August 14, 2003
Last week I wrote a bit about Dark Horse Comics, what I like about their current stuff, what I don’t like, and what’s coming out in October that looks interesting. I thought I’d do the same for Image, DC and Marvel all at once, since I’m mentioning PREVIEWS solicitations and people need to get those pre-orders in, right? After all this, I’ll still have a load of reviews to run through.
Image Consulting
Image is a publisher that, aside from a couple titles, I haven’t been following. So it seemed to me that in the interest of fairness I should start sampling some of their wares. I have to confess that very little of what they put out moves me to pick it up, and their solicitations don’t help. Case in point: FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER:
“The best cop. Three of the worst mobsters. One sewn together body: This is the Frankenstein Mobster. Four souls at war with themselves. Who will be in control? Inspired by 1930’s gangster and horror movies. Featuring the up-to-date female detective, Terri Todd. Set in a city where the lower class are monsters; vampires, mummies, and ghouls. A city that is corrupt to the core, where the mobs hold power over the cops and every citizen.”
Hoo-boy. I know very smart people excited about this, and I like writer/artist Mark Obie Wheatley well enough, but who wrote this copy? It’s barely English, too long (like most Image blurbs), and it just sounds ridiculous. One thing people need to think about is how the copy works with the art next to it as well. Seeing Frankie lounging on some throne, calmly holding a tommy gun, doesn’t say “four souls at war with themselves” to me. And call me a crank, but I don’t see the purpose of #0 issues anymore, unless it’s a prequel thing released well after #1. Despite all my curmudgeonly comments, this book at least sounds a little different, unlike a ton of other Image books listed.
HAWAIIAN DICK: THE LAST RESORT should be decent. The first one was fine. Very good art; could maybe crank up the tension and humor a bit.
INVINCIBLE #8 isn’t something I’ll be picking up, but I have heard good things about the book and may get the first trade when it comes out. I mention this issue because it’s some sort of funeral issue with guest appearances by Savage Dragon, Shadowhawk and other Image superheroes. I’m wondering what the point is? I mean, it’s fine, but maybe some bigger Image fans can tell me if they really like this kind of thing. I say this because there are so very many other Image books that are self-contained, so what does three or four minimally connected superhero series really do for anybody?
I will say that I’m thinking of picking up Erik Larsen’s SAVAGE DRAGON again, based on good word of mouth from some friends. The last time I did this, at the #76 jump-on point, I got bored after a while, as nothing was really happening, and half the “fun” seemed to be from seeing different versions of old characters, which of course means nothing to new readers. Sounds like Larsen has improved things, and is also channeling his love of Lee/Kirby-era FANTASTIC FOUR into something better than that pointless limited series of a year or so ago, so I’m willing to try again.
LEAVE IT TO CHANCE by James Robinson and Paul Smith sees its third hardcover shipping, which I think concludes the original series. A good, fun, all-ages series, and I’m glad Image publishes it in such a nice format, especially as things are moving towards digest-sized trades in many cases.
Should somebody be told that whatever font their using for these solicitations makes an apostrophe turn into an “i” with an accent where the dot would be? So “Roger’s” becomes “Rogeris” with a little flair to it, and it’s really annoying. As for the rest of the regular Image section, I like POWERS a lot still but am only buying the trades, so I imagine this apparently crazy latest storyline will work better all at once. What gets me about Image, though, is how poorly planned their releases seem to be, how kind of old-fashioned. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s exactly the wrong move to launch a whole bunch of new titles all at once. In the `90s, that might have been kind of excited, like you the reader were getting in on the ground floor of a cool new movement, be it Image, Bravura, Valiant, what have you. But it just doesn’t work these days, or only for a very short term. Lot of takers for MYTHSTALKERS-HEDGE KNIGHT-HELLHOUNDS-FEATHER-CAPES-FACTION PARADOX-REALM OF THE CLAW-REX MUNDI-OXIDO? I don’t think so, so that’s a lot of stretching of the G.I. JOE dollar. Of course, with Image books, the creators take more of the financial burden upon themselves, so I guess that’s how they can be more reckless.
