Green Lantern #37

Orig­i­nally I wasn’t going to review this book, but when the Irre­press­ible Rory Byrne demands you read it,  adding “You will shit bricks” you’re required to at least put a few words down.

So here we go.

At the end of the last issue there was this great expec­ta­tion, from Space Ganesh and the other guy,  that Hal Jor­dan would become the leader of the Blue Lanterns. This issue starts out with him “politely” refus­ing the offer before tear­ing off on the two space hip­pies and head­ing after Sine­stro, who’s been spend­ing his spare time cru­ci­fied on the Red Lantern’s cen­tral bat­tery after being cap­tured dur­ing the Rage of the Red Lanterns one shot.

There’s some clear delin­eation between the three rings: Green are cops, Red are ani­mals and Blue are saints. They later live up to the bible metaphor by part­ing an actual red sea. The true nature of the red spec­trum is explored a bit more. It seems that the rings are lit­tle more then par­a­sites. After purg­ing the host body’s blood they take over motor func­tions and most thought processes. Much like those hor­rific wasps that ride around on cockroaches.

While it’s not the first time Hal Jor­dan has worn mul­ti­ple rings (see here and here) that chap­ter end­ing def­i­nitely rates as one of the coolest moments of this entire Green Lantern vol­ume. Yes, Rory, bricks were shat.

Dark Avengers #1

There’s two ways they could’ve gone in this issue:

• through a series of small inter­con­nected scenes, show “the boss” trav­el­ling around putting the team together through a num­ber of every expand­ing word bal­loons; or
• some­thing interesting.

Guess which road Bendis went down?

I’m prob­a­bly being too harsh here as the book isn’t a total wash. They’ve got Mike Deodato on art  for one thing, con­tin­u­ing the good work he did on Thun­der­bolts. I thought the expres­sions on each of the ex-Thunderbolts, espe­cially Bullseye’s, as they realise all their dreams have come true were great. Deoad­ato on art and most of the Thun­der­bolts star­ring. They couldn’t have made it any more obvi­ous that this is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Thun­der­bolts line.

Hope­fully the new mem­bers aren’t going to take the Sentry’s mopey bull­shit. If I could have one request, please give me one issue where they beat the ever-loving shit out of him for being such a sad case. Do that and I’m in for the long haul.

Mighty Avengers #21

This is a great exam­ple of how to make the Ulti­mate line redun­dant. While over in Ulti­ma­tum They’ve had to deal with a flood sub­merg­ing New York, here in the reg­u­lar old 616, New York has been hit with a del­uge of blood, Canada is choked with flesh eat­ing locusts and some­where else  the New Avengers are being used as fer­tiliser for fast grow­ing sen­tient plants and the entire state of Okla­homa has van­ished. Sud­denly the split sec­ond flash flood­ing in the Ulti­mate uni­verse doesn’t seem that ulti­mate anymore.

The recruit­ing scenes aren’t all that dis­sim­i­lar to those in Dark Avengers, but they’re car­ried off a lot bet­ter. Biblical-level crazy shit is a great moti­va­tor. The book shares a lot of the same beats as Dark Avengers, but the way Slott writes dia­logue makes it a much more enter­tain­ing read. See Amadeus Cho’s con­ver­sa­tions with Pym. Both books also share a sim­i­lar antag­o­nist. Dark Avengers gets Dr Doom’s ex, Mor­gane Le Fay while Mighty Avengers has a pos­sessed Quick­sil­ver and some shirt­less guy who likes writ­ing on himself

Which book you grab depends on how you like your heroes. Do you like the bad guys mas­querad­ing as the world’s heroes, albeit offi­cially? Grab Dark Avengers. Do you like you heroes just doing hero-ey stuff? Grab Mighty Avengers. Do you like your heroes to be the under­dogs, strug­gling to get on in a world where they’re oper­at­ing ille­gally? Grab New Avengers. (reviewed next week, fight fans!)

