10/30/13

BEST OF WEEK: THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE #1 — I really loved the JH cover but had to go with McKean. I mean, why stop now? It should be said right up front that, like most people my age and maybe ten years on either side, SANDMAN was one of my favorite comic books growing up and pretty much cemented Neil Gaiman as one of my all-time favorite writers all on its own, long before the prose of STARDUST or rhapsodic wonder of hearing my daughter recite BLUEBERRY GIRL from memory or just even most recently crying my damn eyes out every every single time I sit through “The Doctor’s Wife,” so this is really in no way going to be an impartial review. This is like them taking some formative chapter of my upbringing that I thought was closed, locked behind the final THE END, and then saying, No, this can still happen for you all over again, it never has to be done, it’s a story about stories, you silly boy, and those never really end, do they? Now, listen . . .

So, you see. But the story itself. Neil Himself goes ahead and builds an entire world for us real quick on the fly right there on the first page, lavishing just the right amount of detail on the situation that I’m still completely sucker-punched by the final panel. Of course the damn huge carnivorous plant with a beautiful mind is dreaming, what else would be the point of any of this? And all that ends in fire and meat-eating Quorian the Plant wakes up seriously disturbed by his brief time with the Lord of Dreams and just when you think you can’t handle much more of what these guys are already throwing at you, J.H. Williams III starts dropping bombs early with a double-page spread in which the twelve panels are actually the teeth in one of the Corinthian’s damn eyes, which of course is such a terrific idea but then the execution of that is frankly staggering, only, oh no, the last panel is clearly Destiny reading the previous panel’s description and dialogue from his damn book, so that just means we’re going to turn the page into something even more gaaaaaaah, of course the only people who were called in to help realize this were Dave Stewart and, naturally, Todd Klein, and everybody is just murdering it, but this next double-page spread is one of those recursion things in which Destiny is holding the book reading about himself and our page on the left is repeated as a page in the book on our right page and it’s all eating itself just fast enough and so then what’s the only way to crank things up but have Death show up, and I have to tell you, it took me by surprise, just to see her again, I almost lost it, I mean, I loved her, you did too, right? We all did, that was kind of the whole deal with the original series or maybe the best part of it anyway, and so but I terribly was in no way prepared for her when she showed up? Serious damage done. But when she’s saying that she took him a hundred galaxies away, is she talking about the end of “The Kindly Ones” that we all know and love? Or did Dream die/regenerate in 1915 as well? And is anyone still missing the Time Lord DNA that Gaiman hard-packed into this thing from the beginning? I never got it until now.

The remaining scenes in this are memorable and entertaining in their own right but all mainly set-up for what it to come. I’m not going to play-by-play them but just say that I expected all creators involved to absolutely knock it out of the park and that is just what they did. I could not have been happier with this issue and then finally made it to the fold-out four-page shot that really reinforces what an utter badass Williams is. Without spoiling the content of all of that madness, I will just say that cramming riffs of at least Kirby, Picasso, Klimt, and Timm into a single splash is a pretty stunning thing to do, and I am very very curious to see what will happen next. At least Williams had plenty of lead-time, so the wait shouldn’t be that long, right?

DAMIAN: SON OF BATMAN #1 — And then but on the other hand, in terms of returning to a story past THE END. I don’t think I would have picked this up written by anyone other than Morrison or Tomasi but with original artist Andy Kubert on board, I had to give it a chance. And it doesn’t start out a mess. The art is terrific, and Kubert fires out an in-dialogue *tt* in the third panel of the issue, so he’s at least mostly on-point right out of the gate. We’re not sure which Batman is supposed to be behind the cowl, and that’s as much on Kubert not giving him a discernible voice as anything. But I got that first sinking feeling when Damian mutters, “Ass.” Kubert is trying to shoehorn in that classic Dick/Damian tension but has no grasp of how to do it with anything approaching subtlety or elegance. To say nothing of Talia’s four panels of talking-head exposition, good night! Really, I’m not going to go on. It is a real shame that Morrison couldn’t be coaxed into blasting out a four-issue coda of his run leading us into some kind of SECRET ORIGIN OF BATMAN 666: YEAR ONE! Or Tomasi has proven that he has the chops to tear something like this apart. And Kubert would have blown up anything by those guys up on art. But this isn’t Damian Wayne running around here. I know that kid, love that kid, am still wrecked by his passing more so than almost any fictional character I can name. And I’m sorry to report that this isn’t even close.

ITTY BITTY HELLBOY #3 — The gang all goes to Heck and it is of course completely charming as hell to adult fans of the mythos and terrific fun for kids who are reading these characters for the first time. All in the Merry Aw Yeah! Baltazar/Franco tradition! For whatever reason, this was the first issue of theirs in the over one hundred I’ve devoured that I realized I would read the shit out of their UNCANNY X-KIDS or what have you.

THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS #5 — I still can’t believe how little I care about a comic book about these mythos with art by Becky Cloonan but the script is just a plodding directionless mess. I guess it has a couple of directions but no narrative hook at all. Except for that giant robot rising up and leveling Battery City. I suppose I will pay four more dollars to watch Ms. Cloonan draw me up some of that. Still, this series is a pretty huge disappointment.

SAGA #15 — The introduction of Nun-Tuj-Nun into the mythos is at the least an entertaining and possibly meta-fictional element. Which is explored here to tremendous effect and made me think much higher of this issue than I did when reading it all by myself. That, and dear BKV was good enough in the letters column to direct his readers to read that LOCKE & KEY finale rather than his “laurel-resting drivel,” so let’s just give this one a thumbs-up and move on.

X-MEN: BATTLE OF THE ATOM #2 — Okay, so, I assumed Bendis was going to bring us home here because this was always his baby, but apparently he’s just handing it off to Aaron and . . . a bunch of artists. I seem to remember some stink getting raised over Frank Cho not making his deadline so I guess this is what happened. Again, why no Art Adams? If he will consent to drawing interiors of a shitty Jeph Loeb Ultimate Ultimate Comics Wolverine reboot, why not punch all of our lights out here? Alas. How is this old Chapter 10, though, in a non-hypothetical sense? Pretty solid. Not as much of a dip as non-Bendis chapters of this crossover have been thus far, which is certainly good news. Old Beast getting Sentinel’d was a terrific beat and the reaction-panel to that was spot-on. And of course because this might be the most serious Ouroboros franchise of them all, we can’t be at Cape Citadel without reprising the famous cover of #1. The art is terrific, but I have to say, all these times, guys sign their names all over damn splash pages, I would have pumped my fist through the roof to see a little “AFTER KIRBY” action snuck in there in the corner. The epilogues by the creative teams of the respective books are a nice touch. Though I don’t buy Bobby calling Professor Xavier “Chuck” for a second, I have got to tell you. Devastating final scene, however. It is a shame, as solid as this issue was, I don’t feel like the writer or artists came close to knocking this business out of the park the way Bendis and his collaborators were before or during this crossover, but all it takes is three pages of the A-team roaring in to completely upset the status quo and I’m right back on the edge of my seat, unable to wait for what happens next. Beeeeeendiiiiiisss!

INFINITY #5 — All kinds of escalation here as we realize that of course this entire insane intergalactic showdown with the builders has just been in service of getting all of our former enemies on our side so we can all go back home and whup the shit out of Thanos. There are some who might find that one shot straight-up quoting “The Raising of the Flag at Iwo-Jima” in the same panel that the phrase “Avengers World” is first uttered a bit heavy-handed but it really worked for me, particularly followed by that montage page. It would have been even more magical if Marvel hadn’t already started pimping out that phrase as the next buzz-branding a few weeks ago but I guess there’s nothing for it. But yah, this is all doing nothing more than it’s supposed to, setting up the big finale while giving us some excellent character beats along the way. Opeña and Weaver continue to absolutely throw it down, terrific work.

AVENGERS #22 — All right, so it seems like halfway through scripting this event, Hickman realized that he was in fact putting too many important beats in these other two tie-ins he’s writing and not packing them all in the main title, so suddenly he dialed it back for the benefit of folks who are only picking up the main title, only that leaves not that much serious narrative mass for those of us who have been along for the ride regardless on this title since #001. Yu’s art is fantastic but basically, Cannonball gets to first base with Smasher, Bobby walks in and gives them trouble but it’s all jokey ha-ha, everything’s cool, that Black Dwarf smashes someone into a spot, the Captains America & Marvel tell Manifold there’s no such thing as destiny, Thor waits until they walk off and says, Whoa, mortal, to speak sooth, your entire life was meant for this day, let us go teach Thanos the oldest lesson of all, and we’re all like, okay sweet, cool, let’s do this, only then the Hickman info-graphic on the last page reminds us that we’ve still got another one of these to get through before that actually happens.