As for the other Image “houses”, Top Cow continues to not intrigue. WITCHBLADE penciler Francis Manapul writes that from #70-75 (the “heart-wrenching” conclusion, he says), twelve major characters, including the lead, Sara Pezzini herself, will be thrown in a kind of dead pool / American Idol competition to see which ten live and which two die. I guess my problem with this is that it’s a gimmick that has little to offer a new reader. If I don’t know the characters, what do I care if any of them die? And since it will only realistically be regular readers voting, Sara is in no danger. Maybe the enterprisingly cruel among you (I’m cruel enough, not enterprising enough) can get some like-minded friends together to try to get her killed, but even so, they would just throw in a new chick, not cancel the book.
A guy whose head I’d like a peek inside is Paul Jenkins. I remember discovering his work on PETER PARKER and liking the characterization, but maybe being a little more enthusiastic towards it because he was following a weak suck like Howard Mackie. Just a few issues in, Jenkins was creating horrid new villains, and his run went from erratic to fewer and fewer bright spots, and the vastly superior Spidey stories by Brian Michael Bendis, and generally superior ones by J. Michael Straczynski, made Jenkins’ book fall off my radar. And it seems that he’s fallen off a lot of people’s radar, too. No Ultimate books for him. Some crap Marvel miniseries and then nothing this year.
Yes, ORIGIN was a big hit, and I guess he’s following it now with a look at the last days of Wolverine, but did many people really like ORIGIN? Any reason to read it again? No SENTRY follow-up—was there an INHUMANS sequel starring nobody teen characters? It’s a blur. He also made what looked from the start to be a bad move, taking on some dubious editorial job at Top Cow that also entailed writing long-in-the-tooth, low-in-the-yield properties like WITCHBLADE and now THE DARKNESS. Now, I haven’t read his work on either book, or that crossover miniseries thing, so I can’t condemn them, but neither have I ever read a good review of this stuff, or heard good things. What I will say is that I think there may be an impression that if Jenkins is willing to work on books that not many like or respect, it throws more doubt on the popular stuff. I mean, Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis or even Brian Wood fans were for the most part not excited to learn they were writing VAMPIRELLA stories (Morrison and Ellis years ago, in case I confused you), and Jenkins isn’t nearly the writer Morrison or Ellis is.
|
That said, I’ll give credit to Dale Keown, whose art in the DARKNESS #6 solicitation looks pretty cool—something that would be pretty amazing in a movie, though as someone unfamiliar with the book, why is the guy’s head so exposed, when the rest of him, even his face, is armored? Is the long hair really strong? Someone let me know, thanks.
I also wonder about these expensive items like the $30 “Top Cow Jam Poster 2003” and the $100 CGG graded DARKNESS #1. Do the few sales of these products really support the publishing costs?
Finally, one has to worry a little about nice boys like Marc Andreyko and Scott Morse getting involved with Todd McFarlane, but at least CASE FILES: SAM AND TWITCH is a winner so far. I reviewed the first issue positively, with only criticism that the storytelling device of having every page broken into just three same-sized panels covering three different timelines would get old if repeated. Well, #2 is the same thing, and I liked it just as well. It has to be said that the story is a bit of a slow burn, without a lot of thrills and surprises, but as far as establishing a story with layers of dread, grief, and anger, both creators are doing excellent work. I’d say this one might work better as a trade paperback, but McFarlane hasn’t collected the rest of Bendis’ run on the previous SAM AND TWITCH series, so don’t hold your breath.
THE DARKNESS: WANTED DEAD #1 (OF 3) By Frank Tieri, Mark Texiera and Matt Milla. Image Comics. $2.95
From what I gather, Jackie Estacado is able to turn into/call upon something called The Darkness, a creeping black thing that covers his body and looks like armor when in place. The Mafia wants him dead and have hired a bunch of assassins to get the job done. We learn about this vendetta through page after scenery-chewing page of the mob boss yelling about it in Tieri’s overripe dialogue. He can’t seem to go more than a page at a time without some reference to sex or the body, always in the ugliest turns of phrase. Texeira does his best but has to draw lots of scenes of guys talking in dark rooms, not exactly his sweet spot. It’s a pretty lousy book, and a bad introduction to Jackie, as he only shows up at the very end in a flashback.
Codependent Comics Reviews
The stuff this week that didn’t come from Marvel, DC or Image. Usually it’s all mixed together, but I’m doing a thing here, like. Go with it.
