Comic Books – Page 21 – Fascination Place

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 10 October 2007.

Welcome to the 52nd installment of This Week’s Haul! Wow, I’ve been at it for a whole year? Then it must be time to try out a slightly different format! I bet this works poorly in the syndication feed, though.

Booster Gold #3, by Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC)
Countdown #29 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Adam Beechen, Keith Giffen, Manual Garcia & Mark McKenna (DC)
Suicide Squad: Raise the Flag #2 of 8, by John Ostrander, Javier Pina & Robin Riggs (DC)
Nova #7, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Sean Chen, Scott Hanna & Brian Denham (Marvel)
Powers: Cosmic vol 10 TPB, by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming (Marvel/Icon)
The Clockwork Girl #1, by Sean O’Reilly, Kevin Hanna & Grant Bond (Arcana)
B.P.R.D.: Killing Ground #3 of 5, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi & Guy Davis (Dark Horse)

	It’s all over the comics blogosphere that Countdown has been quite a muddle. Rich Johnston reported that the fur may be flying at DC editorial over the series’ sales (though of course Rich Johnston writes an admittedly-biased rumor column, so take it with a grain of salt). With the series nearly half-over, Countdown #29 amply illustrates the series’ muddled storytelling: A generic “battle” cover which doesn’t occur in the book, featuring a plot thread which occupies a single page of the issue. The introduction of some rather nasty supporting characters, who will apparently be the protagonists of an upcoming series – but who cares? (I guess they’ve appeared before, but I still don’t care.) Half the issue is spent on four of the separate storylines, not really advancing any of them. (Graeme McMillan notes that he skipped two issues and didn’t really miss anything.) A minor supporting character, the Jokester, who joined the world-traveling crew a few issues ago, is unceremoniously killed off for no good reason. And it’s still not at all clear why we’re bothering with all this world-hopping in the first place, since it’s been just one random encounter after another. It all comes down to writing: It’s just not good. There’s no sense of where the story is going (any of the stories), or even if it’s indeed going anywhere.. This is just the opposite of 52 which set up mysteries and adventures, and steadily resolved them. Not every plot thread worked, but as a whole it was entertaining. Countdown is just a messy assortment of stuff. The problem isn’t that the creators aren’t big names, it’s that there’s no direction, and no focus. I suspect this is either due to authorial mastermind Paul Dini not having come up with a good enough framework for the series, or else due to poor editorial direction.
	Although I enjoy Nova, issue #7 ends up being rather a big nothing: Nova throws off the yoke of the Phalanx in somewhat-predictable fashion, escapes… and apparently isn’t going to have any substantial impact on the Annihilation Conquest story. So it ends up being rather pointless. Plus the cover is bland (although nicely rendered). It’s the first big misfire for either this series or the Annihiliation Conquest event, which is a pity since they’ve both been quite good before this point. (It’s slightly disturbing that Chen is already being spelled by a fill-in artist for parts of the issues, though it helps that I hardly notice when the pages alternate between Chen and Denham while I’m actually reading the comic. Chen is a terrific artist – I first picked up Nova mainly because he’s on it – so I guess this means Denham’s pretty good, too. I hope Chen isn’t planning on leaving the book, though.)
	On a brighter note, Powers is the magnum opus of Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. I’ve not been able to warm to either of their works other than this one, but Powers is really good: The ongoing story of two cops who work cases related to superheroes and supervillains, it ran for three years with Image Comics and then moved to Marvel’s Icon imprint. The first series revealed that Christian Walker used to be a hero, until he lost his powers, and then a superhero-created disaster resulted in powers being outlawed in the U.S. This new series ups the stakes as both Christian and his partner Deena Pilgrim get forced into increasingly risky scenarios, partly through choice and partly through circumstance. This latest volume, Cosmic, opens with the death of an unknown – but immensely powerful – hero, and the consequences that his death has for Christian. Bendis’ hallmark as a writer is that he writes copious dialogue. His characters tend to be smartasses, often foul-mouthed and philosophical at the same time. In my opinion, his style doesn’t work at all when he writes for mainstream Marvel comic books, but it works fine in his own world, with its gritty and grimy settings and populace. Oeming’s relatively simple linework seems cartoony at first glance, but it actually works quite well with Bendis’ scripts, conveying the weight of the situations while still leaving room for the gleaming, four-color-style linework for the heroes; in other words, balancing the dark realism with the superpowered sense of awe. Weaving between the two extremes is what makes the book work – that and Bendis’ unflinching ability to keep raising the stakes for his protagonists while still keeping them grounded in their day-to-day jobs. (My biggest regret about the second series is that Deena’s sunny, smartass personality has been fading under the weight of her burdens. On the other hand, it seems that Deena and Christian are on opposite trajectories in their respective stories, so no doubt this is all deliberate.) Powers can be brutal and bloody at times, so it’s not for the squeamish. It is, however, well worth following for anyone who appreciates deconstructive approaches to the superhero genre. (Although this is a good volume, if you haven’t read it before then you’re better off starting at the beginning, or at least the start of the second series.)
	I reviewed the preview issue of The Clockwork Girl a few months ago, and the first full issue is pretty much what I expected, feeling very much like the opening act of a Disney film (which, y’know, isn’t always a bad thing). It features a young mechanical girl being unveiled to the public by her mad-scientist father, and her attracting the eye of a young wolf-boy created by a different scientist. The art is dynamic and polished. The cover is very neat, too, with an “Alice-in-Wonderland-but-not-really” feel to it. There’s every reason to think that this could be a good, all-ages read. Worth seeking out.