KICK-ASS 3 #4 — This one is actually pretty solid. Had to chuckle at Millar’s chutzpah of cover-blurb referencing his own unfortunate Marvel Big Event, along with the argument about DC Villains Month and Canadian underrepresentation. I will take my meta-laughs where I can get them.

THE FOX #1 — I had to drive to three different stores before finally finding a shelf copy of this when my trusty LCS failed to pull it for me but it was worth the hustle! Emmy-Award-Winning-Cartoonist-&-Animator Dean Haspiel drops some Kirby/Toth justice on the page and then enlists Eisner-&-Harvey-Award-Winning-Writer Mark Waid to dialogue the business, resulting in a comic that feels as fresh and timeless now as it might have in the heyday of the Silver Age. I could stand for it to be a little bit more insane but I suspect they’re going to work up to it. Haspiel does cut loose a bit more in the back-up with fight scenes that are more evocative of Kirby’s work exploding off of the page. Maybe that’s because dude is fighting a building? The only beat about the entire thing that rang false for me was the allusion to the neck-breaking in MAN OF STEEL. I know Waid hated it, and so did I, but we ought not to dignify such travesties with a response. I certainly don’t want any allusion to that movie made in the middle of all this buzzing goodness, right here.

PROPHET #40 — BADROCK AWAKENS. The fact that such a thing is related on a scope of such grandeur and science fiction glory is testament to the incredible work these people are doing with this property. I could go on and on and on but think I will leave it at that. Astounding.

THOUGHT BUBBLE 2013 — I didn’t realize this was only the third one of these ever. That means I only missed the first one! Was a huge fan of last year’s edition and this one certainly doesn’t drop the ball, opening up with more madness from Starkings/Cook crossing ELEPHANTMEN over with JUDGE DREDD, two things that should not co-exist but of course go great together, gorgeous art that sings all the sweeter on the newsprint, followed by a terrific and naturally brilliant two-page collaboration between Cameron Stewart & Brandon Graham that is worth your $3.99 right there all by itself, and all right, I’m not going to just run down the entire list but I dug Ming Doyle’s page and am of course powerless before any product of the almighty Moon/Ba engine but this one little slice in particular, how they tap into the universal aspect of nostalgia for youth, also a very interesting opening page from Ramón K. Pérez (all right, it seems like I am almost listing every one), with David Jumble’s inspirational page yet another simple but charming application of the medium that can’t be done in any other form, and then who amongst us will not raise his or her fist at the final-page headlining glory of twelve panels of Jeffrey Brown’s “I WANTED TO BE A TEENAGE MOEBIUS!” The title really says it all but that’s more than enough, my friends. More than enough.

10/23/13

FF #013 — Scott HAD to bring up the space monkeys. Man, that’s just asking for it. This title continues to weather the loss of Fraction to much greater effect than the other one. I still had to sequence the books this way to make a Fraction bookend of sorts on the evening. A quasi-Fraction bookend.

DAREDEVIL #32 — Waid’s Jester has a distinctly Arcade vibe about him. And of course the Sanctum Sanctorum gives Matt the creeps. That Mark Waid has thought of everything! It is good fun to turn this into a monster’s romp just before Halloween. And yet another rock-solid cliffhanger, this business is superhero funny-book science. All drawn to perfection by Samnee/Rodriguez. I hope these guys never leaves this book.

UNCANNY AVENGERS #013 — Well, it wouldn’t be Banshee dialogue if Remender wasn’t aping that Claremont written dialect madness. “Some part o’ ya knows I’m RIGHT!” Extensive Hearing Damage/Screaming Captain America, though, in his first appearance staggering on-panel, feels like at least the sensational character find of 2014. “SHE LIKES YOU.” Really, I could do four entire issues of him just running around with Havok, repeating every line of dialogue without realizing. And we cliffhang with a Wolverine-powered Rogue running off to be the best she is at what she does. “Once and for all, Shugah!”

YOUNG AVENGERS #011 — Watch out for Teen Loki! He is going to be big trouble in the months to come, I have no doubt. He’s not lying to us, now! And neither is Noh-Varr, that sack of shit. And oh but wow, David’s text-web. I swear every two to four issues, these guys pull off some insane trick that has never even been attempted in the medium. Just infrequent enough that I have enough time to forget to look for it and am surprised anew at the power when it shows up again.

WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN #037 — This one once again lowers the bar on the overall quality of this crossover, but Aaron does manage to work in a few more character beats than last time, Wolverine’s muttered vow of abstinence being the leading contender. And you’ve got to love/groan at taking everything back to Cape Citadel. I guess the block Kirby grew up on would have been too on-the-nose. Also a fan of Quire’s “MAGNETO WAS LEFT” shirt. Camuncoli’s work here is perfectly serviceable but just a dip from what we’ve seen over in Bendis’s books. That double-page everybody-foightin’ pin-up, all it made me wish was that they would have tapped Art Adams for these interiors instead of a couple of covers. And can Storm really be so shocked by that “Mother?” Aaron does a nice job capturing Maria Hill’s voice, I will say that. And of course we’ve got to trot out the old “Hope you survive the experience” bit. I liked it better when Morrison’s version of this stuff was trying to eat and shit out everything that Claremont did for sixteen years all Ouroboros-like.

THE FLASH #24 — Ha, Barry hit the reset button. Not THAT reset button, fanboys! Wally West is not waiting for you on the next page. I wonder if they put that line in as a deliberate taunt. This is, for all intents and purposes, the swan song to the Manapul/Buccellato run that this title has been rocking for a little over two years, now. I believe they’re going to do an epilogue next month for ZERO YEAR but this is the end of the modern-day adventures of Barry Allen. And it looks gorgeous. As ever. The energy is crackling off the page, the body language and panel layouts are dynamic, and the colors are rich and striking. I’m not sure that the resolution of the plot is earned, unfortunately. Daniel basically freaks out when he sees his younger self and sister, then Barry grabs him and uses his power to run back to the future and, presto, everything is all right. He doesn’t even seem to have to run very fast, relatively speaking, just bop on over to the opposite facing page and the entire arc is pretty much wrapped up, no problem. Half an issue of narrating everything he’s learned doesn’t really wrap it up that convincingly for me. But the set piece with the crashing plane is a charming enough way to sign off. What we’re left with by issue’s end, however, is unfortunately all flash and very little substance. I’m sorry.

THE UNWRITTEN #54 — What a climax! In case there’s any lingering doubt that this is some kind of parallel-universe/soon-to-be-rebooted type situation, Bigby takes out all six of his children and Snow on two adjoining pages. The biggest and baddest of them all. It is chilling seeing Geppetto hang with Tommy Taylor’s friends. And that appears to pretty much be it, Tommy blows Roland or Cuthbert’s horn and unmakes everything into Kirby Krackle, which would have been a solid enough THE END for me, no problem, but I believe that there is still just a little bit story left to tell.

THE MASSIVE #16 — Cal Israel gets a nemesis of sorts for this new arc and Wood does a solid job making him sympathetic enough that we’re not quite sure who to root for. I’m actually leaning in old Bors’s direction, there. Good to get Garry Brown back on interiors.

THE ROCKETEER/THE SPIRIT: PULP FRICTION #2 — I am not sure that it would have occurred to me to dial up the whole romantic lead-swapping with these guys, but it’s a good fit and Waid plays it just right. Loston Wallace does solid work on the interiors, but I must confess to some sadness at seeing Paul Smith gone after only one issue. He was a huge draw on this book for me. Though Waid writing these two guys would certainly be enough. He knows enough to throw down some biplane action early on. One expects Cliff is going to have to survive a battle in a crypt when the shoe’s on the other foot.

BEST OF WEEK: VELVET #1 — A perfect first issue. I was all over Brubaker/Epting’s Cap run and certainly looking forward to this but was still blown away by how seriously these guys knocked it out of the park. I mean, that first page alone. Four panels. That is how you drop in on a story. Colored to tremendous effect by Brubaker’s new go-to talent Elizabeth Breitweiser. The soft glow of the Parisian light really is magical, a perfect contrast to the ugly espionage antics being perpetrated right off the bat. Our protagonist has a white stripe in her hair, more homage to Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine than Rogue, I’m sure. But this right here is everything you want, we’ve got a set-up, a couple of frame-ups, a twist, and our heroine crashing out a second dead agent’s window wearing her stealth suit and internal-monologuing about her previous life of intrigue that had come to an end until now. All capped off by a Jess Nevins essay on spy fiction during the Cold War. What is there not to love about the Brubaker machine? Terrific terrific stuff.

