparently kicking in my old French learnin’ and causing me to unconsciously silence the “t,” which is never given as an option in the myriad of choices considered by the various experts on hand.

YOUNG AVENGERS #007 — Huh, this apparently came out last week but didn’t get pulled for me until today. C’est la vie! This is the first proper post-pilot-episode all-hands-on-deck issue where we’ve got the status quo firmly established and the entire crew is hanging with one another from the get-go. It’s as great as I expected, am such a fan of what happens when McKelvie & Wilson get together and of course Gillen is by now an old hand at hitting all the various character dialogue interactions and character beats to perfection. As has thus far been the case, Loki pretty much steals every scene as effectively as he apparently has Gillen’s heart. Really digging on this, almost crushing on it harder than Waid’s DD, it’s probably blasphemy to say but there you go.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #014  — All right, I guess we’ll allow that bait-and-switch, it was a bit of a cheap shot to pull back from the Phoenix thing that quickly, but this book is so good, it’s hard to feel cheated by even that. Marte Gracia’s colors continue to be some of the very best in the business, what a force that guy is. Of course, Immonen/von Grawbadger are turning in serious work, as well, it must be said. The double Avengers appearance leading to young frost giant Bobby clobbering Thor with a snowball was priceless, good on ya, Bendis.

FANTASTIC FOUR #010 — Revolutionary Clobberin’ Time! Of course Ben Franklin is a Skrull. That actually makes perfect sense. I kind of wanted John Adams to look more like Paul Giamatti but recognize that as my own deficiency. But seriously, Bagley’s likenesses are excellent, perfectly straddling the line between photo-realistic depection and his somewhat cartoony style. I love how Val is totally not having the soft-sell confession from Reed. And Johnny’s dawning realization. But her line about the irony detector wins for this issue. Old Jason Stackhouse takes a page out of Johnny’s playbook, I’m suddenly realizing. Reed’s explanation for why they’ve been where/when they’ve been was of course well thought out and very cool. Yet another very enjoyable first blast of double-shot Fraction FF.

FF #009 — Who doesn’t love a good pool party? Fraction once again hits us with the inspired notion of framing at least the B-plot within a documentary by the great auteur Bentley-23, a character who it seems to be making a go at stealing every single scene of this run that he’s in. The real development, however, is that the alien-imposter Julius Caesar not only finally makes contact with the team after all of these years but goes ahead and reveals himself and sets them on at least the cusp of their way with the tech and info they need to potentially rescue the original quartet. Which I’m sure is going to happen just halfway through next issue. And Joe Quinones, man, once again does just an uncanny riff on Mike Allred’s art style, of course perfectly aided and abetted by Mrs. Laura Allred’s sublime palette, but it’s a freaky thing where halfway into the issue, I have to remind myself that this isn’t the mad man himself.

AVENGERS #016 — And we’re back with the new New Universe guys. Man, these things come out fast, I feel like Hickman just put them up on the shelf but it’s already been seven issues. That is certainly a pretty picture of all them Spaceknights soaring above Galador. When will those Avengers get big enough?!? They’ve been talking of little else for going on sixteen issues now, not even counting the last page of Bendis’s run. I suppose that it was about time for old Bruce to Hulk out, we were probably overdue for an incident. And Superia appears to have made a full recovery, I thought she was toast. Looks like our crew kind of got their asses handed to them, there. They are not going to have much in the tank when INFINITY comes knocking!

7/10/13

SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #2 — Apparently, if you knock it out of the park the first time out, the smartest thing to do is add Luthor, Batman, and the Bat-Cave to your 250,000-selling comic book spectacular. That will do it for me, anyway. And but wow, before this series came out, I predicted that these would be some of my favorite first-person Clark Kent captions ever, just because nailing internal voices is really one of Snyder’s great strengths, but the second-person emergency options routine he gives himself in that opening scene are really not to be believed, just strong strong work. Of course the big guy winds up thanking God, how else could it all go down? But man, that COMEDY BANG! BANG! ad for the IFC show is very distracting. Then, a terrific scene between the World’s Finest. I guess it isn’t possible to be writing pages for Jim Lee and not ask for at least a page-and-a-half of Bat-Cave. No, I get it. And Bruce Wayne utters the phrase “One hundred and forty gigawatts,” we live in shining times! Lois shows up for a token page and then we get the main event of the issue, General Lane puts the smack-down on our favorite Kryptonian before a couple of excellent cliffhangers. Is this really going to stay monthly? How long will we get this art every four weeks? Stunning pages.

BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN: LIL’ GOTHAM #4 — And normally nothing could make me break up this opening Snyder double-shot but Dustin Nguyen’s epilogue sent me trapdooring over here into the artist’s digital-first book and, man, these two chapters fire on all cylinders. I have been loving what’s been happening every time out, but after putting the boss on the bench for the past two chapters, he comes roaring back with pretty much the entire ensemble of sidekicks and rogues that is really too much fun to be believed. I felt kind of screwed up to be so pumped about seeing dear Babs back in a wheelchair, but of course was involuntarily punching the sky to see Oracle back in action with no advance notice of any kind. But that backseat gag was maybe the best. That panel where Penguin joins the fun and Batman just has his right hand over his face was, no problem, the little girl’s favorite of the issue, she has reenacted it many many times, always ending with, “And then Batman is just like, ‘Oh, brother!’” This is not to slight the second Mad Hatter/Easter chapter, a couple pages of which really nail the insane absurdity of the Carroll source material and send the reader reeling. And the “Bring it, Honey Bunny” panel is another standout. Have been very much digging on this series since the first page, but these two chapters really take it to another level. Am thinking there are only going to be two issues left of this, as its holiday theme implies twelve chapters, but holding out hope for more. Superlative work, all around.

BATMAN #22 — Surprising no one, this crew continues to make a pretty much riveting comic book despite the massive number of times that we’ve had origin flashback arcs shoveled down our throats since 1987. And it all comes down to craft. Snyder locks us right in to the mindset of 25-year-old Bruce and makes him a compelling character even though we’re all shaking our heads and knowing exactly where things are heading. Alfred’s slap was choreographed to perfection. And of course the circular Riddler snake page is Exhibit #294 of why this has been the best New 52 book for just about two years running, the art rendered to perfection but then every line of dialogue singing just as sweetly, just one more slice of story that could not have been delivered in a superior fashion in any medium other than this. It will be a sad, sad day when Snyder/Capullo finally leave this title but let us hope that that tragedy is still many years off. They are laying down a run for the ages, issue by issue, page by page.

DAREDEVIL #028 — Javier Rodriguez shows up on pencils! And hangs with the considerable artistic talent that has preceded him on these pages. But Waid certainly doesn’t pull the punches just because Samnee is off changing his new kid’s diapers, we get an engaging enough flashback that does all the terrific character work with Matt that we’ve come to expect from this title but then there’s an about-face on the last page that is completely out of nowhere. Another kick-ass issue of Waid DAREDEVIL, what a surprise.

HAWKEYE #012 — And now, a brief interlude to introduce Clint’s brother, of whom I have lived my entire life in ignorance. But what a fine occasion for an actual recap page. Going in, I was expecting an antagonistic relationship more in the vein of what old Simon Williams has going on with his brother, so that last page kind of snuck up on me. Oh, the bonds of fraternal love! Francavilla of course shows up and lays waste to every page. Like DAREDEVIL, yet another installment of possibly the very best series that Marvel has on the rack today.

UNCANNY X-MEN #008 — So glad to welcome Bachalo back to these pages, hope he stays in rotation for the duration. Still can’t believe he’s coloring his own work, these pages look amazing. This issue is kind of a catch-your-breath installment. A mutant leaves, then other one we’ve been introduced to gets shot and then recruited, Scott and Magneto all but hug it out, and then Dazzler shows up in her fabulous Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform. Leave it to Alison Blaire to jump in at the last possible minute as soon as she finds out that Whedon’s about to sprinkle his magic all over that.

ASTRO CITY #2 — Still can’t believe we’re just going to be getting these regularly now. When this series first started coming out close to twenty years ago now, it really drove me crazy to have all of these tantalizing hints of series mythology only to routinely have the emphasis diverted to salt-of-the-earth non-powered characters. I wanted ADVENTURES OF SAMARITAN, dammit! But, of course, I just didn’t get it. That’s what makes this series what it is. This issue is no exception, Busiek introduces us to a new civilian and dials us in right away so that we’re already invested in her voice and point-of-view even before we find out what her job is. And of course, no one can do it for you on the out-of-nowhere splash pages like Anderson and Sinclair. (are there maybe too many hyphens in this review?) Everything’s going along just fine and so well that of course we should have expected that gut-wrenching twist on the final page, there. Nothing less than another damn fine installment of this all-time great series.