R.I.P. Abadazad – Again

Abadazad was a fantasy adventure series by J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog which began life as a comic book published by the late, lamented Crossgen. When CGI folded, it was reborn as a series of illustrated prose novels published by Hyperion Books. Hyperion published two volumes: The Road to Inconceivable and The Dream Thief. Abadazad was strongly inspired by L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, but took the tack of suggesting that what was published in the books wasn’t what really happened. Still, despite being a little more “realistic”, Abadazad was still simply a fun adventure story, it didn’t take the “postmodern Oz” approach of making the world darker and grimmer to appeal to modern sensisibilities.

Unfortunately, DeMatteis reports that Hyperion has decided to stop publishing Abadazad. The third book, The Puppet, The Professor and The Prophet, has been published in the U.K., but will not be published in the U.S.

All of which is too bad. Although I didn’t think it was a groundbreaking series, it was fun, and Ploog’s art was terrific (even in the illustrated-prose format), so I’m hoping it will pop up again somewhere sometime, and finish the story.

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 3 October 2007.

Countdown #30 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Keith Giffen & Jesus Saiz (DC)
Metal Men #3 of 8, by Duncan Rouleau (DC)
Welcome to Tranquility #11, by Gail Simone, Neil Googe & Irene Flores (DC/Wildstorm)
Annihilation Book One TPB, by Keith Giffen & Mitch Breitweiser, Scott Kolins & Ariel Olivetti, and Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Kev Walker & Rick Magyar (Marvel)
Ms. Marvel #20, by Brian Reed, Greg Toccini & Roland Paris (Marvel)
Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus #2 of 5, by Mike Mignola & Jason Armstrong (Dark Horse)
The Boys #7-10, by Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson (Dynamite)
Atomic Robo #1 of 6, by Brian Clevinger & Scott Wegener (Red 5)
Modern Masters: Jerry Ordway TPB vol 13, edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington (TwoMorrows)

I feel like Metal Men is getting a little too byzantine for my enjoyment: It’s becoming harder to figure out what time period events are occurring in, and why they’re all part of the same story. There’s the present day, a few years ago, and then quite a few years ago back when Will Magnus was creating the Metal Men. Rouleau’s art is really neat, but I think the story’s structure is essentially reducing the characters to caricatures (Magnus’ final line in this issue – “you jerk!” – ring completely false for him). There’s still plenty of time left for everything to work out, but I wonder if Rouleau’s ambition has exceeded his writing talents here.

Having enjoyed the current Annihilation Conquest event at Marvel, I’m picking up the trades of the first Annihilation series. I haven’t finished this first one yet, but it sure does have terrific artwork. As with the current series, I like how Giffen and company have carved out this space in the Marvel Universe to play in so they can tall big, character-changing stories without needing to tie closely into the main Marvel continuity.

I think Ms. Marvel #20 is the last issue of this series I’ll be buying. There’s just been too much thrash and not enough progress. In many ways I think this series was just cursed by the Civil War, but it also feels like writer Brian Reed doesn’t have a firm idea of the direction the series is going in. After 20 issues, I feel like the story should have gotten somewhere, and it hasn’t. The last page suggests that it might be getting close, but only regarding one of its many story elements. The central theme of the series’ launch – that of Ms. Marvel trying to become one of the premier superheroes in her world – seems to have been lost along the way.

For an opposing opinion, here’s Aaron Glazier’s review at Comics Nexus. It’s like we’re reading different books: I hate how Machine Man is portrayed here, I find the characters weak and the storylines very muddy and directionless. I do agree that the art is quite good, but that’s not enough for me.