PRETTY DEADLY #1 — I really dug the opening scene and then in particular the rhythm and meter of the Song of Deathface Ginny. Though Beauty giving Death a child did send up some EAST OF WEST warning bells, Kelly Sue might have been gnashing her teeth at that coincidental convergence when she first saw that book. This first issue unfolds like kind of a tangled confusing mess but makes sense by the time you’re done and seems as much a product of its setting as content, the twisting winding singsong way of it. I really dug their previous collaboration on OSBORN but Emma Rios shows up here and really blows it up, more than ably assisted by the nigh-ubiquitous Jordie Bellaire on colors. As much as I enjoyed the book, what I loved most about this first issue was the two pages of back-matter, Kelly Sue’s first-person pretty much flash fiction secret origin of the genesis of this project. What emerges is the voice of a writer not only in love with the world around her but with the gift of observation and journalistic scrutiny to trap it in little fragments and share with us, for just a few minutes, exactly how she sees things (and I just typoed that as “sings things” on the first pass, maybe that’s more what I mean). This book is one butterfly’s eyelash away from my favorite of the week, breathing down Velvet Templeton’s stealth-suit-covered neck.

SATELLITE SAM #4 — This one’s settling into a nice even pace as Mike flubs his lines yet again through a combination of being too plowed/checking out Kara’s ass. I’m curious to know if this is an ongoing or how long of a mini it’s planned to be. While the Chaykin art was as immaculate as ever, this was the first installment that felt a bit light on the character moments.

SEX CRIMINALS #2 — Fraction/Zdarsky prove that the first issue was no fluke as we head over to the backstory of “That guy, that fucking guy,” bookended by some really tense scenes of our eponymous time-stopping couple getting chased through “The Quiet/Cumworld/StopTime” by some kind of StopTime cops or some such. Beautiful work.

10/16/13

BATMAN AND TWO-FACE #24 — The aspect of the New 52 reboot that I’ve enjoyed least is the way certain crucial bits of continuity in stories released during my formative reading years have been tossed out. As much as Snyder/Capullo and crew kill it over on ZERO YEAR, I’m still not great with every panel of YEAR ONE not actually having happened to the in-canon version of the character swinging around in the suit every issue. That said, Tomasi/Gleason/Gray drop in here with a retcon origin for Two-Face that not only absolutely works in its own right as straight exposition but immediately sets the stage for a compelling present-day story. Erin McKillen is a merciless worthy antagonist and addition to the Gotham crime family who I hope will stay in circulation for some time to come. Of course, this is a two-parter.

The huge deal that almost knocked me unconscious, though, is that single page of Alfred trying to fill in Damian and Talia’s graves. I really and truly believed that no one was ever going to pick up the gauntlet that Morrison threw down at the end of his run. Really, I almost hoped no one actually would run with it because I just about don’t trust anybody to hit the bar as high as it’s been set, but of course these guys were doing it side-by-side with INCORPORATED month by month, so it’s very exciting to have it set up that as soon as we’re done with the current situation, there’s potential follow-up to all of that insanity on the horizon. With Carrie Kelly still waiting in the wings, no less. These guys continue producing one of the best books on the rack every damn month.

BATMAN ’66 #4 — This is more great go-go camp fun from the land of daylight caped crusaders, dastardly villains, and commissioners without facial hair. I don’t really have any critical analysis for it past the fact that all parties are doing a fantastic job reviving the vibrations of a televisual sensation that premiered almost half a century ago.

BATMAN/SUPERMAN #4 — Pak levels it out a bit on the script as this opening arc winds up. It was solid enough but I’m not sure that I ever synched up with the disjunctive tonal alignment between Lee’s art and the content. I guess that’s why there aren’t a lot of Vertigo Superman mini-series.

BATWOMAN #24 — I was kind of bummed reading this, knowing that the writing team is about to leave, but thought that they had at least one more issue. No? That last panel punched me in the gut. The Zero Year issue is the replacement team’s first shot, yeah? THIS is how J.H. Williams’s run on Batwoman ends? That’s not, I mean, I just can’t no no nuuuuh

WONDER WOMAN #24 — Goran Sudzuka is first at-bat here as we head into Diana’s inaugural arc as God of War. And but why not Goddess of War? Is that like now some kind of retroactively sexist thing like with secretaries and stewardesses? Nothing here but the opening moves of what’s sure to be a year’s worth of sparring. Azzarello has definitely done a fine job heightening the stakes and setting up a dynamic that could make the third year of this title its best yet.

ANIMAL MAN #24 — To no great surprise, Rafael Albuquerque rolls in and absolutely blows it up, a terrific stylistic fit for this title. From Travel Foreman to Steve Pugh with a side of Francis Portela pinch-hitting, this book has really benefitted from top artistic talent across the board. And Lemire’s got the plot humming right along with the bad guys holding the Oscars ransom for Buddy to show up. The writer shows tremendous restraint in a page-turn slice of dialogue, the King of Limbs to Brother Blood saying, “There will be death, there will be rebirth . . .” because I have to tell you that I was turning the page expecting just to see Daniel Day-Lewis in straight-up Daniel Plainview mode. It seems like a bit of a jump for Buddy’s mother-in-law to suddenly be thanking God for her daughter’s reconciliation but I guess losing a grandchild, potentially both grandchildren, will do that to you. My main gripe is that I wish Albuquerque would stop signing every page that he’s really proud of. That’s what the credits box is for. Yes, you kicked ass on that splash, but probably the dominant element that draws my eye on initial glance to it shouldn’t be your signature in all that negative space. Even once an issue, I totally get, but we’ve got three signatures in twenty pages. I’m starting to feel bad for the other seventeen, they were all pretty good, too.

FABLES #134 — The tone of Bigby’s narration is really evocative of that first-person business Claremont used to sling around all over the place on his much beloved UNCANNY run. I like how Blue returns to tell us that he’s never returning. I hope “The Vast Shitstorm Awaits” is the title of Volume 20 or what not. Of course, the writing and art is so consistently great that this entire issue being pretty much a conversation between these two guys about death, the afterlife, and the meaning of life is both very interesting and pitch-perfect in terms of characterization. I tell you what, though, those last two pages snuck up on me and just about broke me down, tragic tragic shit.

MORNING GLORIES #33 — Oooohhhh, they flipped it again! How many Bad Twin revelations can one continuity withstand? Spencer/Eisma aren’t going to let up until we all find out.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN #21 — This spooky story resolves just in time for Halloween. Glad to see that there’s only one arc yet, it does feel like this one’s time is about up.

UNCANNY X-MEN #013 — The business going down! Bendis hits the gas, giving us two warring teams of future X-Men to pair up with our own present-tense divided house of mansion and island. The glory of Gracia coloring Bachalo/Townsend can’t be overstated, really beautiful panels here, throughout. A bit light on the patented Bendis characterization, as the shit is hitting the fan too consistently throughout, but how many times does the poor guy ever get to hear that? Definitely ramped up to see how this is going to close out, hoping that Aaron and crew will keep the quality high next week.

FANTASTIC FOUR #013 — All right, this is much much better. As predicted, Kesel levels the situation out into something past the point of bearable as we’re thrown into an initially confusing parallel dimension take on the FF revealing that Allred’s Old-Man One-Eye Johnny Storm who’s been hanging out mainly over in the other title isn’t even from the 616. Bagley’s art feels a bit too cartoonish and rushed-looking for me this time out, but I can’t overemphasize how much better this was for me than the previous two issues. A bit of a limp cliffhanger, though, that really just made me want this whole thing to be done. Pretty soon, now.

AVENGERS #21 — It’s a really cool thing that they named that Shi’ar battleship Lilandra. And but Ronan just doesn’t care! No Supreme Intelligence will talk him out of the bloodbath that is his by right. Then, once again, Hickman delivers strong montage narration that’s a perfect tonal fit for the grandeur and scope of what the art conveys. But it all comes back to that old Annihilus. I really dig how Gladiator takes the foreground in that one panel with the old die-as-I-lived trope and meanwhile Steve and Carol are just staring into one another’s eyes and we don’t need a word or, God forbid, thought-bubble to know what’s going on there, terrific restraint and a hell of a beat. And then some serious advancement on the Captain Universe front, casting into doubt how much story there’s even going to be left to tell for the remainder of the event. Which is always how you want to feel in something like this, the very opposite of padding.

NEW AVENGERS #11 — The Builder thread finally overlaps into what’s been going on in this book since the beginning as our cast is invited to play tourist with a group of Builders from yet another parallel universe. Which, the mind boggles, I mean, with this precedent, there’s no reason not to just keep introducing nigh-infinite groups of Builders. But surely that’s not going to go down, what a clusterfuck. There’s more than enough going on, though, as this group of alternate Builders takes the premise of this series’ first arc and escalates it up past the outer rim of the galaxy. Massive doings afoot, it feels like really this might the one time that Everything actually Changes. Really! It does!

