Black­est Night #1

In this, the first issue of Black­est Night, Carol Fer­ris shoots a robot in the crotch with the power of love.

Ok, so a lot more hap­pens either side of that one scene. Some good, some bad. But over­all this is a pretty solid start to DC’s 2009 event.

Tales of the Corps #1

I under­stand what they’re try­ing to do with this 3 issue minis­eries. Using it to shine a light on lesser char­ac­ters that don’t get a whole lot of back­story in the reg­u­lar titles. But two out three of the sto­ries here just aren’t that inter­est­ing. First up is an ori­gin for Saint Walker, that doesn’t add that much more to his char­ac­ter. Yes he went through many, many hor­ri­ble events one after the other before finally real­is­ing his des­tiny, but so what. Name one saint that hadn’t endured a long shitty exis­tence before get­ting their halo?

The sec­ond story isn’t all that excit­ing either. It spins a tale of  Mongul’s child­hood dur­ing one mag­i­cal sum­mer where he was the ruler of some aliens who had crash landed on his plant. But who cares because that kid grows up into an ass­hole tyrant who uses a magic ring to con­trol his sev­ered arm and who also ripped another alien’s tongue out just so that alien wouldn’t talk back to him anymore.

Luck­ily, the third and final story shows some merit. Full points for hav­ing the nomadic Indigo Lanterns sound like char­ac­ters from The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Dark Avengers #7

I dis­cov­ered I enjoy read­ing Dark Avengers writ­ten by Matt Frac­tion a lot more than when it’s writ­ten by Brian Michael Bendis.

Com­plete List

Black­est Night #1 (of 8)
Black­est Night Tales of the Corps #1 (of 3)
Wednes­day Comics #2 (of 12)
Agents Of Atlas #8
Dark Avengers #7
Incog­nito #5
Mighty Avengers #27
X-Factor #46

Green Lantern #43

Remem­ber those books from the 90’s where the bad guy, or some other “spe­cial guest star” would take over a book, spray paint­ing or oth­er­wise cov­er­ing up the main title? I kind of wish they did some­thing like that here, as this book is totally Black Hand’s story.

It serves as a nice pre­lude to Black­est Night, retelling Black Hand’s life story and touch­ing on his child­hood, first appear­ance in a Green Lantern book, his role in the recent — and overly long — Secret Ori­gin arc, right up to Green Lantern: Rebirth. There’s also a call­back to the German-speaking  Grem­lins that kid­napped him soon after. It looks like Johns has another bad guy/girl wait­ing in the wings once Black­est Night wraps up. Unless they’re a major player and I’ve com­pletely mis­judged who it was sup­posed to be.

While I can appre­ci­ate Philip Tan’s char­ac­ter designs, his rushed, rough pen­cilling on the book itself really didn’t do any­thing for me. Doug Mahnke on the other hand should be per­fect fit for this book. I’m only famil­iar with his work on Super­man: Beyond and the last issue of Final Cri­sis. But the way he was able to have the char­ac­ters con­vey even the small­est emo­tion should be a great boon to a book entirely devoted to explor­ing large facets of the emo­tional spectrum.

Wednes­day Comics #1 (of 12)

After Trin­ity I was all but ready to give up on the weekly comic for­mat. Trudg­ing through 52 issues of epic space opera that alter­nated between molasses-speed intro­spec­tion and smash cuts of earth-shaking bat­tles took a lot out of me.  But I think DC had the mea­sure of their audi­ence. They knew that the next weekly had to be some­thing spe­cial. Some­thing with a touch of nov­elty to draw an audi­ence made up of those already worn down and those look­ing to break into the comics scene. Some­thing with a strong cre­ative team to keep peo­ple com­ing back. And I think they’ve done it.

There’s 14, one page sto­ries con­tained within, all of vary­ing qual­ity (but none of them ter­ri­ble).  That they’re all set “out­side con­ti­nu­ity” isn’t a great prob­lem. The character’s basic per­son­al­i­ties and dri­vers are all there. Green Lantern wears green, flies in space; Super­man beats the hell out of robots while pro­tect­ing humans.

Though this is only the first issue I do have my favourites already. Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred’s Meta­mor­pho is just the right amount of 1950’s pulp adven­tur­ing; while Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner’s Super­girl is, in a word, cute. Sgt. Rock, Bat­man, Kamandi are three more sto­ries that have me bit­ing my nails and hang­ing for the next issue. I guess the only story I really have a prob­lem with is Won­der Woman. It’s overly wordy and the panel lay­out makes it incred­i­bly hard to fol­low. If they’re going to con­tinue  framign it in the same way I’d sug­gest using arrows to direct the reader from one panel to the next, much like tra­di­tional large for­mat news­pa­per comics have.

I really hope this works out for DC. I’d love to see this done as a yearly event. Some­times its just nice to read a comic that just wants to enter­tain you and isn’t hung up in push­ing things in “a bold new direction!”