AMERICA’S GOT POWERS #6 — Man, there is nothing like Bryan Hitch blowing it up on interiors. Take as long as you want, sir, it is always more than worth the wait. Jonathan Ross’s mini-series blew up out of even his control, as what should have been the final issue is apparently now penultimate. This one is relatively quiet after all of the madness that erupted last time a few months ago, but all of the developments escalate the narrative toward climax in a way that feels natural not forced. And Obama talks some serious trash to the lady who was running the whole reality show back at the top of the series.

CHEW #35 — Pity John Colby. The tension certainly keeps rising, but the six+ week gaps in between issues are starting to get to me. As if it was possible for me to lapse back into tradewaiting. Guillory’s background joke Easter eggs continue to delight, though we possibly hit new Ouroborosian heights with the notes about the 815 crash and smoke monster scrawled on Tony’s board, possibly drawn around the time that the creators found out the live-action Showtime adaptation of this series was dead and in which Ken “Miles” Leung would not, in fact, be appearing as the series lead.

STAR WARS #7 — Now, the past couple of issues have been solid enough but felt a little bit padded with not quite enough going down for my taste. Not so, here, we’re all over the place with several plots moving forward and young Skywalker getting a promotion. Really hoping that this series is going to last more than five more issues but not sure about how long the whole licensing thing is going to hold out. The princess had better find that ice planet pretty soon, now.

EAST OF WEST #4 — This one right here was the thunder! The adjective is terribly overused these days, but “epic” might be the only way to adequately describe what happens when Death comes a’courting his darling Xiaolian, who’s been held hostage by her father, the emperor Mao III, for quite some time. Hickman makes a good decision and stops jumping around so much throughout the many varying characters and locales that we’ve blistered through here since we got started. Almost this entire issue takes place in one setting with a single cut to Texas for commentary for and context of the aftermath. About the only valid criticism that one could make of the first few issues of this is that there was been such a massive amount of characters, backstory, and world-building that it was potentially overwhelming for readers who didn’t show up already acclimated to massive ensembles. I mean, I like to think that I’m pretty good to go and I about got a buzz off of working so hard real-time processing what was happening with #1 on the first pass through. As a result, Death is the only character who I feel like has been, for painful lack of a better term, fleshed out over the course of the first three issues. It’s therefore a nice piece of character work here to not only develop Xiaolian all on her own but then pull that little trick at the end where she almost inherits any attachment or emotional connection that the reader’s made to Death when we hit that final page. Bow down, indeed. Wonderful character work. And I haven’t even mentioned the art, just cracking good stuff.

THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS #2 — A solid post-apocalyptic double-bill headlining, here tonight. This issue picks up a little bit from last time out as the plot with the girl messiah advances and we spend some time with Killologist Korse, who looks just really a whole lot like King Mob, you guys. It turns out that he has a live-in secret gay lover and it is making him lose his edge. I would love to have been there for Way to break the news to Morrison, that would have been some comical business. Cloonan continues to turn in beautiful pages. We still have absolutely no reason to care about the drug-addicted sexbots, however, as of yet can’t understand why we’re burning pages on them. It looks like we’re going to get some serious escalation as we head into the back half of the series, though. Make some noise!

7/3/13

BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN INCORPORATED #12 — Exo-suit Man-Batman has it out with the clone of his son who killed his son and it is a brutal and glorious thing. Burnham imbues every punch and fall with weight and impact to the point that the reader directly experiences not only the physical violence of the confrontation but the partial catharsis of Bruce facing the creature that murdered his son. God, I’m still so fucked up about that little body lying there so still. Just the worst thing. Get it together. Get it together. There’s also a nice little homage to the double-punch shots coined during the initial BATMAN AND ROBIN run with Dick and Damian as Beryl subs in for the departed to get her own pound of flesh. And the Leviathan reveal was shocking and terrible in all the right ways. As was his final fate, just perfect. But what’s better than that final page? The only last cliffhanger that ever could have been, flawless resonance all the way back to seventies O’Neil/Adams thunder. It is so hard to believe that this is coming to an end. I am going to be some kind of damn mess here at the end of the month.