The Boys #7-10 comprises the third story arc in the series, and it’s a lot worse than the first two (which are in the collection I reviewed last week). It opens with Tek Knight, a superhero with a severe sexual dysfunction – but this one not only feels gratuitous (and not a little bit ridiculous), but it’s almost entirely irrelevant to the overall story. Here, Butcher and Hughie set out to find some justice for a young gay man who was found dead in the street some weeks previous, taking them on a short odyssey into the personal lives of several local heroes. That part of the story is actually rather good, and it throws some light on a particular dark facet of what superheroes might be pressured to do through their public image as do-gooders. But the Tek Knight elements are just superfluous. It’s like Ennis felt the story wouldn’t be shocking without the sexual deviancy, but even if less shocking, it would have been a much better story had it been shorted and focused to just the investigation of the presumed murder.

Atomic Robo is pretty neat: Early in the 20th century Nikola Tesla builds an atomic-powered sentient robot who (the book’s introductiont tells us) helps shape the rest of the century. This issue introduces the character in 1938, who at that time is not yet considered a free person, but basically the story is an adventure: He’s sent to the Himalayas to stop a Nazi plot. Although the dialogue is full of anachronisms, the book generally taps the same sense of fun and period adventure as Captain Gravity and some segments of Hellboy. Wegener’s art of reminiscent of Michael Avon Oeming’s at its best (Oeming did the cover of this first issue), although many panels are background-free. Overall it’s a fun issue, and there’s plenty of promise here, although there’s definitely a sense that this might just be a frivolous adventure yarn without a greater purpose. But that’s not the worst thing in the world.

(Why is it that I can enjoy a book, and yet lament that it doesn’t feel like something that will be cohesive in the long term, or have some ultimate direction or destination? Can’t I just enjoy it for what it is? Well, I can enjoy it, but it’s the books that deliver more than their basic narrative that end up sticking in my memory.)

Lastly, if you’re a fan of comic book art in general, I do recommend TwoMorrows’ Modern Masters series. These slim paperback volumes consist of extensive interviews with their respective creators, and a large collection of often-previously-unseen-or-rare artwork by those artists. So you learn a lot about the artist’s career and philosophy, and get to see a lot of art you might not have seen before. I’ve been cherry-picking the volumes of the artists I’m really interested in, which means I’ve picked up about half the volumes.

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 26 September 2007.

Countdown #31 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Sean McKeever, Keith Giffen, Manuel Garcia & Rodney Ramos (DC)
Countdown to Adventure #2 of 8, by Adam Beechen, Eddy Barrow & Julio Ferreira, and Justin Gray, Travis Moore & Saleem Crawford (DC)
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #34, by Tony Bedard & Dennis Calero (DC)
Astro City: The Dark Age vol 2 #4, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, & Alex Ross (DC/Wildstorm)
Annihilation Conquest: Starlord #3 of 4, by Keith Giffen, Timothy Green II, & Victor Olazaba (Marvel)
Girl Genius: Agatha Heterodyne and the Golden Trilobite HC vol 6, by Phil & Kaja Foglio (Airship)
The Boys: The Name of the Game vol 1 TPB, by Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson (Dynamite)
Boneyard #26, by Richard Moore (NBM)

Wow, the last issue of Astro City came out back in April. I know there are many good reasons why it comes out so slowly, but it’s still frustrating considering this is one of the best comic book series ever published. This is a pretty good issue where the stuff hits the fan for our protagonists, the Williams brothers, as well as suggesting what the scoop with the Silver Agent is. One more special is up next, and then the third and final mini-series to conclude The Dark Age Can’t wait! I hope they can get it all out in the next year.

Speaking of excellent comics, I finally got my hardcover copy of volume 6 of Girl Genius. This is a hefty volume concluding Agatha Heterodyne’s adventures in Sturmhalten, including the truth about her mother, Lucretia Mongfish, the plans her mother left behind after she disappeared: Specifically, the plan to return her consciousness to life in the body of her daughter.

Unfortunately, though there’s a lot to like here, the story is both padded and confusing. Most of the padding is in the form of Agatha’s allies who spend much of the book wandering around in the sewers of Sturmhalten, an expedition which is sometimes amusing, but which does absolutely nothing to move the story forward. Most of the confusion comes in trying to figure out when we’re watching Agatha and when we’re watching Lucretia, and in trying to figure out exactly who did what, and why. The motivations here are slippery things, and I think the Foglios overextended themselves in trying to be too clever with what amounted to the mechanical aspects of the plot. I think I finally got it all figured out, but it shouldn’t have been this hard.

Those frustrations aside, the book is still tremendously entertaining, very funny, and full of action, adventure, and things blowing up real good. And the secrets of Agatha’s family history are slowly emerging, although – again – the issue of motivation is central to the goings-on, and it’s not at all clear to me what exactly happened in the war against The Other all those years ago. Are the revelations herein supposed to be taken at face value, or is it all a blind for something deeper? That’s the problem with a story that has games-within-games, you can never tell when you’ve reached the center, and that can be really annoying. Eventually the Foglios are going to have to make it absolutely clear in the story that “this is what happened, and there are no more secrets to be revealed”. I hope that’s where this is all going.