BEST OF WEEK: HAWKEYE #013 — Always more than worth the wait. Fraction/Aja/Hollingsworth manage to squeeze in several hyper-compressed little vignettes that are all memorable in their own right, the two pages with Kate Bishop being probably my favorites. As ever. This one’s all over the place, a Clint-centric that runs in and out of several fragments we’ve already seen and places Grills’s murder and funeral in the proper sequence with and context of Barney’s appearance and Kate’s exit (which was a total drag, those two pages, I at first thought she was already back and we’d just see the make-up talk another time). Now, we’re all caught up and presumably ready to rocket forth with some kind of main narrative some time. Or just more drinking and grilling and hanging out with the lucky best pizza dog in the whole world. It will be a hell of a thing, whatever form it takes.

10/09/13

Oh my dear ones! The combination of the back half of teaching my first semester of college English and the release of 282 pages by two of my favorite creators got our situation a bit logjammed up here, but we here at WEDNESDAY NIGHT MASS are making every effort to rectify the situation. Commencing now!

BEST OF WEEK BY A DAMN SIGHT BUT IT REALLY ISN’T EVEN FAIR: 

BATTLING BOY, VOLUME 1 — Glorious glorious day. Paul Pope is one of the most exciting creators working in the medium today, blending western and eastern influences into a unique voice that channels Jack Kirby not in the stylistically dynamic way that first the brilliant Walt Simonson and lately Tom Scioli appear to have locked down to a scientific line-by-line/crackle-by-crackle level but through a more thematic scope, that sense of wonder barreling out past the furthest horizons of imagination and plumbing the depths of all that starlight narrative and recovering it for all of us to feast our eyes upon. And I didn’t realize we had been so long without, time is accelerating and getting away from me, but aside from that wonderful twelve-page STRANGE ADVENTURES serial running through WEDNESDAY COMICS in ’09, it has been a full damn seven years since we have been fortunate enough to feast our eyes upon BATMAN: YEAR 100 and any interior Pope pages at all (unless he’s been having an affair with some overseas publisher, I always suspect he’s stepping out behind our backs, cheating on us filthy Americans with an international audience more attuned to appreciate what he’s got going on). All of which to say, when I got home at quarter past nine on the second Tuesday night in October and saw the cardboard package containing this volume on my doorstep, I uttered an involuntary, “Oh noooo….” the embedded content of which I was subsequently unable to articulate to my wife, the degree of positive connotation that this negative contained, the monosyllabic expression of how unprepared I was for over two hundred pages of the raw uncut goodness, even after all of this time.

Of course I snatched up THE DEATH OF HAGGARD WEST as soon as I realized that it was out and had devoured and enjoyed the hell out of it four or five times before BATTLING BOY ever showed up. But I thought HAGGARD was a prequel, so was a bit surprised to find that it was in fact that opening set-up of the book. Which was all well and good, I had had so much fun with it in the weeks leading up to this that I certainly didn’t mind getting a head-start on the greatness. And it was wonderful the way it threw me when the title came true again, only this time when I turned the page, instead of jump-cutting to the funeral, the scene shoots over to some kind of Rainbow-Bridge-wormhole type situation that turns out to be a parallel introduction and set-up for the actual protagonist, the eponymous hero of our story. It is an interesting set-up, though, the choice Pope makes to introduce Acropolis and its science hero champion first. This lends a bit more weight to the character of Aurora West, the fallen hero’s daughter, making her just about a co-lead, for my money. And more power to her! But before long, the kid’s fighting his first battle and basically choking, leading to his Thor-analogue father making the odd decision to just straight remote-bail his son out even though the whole point of this seems to be a coming-of-manhood-by-combat and everything we’ve seen of the father leads us to believe that he’d rather see his son fail than lift a finger to help him out, even from a few universes away. But that’s not what happens, remote lightning bolt destruction gives way to our hero taking credit for what he did not do and then falling into all the ensuing mortal fanfare. Am I the only one who thought the Humbaba was going to turn out to be his friendly monstah sidekick? The guy’s position on the cover made that twist seem like a dead giveaway to me, but I guess not. Really, before we know it, the story is careening to a close and I was starting to sweat it because had no idea that this was a multi-volume deal, thought it was one shot and done, and as the pages dwindled, the kid was really running out of space to prove himself. But in a terrific inversion of the opening scene, it’s Aurora West to the rescue and she winds up turning the tide. The last shot of our hero is of him confessing his lie and then before we see the immediate response to that, Pope cuts away to the bad guys’ lair for the final eight pages of the book, which badly freaked me out on the first read, thinking that this was the ultimate ending of the saga and just where the hell was Pope’s head at? It turns out this was only the pilot episode, which is terrific news because we barely got any sort of character journey at all here, just the very beginning, but that was of course by design, I realize now. Plotwise, this was barely the first act, but it certainly arrives with a bang.

Pope’s designs are across the board spectacular. It might be simplistic but really the best adjective is that everything just looks cool. The totem-animal T-shirts (we need to live on a world where a kid can collect all of THOSE things), the Haggard/Aurora West get-up, the Ghoul Gang’s hooded mummy thing going on with the chainsaw-in-a-guitar-case, the multi-secret labs and workshops of Haggard West accessed with the turn of his flight key, his three-shot blaster, even, everything is supercharged and imbued with this retro-pulp feel while also giving every indication of bleeding with both a sense of timelessness and the near future set to erupt any moment now. And every other aspect of his craft, the guy is just a master. I’m in particular a fan of the way he cuts to these incredibly long shots where the figures are just like these tiny tiny silhouettes traveling through whatever vast landscape is currently in effect. These 202 pages are Paul Pope throwing down the gauntlet, designing and populating both a world and a multiversal hub that are teeming with fascinating characters and ideas begging to be explored to such a degree that the reader can’t resist getting started in his or her own imagination while waiting for the next installment to erupt from Pope’s head, hands, and heart. He set out to create the first teen superhero to thrill children and adults of the 21st century and beyond, and he has done exactly that. And the best news of all is that he’s only getting started.

MULTIPLE WARHEADS: DOWN FALL — Well, I was clearly not paying attention ten years ago when Brandon Graham started firing off the first shots of this series and am damn grateful that a reprint was made available. This is a feast, all that we’ve come to expect from Graham pretty much in place. The playful tone, ridiculous puns and wordplay, mishmash science fantasy insanity, this certainly couldn’t have come from anyone else. It’s interesting to see how close this is from a standpoint of craft to the mini- from this past year. I mean, I’m not trying to say dude’s been stagnant for ten years, but it’s pretty wild to see how much of his unique style is already in place pretty much fully formed. I think he’d done the first few issues of KING CITY by this time? What’s cool is that though the aforementioned colorized mini-series that came out this year was completely inclusive to new readers, I didn’t feel lost at all or like I needed to hunt these original installments down to understand the whole story but still had a hell of a time reading them, even though I already knew stuff like Sexica was going to sew a wolf penis onto Nikolai for his birthday. The enjoyment was in the execution. We are all very lucky to have Brandon Graham making exactly the kind of comics that he wants to make.

BATMAN #24 — $6.99?!? That one came as a bit of a surprise. There was actually a guy at the rack eyeing it, unsure if he should protest this hike by boycotting it. I reminded him that the names on the cover are the ones who’ve taken us this far and it looks thick as hell and is probably going to be worth it and if he didn’t take a chance on it, he was going to be regretting it really badly right around midnight and of course he agreed. So, this is all a hell of a thing, I thought that ZERO YEAR was like a single arc but what we’ve got here that looks like it’s going to be a climax/New 52 Joker origin is really only the first part of the next arc. How much of a monster flashback have we signed up for, here? Not that I’m really sweating it when the quality is this high. It turns out to be 43 damn pages produced by the main team with eleven pages of back-up with art by none other than Rafael Albuquerque. Old Marvel would be asking more like $10.99 with that kind of page-count on business this high-profile. So but, how’s the story itself? After Alfred gives Bruce a really close haircut and the art team goes ahead and immaculately reprises the cover of DETECTIVE #27* because I guess why not since we’re in the same chronological neighborhood, then the main plot kicks in with the Red Hood Gang’s raid on A.C.E. Chemicals, the outcome of which any fan worth their salt has a pretty fair idea. I dig Snyder having Bruce ask the news crew/public the “What do YOU love about Gotham City?” This is a cool progression/escalation from the question first posited in his narrative captions in #1. Special respect to Fco Plascencia for the gorgeous orange-pink tones on that explosion. Really, just throughout the entire following scene, stunning work above and beyond the usual greatness. And that goes for Capullo, as well, his composition and camera placement, how effectively he stages his action scenes, the dynamism he brings to every page, you know what, the guy can act like as much of a badass as he wants because there’s really no acting involved, that man can back up as much shit as he wants to talk about anyone ever with the greatness and consistency of his own output. Then, we get a solid epilogue based on Alfred really ramming home the whole we’re-all-thespians-playing-a-part thing that was such a crucial component of Snyder’s all-too-brief run with Dick behind the cowl that serves as an effective coda to this first arc before The Riddler shows up to hurl us into the next crazy thing. Is Capullo going to be back next month after throwing down double-duty this time out? Anyone else I’d think would have to take a break, but that guy, man.