SATELLITE SAM #1 — I was expecting pretty serious greatness from Fraction and his idol Chaykin but these guys really and truly knock it out of the park, here. Fraction channels his inner Sorkin, providing rapid-fire in-studio dialogue that sings with total authenticity even before you become acclimated to how tech-jargon-heavy it is. The easiest way I can sum up this premise is it’s like that QUANTUM LEAP episode when Sam jumped into the body of Future Boy, the sidekick on a live science fiction adventure serial but then the whole thing’s run through that Sorkin filter. Excellent writing, throughout. And I haven’t enjoyed Chaykin interiors this much in a long time. Lately over at Marvel, he’s run into the same problem that I had when Simonson was doing those issues of Bendis’s Avengers, the young guys coloring the work are completely over-rendering it and going way overboard when a flatter style more akin to what Hollingsworth has got going on in HAWKEYE would be much more the call. Here, Chaykin sidesteps the problem altogether by keeping it in black-and-white, an aesthetic decision that both fits in with the story conceptually and showcases just how much of a badass Chaykin is to this day. The shots of Libby walking through the East Village are particularly strong. But Fraction more than shows up, as well. Kara asking her co-star if can still see her cross in only her second appearance on-panel is a just ridiculously deft piece of characterization, dialing us in to her with surgical precision and efficiency. The only aspect of this issue that didn’t seem completely perfect to me was letterer Ken Bruzenak’s decision to exclude black lines from the word balloons. There are places where it works and is even necessary, but any time they’re over white space and not bounded by shadow, that doesn’t work for me, it looks like the dialogue’s just drifting out in space. But that’s a small quibble, these guys have something really special brewing here, top creators firing at the top of their game.

AVENGERS #15 — The Hickman juggernaut keeps right on rolling. It’s occurring to me with this arc that, among other things, he’s bringing the same sense of epic scope and grandeur with which Morrison imbued the JLA in 1997, that A-list all-hands-on-deck approach. A natural escalation from Bendis’s set-up but a little surprising in hindsight that it took this long for the franchise to follow suit. Pretty fine timing, in terms of other media. This was a big fighty issue, not too much on the nuance. I did find Frank Martin’s choices a bit off-putting in places, particularly coloring everyone in Banner’s action science room with purple skin even though every single light source was some shade of blue-green. Caselli tore it up, regardless. That two-page spread of the alien creature sending the signal across the cosmos was the real business. I do hope I don’t have to wait four weeks before the next issue comes out!

AVENGERS A.I. #1 — Well, I wasn’t going to check this one out but my shop pulled it for me and Marvel improbably launched a new series with AVENGERS in the title at the $2.99 price-point, plus I keep seeing this fellow Sam Humphries’s name about town, so I figured why not give it a try? Was pretty much disappointed on every level, the art verged on not even being pro-quality, really flat and static layouts throughout the interior pages of a book suffering from the terrible and unfortunate comparison of having a Weaver/Gracia cover. The dialogue was stilted and simply not engaging. The ensemble did not play well off each another one bit, there was no chemistry crackling whatsoever. I got the vibe that the writer phoned this in because he’s working on four titles this month and this happened to be the one where the quality slipped. Which is not the vibe one wants to cultivate at any time but certainly not on an #1 launch. If this iteration of Hank Pym is the third smartest man in the 616, then I’m the ruler of Latveria. And you will all bow before my superior intellectual might! Richards!

DAREDEVIL: DARK KNIGHTS #2—I made it home and realized that I should have looked at this cover a little bit closer. I was planning to check out this series later on in trade and passed on the first issue, took if off my pull and everything. But they put it back in muh stack and I didn’t look too close, it certainly wasn’t odd to see another DD book there so soon after the last one came out. This is not a very terrible problem with which to be saddled, I have fond memories of picking up Nocenti/Lee Weeks issues off the spinner rack at my friendly neighborhood 7-11 back when new comics were within walking distance from my parents’ house, so it was cool to check in with an old master and see what he has to say lately. Drum-tight business, certainly not lighting the world on fire but a very solid Daredevil story on every level, the script is tonally right where it needs to be and the art looks terrific. Lee Loughridge hits the target on the colors too in a way that those guys I was talking about up top who colored Simonson and Chaykin for Marvel lately haven’t, not such a garish palette but subdued and understated. Recommended to one and all.