KOMIKWERKS VOLUME 1 by Various. Komikwerks, LLC. $9.95
Komikwerks is a burgeoning and busy collective of comics and animation artists exploring their muses through webcomics. This is a trade paperback collecting not the best of this material, but rather almost all new stories created for print. I initially found this kind of
refreshing, as most anthologies seem to be more centered toward art-comics, so for a change it’s nice to see linear storytelling and a lot of different genre efforts thrown at you one by one. The problem is that while there’s nothing terrible here, none of it is exceptional, either. I liked “Master Minds” by Aaron Sowd, Lance Karutz and James Denning, a solid spoof of comic book supervillain clichés. The previous story, “Power Lunch” by Patrick Coyle, imagines superheroes being like professional athletes, with a devious superagent making deals for them, getting them on the best superteams and the like. A good bit of fun with both a look and feel somewhat like POWERS. The other stories mainly attempt to launch new series, graphic novels, what have you, with spare and unsatisfying stories. There’s a feeling that the creators aren’t comfortable with the form, either trying to cram too much in or holding too much back for a longer story, offering just a tease. Concepts like “Dewclaw”, where anthropomorphic canines fight about whether they should continue to serve humans, just don’t seem well thought out. If you’re just as smart and strong as a human, why would you continue to honor them? But overall this is a pleasant but slight collection that is free of pretension but a good deal shy of excellence. There are future volumes already in the works, though, so perhaps we can see some growth and refinement.
COMIC BOOK ARTIST (V.2) #1 Edited by Jon B. Cooke. Top Shelf Productions. $7.50
With better production values, including a glossy color section, a better design, higher page count, and an appealing new pissiness creeping into the editorial tone, CBA launches its second volume with one of its best issues ever. Some readers may miss the theme issues focusing on defunct old series and publishing houses, but Cooke strikes a good balance between the quality creators and work of yesterday and today, mainstream and alternative. Neal Adams is as engaging as ever, and the Alex Ross interview likewise provides some insight into his creative process that most interviews with the man miss in their focus on his visions of this or that Golden-or-Silver Age character. Instead, we get a few of the nuts and bolts of how he actually produces his art, and there’s a nice continuity between this and the Adams interview, both men discussing the others’ work and its appeal to them.
Other features include a handsome Craig Thompson sketchbook, a middling interview with fantasist Michael Moorcock and a history of ARCADE, which has a good Art Spiegelman interview about his work on this seminal book. That’s quite a bit of range for one magazine, all tied together by intelligent questions from Cooke, who is obviously relishing the increased freedom under the Top Shelf banner. A handsome issue, well worth the price for all the good it contains.
MADMAN KING-SIZE SPECIAL by Mike Allred, Daniel Krall, Steve Weissman and Nick Derington. Oni Press. $6.95
Longtime Allred fans will be rewarded for their patience, as Allred not only returns to his most beloved creation, but with an innocent romanticism and silliness unsullied by the more cynical, but brilliant, X-FORCE/X-STATIX series written by Peter Milligan that Allred has been drawing the past three years. In this tale, Frank Einstein contemplates his crazy past and his crazy love for Joe, while confronting robots and a grieving scientist father who has turned into a fish-man. Even read as a black-and-white preview, the art is dazzling and invigorating, with a spaciousness not seen in the wordier X-STATIX. The ending is abrupt and vague, but the presence of three backup stories eased that momentary pain.
The first is by Daniel (ONE PLUS ONE) Krall, depicting Snap City teens talking disparagingly about Madman until a teen girl recounts her own personal experience with him, setting the record straight. It’s cute and I really like Krall’s art, which shows a great command of the slack body poses of youth. Nick Derington contributes a story starring Frank and a lot of his supporting cast, continuing the monologue about how beautifully strange, angst-ridden and love-filled his second life is. Derington has worked with Allred before and has a good feel for his writing style, plus his art has the right kitschy, Jay Stephens quality to it. For his part, Weissman does his usual kid thing, a quirky story involving a family who worship and dress like Madman, and it’s ace work.
THE FRANK BOOK by Jim Woodring. Fantagraphics Books. $49.99
As Eric Burdon once sang,
“Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” This is a common human need, but in these stories Woodring seems to have sublimated it, presenting a series of willfully opaque adventures that resist analysis. Quite honestly, however, this is a good thing. Most comics are very easy to understand. And for the most part I like this. Tell me a story and tell it well. But a challenging work is good for the reader and reviewer.