BATMAN: LIL’ GOTHAM #7 — All right, it’s been a month and I’ve probably read about 4,000 pages of comics since then and now can’t find this issue in the chaos of my little girl’s collection, which really needs to be sorted soon. I remember Barbara/Oracle was leading the charge in this one and I really liked it? Sorry.

AMERICA’S GOT POWERS #7 — Not sure how long it’s been, but it’s less than two years because I know I read the first issue here in my no-longer-that-new house, so I’d say that Hitch did a pretty respectable job knocking out the interiors on this, particularly considering that a couple of the issues were over-sized. Of course, the pages are gorgeous, Hitch is one of the top talents in the industry and is, for my money, still underrated, as beloved as he is. All told, beloved Englishman Jonathan “Wossy” Ross provides us with a satisfying resolution to the kind of Hollywood-friendly plot that Mark Millar would have generated if he wasn’t such a shock-driven shlockmeister with a black hole where his soul belongs. This one didn’t light the industry on fire but was a quality read that I definitely recommend picking up in trade if you missed it this go-round.

CHEW #37 — Wow, and the L O S T numbers right off the bat, there, first panel. 108 4EVAH! Guillory’s Easter eggs remain as on-point as ever with the Shawshank reference and the Layman Luv Edition (*shudder*), but I’m really a fan of the way he chose to depict the mind-meld memory playback situation between Tony and Toni. Cool tricks that of course only you can pull off in a comic book, I love it when people crank it up and try to push the medium forward as far as they possibly can. We get more epilogue with Antonelle, though this has got to be the last gasp, I should think. Still such heartbreaking business. This remains one of the most entertaining and original books on the rack and I remain glad that I decided to stop tradewaiting and treat myself to the singles.

ROCKET GIRL #1 — I’ve been looking forward to this one ever since I heard the short pitch and they know what they’re doing, give you all you need to know right there in that first panel. Teen rocket-cop from the future on a mission into the past to save the world before it’s too late! What more do you need to know? This is a charming and entertaining execution of that concept, Brandon Montclare’s script is efficient and does its job, the writer hits his beats and stays out of the way while Amy Reeder on full art soars as high and fast as her heroine. Just beautiful work and all the better for being all-ages (Rocket Girl does fly into 1986 Times Square, but we’ll give that a pass). This is a great pilot episode, a solid set-up that introduces our principal characters in two eras and sets the stage for the grand adventure to come. Recommended!

THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS #15 — I was on-board with this strictly for the insanity component because of course it’s got that in spades. However, it felt a bit skinny without the rest of the ensemble, not quite as satisfying of a read as when we’ve got them all packed in there, bouncing and supercolliding off of one another in all their improbably and glorious ways. Ryan Browne once again succeeds at the impossible job of filling in for Pitarra.

THE SHAOLIN COWBOY #1 — When the first volume of this was coming out, I used to wish that they’d just release non-lettered editions because as brilliant as the art was, I found the dialogue pretty nearly unbearable, all the puns and names, the whole deal. So, I don’t know if it’s just because I’m older and more appreciative or Darrow has gotten much better or what the deal is but the full-text recap on the first two pages is a revelation, a brilliant piece of writing that hits serious levels of wit and satire and kind of stark raving madness at the same time. The whole deal is bonkers. And that’s just the text piece. Once Darrow sets in on the panels, masterfully complemented by the incomparable Dave Stewart, it’s all the reader can do but just barely hold on and struggle with the eternal conundrum of racing through to feast eyes upon the next impossibly hyper-detailed and finely rendered page or hit the brakes and just sit there for five minutes really trying to see everything that Darrow’s packed in there. I have no idea what the lead-time is on this, if he’s already got five in the can or what, but whenever #2 comes out, it’s going to be more than worth the wait.

STAR WARS #10 — Carlos D’Anda roars back from his time off and continues tearing it up, both the photo-realistic depiction of actors near and dear to our hearts and the intricate linework on all of those glorious starships. Wood does solid character work with Wedge Antilles and how traumatized he is in the wake of the Battle of Yavin, another example in this book of a beat that had never occurred to me separately but that makes absolute sense once it’s out there. The only twentieth-century slang that Wood lets creep in this one is the new badass Imperial commander guy dropping the “Yavin, blah, blah, blah,” which, he might as well have said, “yadda, yadda, yadda.”

ASTRO CITY #5 — This is probably my favorite one of the new volume just because the team manages to pack so much in. Between the Chthulu-flavored pulp adventures of The Working Group On Unsettling Anomalies, Classification, and Containment (I wonder if these folks have been percolating in Busiek’s brain or on his desk since before FATALE was just a gleam in Brubaker’s eye) to the apparently massive potential revelation lurking within the temple of Lord Saampa, the Serpent’s Tongue, to the more Silver Age-flavored exploits of Dame Progress versus Mister Cakewalk, the creative team takes us on a whirlwind journey via thumbtacks and string littered with dozens of allusions and implications that breadcrumb into other stories. I’m still really loving the conceit of the Broken Man employing the readers as agents against some massive unseen force and we’ve got to be told things in the right order or all is lost. Plus, he’s got the best mullet since Longshot, no problem.

WOLVERINE #9 — Cornell pulls the trigger and just gives us straight Kitty Pryde narration for this one, a decision that much more effectively conveys how he’s handling the situation he’s in, through the eyes the first girl we ever saw him mentor, someone who cares about him very much, so much better than if we were getting first-person inner-monologue. The art, as ever, remains at the highest level of craft, creators getting out of the way of the story, tossing their egos to the side and just letting the characters act. Really hope these gentlemen feel like sticking around for a long time to come.

X-MEN #6 — Once again, Wood has serious trouble nailing the tone of a sizable portion of this ensemble, most egregiously with the sarcastic Cyclops and Psylocke quipping about a baby in her hand pooping while wielding a ninety-pound psychic ball-and-chain. That last one, in particular, scans as reaching for that kind of self-aware dramatic cum comedic tone that Whedon has down but that falls all sorts of flat here. And she’s one of his chosen cast, not some character shoe-horned into this issue because of the crossover. No excuse for that. And I can’t stand the deal of writing cliché into dialogue and then just having someone else point out that it’s a cliché. Wood should strive to be better than Johns. This isn’t a terrible book, it’s just nowhere near the standard that Bendis has been setting elsewhere or even that this series was rocking for its first three issues. Hoping that we can get it together by the time the Dodsons show up.

INFINITY #4 — Opeña/Weaver/Ponsor keep the quality terribly high as they embark upon the second half of this universe-spanning slaughterfest. We get to meet Thanos’s boy, who is of course a really good dude and totally nothing like his daddy until dude turns him into a younger version of himself. That shit always happens. That Builder bitch-slapping Thor is pretty rough to sit through, though of course we should all see the Mjolnir-as-boomerang payoff coming. Great last beat, too, the follow-up and inversion to Cap’s previous answer. Man, I hope that was in the core title and not AVENGERS. This one is still going great guns.

*it would be nice if Editorial let the BK WAS HERE graffiti be more in the shape of a finger, if you take my meaning

10/2/13

ALL-NEW X-MEN #17 — Now that is the real-life slam-bang accept-no-substitutes unfiltered goodness. Right from the first three pages, there. I knew knew knew it was all going to go so horribly wrong, but man, as soon as Future Hank shed a tear out there in front of the Capitol, I was right there with him. What a damn campaign it must have been that we didn’t even get to see a panel of. And Handlebar-stach Piotr seeing his little snowflake, man, that broke me down even worse. I almost take them for granted, these merry mutants, but I picked up my first issue of UNCANNY in the summer of 1988 when I was eleven years old, which certainly seemed at the time like the perfect age to check in to the mansion at 1407 Graymalkin Lane. The issue on the rack that day was #236 and I got #231 too because I liked the Leonardi cover but by the time #239 hit the stands and it was time to ignite Inferno, I was pretty much up to speed with the situation, had completely absorbed #155 on and also hit The Dark Phoenix Saga in trade (the first time that happened, I guess) and via the CLASSIC X-MEN reprints also spewing forth at the time was pretty well all caught up there within the first twelve weeks of that first Genosha arc. All of which to say, I grew up with these people. I love them. They are family to me. Long before my first beer, I dreamed of sneaking off to Harry’s for a pint or two with Logan and Kurt just for the comradery, the conversation. As much as I toe-crinklingly adored Morrison’s run and the ASTONISHING Whedon/Cassadayness that followed, Bendis’s run right here is the closest I’ve felt to them since that first white-hot pubescent blast.

MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #1 — Well, I had very high hopes for this, have been a fan of Kindt since he took over FRANKENSTEIN… from Lemire and maintained the quality, had to go back and check out REVOLVER and MIND MGMT, which are both excellent, and have been a fan of Brother Rudy since he was over on Lemire’s rebooted-before-its-time SUPERBOY and then kicking all kinds of ass during the first year and a half of this latest volume of SWAMP THING. And the boys, they did not disappoint! From the first page, this feels very much like classic Marvel Knights, which is to say the off-kilter 616 equivalent of Vertigo, which is in no way a dig, I believe that is a very good thing. Right away, both the narrative voice and art are spot-on for Peter but simultaneously evoking that same kind of underlying sinister tone that Morrison had going with Jae Lee on the FF: 1234 deal or the aforementioned did with Jenkins on that killer INHUMANS series. They hit the gas right away with these pages. The level of depth and detail on that close-up of Peter on Page Three are not to be believed. And Rudy has managed to both refine and escalate the quality of his innovative layouts, one of the only guys in the industry who seems to be not only processing the insanity that J.H. Williams III brings to his panel arrangement but actually running with it and trying to push it forward. And I’m glad I took a moment on Page Three to slow and down and really appreciate the quality of what was going down there because after that, basically everything goes insane. They hit the gas on this issue in more ways then one. The little girl robot blows up, Peter gets dosed and since he’s our narrator, we basically have as little idea what’s actually going on right now as he does. He keeps saying that he’s dropping frames, which is a clever way for Kindt to translate the fact that Rudy is no longer giving us linear consecutive panels, the gutters are miiiiiiiiles long, and the effect upon the reader is perfectly identical to that upon Peter, we just get beat up every single direction backwards and forwards (even the lettering goes backwards for a page), things happen out of sequence, it’s an entire damn mess. A glorious one. Hard to believe that through all of this rabid madness, we actually get the set-up for the series. I presume they have some plan to escalate this next issue but don’t see how?

CATALYST COMIX #4 — I am late to the party but have jammed this entire run and am now entirely caught up. Joe Casey has done a terribly cool thing here, this is an anthology featuring three different serials that take turns headlining, with the one in front getting fourteen pages and the other two seven pages each. 28 pages with a single ad and a letter-column for $2.99. You can’t afford NOT to buy this thing. The first headliner was “The Ballad of Frank Wells,” which scans as kind of an existentialist Zen riff that at least starts out in GØDLAND territory, though it’s clearly headed somewhere all its own. Dan McDaid provides suitably crackling art. Then Austin’s own Paul Maybury takes up the torch to present the adventures of a teen super-heroine named Amazing Grace, who it looks like is in the process of getting seduced by an extra-dimensional charmer called Mr. Seaver, though she seems to be turning it around on him here in this latest issue. “Amazing Grace” takes the headlining slot with this issue (and I assume for the next two) and I’m looking forward to seeing her story have twice the room to develop, this one is my favorite of the batch. But we also have “Agents of Change,” which features a super-team that’s been reunited but all they’ve done so far is go to group therapy and get blasted at a club, only it turns out they’re rocking a MATRIX-or-really-JOHN-BYRNE’S-NEXT-MEN-type virtual-reality situation. That one’s really been a slow burn so far but I have a feeling it’s going to blow up once it moves to the headliner slot. Ulises Farinas on art. But then Brad Simpson is coloring everything and really does a good job giving each story its own palette but really making them all feel unified, which seems like it would be a hard thing to do. And Rus Wooton is lettering the whole deal and manages not to toss in those italicized phrases that are so obtrusive over on the Hickman books, so I guess we can blame him for those. If you are one of those who complains that there is nothing new under the sun and the Big Two are incapable of producing superhero comics that set your heart a-racing, you should give this book a shot, there’s really nothing like it on the rack and quite a lot of story for your three American dollars.

MORNING GLORIES #32 — Aw, a Vanessa issue. I’ve got to say, I am almost almost getting wise to this book, when she was talking to the person on the other side of the wall, was thinking, “Well, I really wish that we could hear this person’s voice. If it’s a woman, it’s probably either Casey in disguise or Future Vanessa. If it’s a dude, got to be Future Hunter.” And the instruction site. Our august commentator lumps that right in with the tower and the cave, at this point, I’m okay if Hurley shows up. It would be a hell of a cliffhanger. He can be saying “Dude . . .” in the last panel on the penultimate page and then you turn the page and there’s Hugo. I would just completely break down if that happened.

TRILLIUM #3 — Man, a very efficient but nonetheless brutal little slice of backstory to open up, there. They pack just the right amount into only six panels. And we’re back to a flip for the past sequences. Flashes of manga, turning the pages from left to right. “Sorry, but I need your raygun,” is the line of dialogue to beat tonight. Elegant in its simplicity! Nika needs the raygun to kill that door at 78%-charge. And now everyone’s in the mix. Big brother Clayton makes it to the future and it looks like those three heavy glide bombers follow Nika back to the past. And next issue is the end of the universe. This continues to be one of the very best stories currently on the rack, just wonderful business all around. Lemire & Villarrubia ride again!

DETECTIVE COMICS #24 — That cover is like an old-school STAR WARS level of excitement-generating. I suppose, now that I mention it, the only way to possibly crank it up is to have them dueling with lightsabers. Layman/Fabok/Blond do nothing more than continue their run of greatness, bringing the arc with the Wrath to a conclusion of sorts while once again setting the next deal up right away, it looks like it’s probably Man-Bat’s turn in the rotation. I like how the epilogue of this one parallels the Emperor Penguin story, highlighting what happens when Batman wins, his antagonists are only beaten insofar as their current plan but they go right back to their cell in Arkham and start hatching their next dastardly scheme. A bittersweet announcement about the creative team, I have really enjoyed Manapul/Buccellato’s work on FLASH and am certainly onboard to see what they do here (and not just to see how many incredible ways they can Eisner the title sequence into the Gotham skyline). But man, would really love for this current team to hang out for another couple of years, this has been a terribly strong run all around.

FOREVER EVIL #2 — Man. I’m not sure that having Luthor inner-monologue a quote on survival of the fittest by some obscure novelist named David E. Smalley is the way to make him come across as smarter. Unless the plot of his 1929 novel STUMBLING is some sort of foreshadowing clue? “…his mystery/suspense novel that was probably the inspiration of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE a generation later- about a vicious murderer, surgically altered to become a brilliant surgeon and philanthropist. And the complications that ensue.” That would be pretty nifty subtextual work if the end of that’s a clue to the end of the series, I have to say. And Otis! I can hear Ned Beatty now. “Mistah Luthor.” Raven needs to figure out that “an evil Justice League” is not a figurative term and does not require the “literally” qualifier. I swear to God. Like last issue, the art is lovingly hyper-rendered, it looks like it took three months to draw this thing, Finch is a beast and Friend and Oback complement his lines to tremendous effect, but if Johns can’t deliver characters that I can invest in taking party in a story that I care about, well, it’s not even worth quoting Faulkner over.

BEST OF WEEK: BATMAN: BLACK AND WHITE #2 — I’m honestly such a fan of this concept, it’s going to take something pretty special to knock it out of the top spot every week it comes out, critical bias confessed. This time out, we open with a tale by Co-Publisher Dan Didio and insanely talented photorealistic renderer J.G. Jones that looks like it’s Man-Bat saving his kids from a molesting worker at the foster home where they’re living. Narrated by the little girl. Pretty grim stuff, top drawer craftsmanship. Then we get a hell of a tale written and drawn by Brazilian phenom Rafael Grampá featuring the Joker talking some real creepy folks into robbing Wayne Manor by way of a very well written monologue about circles and patterns that is heavy on the symbolism. Killer twist at the end but the real star is of course Grampá on eight pages of Batman interior sequentials. Rafael Albuquerque of AMERICAN VAMPIRE fame steps up to the writer/artist plate next and delivers a solid romp through Purgatory for our dark knight that has another twist ending. These artists and their twists! The next one I’m not so sure about. Jeff Lemire predictably knocks his script out of the park but legendary Filipino illustrator Alex Nino makes the decision or didn’t have time to ink the pages. Maybe he thought gray markers would do the job for a gang of the shading but whether the effect is intentional or not, the end result looks to these eyes like pages that are sorely in need of finishing. And the story deserves more than that. Hellacious linework throughout, it must be said. Finally, the perfect headliner, long-time Hollywood Bat-producer Michael Uslan and Dave Bullock throw down a silent movie starring The Bat-Man, complete with the celluloid reels on either side of the page and title cards for the spoken dialogue. Bullock’s time spent making all those great cartoons is put to tremendous use here, this looks pretty much like screen shots from a silent black and white forties equivalent of the Timm/Dini animated series. And just when it seems like the thing’s possibly more style than substance and there’s maybe nothing wrong with that, Uslan pulls a knife on you in the end. Strong strong material. Forty pages, five dollars, no ads, and it’s all For Archie Goodwin. What is there not to adore about this series?

9/25/13

FIRST BORN #23.2 — Aaahh, you could swear those oracle girls were in 100 BULLETS. Too bad they couldn’t rope in Risso for the single-month hit with his old partner. Of course, Azzarello nails the voice for the prophecy, the girls speaking in street-lingo. He’s always been so great at that. Probably it’s just because WONDER WOMAN is regularly one of the best books of The New 52, but more than any other title I read this Villain’s Month, this issue did more heavy lifting to expand the back-story and provide new insight into its given protagonist’s motivations while simultaneously advancing the overall narrative of the main title and whetting the reader’s appetite for what happens next. Fine work, all around.

BANE #23.4 — Very cool to get Graham Nolan in the mix on this one, the most spot-on creative assignment I saw from DC this month. Break the Rivera! Surprising no one, Tomasi hits a unified tone on characterization throughout. “Touch me again and YOU will die.” It is never a good sign when the interim warden at Arkham is straight-up quoting Dante Hicks. I hope Kevin Smith read that. Just like last week, I don’t care one little bit about the mini-series that this leads into, but this was a well-crafted done-in-one.

THE WAKE #4 — And the hits just don’t stop coming, this might be the best art on this series yet. I have to say that this is a pretty bleak situation, though, plot-wise. I really don’t see how this ever-diminishing crew of survivors has four more issues left in them. Snyder, as ever, is a deft hand at balancing character moments with all of the screaming horror crashing in on all sides. This remains one of the best books on the rack and will surely go down with TRILLIUM as the two best mini-series of the year.

THE UNWRITTEN #53 — These guys continue to throw down one of the best FABLES arcs in recent memory that just happens to involve Tommy Taylor and his friends. Oh, but all anyone wants to do is talk about story this, story that, I’m pretty much looking for some Gaiman ex Machina to amble in, blink his sleepy eyes, and make it all better. “Words MATTER, Mr. Pullman!” Again, though, the question of FABLES continuity rears its ugly head. This has got to be like a parallel situation going on, right? It doesn’t seem like some of the momentous events happening in this arc are really going to count in the main title. And of course, I’m wild for all that krackle on the last page, there. As if I even had to tell you.

JUPITER’S LEGACY #3 — So damn good to get Quitely on interiors. We must never take such things for granted. This is some grade-A evil-ass Millar shit right here, though, man. Garth Ennis taught that boy how to hate thum superherahs! It looks like these first three issues were just the pilot episode set-up, we’re now off on the premise implied by the title. Of course, Millar’s got to spoil next issue’s time-jump in the editorial page. Beautiful damn art, though, kudos to Peter Doherty for hanging with the greatness all around, colors, letters, and design.

SAGA #14 — Okay, that panel with Oswald D. Heist immediately sussing to the fact that they GOT his novel was a pretty cool moment. Hahah, and then Alana follows it up two panels later with a double “literally” that I don’t think actually qualifies as abuse of the proper usage but, man, just so sick of that word now. This one moves things along well enough. I’m still digging more on The Will/Gwendolyn/Sophie unit than our main characters, though Heist and Granny’s sit-down resonated pretty well for me.

BEST OF WEEK: SEX CRIMINALS #1 — I fell immediately and right in love with this to an arguably terrible extent, pretty much red-line all the way to how I felt about the first issues of CASANOVA or THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY, which, let’s all first just pause and breathe out that the stranglehold tyranny of Gabriel Ba has at last come to a once-and-for-all end, I mean, that guy. But the first-person voice of this, Fraction ratchets all the dials up and delivers so hard. I take back every single shred of my bitching about him bailing out on the double-FF run. If the choice is he either finish those out all the way or that now we get SATELLITE SAM and this concurrently, it’s not even a question. From the first page, which happens to be located on the inside cover, this is an engaging, challenging, and exhilarating piece of work so wholly original that it reinvigorates and reminds me why I show up every Wednesday ten times before the book is halfway done. This is the first time that I can see Fraction’s oft-professed love for Los Bros Hernandez not only actualized but blooming into something uniquely beautiful unto itself. Zdarsky’s art is both stunning and perfectly suited to the task at hand. I feel like I should make some kind of Andy Kaufman joke now about him, just because that’s how he apparently rolls and I love him for it, but maybe that’s what took me most by surprise about this, I only know the guy from like that horrific re-lettering deal he did on the 1986 Spider-Man/Power Pack child-safety/molestation ad and the campaign for Toronto mayor, so when I heard this was the team, I kind of just expected some of the pages to be drawn in feces? Maybe a Jackson Pollock sort of glory? All in context, but this tight kind of Team Phonogram McKelvie/Wilson thing really took me by surprise and totally seduced me into a sex criminal lifestyle of my own. If they would only have me! But, seriously, folks. This is one to lay down before your significant other, your parents, your boss at work who has trouble making eye contact, this is the bridge that must be built between the mainstream consumer of Joss Whedon’s MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS and the funny book in your hand, a modern-day twenty-first teen century’s SANDMAN or Y THE LAST MAN, if you will. Just so poignant a voice you ache for it, is mainly what I’ve been trying to say. Oh, and the time-stopping orgasms. Buy this book and you, too, can have one.

EAST OF WEST #6 — All right, this is a new character I can get behind. Of course, I am a sucker for a science-fiction Ranger. Nick Dragotta improbably manages to ratchet the art up a few levels past what we’ve seen thus far, a pretty serious escape scene, here. Cool, too, to see an entire issue carried along without the strength of our two strongest characters thus far, Death & Xiaolian. The emphasis on the dialogue communicated through italicizing is really getting under my skin, though, I have to say, don’t know if it’s Hickman or Rus Wooton’s idea but I wish whoever it is would knock it off and respect me enough to let the stressed phrases fall naturally, that business really takes me out of the story and it’s happening all over the place, multiple times per page.

FATALE #17 — As a child of the nineties, I am still digging hard on this hard-rockin’ bank-robbin’ arc. That Jane/Jo is bad news, there is certainly no getting around that. Not much more to say than that, this team continues to absolutely crush it, Brubaker/Phillips’s hundred-odd issues together really show and Mrs. Breitweiser’s tones continue to provide a perfect complement to the entire affair. I was positive that Brubaker was going to be talking about Walter White on the editorial page but pleasantly surprised that his only other recommendation was PACIFIC RIM. That’s the first time I’ve batted 1.000 since he started passing out suggested material.

FF #12  — Well all right, to the surprise of no one, it turns out to be much better to welcome another Allred into the fold than some random guy from Portland. The Doom dialogue, in particular, is spot-on. And who can resist Adolf the Impossible Boy’s falling in love with old FF issues? Though why Mik (or Korr??) didn’t dig as far back as Kirby is certainly beyond me. The one serious bump here is the deal with Darla and Scott’s kiss getting interrupted because she spilled coffee on his leg. Of course that would freak a fella out, she has no business getting upset about that. A strange terribly ill-conceived little bit that didn’t make any sense to me at all.  The page of Adolf & Luna watching shojo anime was pretty great.

WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN #36 — Well, it’s looking like this crossover should have just been confined to the Bendis titles. I’m a huge fan of this series but read it in trade, so I’m not quite caught up yet. That is not a problem, as the contents of this issue are a direct continuation of the story so far and the only thing that distinguishes this particular chapter is a single-panel gag with Broo. But the script and art are not up to the lofty heights that Bendis and his collaborators have set on past chapters. Giuseppe Camuncoli is a perfectly serviceable artist but the dynamic composition and finely rendered detail and linework isn’t even close to what we’ve seen thus far. And the colors aren’t even close. And this script is nowhere as good as everything else I’ve read in previous issues this title. Let Jason Aaron write his book and tell his story, and let Bendis drop his bombs over on his other books four times a month. At least this title stands to get a sales bump from the crossover, I guess is the silver lining.

UNCANNY AVENGERS #012 — Remender welcomes Sal Larocca to the fold as the business continues to unfold with the Apocalypse twins. Between the multi-front madness unfolding in INFINITY and the BATTLE OF THE ATOM, maybe I’m just suffering from 616 epic event overload, but this arc isn’t crushing me quite as badly as it was a few months ago. Solidly constructed, just not blowing me away. Good for poor old pacifist Simon, though, it’s nice to see someone finally catch a break.