My local comics shop had com­pletely sold out of copies by Mon­day. So hope­fully DC see this as a sign that most of the spec­u­la­tors have left the mar­ket and that there’s peo­ple out there will­ing to read their sto­ries regard­less of what the damn thing is printed on.

Com­plete List

Booster Gold #22
Green Lantern #43
Wednes­day Comics #1 (of 12)
Dark X-Men Begin­ning #1 (of 3)
Ms Mar­vel #41
X-Men: Legacy #226

Green Lantern Corps #38

This issue got me think­ing about how much Count­down failed Kyle Rayner as a char­ac­ter. In Count­down he was lit­tle more than trans­port for the other char­ac­ters. Using the most pow­er­ful weapon in the uni­verse as directed through his artist’s mind to cre­ate bub­bles and flat boards for them to ride on.

The Kyle we see in this issue is con­fi­dent and most impor­tantly proac­tive. The back half of this book has a great con­fronta­tion between Kyle, Guy Gard­ner the Alpha Lanterns. Peter Tomasi should be really proud of how well he’s fleshed Kyle out. This isn’t the same char­ac­ter from the ION series (that I dropped halfway through due to over­whelm­ing meh-ness). In link­ing him to Guy and Sorinik Natu Tomasi has given Kyle both pur­pose and passion.

Art by Patrick Glea­son is good. Very good in fact. It must take a lot of work to draw this book. What with 99% being aliens of dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes. Then hav­ing those aliens appears con­sis­tently across every page. It’s really impres­sive work. I don’t know why Glea­son isn’t doing more in the indus­try. He’s def­i­nitely one to follow.

Uncanny X-Men #513

I’m still not 100% sold on this book.

I get what they’re try­ing to say with the sto­ry­line. Propo­si­tion X is a par­tial alle­gory of California’s Propo­si­tion 8. And if the story was a med­i­ta­tion on how Propo­si­tion X (pro­posed ster­il­i­sa­tion of all mutants) it could’ve been incred­i­bly inter­est­ing. But this is a Mar­vel Uni­verse under Nor­man Osbourne’s Dark Reign. So he has to pop up to reit­er­ate what a giant ass­hole he is. Again.

And there’s the lit­tle things that didn’t need an extra layer of comic book­i­ness added. Like Simon Trask, the man repon­si­ble for organ­is­ing the march that starts this whole thing, being revealed as some sort of cyborg or Sen­tinel of some kind. Wasn’t it enough that he was this hor­ri­bly blink­ered bigot? Did he really have to have the electro/mind con­trol thing going on too?

Now that I’ve reread that, it seems weird to be com­plain­ing that a comic book is too much of a comic book. But there you go.

On the plus side the character’s voices are spot on.VBut then Frac­tion was always good at that.

The art work by Terry Dod­son is top notch as always. Some won’t like the thick out­line around each char­ac­ter, but I’m a fan.

Com­plete List

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #26
Witchfinder In The Ser­vice Of Angels #1 (of 5)
Bat­man and Robin #2
Green Lantern Corps #38
Secret Six #11
Agents of Atlas #7
Uncanny X-Men #513
Angel #23

There’s just far too many comics to review all of them this week. 14 of them, thanks to Marvel’s poor/genius sched­ul­ing. Instead you get one book from each of the Big Two.

Detec­tive Comics #854

My only brush with Greg Rucka came through his work on 52. Where he put a lot of work into the entwined sto­ries of  Bat­woman and The Ques­tion. So I guess it’s only fit­ting that I get reac­quainted with his work through a book that stars those two char­ac­ters. Yes I’m aware they had their own post-52 minis­eries, but I didn’t read that as, to me , that par­tic­u­lar story seemed to have been played out in the pages of 52 already.

At first glance the Kate Kane in this book seems vastly dif­fer­ent than that one who appeared in 52. She’s less a socialite and more of an army brat. She’s got tat­toos and it’s implied she sleeps (or slept) around. Yes, she’s still a les­bian, and yes it comes up but only in a way to flesh out her “com­mit­ted to the mis­sion” mindset.

Before this book, id you’d asked me to point out art by JH Williams I woul’dve had no chance. Would not know him from a bar of soap. After read­ing this book I have every panel burnt out to my brian. In a good way of course. And the panel lay­out. Wow. There’s one two page sequence depict­ing that I loved. A series of light­ning bolt pan­els depicts Bat­woman talk­ing to Bat­man then head­ing back to base and chang­ing back into civil­lian clothes, under­scored by a shot of Bat­woman, on her motor­cy­cle, shoot­ing across the page.

There’s this incred­i­ble amount of energy that crack­les off every page.

Mean­while over in the Ques­tion backup…sorry “co-feature”, Renee Mon­toya seems to have become DC’s answer to the Heroes for Hire. Using an email account and/or web­site to solicit inves­tiga­tive work. Her first case pit­ting her against human traffickers.