What I found, in reading page after page of this cute, silent animal Frank—closer to an anthropomorphic cat than anything, but not quite—is that I enjoyed it more the less I tried to figure it out. Oh, I made some observations—there’s a lot of dismemberment and quite a bit of cloning; Whim may represent the unknowable God, or the Devil, or both; Manhog seems to be Humanity at its worst, sniveling and groveling and sweating, without love or dignity or understanding—but when these are all read together, what comes out is a simple but true message that Life is beautiful and terrible and we’ll never comprehend it. Woodring’s art is incredibly suited to this task, with rich and bold linework and gorgeous use of color, while at the same time obsessive and horrifying in its intensity.
With the power of repetition behind him, these stories get under one’s skin to the extent it’s not hard, a week after finishing the book, to draw one of the ubiquitous acorn-shaped temples/palaces from the stories myself, or to imagine the odor and sheen of Manhog, or even to contemplate affecting an unknowable Franklike grin as one walks through this world of either achingly vibrant color or quivering, humming ink lines. The book refuses to directly engage but it insinuates, the quietly rising tide of visual information soaking through your shoes and socks, and finally, your skin.
SLEEP, LITTLE GIRL by Sergio Bleda. Strip Art Features. $12.95
Juan, a low-rent investigative journalist, looks into a case of a young girl’s foster parents both dying in their sleep on the same night. Not only did the same thing happen to the previous set of foster parents, but the girl’s biological parents had been murdered before that. As he digs deeper he unlocks the girl’s secret but he may not live to tell about it.
Bleda delivers a good read here, with competent but developing painted artwork and a good sense of dialogue and pacing. Scenes between Juan and his wife Maria, or his buddy, are natural and unforced. The climax and ending are the only real weak areas, as Bleda isn’t able to create much suspense, nor was there quite enough space given to characterization for the reader to much care about them at the end. And there’s one really bad plot point where the guy finds the girl at an institution and, behind shrubbery, manipulates and entices her to give him a call some time. It’s got an unfortunate and unintended pedophiliac undercurrent that makes it hard to sympathize with the guy later. Not that he’s a pervert, but going to such lengths for his story, preying on a traumatized girl, doesn’t make one root for him later, even if the girl isn’t all she appears to be.
KILLING DEMONS by Peter Siegel and Brent White. Engine Press. $8.95
An energetic if flawed graphic novel, KILLING DEMONS tells the story of Detective Sarah Bentley forced to seek the help of noted demon hunter and eccentric Joshua Brand regarding a homicide where the victim’s limbs were removed and stitched back on the opposite sides, with no blood loss. It’s an original and shocking grabber, I’ll give it that. From then on, the book is pretty much what the title suggests, killing a lot of demons. And White’s art is creepy and effective at depicting the action. The story succeeds as a pulpy adventure with an influence from 80s gore films.
Where Siegel stumbles a bit is the structure and characterization. The first scene shows us Brand as a child, essentially forced into this life of demon slaying, and when you start out showing the lead as a kid, there’s an implication that the author intends to make him a sympathetic character, intends to delve into the events that led to his current psychological makeup. That’s not really developed here, however, and Brand comes off as a cipher, a cocksure type not unlike Sherlock Holmes but with a bad ponytail in place of the genius and the deerstalker cap.
It’s harder still to get a handle on Sarah, though the solicitation would have you believe she’s the protagonist. Her and Brand’s sex scene comes out of nowhere, maybe an 80s film influence that shouldn’t have been used. There’s no building rapport, no sexual chemistry. Basically, when there’s a free moment between carnage, she climbs on top of him. All in all, it’s an entertaining debut with a good price point, and the good parts are good enough that I’ll be looking forward to seeing what Siegel and White do in the future.
CHALAND ANTHOLOGY: FREDDY LOMBARD VOL. 1 & 2 by Yves Chaland. Humanoids Publishing. $24.95 ea.
Even as someone with minimal knowledge of Herge’s TINTIN series of beloved adventure graphic albums, it’s easy to see the influence on Chaland, who in these five tales creates adventures for a more mature, even cynical reader. These date from the 80s and, like Herge’, Chaland has proven to be a major influence of artists the world over. One can see in his characters the elegance and simplicity one sees in Andi Watson’s work, though in a more refined version, and with backgrounds as realistic as any European artist where Watson is a minimalist.
The clair ligne master debuts freelance adventurer Lombard along with sidekicks Snipe and Dina, in “The Will of Godfrey of Bouillon”, where the trio seek the location of a family treasure for a drunken heir. The simple story is padded out with an enjoyable alternate version of same set in medieval times, one of Freddy’s dreams. In an interview excerpted in Vol. 2, Chaland described this as a “clever trick”, which seems a bit much when discussing a hoary convention like a dream sequence. The backgrounds in this story are simpler, more like Disney comics or ASTERIX, and the coloring is muted, but it’s still artistically impressive. The story itself, though meandering, remains entertaining and frequently funny, with a nice twist at the end.
“The Elephant Graveyard” is a further artistic refinement, with Chaland experimenting with Hitchcockian angles and utilizing many more panels per page. There’s an excellent use of color in a jazz club scene, all tans and a reddish brown that foretellss primal violence about to emerge. And after losing his already trademarked scowl a few pages in, Freddy starts to become a little more developed as a character, along with Sweep and Dina. The emphasis is still on plot, though, which is a little surprising since Chaland’s plots are so loose. Really, the first twenty pages of this one have little to do with the quest for the Elephant Graveyard at all. Instead we have some jungle intrigue, complete with offensive native caricatures—skin black as pitch except for the big white eyes and pink lips—and a sadistic, whip-cracking, jodhpur-wearing white chick. The real story kicks in now, the tension of the white hunters now being the hunted. It ends up being an eye-for-eye morality tale suitable of 50s EC Comics, but Chaland invests it with significance through clever storytelling tricks on almost every page.
Chaland uses his thickest and most beautiful line yet on “The Comet of Carthage”. His confidence apparently soaring, he lets his art speak alone, without dialogue, for many stretches of a page or nearly a page or more. The coloring is also the best yet, Chaland being careful to choose a couple objects to be bright on each page, holding the eye long enough to process the more realistically colored objects and backgrounds.
The story is a suspense thriller involving the trio protecting a wife from her husband as he stalks them in their home, both the art and dialogue dreamier, more intense and more lyrical than ever before, with passages such as,
“And those damn sculptors who, damned and marked by an offense, beat themselves on the chest and forehead, have but one strange dark hope. They pray that death, soaring like the sun, will plant flowers in their brains.”
Dina reveals her own feelings for Freddy, and her closely-held knowledge he’s not quite the creep he appears to be, in a sad soliloquoy. The story careens off the road early on but the bumpy ride is just as enjoyable in this case.
Volume 2 begins with the penultimate Freddy tale, “Holiday in Budapest”, a classic set in a Hungary suffering political turmoil. Dina is a tutor for a precocious boy, Laszlo, whose uncle is set to become the leader of Hungary. To do so, he can’t foment revolution but has to bide his time and let it come to him. This plan results in a friend being framed but it’s part of the larger picture.
Snipe and Freddy aren’t happy to have the kid around, but eventually warm to him. Meanwhile, Snipe is seduced by the uncle’s sexy, forward assistant, which leads to him trading on their passionate new relationship to help save an imprisoned Laszlo. It’s the best Lombard story yet: politically and sexually charged, full of regret and intrigue, and it lets Freddy’s better and less mercenary nature finally come through.
“F-52” is another departure, about the first flight of an immense, advanced new commercial aircraft. Freddy & Co. are working on board in various roles and there are not one but two suspense plots. The first involves a covert search for a passenger who may be a dangerous saboteur, and the second involves a loathsome couple who abduct another passenger’s daughter and try to pass her off as their own, dumping their own retarded daughter. Freddy and his friends are really supporting characters in this, and the best scenes involve the couple and the tense search. An unsettling but masterful end to the Lombard stories of Chaland, who died in a car accident at age 33. Both volumes are very good, but one may actually want to start with the better Volume 2 and decide from there about continuing.
The House of Medeas
Let’s wrap up talking about Marvel and DC a little. I don’t happen to care that much about this and that creator being pulled from one company to the other for an exclusive deal. I’ll follow Grant Morrison to whatever he does, so it’s not that big a deal if he leaves NEW X-MEN, good as it is, for something else, because there’s a good chance the new thing will be as good or better. Now, as far as Marvel goes, they’re not in as bad a shape as it might initially look. Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, and Garth Ennis are not just good writers but prolific ones. Add the terrific Priest and Milligan on THE CREW and X-STATIX, good-but-uneven scribes like Straczynski, Peter David and Bruce Jones, and that’s quite a few books covered. One or two of the hordes of new writers will do something worthwhile.
This is a pretty good lineup, though it still can’t cover up the fact that Chuck Austen gets way too much work for how unexceptional it all is. Austen’s problem is his work is, to my mind, not distinctive enough for most fans to recognize the tics and start to actively despise it. I mean, good Warren Ellis scripts and crap Warren Ellis scripts still have the same “sound” to them, you know? “You pathetic little man” has been used, with minor variations, in approximately 47 different issues, I think. More on this below.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #500 is a double-sized anniversary for the comic many of us still hold as a favorite. I don’t think there’s a better character than Peter Parker/Spidey in comics, really, so there’s my bias. That’s not saying more than 25% of these issues are worth reading again, though, and I think JMS is running out of steam. That Mafia monster storyline was too long for what it was. And I’m guessing, since every Spidey villain is being worked into the story, that the story itself will be paper-thin, but hey, you do get both Romitas working together on it, so I can throw $3.50 Marvel’s way on this.
Loeb and Sale do one more go-round with their reworking of classic Marvel material, this time for HULK: GRAY. I’d guess, given the flavor of the others, we’ll get a lot of Bruce Banner’s narration, which could be good. This will be a lightweight book, but pretty and reasonably entertaining.
NYX by Quesada and Middleton will get a look from me, but it does seem we see at least two of these teen mutants miniseries each year. Very lewd solicitation artwork on this, with the jailbait blonde licking a pacifier, but I can’t say it’s not attractive.
1602 will probably be fun. Seems like Gaiman is just doing a high-toned Elseworlds story with one of those inordinately fortunate Kubert boys, though. If it was a better artist, I’d be more excited about this.
Have you noticed how Marvel is trying to bring back a bad trend from the `90s (and `70s, I guess) of giving solo books to villains? THANOS; KINGPIN; MYSTIQUE; VENOM, etc. If they’re miniseries, that’s fine, but I do wonder just what you can do with Thanos month after month. Do his schemes just keep failing, or are they going for a different approach, where we see the human side of the mass murdering, death-obsessed putty face?
CAPTAIN AMERICA will, one year after its relaunch, finally be readable, as Dave Gibbons does an arc with art by the underrated Lee Weeks. I expect Gibbons to do a good job reminding us of whatever value the character still has.
Looks like Marvel isn’t listing any of their hardcovers of the past couple years in this month’s PREVIEWS, so I don’t know what that means. Hopefully they stay in print, and books like ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and DAREDEVIL continue in both the hard-and-softcover formats. One new hardcover that will probably be nice to leaf through is THE ART OF MARVEL, which I think is just a coffee table book of painted versions of Marvel characters. One of those things you wouldn’t mind getting as a gift but wouldn’t really buy, because how often would you look at it?
Speaking of collected series, are the Busiek/Perez AVENGERS trades all still in print? Probably, but it sure is annoying to see a VOL. 1 used in the title for the first arc of Geoff Johns’ uninspired run.
The most interesting collection being solicited then is ESSENTIAL TOMB OF DRACULA, finally making available the seminal Wolfman/Colan vampire series, or at least the first twenty-five issues of it, more volumes presumably to follow. And with Colan’s artwork and the mood of the stories, the ESSENTIAL black-and-white presentation should work really well, though I’d prefer nicer paper for a higher price point. Still, I’ll be picking this one up.
Distinguished Comics Attrition
DC has recently added Grant Morrison to its list of exclusive writers, among other big talents like Loeb & Sale, and I’m guessing they’ll have a pretty strong 2004. There are always weird areas with DC—I still don’t get why the generally strong Eye of the Storm line from Wildstorm isn’t doing better—but Vertigo and the mainline seem to be in about as good a shape as one would expect, given the tight control DC has over its superhero properties.
Their Previews listings are huge affairs, pretty well-designed and intelligent. I appreciate the should-be-common-sense of plugging other books by the same creator or featuring the same character within the solicit copy.
As far as upcoming stuff, we’ve got the 100 BULLETS team of Azzarello and Risso on a six-issue BATMAN arc, which I imagine will be cool and dark and not altogether essential. I’ll get it, not expecting excellence.
Azz also has a hardcover Sgt. Rock graphic novel out, BETWEEN HELL AND A HARD PLACE, drawn by the great Joe Kubert. I’d probably wait for the softcover but do think this sounds good, both a war story and a murder mystery. But $25 for 30 minutes of reading always chafes me.
Judd Winick isn’t the most reliable writer, but CAPER sounds promising, with art by Farel (POP GUN WAR) Dalrymple, John Severin and Tom Fowler on respective four issue arcs.