DETECTIVE COMICS #22 — The stunning Layman/Fabok run continues with the introduction of an Anti-Batman. Which is a terrific idea but I dearly dearly hope that he’s not going to turn out to be the anti-Bruce Wayne who was introduced in the second scene in this issue. Not a terribly elegant way to do your business, there. I’m thinking it’s got to be misdirection, the Mighty Layman’s too smart to go for something so obvious. If it does turn out to be him, it would have been cool to introduce the civilian foil a few issues ago as a subplot that just seemed designed to mess with Bruce’s business and then have him turn out to have this other identity here later on. Either way, he looks to be quite the opponent. Jason Fabok and Emilio Lopez are absolutely murdering these pages, really top quality material.

6/26/13

BATMAN/SUPERMAN #1 — I was really looking forward to Pak/Lee’s take on the World’s Finest and this initial installment does not disappointment. Lee sprints past his regimented OZYMANDIAS layout structure, managing to seem both energized though still focused and restrained. Pak holds on to that blue/gray alternating narrative caption between the two leads bit that Loeb just immediately ran into the ground at the top of the last volume of this team-up, but the thing is, Pak manages to dial back the precious juxtaposition, doing a pretty fair job of channeling that first-person present-tense Bruce Wayne voice that Miller codified back in ’86 and ’87 in his two all-time classics. This “first encounter” manages to entertain even though we’ve all seen permutations of it several times before. I am particularly intrigued by the twist at the end. I do think it was a little bit weird to have Ben Oliver draw that section. I guess it was a deliberate choice? Because surely you wouldn’t be having a fill-in on a first issue. Possibly a stylistic decision, and no slight against Mr. Oliver, but it comes across as a strange call to have Jae Lee only drawing three-quarters of a first issue where his marquee name was arguably a bigger draw than the writer’s. Still, a solid beginning, looking forward to subsequent issues.

FLASH #21 — What could have been a fill-in crossover of heroes running the old misunderstanding/fisticuffs trope into the ground manages to be entertaining on its own merits with the art doing most of the heavy lifting. It is hard to conjure an artistic team who could do a better job of drawing an issue’s worth of two Flashes running around the world. The body language continues to be some of the most dynamic and energetic in the business and the layouts flow so beautifully, guiding the eye across the page with just the right amount of urgency and velocity that this title demands. And even an “impulsive” gag in Barry’s narration, groan.

THE WAKE #2 — All right, I jammed PUNK ROCK JESUS in between this and #1 so, as much respect as I had for Sean Murphy from JOE THE BARBARIAN and the AMERICAN VAMPIRE mini, have a whole newfound appreciation for the scope of his talent after seeing a couple hundred pages of his finished work in only black and white. All of which to say, jumping back in here with Matt Hollingsworth coloring it up to perfection is quite the heady experience. So, these guys are doing nothing but knocking it out of the park in the art department, but then Snyder again turns in pretty much a flawless script, we get just enough explanation/exposition that answers questions we have while generating new ones, a dab of characterization that is natural but not forced, and then serious escalation on the last pages, certainly in the present tense but then out-of-control hijinks there in the flash-forward. What is going on? How can that possibly tie in with our main narrative? If these boys keep it up, and I have to reason to doubt that they will, this mini-series is going to be one for the ages.

THE UNWRITTEN #50 — Man, I feel kind of terrible writing this, but Carey drops in and flat writes the pants off of Bill Willingham in this crossover, as solid as FABLES has been lately, this issue blows away what’s been going on over there for me. I mean, just grabbing that tone and running away with it. The bit about Ozma refusing to do the exposition part of the spell is really clever stuff. And I love the whole set-up/payoff with Tom showing up, everyone’s immediately thinking there’s no way that the spell worked. It was pretty nuts to see the current situation of both Snow and Bigby. I presume the continuity of all that will be made clear. I had completely written him off in the other title, crazier things have happened over there. I do wonder if there’s anyone at all who reads this and doesn’t pick up FABLES, they must be terribly terribly overwhelmed at this point. Same deal goes the other way, FABLES folks who don’t regularly pick this up would be well advised to begin doing so, seems like some fairly essential business going down right away. I had a great feeling about this arc/crossover when they first announced it a few months ago, but this is much better than I dared hope.

PROPHET #36 — This is haaaaard science fiction, man. As if it wasn’t already, but seems like they found a way to crank it up, even now this far in. There isn’t even room for credits, you get the last names on the front cover and then on the inside-front cover, there’s the first page. Newfather vs Big John TO THE DEATH! The wild and improbable thing about this series continues to be the way in which the creators have made Diehard such a compelling character, one of the most subversive pieces of character work that I can think of lately, given the character’s initial incarnation. And that line about him just being tools that think he’s a man followed by the aside that he’s not even the only Diehard unit still functioning, just flattening business. Sometimes, I have to take pictures of what I’m reading and send them to my friends in the middle of the night. And naturally, he and first John first travelled with 108 other crewmembers, just nonsense. I wonder if these guys have an endgame in mind or are just burning bright as hard as they can for as long as possible. This book continues to be one of the very best of the month every single time out.

JUPITER’S LEGACY #2 — Another solid installment. Quitely’s art remains the star of the show and Millar does fine work letting the story tell itself and not get drenched in his own kick-ass sensibility. We’re getting to the betrayal/assassination angle a bit quicker than I expected. And the girl’s cousin has got to really be the father, right? It seemed pretty obvious from the first page that he walked in, not even counting that that would be so Millar. Really digging getting Quitely on interiors again, just hoping that it’s not going to hold up MULTIVERSITY anymore.

MORNING GLORIES #28 — I got the Irving cover! It’s a freakshow, how much more insane this book is nowthan it was just a few months ago. It continues to crack me up, the fact that it takes a full three pages of backmatter to even begin to piece together for the poor beleaguered fan what the hell is even happening here. And I’ve been trying, but man, we need it. All those callbacks to #13, I would love to know the percentage of readers who picked up what was going on there the first time through. I bet it’s in single-digits. Spencer & Eisma continue to deliver a hypercubic ton of entertainment across space and time starring an ensemble that keeps expanding at every opportunity, with multiple versions of characters dropping in at will, sometimes in disguise as people we’ve already seen. A hell of a lot to keep track of and a very rewarding experience for those willing to make the effort.

LAZARUS #1 — This left me a bit cold. I’ve been looking forward to this since it was first announced and Lark completely delivers on the art, colors the whole thing, even, but I did not find much of a hook on the narrative or character level. From the first page on, all of that medical language completely killed the momentum out of the gate, really think no captions alone would have done much better rather than dropping a gang of medical jargon on us. And the premise is interesting enough but there wasn’t one thing to draw me in and make me in any way care about Forever Carlyle as a person or protagonist. I suspect that it will become more intriguing as we go along but this is one strong Rucka woman I don’t mind waiting to check back up on in a few months or years when the trades are cheap. That art, though, man, spectacular.

THE MASSIVE #13 — Viva America! Good to get Garry Brown back on interiors. Storywise, it was interesting to check in on the old homefront, but this installment was not meaty enough to make me feel good about picking this title up in singles, particularly on such an insanely crowded week.

FATALE #15 — Oh dear, not another prologue. These things never end well for poor Nick. Though he actually came out of this one relatively unscathed. And but the main narrative, this is about a bank robber in a band called Amsterdam whose single hit is a PKD reference. Okay, I’m in. And then Jess Nevins on Aleister Crowley. Brubaker is very good at soliciting backmatter that consistently challenges his feature presentation’s superiority.

BEST OF THE WEEK: PIZZA DOG #11 — Goddamn. It really didn’t seem like this book had any room to get better. And then they go and nuke us with the Pizza Dog issue. As soon as I heard about it, I was expecting serious greatness, but this is above and beyond the call. With this issue, I realized that Fraction/Aja/Hollingsworth have probably already entered into the pantheon of all-time great creative teams on the level of Lee/Kirby, Moore/Gibbons, Morrison/Quitely, everydamnbody who worked on 100 BULLETS, etc. I mean, they were of course already there, but the sheer genius inherent in every beat and understood and not understood word and scent-graphic really codifies the situation to dramatic effect. Aja has always been a force, but the escalation here is really something to experience. And it’s not just clever olfactory graphic shenanigans in the vein of Chris Ware, that one page where Lucky sees the female walk by and then falls in love, gets his heart broken, and then mended within a five-panel stretch is timeless cartooning for the ages. It is also a terrific narrative conceit to take us back through events from the series that we’ve already experienced via normal point-of-view but now re-experienced through the dog’s senses, only to careen the narrative forward at the end to business that’s going down for reasons we can only guess at, but that is all the more exciting and engaging due to the confused way in which we first experience the events. Just when we got comfortable filtering this story through the perspective of a dog. Really brilliant work on all fronts, celebrating the medium while pushing it forward, all that good stuff.