X-Factor #39

There would be a fairly detailed review here. I say “would be” because at the begin­ning of the book Peter David swears all read­ers to secrecy and asks that we don’t spoil the book. So I’ll hon­our that. What I can say is that the book is well on it’s way back to it’s first year lev­els of awe­some­ness. After flip­ping to the back cover I had to sit alone on the couch for a good five min­utes just to digest what I’d read. It’s been a long time since a comic had that much of an emo­tional impact on me. Bravo, Peter David, bravo. Good to see the art back on track after the mis­step that was the Stro­man period too.

Com­plete List:

Final Cri­sis: Super­man Beyond #2 (of 2)
Green Lantern #37
Trin­ity #34
Aston­ish­ing X-Men #28
Dark Avengers #1
Mighty Avengers #21
Thun­der­bolts #128
Uncanny X-Men Annual #2
X-Factor #39
X-Men: Legacy #220
Angel: After the Fall #16

Final Cri­sis #6 (of 7)

For­get the naysay­ers, Final Cris #6 is great.

No, I’m not going to write para­graph after para­graph defend­ing the book. It’s awe­some, even with one minor problem.*

I didn’t read Bat­man RIP, or it’s fol­lowups, so I can’t com­ment about how it fits in with Final Cri­sis. But I did read Count­down so I can help out if you’re strug­gling with the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance needed to get through it.

Speak­ing of Bat­man, hav­ing him his one rule to put a god-killing bul­let in Dark­seid, then pay­ing with his life, was one of the best things I’ve read in a long time. Oh, and he’s not really dead, you guys. Read the story again. Hell, just read the Sonny Sumo pages. Not. Dead.

More good things: a Tiger-man on Tiger-man bat­tle, where the Tiger in a tweed jacket and bow tie comes out on top; and a sub­plot about shift­ing the planet’s pop­u­la­tion to a par­al­lel uni­verse to save them; end­ing with a vari­ant of the now clas­sic CoIE Super­man pose. They’ve got me hooked.

*The art. They’re up to around 4 or 5 artists now, so there’s lit­tle con­sis­tency from page to page. I can see why JG Jones was ink­ing his own pen­cil­ings too. Who­ever they’ve got to replace him is just awful.

Green Lantern Corps #32

I don’t under­stand these Faces of Evil tie-ins. Is it sup­posed to be a  show­case of the bad­dest char­ac­ter fea­tured in a book? If it is, then Kryb isn’t it. Sure she’s creepy as hell, but not what I’d call evil. Espe­cially with the rev­e­la­tion that she con­sid­ers the Green Lantern Corps to be a malev­o­lent dan­ger to the well being of the chil­dren she col­lects, and isn’t search­ing for  food.Though I don’t know how that trans­lates into the “abil­ity to instill great fear”.

But that doesn’t really mat­ter as the rest of the issue is pretty damn cool.

There’s Kyle’s clever way of remov­ing Kryb’s mind-control; the grisly death of a red shirt Green Lantern; a new law enacted in the Book of Oa; the res­ig­na­tion of a large con­tin­gent of the Corps, who I’m sure will no doubt pop up as vio­let, blue or some other colour of lantern down the track; and an inter­est­ing, but not unex­pected fate for Kryb.

I really enjoyed the Vio­let Lantern’s ring class­ing Kryb as a ‘heart­breaker’. I liked the way the Vio­let ring com­mu­ni­cated in gen­eral. I’m glad they’re not just a straight up female ver­sion of the Green Lantern Corps, but have their own rules and meth­ods for deal­ing with their ene­mies. Though their recruit­ing process is a lit­tle extreme, espe­cially com­pared to the Blue Lantern’s “extended inter­view” way of recruit­ing to their par­tic­u­lar corps.