It reads like it was orig­i­nally pitched as a full length story that’s been slimmed down through pre­cise cuts. Noth­ing is miss­ing really, but there’s no great expla­na­tion of the bad guy pos­si­ble motives, just that he’s the damn bad guy.

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1

After the let­down of an event that was Brian Michael Bendis’ Secret Inva­sion I har­boured a feel­ing that, given half a chance, Matt Frac­tion could easy write the next Mar­vel event. And here it is.

I’m glad it’s not a company-wide thing as I really couldn’t han­dle another one of those from Mar­vel. But it does carry the Dark Reign tag, which I cna’t really get enthused about. Even though most of the Mar­vel side of my pull list involves Dark Reign in some way.

The story seems organic enough. At the end of Secret Inva­sion, when Nor­man Osbourne was given the job of…well what­ever the hell it is he actu­ally does, he put all mutants on notice. Telling Emma Frost that if they couldn’t con­trol them­selves then he would. Or words to that effect.

In this first issue of the inde­ter­mi­nately long minis­eries (there’s no “#1 of #3″ on the cover, just “Chap­ter One”) Simon Trask organ­ises a march on San Fran­sisco in sup­port of a new law to ster­ilise all mutants, which of course leads to all hell break­ing loose. Really, nobody watched the first 10 min­utes of Die Hard 3?

With half of San Fran­sisco on fire Nor­man Osbourne makes good on his promise and sends in the Dark Avengers to con­trol things. Which of course they don’t because they’re all psy­chopaths. Then Nor­man takes Emma Frost aside reit­ter­ates whats he first told her and then pro­motes her to Leader of All Mutants. Charles Xavier shows up to talk down Cyclops, but it’s revealed to the  reader that the real Charles Xavier is lying in a prison cell with his brain leak­ing down his shirt. None of which makes a whole lot of a sense.

But, this is only the first issue, and I’ve got enough faith that Frac­tion will spin out a few inter­est­ing con­cepts before bring­ing every­thing to a decent conclusion.

Of  course Mar­vel get full praise for keep­ing Greg Land as far from this story as pos­si­ble. Marc Sil­vestri han­dles the art in a pass­able fash­ion. It’s a lot more basic than his linework from back when Grant Mor­ri­son wrote the book, with most of the humans look­ing like scare­crows. And a small but sig­nif­i­cant draw­ing of a continuity-breaking, male Loki.

Com­plete List

Detec­tive Comics #854
Green Lantern #42
Aston­ish­ing X-Men #30
Avengers: Ini­tia­tive #25
Dark Avengers #6
Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1
Immor­tal Iron Fist TP Vol 04 Mor­tal Iron Fist
Ms Mar­vel #40
New Avengers #54
Run­aways 3 #11
Secret War­riors #5
Thun­der­bolts #133
Uncanny X-Men #512
X-Factor #45
X-Force #16
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #214

Last week I tried to shake things up a bit by review­ing every comic picked up. While it was an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment I didn’t quite  get the response I was after, so we’re back to the three book deal this week.

Power Girl #2

It seems a lit­tle too soon to use the sec­ond issue as an expo­si­tion tool and drawn out ori­gin for the bad guy. Sure, it goes against con­ven­tion, but you know what? I didn’t mind it. Because the rest of the issue was devoted to Power Girl tak­ing on an albino gorilla with a super­hu­man brain. I could read that kind of thing forever.

Incog­nito #4

Still good. Still very good in fact. But it feel like the 2 month gap between issues #3 and #4 killed the momen­tum some­what. This issue is pretty much entirely fall­out. Zack is dis­cov­ered, inter­ro­gated by the SOS, a gov­ern­ment agency tasked with tak­ing down rogue super­pow­ers. (Which I guess in a way makes it the CIA of Incog­nito) and put back on the streets sans pow­ers. The improb­a­bly named Ava Destruc­tion throws a wrench into the whole idea of the bad guys com­ing for Zack’s blood. The pulpy ele­ments are still there, but the noirish tones have really started com­ing to the fore.

Mighty Avengers #26

I was all but ready to give this up after last month’s issue. It’s pretty easy to bag the book with it’s slow pac­ing and char­ac­ters don’t do a hell of a lot — except for Her­cules, who may just be the fun­ni­est char­ac­ter in the Mar­vel stable.

But then you get an issue like this  with crazy War­ren Ellis-style Zeno Rooms, sonic screw­drivers and sci­en­tific equa­tions that take phi­los­o­phy  into consideration.

It’s still dan­ger­ously close to being dropped, but if Dan Slott can keep load­ing the book with off the wall sci­ence stuff and improve char­ac­ter inter­ac­tion then it’ll keep it’s spot on the pull list for now.

Com­plete List

Ex Machina #43
Final Cri­sis After­math: Dance #2 (of 6)
Power Girl #2
Cable #15
Incog­nito #4
Mighty Avengers #26
X-Men: Legacy #225
Angel #22