DAREDEVIL #027 — Now, that was just a hell of a climax. Can’t imagine what Waid has cued up for an encore, I mean, really, everything since #1 has led to this. But that’s why he gets paid top dollar! If this volume ended on this issue, it would certainly stand as one of the best runs that so many talented creators have contributed to this character over the years. Though one that certainly made the transition from the light and fun version Waid made such an issue of in interviews to the typical macabre fare we associate with Matt Murdock and all of the individuals unfortunate enough to be counted among his loved ones. So, this was apparently a sustained two-year opening salvo. We’ll see what happens next. Congratulations to Brother Samnee on his new arrival, he certainly deserves a break. Looking forward to seeing what Rodriguez does all on his own next time out.

FF #008 — Man, the colors on that page when Darla slams her Thing rings together, just out of this world. This book is big and loud and poptastic and revels in its own glory. The “You look great, Tong” page is also a real winner. This is nothing more or less than the greatness to which we’ve become accustomed from this creative team, great fun throughout. It looks like the Allreds have even managed to slam out another twenty pages to be released in three weeks, I tell you, this production schedule is insane.

YOUNG AVENGERS #006 — There was certainly cause for concern when the inevitable fill-in kicked in for McKelvie/Norton (and even Wilson, yikes), but Kate Brown really shows up. I want to say she was helping Paul Duffield make deadlines in the back two-thirds of FREAKANGELS maybe, there? I miss those six-page Warren clusterbombs on Fridays. Brown even pulls off one of those insane technical things that I guess Gillen is always asking for, something like thirty panels on two pages of super-speed assembly action. What starts out as a charming little character piece featuring someone we know and someone we’ve just met turns into a bit of horror that definitely has me wondering how it’s all going to go down next month. Really hope Kate Brown hangs around on tag-team art chores, terrific work, especially the light on those last pages, there.

X-MEN #002 — That cover is gorgeous. And heightens my knee-jerk suspicion that Frank Martin is the man who married Laura, could it be true? This issue lives up to the out-of-the-gate thunder we had last issue, all of the character interactions feel just right and of course the mansion gets trashed again, so check and check, another successful merry mutant outing. A weird thing Sublime tells Jubilee about the baby though, “We leave a new person behind,” when they take over host bodies, meaning the kid’s original personality was absorbed/destroyed and now a “reset button” has been hit and this is basically now a new person? That’s weird, right? Amazing following page of Jubilee and the kid looking into one another’s eyes, Coipel’s lines are, of course, amazing but Martin’s tones really really sell the moment.

ALL-NEW X-MEN #013 — This remains one of the best-looking books on the stands. And Bendis certainly knows what to do the instant he throws teenage Jean in with Lady Mastermind, how could anything else have happened? I also love this issue’s reveal behind the subplot with Mystique stockpiling these insane reserves of cash. Bendis is carefully throwing in some big and sweeping ideas, but never at the cost of character moments. Or extended conversations, natch. It is hilarious that they reprint Havok, I mean Alex’s speech from UNCANNY AVENGERS #005 at the end of this book.

UNCANNY X-MEN #007 — The whole “gang lost in Limbo” arc comes to an end, so I presume we’ll now be saying goodbye to Frazer Irving, who completely knocked this one out of the park slinging full duties on art. Of course, Bendis being Bendis, the entire issue is relayed in the form of exposition, though there’s a nice little kicker at the end that makes the whole affair worthwhile and not just the ninety-ninth time he’s pulled that one out (but I mean seriously though, has anyone in the history of the medium ever been so in love with the rat-a-tat-tat of two people in dialogue with one another? Far too much Mamet consumed at an impressionable age, I’ve no doubt). I am a fan of letterer VC’s Joe Caramagna’s decision to, at least on that initial spread, just do all the talking in one little column and leave the rest of the two pages undisturbed so that we can fully appreciate Irving’s infernal Mindless One madness. I wasn’t sure if this series was going to have enough weight to sustain my interest independent of the title it spun out from, but so far so good. I just can’t wait until this whole $3.99 experiment ends and these babies are available for three bucks a pop again.