(I had a similar problem with Babylon 5: When it was revealed what the Shadows and the Vorlons were really up to, my reaction was, “Nah, that’s silly! It’s gotta be a blind for their real motivations. But in fact, silly or not, that was it. But directions had reversed so many times that it was hard to believe.)

The Boys didn’t really register on my consciousness until the controversial decision by DC to cancel it from its Wildstorm line, resulting in the book moving to Dynamite. While I’ve enjoyed Darick Robertson’s artwork in various places, I’ve not read much by Garth Ennis, who is probably best known for his series Preacher, which, well, I haven’t read. However, the brouhaha and a flip-through in the store made me decide to pick up the trade paperback, which collects the first 6 issues.

The first three words that come to mind about this book are not for children. This is a grim, edgy, extremely violent, and often gratuitous story about a world in which superheroes are real, and their fights and whims take a huge toll on normal humans. Ennis doesn’t shy away from just about anything he can imagine super-powered people would do with their powers, and Robertson illustrates it in graphic detail. So if any of that is the sort of thing you wouldn’t be able to appreciate, then The Boys is not for you.

“The Boys” themselves are five people who work as a covert team to put the fear of god into superbeings, through threats, blackmail, and sheer force. Needless to say, some of them are powered themselves. Their leader, Billy Butcher, is assembling the team anew after it having disbanded some time previously, and he recruits three of his old mates as well as a new recruit, Wee Hughie, to start executing his plans. His first target is an out-of-control teen group of superheroes. Even as Hughie is getting his first taste of working with the Boys, a charming midwestern superheroine named Starlight is recruited to join the Seven, the country’s premier super-team (with the usual analogues to members of the Justice League), who learns that playing with the big boys isn’t at all what she’d expected.

The Boys reminds me strongly of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, not just in its approach of an undercover team fighting the forces which dominate the world, but in giving the story an “everyman” point of view: The story (almost) opens with Hughie seeing the woman he lives brutally killed during a fight between two superbeings, much as Jack Frost is the young ne’er-do-well who joins the Invisibles. Ennis is more deft at characterization than Morrison is, but then, Morrison had bigger fish to fry than following Jack through the series, while The Boys is fundamentally very much about the perceptions and reactions of the characters.

It’s probably inevitable that The Boys also be compared to Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan, as both books take place in which certain trands have resulted in a seriously damaged world in which our heroes (who are anti-heroes in both instances) operate, plus of course they’re both drawn by Robertson. Robertson’s artwork has advanced considerably since Transmet; it no longer feels like that of a darker Shawn McManus, it feels more realistic and more expressive, especially in his faces. I don’t think this book would have worked with anything less.

Does it work? Well yes, it does. As I said, there are many gratuitous elements: Nudity, sex, drug use, violence, which often don’t contribute directly to the story but serve merely as a backdrop. But every so often Ennis drops in that one “whoa, holy shit” moment which demonstrates that the book isn’t all about sex-and-violence, but that there are really things worth fighting for in this comic. The panoramic view of New York City part-way through was the moment that I realized the book is being serious. As I said, if you can’t get past the less-important moments, or if seeing horrible things done to good people with little immediate hope of justice being done is something you can’t stand, then this book is not for you.

Contrasting The Boys with Warren Ellis’ major works is I think most worthwhile: Ellis’ stories are, fundamentally, about people pursuing the right ends for the right reasons. His stories really are about heroes, although those heroes sometimes use questionable means to achieve their goals, but they are usually reluctant to do so, or feel that they’ve been backed into a corner and have no other choice. The Boys are about people pursuing the right ends, but maybe not for the right reasons, and certainly not choosing very clean ways of going about it. Both Butcher and Hughie have a revenge motive, and also a motive to keep what happened to their loved ones from happening to anyone else. (The motives of the other Boys are so far unknown.) And their frank vigilanteism (even if tacitly supported by shady arms of the government) is not exactly admirable. But I think the point of the story is to see how far these characters can be pushed in a decidedly hostile environment, and the story in this volume is the set-up for what comes next.

Am I thrilled to be reading this book? Well, it was pretty interesting, and a little nauseating at the same time. But also compelling. I definitely think there’s a lot of promise here, and I’m going to pick up the issues that Dynamite has published since.

If you’ve been waiting for the superhero equivalent of Transmetropolitan, then The Boys may be the book for you.

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 19 September 2007.

Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #56, by Tad Williams & Shawn McManus (DC)
Countdown #32 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Tony Bedard, Keith Giffen, Al Barrionuevo & Art Thibert (DC)
Countdown to Adventure #1 of 8, by Adam Beechen, Eddy Barrows & Julio Ferreira, and Justin Gray & Fabrizio Fiorentino (DC)
Countdown to Mystery #1 of 8, by Steve Gerber, Justiniano & Walden Wong, and Matthew Sturges & Stephen Jorge Segovia (DC)
Ex Machina #30, by Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris & Jim Clark (DC/Wildstorm)
Armageddon Conquest: Quasar #3 of 4, by Christos N. Gage, Mike Lilly, Bob Almond & Scott Hanna (Marvel)
World War Hulk #4 of 5, by Greg Pak, John Romita Jr. & Klaus Janson (Marvel)
The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite #1 #1 of 6, by Gerard Way & Gabriel BÃ¡ (Dark Horse)

Gee, it’s a new artist on Countdown! Too bad he got stuck illustrating this piece of cow flop, which largely involves a bachelorette party for Black Canary, who’s getting married to Green Arrow soon, in what is surely one of the most pointless company-wide events in recent memory. Countdown has been pretty widely panned in the blogosphere, and for good reason: There’s really no coherent story in it, and random events from the DC universe – like the GA/BC wedding – intrude on it for no good reason and to no good effect. It’s everything that 52 wasn’t, and that’s not a good thing.

Meanwhile, I broke down and decided to try both Countdown to Adventure and Countdown to Mystery, which are both sorta-kinda tie-ins to Countdown, each with two stories.

Countdown to Adventure focuses on the “space heroes” from 52: Adam Strange, Starfire, and Animal Man. Adam Strange gets some competition in his role as protector of Rann, while Animal Man’s wife isn’t too wild about the buxom Starfire crashing in their house since she lost her powers. The art is very pretty and the story has promise, although honestly I get tired of writers dumping on Adam Strange all the time. Can’t the guy ever catch a break? I think the best Adam Strange story in the last 15 years was the JLA story in which he manipulated the Justice League to save Rann, showing that, yes, he really is just really clever and he can think rings around other heroes (and villains).

The back-up story is about Forerunner, a supporting character in Countdown, and it’s basically a good tale about a completely uninteresting character.

Countdown to Mystery was originally going to be Steve Gerber’s relaunch of Doctor Fate, but I guess DC decided it might sell better if tied in to the current ongoing event of Countdown. Who knows if it does, but the story here has absolutely nothing to do with Countdown. In it the helmet of Nabu lands on the head of Dr. Kent Nelson, failed psychiatrist. Does he have any relationship at all to the Kent Nelson who was the original Doctor Fate? Who knows? Gerber’s trippy, stream-of-consciousness narrative doesn’t really work at all – the thing feels entirely by-the-numbers, like one of the glummer moments of a Doctor Strange run over at Marvel. Justiniano and Wong’s artwork sometimes feels like Tom Mandrake, and sometimes like Kevin O’Neill, which is a bizarre mixture. It’s not bad, although the tweaks to Fate’s costume look kind of silly.

The back-up here is about the current incarnation of Eclipso, a silly DC villain from the 60s who’s now in the body of the ex-wife of The Atom, for reasons which emerged in DC’s event of a couple of years ago, Identity Crisis, which was a series which had very pretty artwork and a completely nonsensical story. All of which means that this series probably would have been better if it had been left as just a new Doctor Fate series.

I think I see how World War Hulk is going to end: The Sentry is going to finally join the fray, try to talk the Hulk down from his rampage, they’ll get into a fight, and then the Sentry’s evil opposite number, the Void, will get released. In the ensuing chaos, the other heroes get free and try to contain the void, the the Hulk slips away somehow – possibly injured and taken by his allies out of reach of Earth’s heroes. And the Hulk’s story diverges from that of Earth again. Which would leave the question of: What happens next?

But first there’s the even bigger question: Can Greg Pak surprise me and pull off a different ending from this?

Fans of Hellboy must check out The Umbrella Academy. Gerard Way is the frontman of the band My Chemical Romance, one of those rare alt-rock bands that I’ve actually heard of. Irrespective of that, the comic is actually quite good. The book has a strong Victorian-era feel, although details of the story suggest that it takes place in sometimes between 1920 and 1960 (after the death of Gustav Eiffel, for one thing). In it, a number of infants are mysteriously born to women across the globe, and a prominent man named The Monocle goes out to collect them, but finds only 7, whom he raises himself in The Umbrella Academy. The seven each have one or more unusual powers, but their father dotes on Number One, who is a Superman-like figure, and denegrates the others. The first half of the issue takes place when the group is 10, and the second half focuses on Number One, now called Spaceboy, 20 years later, when an accident has left him with the body of a giant gorilla.

The book has heroes in domino masks, a talking ape, a boxer beating up an alien, and one of the kids reappearing after a long absence. Ba’s art is reminiscent of Mike Mignola’s work on Hellboy, and the whole thing is creepy and eerie and provocative. A very neat start, I’m very much looking forward to the next issue!