YOUNG AVENGERS #10 — That is one grisly opening. Mother devoured our narrative caption and implicitly our narrator! None are safe. We take a break from the ensemble at large this issue and divide the issue into Loki vs Mother in a game of questions that reveals little but just enough and then Leah takes Teddy to a magic circle of crazy stalkers who have been wronged by our Young Avengers. McKelvie/Norton/Wilson’s art remains beautiful but content-wise, this issue is kind of spinning its wheels a bit, relative to what we’ve come to expect from this title.

AVENGERS #20 — The cosmic madness continues to unfold! The rack Yu saddles Natasha with on Page Four of actual new content is ridiculous and too much by half, any superspy worth her salt would absolutely have to get that business reduced in order to be in any way effective in combat, zero-gravity or otherwise. Okay, and ha, Mentor’s “IF YOU WISH IT” is totally that same italicized Hickman emphasis thing that happens in EAST OF WEST and THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS but goes down just fine the single time here. I don’t recall seeing David Curiel’s name before now, but his digital coloring really pops, particularly on the female faces and that one page of Ex Nihilo and Abyss soaring through all the celestial swirl. It looks like we’re about halfway through this event and Hickman has managed to maintain the entertainment level thus far, interested to see what he’ll do to escalate the situation here in the second half.

9/18/13

A different sort of mass this time, Wednesday Faithful, usually I burn the barn down every week roaring through the new books and drinking all of the Lone Star and letting them both hit me full-force, certainly making instantaneous critical judgments but recording nothing, just bathing in the sweet Lazarus Pit glory of comic books that I wasn’t able to read the night before. Then, I’ll go back over the course of the week or all at once and read through them again to peel back the curtain, poke at the armature, and generally absorb the craft of the creators to the best of my ability. Then, I write the reviews.

That’s all out the window this week, you loony birds! Because this week is actually last week is actually . . . the thing is, I was in New York City all last week and though it might seem counter-intuitive that I failed to indulge in this holiest of holy Wednesday night pursuits while within the boundaries of the capital city of comic books, if you’ve ever been, it’s really not such a wonder. Last Wednesday, I was actually in Peter Parker’s old stomping grounds watching my little brother and some folks he plays with smoking some soul and blues and country standards. If you have the opportunity to witness Shelley Wade & the Dimestore Romeos at The Dog & Duck Pub in the Sunnyside neighborhood in Queens, I sincerely urge you to avail yourself of it. There is no cover and the music is impeccable. The gentleman who plays guitar has been the drummer in Woody Allen’s Dixieland band for decades and even loaned me his instrument so that I could play Miles Davis and The Meters music with the little brother, and my little girl got to see us play music in a bar for the first time. All wonderful! But now, I’m back, in a bubble of alternate history, it’s really Tuesday the 24th everywhere else, almost the 25th, come to think on it, now, but here, in this room, it’s Wednesday the 18th in the parallel universe where I was not playing Trane licks on a decades-old hollow-body in Sunnyside hours before retiring, as ever, to The Band and their last waltz.

BATMAN ’66 #3 — (and I meant to say, that means no filter, no multiple readings, tonight/this week/last week, I know more than ever how poor Jack Bauer feels because We’re Running Out Of Time!, new books are upon us again tomorrow already, what you see is what you get, let the havoc commence and release the Hunger Dogs, as the saying goes!) WHAT’S THIS? Quinones & Wicks on art? This is the team who banged out that superior Harley & Ivy story a couple of weeks back in BLACK AND WHITE, no? With Wicks scripting, I believe? Quinones’s style again veering in an Allredian direction. Holy Ghost Artist, Batman, will we ever see young Michael Allred on interiors for this title? But, wait! Quinones! I love your Batman, brother. It looks a hell of a lot like Pope’s. That’s high high praise from this direction, my man, but you gave him the white eye-slits. This isn’t that book. And but wow, the Boy Wonder manages two Holy. . .s ! in as many panels, that is some fine work. And it ends . . . with a wink. That Jeff Parker is one damn sly individual all the way around. If the impromptu physics lesson doesn’t carry the day, then we will always have the Egg Zeppelin. And, “I don’t mean to sound negative, Batman, but we’re still plummeting towards the earth!” as delivered by Burt Ward is the line of dialogue to beat tonight.

CLAYFACE #23.3 — Layman always does economical work imbuing characters that at first blush seem stock with humanity, peppering just enough details through narration or spoken dialogue to make them come alive. Such is the case here, the content of this story doesn’t punch you in the face to anywhere near the degree that the cover does, but it’s a character study that respects both subject and reader.

SCARECROW #23.3 — All right, I’m not going to type the whole thing out tonight, but Tomasi’s Scarecrow’s line about Two-Face’s Hamletesque duality takes the dialogue prize from the Boy Wonder’s plummeting. Perfect. And then, the “Bane problem,” can’t help but think of John Locke and what a problem that turned out not to be, at least in his original incarnation. At the end of the day, or the twentieth page, I should say, I could give less than a damn about FOREVER EVIL: ARKHAM WAR, but this was a hell of an issue, these two in a row, actually, quite a rousing combination.

UNCANNY X-MEN #012—Am digging on Hill as the antagonist in this series, nice to see Bendis dancing with her again on a regular basis. Professor K as an advocate for the kids rings true and makes for a great dynamic against the rest of the people who have pretty much raised her. Emma boils it all down to perfection, it is in fact the ultimate get for Scott. And don’t know how I didn’t see this coming, what a damn set-up for telepathic throwdown payback coming right up.

FABLES # 133 — Willingham/Buckingham/Leialoha keep the storytelling engine rolling at full capacity as Rose burns pretty much every bridge with Snow all at once and we get three pages of mostly horrifying seven dwarves flashback. I’m guessing that was Randy who got skewered?

CONAN THE BARBARIAN #20 — It is still very much a creepy ghost story in the woods for Conan and Bêlit, directly emphasized by the former’s horrifying tale by the campfire in the opening pages, just in case anyone is dubious about the situation. This whole thing has a Joe Landsdale vibe about it, which, Wood could do much worse than be evoking that kind of mood. And then we just fire off into what-the-hell? supernatural territory at the end there, good fun and madness. I had no problem with the last poppy fever-dream arc but am digging this one much more.

MORNING GLORIES #31 — This is solid character work with Hunter, who of course we all love. I am, though, experiencing compression pains, or whatever’s the opposite of growing pains, but after everything went so fucking ballistic and insane for months and months there at the end of Season One, I’m having a bit of trouble just suddenly settling down and zooming the scope back down to –centrics set in this school that they’re suddenly supposed to be attending again, hitting daily classes and so forth. This sounds more like bitching than I mean it to, I certainly enjoyed the issue, it’s just a bit jarring that suddenly we’re not all time-traveling and dimension-hopping and getting our lives saved by older versions of ourselves in disguise. And I still totally can’t figure out which character is supposed to be the smoke monster, which is becoming aggravating. But that’s on me.

DAREDEVIL #31 — No surprise here, nothing but quality from Waid/Samnee/Rodriguez as Matt deals with a Serpent Society-incited riot stemming from a case that was Ripped From The Headlines! These guys are just so good, man, even if, if your internal chemistry is so damaged to the point that somehow you hate Daredevil and everything he stands for, you’ll still love this book. Is that supposed to be Foggy on the last page, though? Unacceptable, Mr. Waid!

BEST OF WEEK: NEW AVENGERS #10 — I’m still really in love with the premise and roster of this book, it isn’t getting anywhere near the attention or love it deserves in the flood of superhero books hitting the racks every month. It was impossible not to hear T’Challa deliver that “convenience or providence” line in the library with Fishburne Morpheus inflections, that “three ships, three objectives” pep talk he gives on the verge of the third act to RELOADED. So much going on here, incredible to believe the Avengers are off in space dealing with the Avengers and all the shit going down here has seemingly nothing to do with it, shit is just erupting all over the place at once. That page with Namor, though, man. Tough to read. Stiff upper lip, your Imperius Rexness. What escalation, though! In three pages, the spy in Strange locates the son of Thanos and we get another incursion. I love how Ebony Man is just like whatever, I’m with Thanos. No, Ebony Man! Listen to the Stephen Strange, the red-skies incursion is really such a very big deal!

INFINITY #3 — I cannot overstate the emotional impact of seeing Kenneth Connell’s Star Brand insignia that I drew on my left hand easily three or four dozen times in the middle of class during fourth grade, having that particular cosmic energy serve as a turning point is really just about almost too much for me, oh no goodnight but so wonderful. I miss Royce Ching.