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

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

Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four #60

60 issues? Thats it? Man, even the manga ver­sion of Sab­rina the Teenage Witch man­aged to hit 100 issues before it bowed out.

Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four started out with a strong idea. Four teenagers — trans­formed into vaguely ele­men­tal forms through a mishap with an exper­i­men­tal trans­porter — team up to have adven­tures through time and space. It should’ve been fun as hell, and it was for the most part, until Mike Carey came on board and things began to go wrong.

Start­ing with his reg­u­lar run all the technical/scifi stuff (stacked uni­verses, time travel) was pushed to one side — replaced with some ridicu­lously con­vo­luted Space Opera. Really, what the hell was that Seed Nine­teen stuff about anyway?

With Carey gone I’d hoped they’d be able to bring the title back around, make it fun and excit­ing again, but this was not meant to be. As near as I can tell the new writer was brought on solely to pro­vide filler for Jeph Loeb’s Ulti­ma­tum. The remain­ing two main char­ac­ters team up with two ene­mies to head to Atlantis, a place they’ve already been despite what they say, to use a macguf­fin that makes no sense what­so­ever. All this was eas­ily explained when I dis­cov­ered the writer’s main source of income was writ­ing episodes of Heroes, the scifi equiv­a­lent of eat­ing paste.

Because this is just an Ulti­ma­tum book mas­querad­ing as an Ulti­mate FF title it doesn’t even get it’s own finale. There’s a quicky rev­e­la­tion and then a ‘to be con­cluded in Ulti­ma­tum and Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four: Requiem’.

Two books? If this is an indi­ca­tion of how the Ulti­mate uni­verse will work once the line is rebooted after Ulti­ma­tum, with the sto­ries bleed­ing between titles and into one-shots, then count me out. I get enough of that with the real Mar­vel Universe.

X-Factor #40

Like last issue this book starts off with a note from Peter David that we don’t spoil any of the con­tent in this issue. And there’s a lot of impor­tant stuff hap­pen­ing here.

The bulk of this story con­sists of a meet­ing between Jamie Madrox and one of his last inde­pen­dent dupes, Pas­tor John Mad­docks (last seen back in issue #16). While for the most part it’s just two iden­ti­cal talk­ing heads hav­ing a theo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion it’s writ­ten (and drawn) well enough that it’s never bor­ing. Madrox has a lot on his mind after the events of the last issue. Its refresh­ing to see a comic book char­ac­ter work through things in a real­is­tic, human way rather than brush­ing them aside and switch­ing to “punch every­thing” mode.

There’s a series of small reveals that cul­mi­nate in one huge reveal that, if you’ve been fol­low­ing X-Factor from the begin­ning like me, should put a huge grin on your face.

Com­plete List

Adven­ture Comics #0
Trin­ity #38
Dark Avengers #2
Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four #60
Uncanny X-Men #506
X-Factor #40
X-Men Legacy #221

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

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #20

Read­ers of this site and fol­low­ers of my Twit­ter account may know of my utter dis­ap­point­ment with any­thing that comes from Jeph Loeb’s hand. So it was with utmost trep­i­da­tion that I sat down and started in on this book.

Just a note of warn­ing: this is a book for the hard­core fans only. Unless you’ve been watch­ing the show since episode one you will be lost.

The meat of this book is a flack­back to sea­son 2 of the TV show in the style of the ani­mated series that was pro­posed way­back when.

There’s a cou­ple of decent enough moments in the book, Like Buffy think­ing back to Angel’s words of advice and get­ting them mixed up. But the major­ity of it is just incred­i­bly bad. Like the “real-life” scenes that book­end the car­toony mid­dle. The char­ac­ters are writ­ten so over the top that they bor­der on par­ody. They get worse once the car­toon sequence begins.

And Loeb? Points off for using the same lame Wiz­ard of Oz ref­er­ence that you used in the sea­son finale of Heroes. It wasn’t good then and it’s not good in this book.

Thank the var­i­ous gods that this is just a one shot. I don’t think I could han­dle another Loeb issue.

Mighty Avengers #20

When Secret Inva­sion started way back at the start of the year both the Mighty and New Avengers books were hijacked to pro­vide for filler material.

You could eas­ily class this book as more filler, but the writ­ing, by Bendis, is just so much bet­ter than the main Secret Inva­sion book. I won­der how much bet­ter SI would’ve been had Bendis stuck to the small character-focused arcs, rather than resort­ing to scenes where the Skrulls break out the big guns.

Prob­a­bly my favourite part was the silent mon­tage of Ms Mar­vel fill­ing in Hank Pym on the Mar­vel Uni­verse hap­pen­ings since he’s been gone. Can’t wait for the inevitable pho­to­shops where Cap­tain America’s death is replaced with pic­tures of Sarah Palin. If it hasn’t hap­pened already that is.

There’s three artists listed in the cred­its: Lee Weeks, Jim Che­ung and Carlo Pag­u­layan. I don’t know why they needed three dif­fer­ent artists to fin­ish off this book as it’s just a stan­dard 22 pager. No upsiz­ing at all. Which is strange as this is Bendis’ last issue of Mighty Avengers. Dan Slott takes over next month ad for the fore­see­able future (hopefully).

Com­plete List:

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #20
Ex Machina #40
Trin­ity #29
Avengers: Ini­tia­tive #19
Dark Reign New Nation
Mighty Avengers #20
Thor: God-Size Spe­cial #1
Thun­der­bolts #127
Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four #59
Uncanny X-Men #505
X-Factor #38
X-Men: Legacy #219