(You can read some previously-published solo adventures of adult members of the Umbrella Academy on the comic’s MySpace page.)

On a completely different note, if you’re interested in any incarnation of the Justice Society of America of the last 35 years, you might be interested in the extended debate Kalinara and I are having about them on her blog. We have completely different points of view on the subject, which is amusing even if I do find her point of view rather incomprehensible! 🙂

Adorable… Maybe Too Adorable

Terrific painting of Wonder Woman and a box of kittens by the great Steve Rude.

(via Cynthia)

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 12 September 2007.

A big haul this week!

Booster Gold #2, by Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC)
Countdown #33 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Adam Beechen, Keith Giffen, Carlos Magno & Jay Leisten (DC)
Fables #65, by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham & Steve Leialoha (DC/Vertigo)
Justice Society of America #9, by Geoff Johns, Dale Eaglesham & Ruy Jose (DC)
Suicide Squad: Raise The Flag #1 of 8, by John Ostrander, Javier Pina & Robin Riggs (DC)
Welcome to Tranquility #10, by Gail Simone, Neil Googe & Scott Shaw! (DC/Wildstorm)
Nova #6, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Sean Chen, Scott Hanna & Brian Denham (Marvel)
Thor #3, by J. Michael Straczynski, Oliver Coipel & Mark Morales (Marvel)
B.P.R.D.: Killing Ground #3 of 5, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi & Guy Davis (Dark Horse)
Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others TPB vol 7, by Mike Mignola, Richard Corben & P. Craig Russell (Dark Horse)
Castle Waiting #8, by Linda Medley (Fantagraphics)

The new JSA kicks off the storyline “Thy Kingdom Come”. Power Girl, as anyone who’s warped enough to be able to keep track of this stuff knows, is the last survivor of Earth-2 from before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, her cousin Kal-L (the Golden Age Superman) having died in the Infinite Crisis, making her feel especially alone. “Thy Kingdom Come” will feature the Superman from Kingdom Come, who’s a rather tortured soul who superficially resembles Power Girl’s cousin. This is also the world that current JSA member Starman spent some time in. So there’s a lot of interesting potential for character drama here. Is Geoff Johns the writer to realize the potential of this scenario? I tend to think of Johns as a plot-driven writer – characterization isn’t really his forte. But this could be the story in which he rises above his limitations.

Weirdly, the first issue of Suicide Squad: Raise The Flag is missing both a chapter title and creator credits. I can’t remember the last time I read a book by a major publisher that was missing its credits. Must’ve been some oversight. I wonder if this is related to it being titled From The Ashes on the cover?

Anyway, this is the mini-series sequel to the 1980s series written by Ostrander and grittily illustrated by Luke McDonnell, who at the time was the artist of choice for hard-hitting series with a strong human component (e.g., Denny O’Neil’s Iron Man run when Tony Stark is overcome by his alcoholism, and the latter days of Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar run). The premise was that the government operated a covert squad with a few D-list superheroes, but which mainly consisted of incarcerated supervillains who would go on high-risk missions and have their sentences commuted if successful. Oh, plus they’d get their arms blown off by remote control if they tried to escape. The thing was a big balancing act among various personalities of varying degrees of stability, and it worked very well and is fondly remembered today.

Halfway through the original series, Rick Flag, one of the main heroic figures, died in a nuclear explosion in a foreign country. This series is based on the notion that he didn’t actually die. The first issue is a flashback in which key members of the old Squad travel to Russia to investigate a rumor that Flag is imprisoned there. It gives you a great feel for the original series – really, it’s like no time has passed at all – and ends on a cliffhanger implying what really happened.

Ostrander might never surpass his original GrimJack series (though it sounds like the Grinner might be moving over to a new site called ComicMix), but Suicide Squad is also excellent, and this looks like a terrific follow-on to the original.

Oh, and Javier Pina’s art is excellent – even better than his stuff on Manhunter.

Okay, each of the last three issues of Nova have ended with a cliffhanger in which things were worse for our heroes than they were an issue before. I don’t think it can go on much longer, though; I’m impressed it’s gotten this far!

J. Michael Straczynski has been taking some flak for his portrayal of Iron Man in this issue of Thor (for instance, from Brian Cronin). I think this criticism is misguided, for two reasons: (1) Thor is justified, given that Iron Man created a subservient clone of him during the Civil War, and (2) Iron Man has been pretty much acting like a dick since the start of the Civil War, most of his actions have been morally indefensible, and frankly emotionally the reader wants someone to kick his ass: Thor, the Hulk, whoever. Iron Man’s not a hero anymore, and seeing Thor lay into him is just plain fun.

The real problem with this issue is also twofold: (1) The fight with Iron Man doesn’t advance the story, and (2) the story is boring. Thor going around to rescue his Asgardian brethren in the wake of, well, whatever happened to remove them from our plane of existence. The first issue was promising in that it suggested the return of the Thor/Don Blake dynamic, perhaps with actually giving Blake some characterization this time around. Blake hasn’t appeared since he changed into Thor at the beginning of #2, and “ponderous Thor” just isn’t very interesting. Kurt Busiek knew to lighten him up with “bombastic Thor” every so often, but Straczynski doesn’t seem to have learned the trick yet.

I figure if there isn’t some actual story advancement – and I mean more than just finding more Asgardians, because that’s just a boring old quest, not a decent plot – by issue #6 or so, then it might be time to give up on this one.

I’ve been less-than-kind to Mike Mignola’s comics recently, so I’m happy to say that Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others mostly has the nifty stuff that I enjoy most about Hellboy: Hellboy kicking ass, making quips, and dealing with bizarrely inventive supernatural menaces. The centerpiece of the book, “Makoma”, is actually one of the weaker stories: A myth about Hellboy perhaps about one of his previous incarnations. The framing sequence, about a supernatural explorer’s club, is more interesting than the main story. The short stories are nifty, though. My favorite Hellboy stories seem to be those which feature or imply time travel so I think “Dr. Carp’s Experiments” is my favorite of the volume.

Though if you’re unfamiliar with Hellboy, you might want instead to start at the beginning.

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 6 September 2007.

Countdown #34 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Keith Giffen & Jesus Saiz (DC)
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes: Dominator War TPB vol 5, by Mark Waid, Tony Bedard, Barry Kitson & Kevin Sharpe (DC)
Metal Men #2 of 8, by Duncan Rouleau (DC)
Armageddon Conquest: Wraith #3 of 4, by Javier Grillo-Marxuach & Kyle Holz (Marvel)
Ms. Marvel #19, by Brian Reed, Aaron Lopresti & Matt Ryan (Marvel)
The Incredible Hulk #110, by Grek Pak, Carlo Pagulayan & Jeffrey Huet (Marvel)
Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus #1 of 5, by Mike Mignola & Jason Armstrong (Dark Horse)

Weirdly, Saiz & Palmiotti’s art on this week’s Countdown seems very reminiscent of Kevin Nowlan’s art, or maybe Nowlan over Brian Bolland. Not that this is a bad thing, but it’s always weird when art so closely resembles the style of another creator that I have to check the credits to see whether he’s the one who really drew it.

The Incredible Hulk is tying into the World War Hulk storyline by focusing on Amadeus Cho, the seventh-smartest person in the world, who is also a teenager who believes in the Hulk. This week’s issue cuts to the core of Cho’s belief in the Hulk, despite the Hulk’s past as a rampaging beast and his current stated desire to kill the heroes who sent him into space. It’s a little hard to swallow, although it does suggest an ability that the Hulk’s had all along which seems to explain his behavior at times over the years. It’s the sort of thing that could open up some new avenues in the Hulk’s character, but I bet it will mostly fall by the wayside. I also wonder if Pak has written himself into a corner so that he won’t be able to resolve World War Hulk in any satisfying manner. Which would be a shame.

Pak does a terrific job of writing Cho, who’s always a couple of steps (or more) ahead of everyone else, who’s insightful as well as clever, and who’s a lively and sympathetic character. I’m still just a little suspicious that he’s not quite as selfless as he’s portrayed, but I’d certainly be pleased if he were. (He sure beats J. Michael Straczynski’s characterization of Reed Richards all hollow.)

I haven’t been following the other World ar Hulk tie-ins, just this and the main series, but really I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. These two series are opposite sides of the same coin, complementing each other nicely. It’s tough to write a tie-in when the book’s main character is the star of the main series, but after an awkward start Pak’s really made it all come together.

Lobster Johnson is Mike Mignola’s latest mini-series in his Hellboy universe: LJ is a pulp-style hero working in 1937, and The Iron Prometheus concerns his efforts to protect a man in a powerful electric suit from the evil ambitions of (of course) Nazis. Chris Sims picks it as his best of the week, but I was less impressed.

Although still enjoyable, these days Mignola’s books seem like a shadow of what they were back in the early Hellboy days. Mignola rarely draws anymore, although some of the artists he does employ do a good job of aping his style, as Jason Armstrong does here. I realize Mignola isn’t a very fast artist (when was the last time he draw a monthly ongoing book? Alpha Flight in the late 1980s?) and this is therefore his way to tell more stories on a semi-regular schedule, but these days he’s not even drawing the Hellboy: Darkness Calls mini-series. Still, at least he knows the trick of hiring good artists when he’s not doing the chores himself.

