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

Green Lantern #38

There’s no mess­ing around with the Hal Jordan-as-a-Red Lantern stuff from the end of the last issue. It’s dealt with by the mid­dle of the book, in a way that puts a lot of empha­sis on why the Blue Lanterns exist. Of course there’s a  down­side in that it unfor­tu­nately destroys my the­ory that Hal Jor­dan would con­trol all the rings by the end of the War of Light.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this book. The way it jumped from Ysmault to Earth to Qward to the Vega Sys­tem pro­vid­ing lit­tle hooks into future sto­ry­lines. Like Carol Fer­ris return­ing to the Star Sap­phires (now Vio­let Lanterns) after play­ing a major part in their for­ma­tion way back in The Sins of the Star Sap­phires story arc; Sine­stro escap­ing back to Qward to pre­pare for his incur­sion into the Green Lantern Corps book to face off against Mongul for the lead­er­ship of Sinestro’s epony­mous Corps; and the Con­trollers head­ing to the Vega Sys­tem to remind every­one that the Agent Orange story starts next month.

As the Black­est Night mini-event gets closer both Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps books are pick­ing up a lot of momen­tum, espe­cially this book. I still remem­ber how slowly Secret Ori­gin plod­ded along just to set up Atroc­i­tus as the Red Lantern big bad, so I really shouldn’t com­plain about pac­ing. I got what I wished for.

X-Force #12

Back in New X-Men Kyle and Yost spun some really great tales fea­tur­ing the kids ver­sus long time X-Men foes like Rev­erend Stryker. When they announced the move to X-Force (along with ini­tial char­ac­ter sketches) I was, much like the rest of the inter­net, imme­di­ately skep­ti­cal. A year later I’m happy to say that I was wrong. X-Force is good. Bet­ter than it deserves to be, for sure, But I like it.

Well ‘liked’ might be a bet­ter word. This issue was just very, very underwhelming.

It starts off with the team quickly real­is­ing that they weren’t exactly suc­cess­ful in keep­ing Bas­tion from the get­ting his robot hands on the Legacy Virus (as seen last issue). D-grade mutants start show­ing up in the mid­dle of pro-human rallys, with their pow­ers flar­ing wildly out of con­trol, killing all the protesters.

Apart from that, not a whole lot actu­ally hap­pens this issue. There is an incred­i­bly awk­ward exchange between Rahne, in wolf-humanoid form, and some sort of Asgar­dian wolf-god. But the less said about that the better.

If I was going to choose a shin­ing moment it would be find­ing out, on the recap page of all places, that Domino has a real name.

Just so I don’t end on a downer I thought I’d men­tion the colour­ing. The usual muted grey/brown palette gets a huge kick this issue with the addi­tion bright oranges and pinks of the energy spikes spin­ning off the Legacy Virus-infected.

— —  — –

I’m off on hol­i­day next week, so no reviews for a cou­ple of weeks. Once I’m set­tled in I’ll be chang­ing the reviews up a bit. I’m run­ning low of the spare time needed to prop­erly review a books so I’ll just be review­ing the one book each week. I’m going to ran­domly pick the book out of the weekly pile so it could be the worst or it could be the best.

Com­plete List

Green Lantern #38
Trin­ity #39
Avengers: Ini­tia­tive #22
Mighty Avengers #22
Ms Mar­vel #36
New Avengers #50
Run­aways vol 3 #7
Thun­der­bolts #129
X-Force #12
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #210
Angel #18

Final Cri­sis #7 (of 7)

Well this was cer­tainly something.

If you didn’t read Super­man: Beyond before this final issue I would imag­ine that this would come across as a gar­bled mess.  Even after read­ing S:B, it still has a lot of rough edges.

It’s main strength is that it doesn’t play out as a typ­i­cal event line-wide comic (though it is hin­dered by mis­di­rected mar­ket­ing on DC’s behalf). There’s no great uni­ver­sal upheaval that affects every sin­gle char­ac­ter. This is Superman’s story and, to a lesser extent, Batman’s. But it is enjoy­able, and that’s the main point.

Like all ser­ial minis there’s a lot of ques­tions left unan­swered. I could write these down, but instead I’ll direct you to The Final Cri­sis FAQ project over at Comics Should Be Good. They seem to be doing a bet­ter job of it.

Legion of Super Heroes #50

Wow. I take back every­thing I said about Final Cri­sis’ empty ending.

I’m well aware that Jim Shooter had to hack at the main plot­lines he’d been build­ing for the past year, but this is just ridicu­lous. What should be a huge mon­u­men­tal bat­tle between good and evil is not much more than a skir­mish between seven Legionar­ies and a hand­ful of bad guys.

The dan­gling thread about the fate of Dream Girl, some­thing given all of three pan­els over the last four issues,  is given a res­o­lu­tion at the very end, but with most of the work seem­ingly han­dled off panel it just comes across as filler. Then there’s the big reveal last issue of Princess Pro­jec­tra being the final Big Bad. But that’s com­pletely dropped.

I’ve only read one issue of Geoff John’s Super­man and the Legion of Super­heroes and the two issues of Legion of Three Worlds, but they’ve been a lot more fun to read than the last year or so of this series. I guess that’s the major prob­lem I had with this title. Jim Shooter for­got to make it fun, and it suf­fered for that.

Long live the Legion!

Note: I’ve read that Jim Shooter didn’t even write this last issue. Can’t wait to here the story behind that.