LIFE EATERS is some painted hardcover about Vikings or something. Pretty, but no thanks. Similar no to the Pander Bros’ BATMAN: CITY OF LIGHT, as an eight issue mini sounds like padding to me, and I’ve never been a big fan of theirs. And let’s round out the “no’s!” with BATMAN/JOKER: SWITCH by Devin Grayson and her apparent hostage John Bolton. Neil Gaiman—please give this guy some work again.
TWO-STEP is the least promising in a raft of largely misfiring Warren Ellis DC projects in 2003. RELOAD fell apart at the end, MEK was an abomination of mismatched talents and poor structure, and TOKYO STORM WARNING fails as no-brainer fun less because of Ellis than really dreary art that misses every attempt at cool manga tropes. GLOBAL FREQUENCY has to be the biggest disappointment, as it has the best premise but little effort in execution and absolutely no tension or characters. I think it’s clear that even though there are good moments here and there in these books, and RED is off to a decent start, there is absolutely nothing here that one would want to read a second time, unlike his trinity of TRANSMET, PLANETARY and THE AUTHORITY.
Okay, let’s cool down now, mentioning that good recent series like 21 DOWN and H-E-R-O have their first collections coming, Morrison’s ANIMAL MAN and a host of classic old superhero series continue to be collected, and the Silver Age hipster Bob Haney has a new book coming, TEEN TITANS SWINGIN’ ELSEWORLDS SPECIAL, with art by Jay Stephens and Mike Allred. I can’t imagine that not being worth some chuckles, even if it’s over the sheer idiocy of the thing.
And now, let’s leave off with a couple reviews.
SUPERMAN/BATMAN #1 by Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines. DC Comics. $2.95
Jeph Loeb has been tearing up the sales charts with the overwrought, cheesy but somehow endearing BATMAN run he’s doing with Jim Lee, and he’s written SUPERMAN for years, so he’s the most logical, commercial choice for this new team-up book. His old McGuinness is less proven when it comes to the shadowy world of Batman and Gotham City, but he looks game enough here.
Loeb sets things up with slightly fresh takes on both characters’ origins and how they contrast. It’s not a brilliant device but a very sensible one, and Loeb is a very strong writer in terms of structure and purpose. He can get into some trouble on a long storyline like the current “Hush” story in BATMAN where he works in a lot of superfluous villains and red herrings and distractions, but the story’s spine is always there under the fat. So far in S/B #1, there isn’t much fat, and after the origin material we’re right into a mystery involving a rapidly decaying Metallo. The villain manages to shoot Superman with a kryptonite bullet, which puts Batman in the unusual position of having to perform some emergency surgery to save the life of the world’s most powerful hero. There isn’t a great deal of tension in this scene but the dialogue is pretty good, and McGuinness does well, especially in close-ups. There is also a two-page splash that perfectly illustrates the differences in each character: Batman is coiled and defensive, Superman open, expansive, fearless. The ending, involving a huge kryptonite meteor and President Luthor’s plans for it, looks like a fine idea but is handled a bit too corny. It’s a pretty good book for the most part, though.
DR. FATE #1 by Christopher Golden, Don Kramer and Prentis Rollins. DC Comics. $2.50
This was a whim purchase, having something to do with the excellent Paul Rivoche cover, a mild but genuine appreciation for Golden’s talent, and the old fanboy hope that maybe this Golden Age character would finally find a story that I could care about. Well, not this time.
What’s going on here is the current Doc is a bit of a maverick, and his mentor feels he’s not ready. Fine. He puts down lots of mystical menaces that almost no one in his town can see, except for some dedicated students of the occult. Fine. Some waitress has a crush on Fate, in his civilian guise of Hector Hall, but her hothead ex is a criminal who now has it in for Hec. Yeah, okay, fine. It’s all fine, the art’s fine, but there’s no spark here. Nothing to be ashamed of, but nothing to make me have to get the next issue, either.
Friend of Breakdowns and Comic Book
Galaxy
mastermind Alan David Doane has a swell and revealing interview with Mark
(ULTIMATES) Millar right here.
Next Week: More, more, more.
Chris Allen
If you have a comic or graphic novel you’d like reviewed, please send it to:
Chris Allen
Breakdowns
1451 River Crest Rd.
San Marcos, CA 92078
I can’t guarantee I’ll review everything sent, but I get to most of it, and review almost every small press book, as I recognize the effort and expense involved. Gawd Bless.
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