Com­plete List:

Booster Gold #16
Final Cri­sis #6 (of 7)
Green Lantern Corps #32
Trin­ity #33

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #21

Jane Espen­son is sec­ond writer for the Buffy TV series, after Drew God­dard,  to tackle this comic book con­tin­u­a­tion. Unlike Drew she’s only here for this one issue. The focus is on the vapid Har­mony, writ­ten here dumber than she was by the end of the last sea­son of Angel for some rea­son.  Still just as crafty as ever though, as she goes on a one vamp mis­sion to get thrust into the media spot­light so she’s never denied entry to night­clubs or exclu­sive par­ties ever again.

Mean­while there’s a sub­plot about a new poten­tial slayer,  fresh out of a street gang, and Andrew’s attempt to sign her up to another one.

With­out over analysing it this reads like a “mes­sage” issue about how the Amer­i­can media (espe­cially MTV) will give any­one air­time as long as they’re kooky or dif­fer­ent enough and the pos­si­ble results of that, sexy or oth­er­wise. With the usual Buffy spin of course.

Even though it’s a done-in-one there’s still greater ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the Buffy uni­verse ‚as this issue shows that the gen­eral pub­lic might not be the big fans of Slay­ers that Buffy and team think they are.

It could’ve done with a bit more flesh­ing out, but it’s Espenson’s first ever story in the comic for­mat so I can’t really really fault her. At least it’s bet­ter than the Loeb-tastic pre­vi­ous issue.

Shrugged #8

I can’t remem­ber the last time I read an issue of this book. It feels like it’s been a year, maybe longer. I can’t remem­ber any char­ac­ters moti­va­tions, how they got into their cur­rent sit­u­a­tions. page is that this issue fea­tures a bunch of kids team­ing up with angels(?) to bat­tle a bunch of evil demons(?) that look like 1930s gang­sters, and their leader who looks like Emperor Zurg from Toy Story.

They fight, the demons betray each other and two char­ac­ters are revealed to have died and ascended to angel sta­tus. I assume this is a major plot point given the amount of pan­els devoted to it, but for the life of me I can’t remem­ber if those char­ac­ters were ever given the spot­light. In the end the bad guys lose and the sta­tus quo returns. I assume.

Hav­ing no ref­er­ence points, or even a “pre­vi­ously on…” sec­tion kills this book. As this is Michael Turner’s last writ­ing credit before his death last year you’d think the com­pany would’ve put extra effort into giv­ing peo­ple a heads up about what has come before. Had they done this the book may have moved from bor­ing and pre­dictable to sub­stan­dard. There’s just no way of knowing.

Com­plete List:

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #21
Hell­boy: The Wild Hunt #2 (of 8)
Secret Six #5
Trin­ity #32
Crim­i­nal vol 1
Shrugged #8

Yes­ter­day I finally took the plunge and signed up for an account with del.icio.us. For those who aren’t aware del.icio.us is an online book­mark­ing sys­tem. It allows you to book­mark any page on the inter­net and eas­ily share that with other people.

The more imme­di­ate ben­e­fit for me is that I no longer have to email long list of inter­est­ing URLs from work to home, instead I can just log them in del.icio.us for later perusal. The only down­side is that I have to read through every email to man­u­ally pull out ever link I’ve ever sent and add them into my book­marks. Small price to pay of course, but I’m not look­ing for­ward to doing it.

The next ver­sion of this site  (when­ever it appears) with have full del.icio.us inte­gra­tion. Allow­ing me to post link directly to the blog and replac­ing the Asides cat­e­gory that died out around the mid­dle of last year.

While this near fic­ti­cious redesign is under­way you can check out my book­marks at the Offi­cial IB Indus­tries del.icio.us page.

If you’ve come here via Comic By Comic, wel­come.

There was just no way I could get to the city on Box­ing Day to pick up a stack of comics. I was too busy spend­ing every hour of day­light try­ing to build a bar­beque. So I’ve lumped both Box­ing Day and day after New Years Day hauls into the one post.

Incog­nito #1

Incog­nito is fan­tas­tic. Mark my words: This will be the stand out title of 2009.

Incog­nito is the story of Zack Ander­son — one time supervil­lian, now lowly file clerk. After rat­ting out his evil super­pow­ered boss, Zack has a new iden­tity thanks to the Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram. There’s a down­side though, as he’s forced onto meds to dial back his super­pow­ers to nor­mal human lev­els by his government-appointed handler.

Mostly the book is about Zack try­ing to deal with a life in a world he really doesn’t care for.  And the inter­ac­tions with peo­ple he views as being beneath him (ie. every­body). If these parts weren’t writ­ten as well as they are then the book would just fall apart.

There’s small moments when the book hear­kens back to the orig­i­nal pulpy Golden Age comics of yes­ter­year. Case in point: his pow­ers were given to him and his brother by an overzeal­ous sci­en­tist in a dank cave. Using SCIENCE!

Things like that really appeal to me.

I’ve never come across Phillips’ art before, but I like it. It reminds me of David Aja’s style on the first few arcs of Marvel’s Iron Fist. Char­ac­ters are expres­sive and action scenes are kinetic and bloody. In civil­ian clothes Zack is a beaten down white col­lar in a dead-end job. But when he puts on the domino mask he seems to stand taller, with more author­ity. It’s the lit­tle things like that that make a book great.

If I had to com­plain about some­thing it would be that the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters aren’t that well defined. I don’t know any­thing about his brother or his ex-boss. At one point the han­dler threat­ens Zack with putting him in the same prison cell as the boss, but the scene comes across a bit flat as at that point there’s no indi­ca­tion of who his boss is. Hav­ing Zack not really react to the threat doesn’t help that much either.

There’s a note in the back of the book from either Brubaker or Phillips or both that sug­gests if I liked Incog­nito I should read Crim­i­nal. Based on what I’ve seen in Incog­nito I’ll be grab­bing the first Crim­i­nal trade as soon as I can.

Ulti­ma­tum #2 (of 5)

I’ve been slow­ing pair­ing back my Jeph Loeb-written books. Wait­ing until they’ve com­pleted a story before see­ing them off. But this, this Ulti­ma­tum bull­shit is just so hor­ri­bly writ­ten and pre­sented that I’m tee­ter­ing on giv­ing up on the entire Ulti­mate uni­verse alto­gether. A uni­verse where an obese man who’s never before shown can­ni­bal­is­tic ten­den­cies can chow down on the entrails of a woman and enjoy it is not a uni­verse I want to read more about.

I bitched and moaned about Ulti­mates 3, but when it ended I hope edi­to­r­ial would reign Loeb in a bit. Maybe teach him that there’s a big dif­fer­ence between the Mar­vel 616 and Ulti­mate uni­verses. But no, once again they’ve given him carte blanche to pro­duce Ulti­mate shit.

Finch’s art doesn’t help either. He was great on the first arc of New Avengers, so I’m not sure what went wrong. Sure fore­ground char­ac­ters are recog­nis­able, but with this new sketchy style he’s rock­ing every­thing else behind them is a mess.

The one good thing is that Ulti­mate Thor no longer speaks in the Shake­spearean way that was intro­duced in Ulti­mate Power (and more pop­u­larised  by the orig­i­nal 616 Thor) and has reverted back to some­thing sim­i­lar to how he was por­trayed dur­ing Ulti­mates 1 & 2. That this is the only good thing I can say about the issue is depress­ing as all hell.

Com­plete List 26/12:

Final Cri­sis: Secret Files #1
Green Lantern #36
Trin­ity #31
Avengers: Ini­tia­tive #20
Ulti­mate X-Men #99
X-Force #10
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #208 Wolver­ine Movie Cvr

Com­plete List 2/1:

Flash #247
Trin­ity #30
Incog­nito #1
Ms Mar­vel #34
New Avengers #48
Run­aways 3 #5
Ulti­ma­tum #2 (of 5)