New Avengers #49

I sat down to read this fully expect­ing that the “search for the baby” plot would be stretched out for at least six issues. That Bendis man­aged to resolve it in under 22 pages, with next-to-no decom­pres­sion, is noth­ing less than a small miracle.

If Bendis can keep that pace up for at least half a year then I’ll be a happy guy.

Com­plete List

Final Cri­sis #7 (of 7)
Legion of Super Heroes #50
Trin­ity #35
Avengers Ini­tia­tive #21
Ms Mar­vel #35
New Avengers #49
Run­aways 3 #6
X-Force #11
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #209 Dark Avengers Cvr

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)

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #19

It’s incred­i­bly hard to review this issue of Buffy. The pre­vi­ous issue shipped nearly 3 months ago so I’ve for­got­ten nearly every­thing that’s hap­pened in this sto­ry­line. All I remem­bered when going in was Buffy was 200 years in the future with Fray (the last Slayer), Dark Wil­low was again the Big Bad, Nice Wil­low was try­ing to get Buffy back and Dawn was in the for­est with Xander.

To prop­erly review this issue I’d have to go back through the last few issues to catch up. Due to poor fil­ing skills thats not going to hap­pen, so I’m stuck read­ing this book with only a vague rec­ol­lec­tion of whats come before.

So, the story. Buffy fights Fray. Fray fights Buffy. Dark Wil­low tries to kill Buffy “to save the world”. Dawn and Xan­der fight ghostly goblin-things with some help from mag­i­cal for­est sprites and a hand­ful of Slay­ers. Buffy kills Dark Wil­low. Buffy returns to her present. Oh, and Riley makes an appear­ance at the end with a Twi­light scar on his chest.

So Twi­light is the Ini­tia­tive? This and many other ques­tions remain unan­swered in this issue.

The art serves the story well. While the char­ac­ters are not hyper real­is­tic like in the ongo­ing Angel series, I was still able to recog­nise Riley easy enough.

The 3 month delay is a real shame, because up until this point Sea­son 8 has been a lot of fun to read. I’m wor­ried that the huge delay shook a few read­ers loose. I’m sure this sto­ry­line will read a lot bet­ter in trades. So some­one Jefah should enjoy it a lot more than I did.

Dou­ble shame is the con­sis­tently bad Jeph Loeb is writ­ing the next issue. It makes me won­der if they’re inten­tion­ally try­ing to lose readers.

Thor: Man of War

How do you sur­pass the Blood Colos­sus — a venge­ful giant made from the blood and flesh of fallen vikings and pow­ered by a god — that appeared in Thor: Reign of Blood? The short answer is “you don’t”. But Man of War doesn’t suf­fer from a lack of Blood Colossi at all.

This, the third (and last) book in Matt Fraction’s series of Thor one-shots is a great yarn about what hap­pens when gods get pissed off at humans, other gods and exis­tence itself. While a lot darker and grit­tier than Reign of Blood, or Ages of Thun­der before it, Frac­tion still man­ages to weave a lot of black com­edy (the best kind of com­edy!) into the story.

The book is divided into two halves with a dif­fer­ent artist han­dling each part. Clay Mann (really?) does a decent enough job on the first half, right up until the Storm Giant shows up. The next few pages of bat­tle were incred­i­bly hard to fol­low, until I spent a few min­utes star­ing at each panel and try­ing to suss it all out.

The final part, drawn by “artist” Patrick Zircher, is a lot eas­ier to read. Maybe because he didn’t feel the need to invoke the z-axis like Mann. Odin and Thor’s final bat­tle has just the right amount of bloody Viking action to keep me want­ing more. But sadly this looks like it for Fraction’s Thor. You will be missed.

Wolver­ine: Ori­gins #30

It feels a bit weird to be review­ing the last issue in a two book crossover. But after last week’s far too happy reviews I needed a book I knew would be bad. Of course I wasn’t count­ing on Buffy drop­ping the ball this week.

Any­way, on to this issue. It begins with Wolver­ine squar­ing off against against his *shud­der* son Daken. At least it lets Mike Deodato draw the one good panel in the entire book. A worm’s eye view of the two, claws out and ready to get slic­ing. While this is hap­pen­ing Pro­fe­sor X lies dead on the floor. vic­tim of a psy­chic bomb planted deep in Daken’s mind. Oh, whats that? He’s not dead just uncon­scious? It seems the dam­age from the bomb trig­gered in the last issue was inef­fec­tive against the “frac­tured nature of his mind”. Uh, right.

Wolver­ine retreats to his happy place in an attempt to hold back the beserker rage he’s well known for. But then his “Julie Bowan in white lin­gerie moment’” quickly becomes “Grandma mak­ing out with Shooter McGavin while wear­ing a KISS mask” and the fight is back on.

Pro­fes­sor X brings them both into Wolverine’s happy place and explains that Daken draws his rage from the same place. Back in the real world Daken stabs Sebas­t­ian Shaw before he can kill Pro­fes­sor X. Then Daken and Wolver­ine wan­der off to rejoin their own sto­ry­line. Phew.

Deodato’s pen­cils are fine, but hey’re let down by sub­stan­dard ink­ing. The less said about Daniel Way’s writ­ing, the better.

Com­plete Pull List:

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #19
Legion of Super Heroes #48
Trin­ity #26
Ms Mar­vel #33
Run­aways vol 3 #4
Thor: Man of War
Ulti­mate Ori­gins #5 (of 5)
Ulti­mate X-Men #98
Wolver­ine: Ori­gins #30
X-Force #9
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #207