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

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

Green Lantern Corps #33

Know what I really, really liked about this issue? The inclu­sion of a smack-talking, Steve Buscemi look-alike called ‘Imec­sub’. It was a nice call­back to Geoff Johns cre­ated Isamot (Tomasi back­wards) and a cool way for Tomasi to ‘pass it on’.

The rest of the issue is a period of down­time. Giv­ing the main char­ac­ters a quick breather before plung­ing into more ‘Black­est Night’ fun times. Kyle Raynor and Guy Gard­ner share a beer; Raynor and Natu, a kiss; Sarnek(?) and Vio­let Lantern Miri, words. It’s obvi­ous that Peter Tomasi is hav­ing a lot of fun with this. Espe­cially in the scenes where Raynor and Gar­dener involve the rest of the Corps into help­ing paint a mural on Oa.

There’s no eye­balls rain­ing from the sky, babies being cut out of wombs or other hor­ros. This comic is the dreaded f word. It’s FUN.

The backup Ori­gins and Omens story focuses on Kyle’s recent his­tory and teases that we’ll see a Black Lantern Jade in the upcom­ing Black­est Night. Despite her phys­i­cal body being blown to space dust way back in Infi­nite Crisis.

Incog­nito #2

When I reviewed the first issue I kinda bitched about how the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters weren’t exactly multi-dimensional. Well I take that all back.

I thought it’d be a lot longer — we’re talk­ing issue 4 or 5 — before the Zack’s boss, the Black Death showed up, but I’m glad to be proven wrong. I’m still unsure about what sort of threat he poses to the gen­eral pop­u­lace (apart from tele­path­i­cally talk­ing to peo­ple in black, evil look­ing thought bal­loons). But it’s something.

The story keeps flow­ing from pulp to noir fairly seam­lessly and at a decent clip. Scenes like Zack’s mad sci­en­tist cre­ator lit­er­ally pick­ing the brain of a pre­cog­ni­tive guy awe­somely called Max Gazer shoring up the pulp, almost EC Comics side. While Zack spends some qual­ity night time with a girl with seri­ous damsel-in-distress issues, who barely acknowl­edges him in his day­time civil­ian identity.

What I most like about this issue is that every­body has their own dark agenda. Not just the bad guys, but the “damsel” and even Zack’s new best friend. Zack is try­ing (not very hard) to be the hero, but the world has decided that he’s bad guy. It’ll be fun to see if he can push past that peer pres­sure and be the bet­ter man.

Com­plete List

Hell­boy: The Wild Hunt #3 (of 8)
Booster Gold #17
Green Lantern Corps #33
Trin­ity #37
Incog­nito #2
Angel #17

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)