More serious, though, is the increasingly repetitive feeling I get from the stories: None of them really feel “special” anymore, and each one feels less distinctive than the last. Moreover, neither the Hellboy nor the B.P.R.D. series seem to be going anywhere. It seems like both have lost the heart of he early Hellboy series, and Lobster Johnson feels like more of the same.

I think the problem is this: Hellboy is the heart and soul of Mignola’s stuff – everyone else is too ethereal or too mysterious or too self-doubting or just too damned creepy to get behind as a character, while the beauty of Hellboy is that he’s this giant devil-thing with a stone hand who basically just wants to go kick some alien ass to make the world safe for freedom and apple pie. (The only character who could really equal Hellboy was Roger the Homunculous, who shuffled off the series’ immortal coil a while ago, alas.) In his own series Hellboy’s turned into a character who’s just being pushed around by various godlike figures, and no one else can fill the void in the other books.

Lobster Johnson falls into the “too ethereal” category, a ghostlike figure who comes and goes and speaks mysteriously, and occasionally fights a giant gorilla. I have little doubt that this will be an enjoyable series, but also that a year from now it will feel liks just one more cog in the giant Hellboy machine, and that someday I’ll look at the stack of cogs sitting on my bookshelf and wonder when the payoff to it all is coming.

Jim Shooter to Return to Legion of Super-Heroes

Wow, it’s for real: Jim Shooter is going to write the Legion for the first time in 30 years.

Read an interview with Shooter on Newsarama.

When I started buying the Legion, way back in 1976, Shooter was on his way out (he’d soon become Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics), but he wrote the first three Legion comics I ever bought (including his last two). It’s been a while since he’s written any comics, I think, so it’ll be interesting to see how it pans out.

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 29 August 2007.

Countdown #35 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Sean McKeever, Keith Giffen, Manuel Garcia & Mark McKenna (DC)
Ex Machina Masquerade Special by Brian K. Vaughan & John Paul Leon (DC/Wildstorm)
Manhunter: Origins TPB vol 3, by Marc Andreyko, Javier Pina & Fernando Blanco (DC)
Hellboy: Darkness Calls # 5 of 6, by Mike Mignola & Duncan Fegredo (Dark Horse)

I think Greg Burgas nails it in his review of the Ex Machina special: It’s not a story of any great consequence, and the sentiment driving the plot doesn’t ring true. Plus, I’ve never warmed to John Paul Leon’s pencils, as the renderings aren’t to my taste, and his layouts never seem to really tell the story, they just sit there. The earlier 2-part special, drawn by Chris Sprouse, was much better than this one in every way.

(And why did a Halloween comic come out in late August? Especially strange since we’re in the middle of a brutal heat wave here on the west coast.)

Manhunter really hits its stride with this third collection, which focuses on Kate Spencer’s “origins”, both her gear and her personal history. She also continues to battle the dregs of the DC Universe’s array of supervillains (wow, I’d completely forgotten about Punch and Jewelee). I suspect the reason it’s been struggling to gain readers is that it has taken so long to hit its stride; the first twelve issues (that’s a whole year of issues, folks) thrashed around like the series was trying to establish itself rather than trying to finds its voice, which is rather putting the cart before the horse.

Anyway, this series of federal-prosecutor-turned-vigilante stays down-to-Earth, while being strangely conflicted: It deals with some intensely personal issues, yet always seems to keep the characters’ emotions at arm’s length, always being a little too matter-of-fact for its character bits. That we only get brief glimpses of most of the supporting cast doesn’t help. The adventure bits are a lot of fun, though, and present an unusually unglamorous view of superheroing – reasonably enough, since Manhunter is truly a vigilante and not a traditional hero.

Manhunter has been a fan favorite on the Internet for a while. I don’t think it lives up to the hype, but if it truly comes back from its current hiatus then I’ll probably add the monthly book to my saver at my local store.

And now, a slightly different tack: Comments on books I didn’t buy:

I thumbed through the first issue of the new Brit series. Brit is another of Robert (Invincible) Kirkman’s Image Comics heroes: A middle-aged man who’s completely invulnerable and decidedly sardonic, who works for the government. I picked up the collection of the earlier stories, Old Soldier a while back: The stories are basically big “smash-’em-up” ones, which means they’re okay, but not deep. A nice occasional diversion, but not something that holds up over time. This new series I guess is supposed to be somewhat deeper, but the first issue looked like more of the same. Brit isn’t as appealing a lead character as Invincible, so I decided to pass on this one. (Often I decide not to buy a series which is going through a revival because, as I put it, “I’ve been on that train before and I don’t really want to get on again.”)

I also glanced at The Mice Templar #1, from Michael Avon Oeming, whose art on Powers is quite good, but I’ve never warmed to anything else he’s done. The art here actually made me cringe (take a look), so I took a pass on this one. I’m already reading Mouse Guard, and I think it’ll fill my need for rodent adventure stories on its own.