Category: Comics

Comic books and comic strips

This Week’s Haul

  • Batman and Robin #16, by Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart, Chris Burnham & Frazer Irving (DC)
  • Secret Six #27, by Gail Simone & Jim Calafiore (DC)
  • Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #6 of 6, by Peter Hogan, Chris Sprouse & Karl Story (DC/America’s Best Comics)
  • Captain America: Man Out of Time #1 of 5, by Mark Waid, Jorge Molina & Karl Kesel (Marvel)
  • Scarlet #3, by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev (Marvel/Icon)
  • Squadron Supreme Omnibus HC, by Mark Gruenwald, Bob Hall, Paul Ryan, John Buscema, Paul Neary, John Beatty, Sam De La Rosa, and others (Marvel)
  • Irredeemable #19, by Mark Waid & Peter Krause (Boom)
  • The Boys #48, by Garth Ennis & Russ Braun (Dynamite)
  • The Mystery Society #4 of 5, by Steve Niles & Fiona Staples (IDW)
  • Invincible #75, by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley & Cliff Rathburn (Image)
Even though The Return of Bruce Wayne hasn’t finished yet (and despite it being written by the same author), Bruce Wayne is back in this month’s Batman and Robin, to help clean up the disaster in Gotham City that Dick Grayson (the new Batman) and Damian Wayne (the current Robin) couldn’t stop. Seems like someone at DC had trouble with scheduling.

The issue is pretty good. Naturally I much prefer Cameron Stewart’s art to Frazer Irving’s – my exposure to Irving so far is such that I’ll be wary of buying any comics he illustrates in the future, because I really don’t care for his style. The story involves Bruce facing off against the man claiming to be his father, Thomas Wayne. In the minimalist style he’s employing these days, Grant Morrison makes it more-or-less clear what’s really going on (the man is an impostor with a supernatural background), but he isn’t really a very scary villain, just another blustering idiot who’s stumbled into Gotham not realizing how dangerous it is. His final encounter with the Joker demonstrates that. But as I’ve said, Morrison has never been very strong at characterization, so stories which might otherwise be character-based tend to fall a bit (or a bit more) flat.

That’s been the downfall of Batman and Robin as a series: Dick was never portrayed as a very strong Batman (despite having been a very strong character when Marv Wolfman wrote him as one of the Teen Titans, and one quite different from Batman), and while there were hints of an unusual tension between him and Damian-as-Robin, it never came to any fruition, it all felt mechanical and not very important. A writer with a better notion of how to handle characters would have been able to make their relationship the foundation of the series, but instead it ended up being another wacky Morrison plot-fest, which seemed to work against what the series wanted to be.

I think this is Morrison’s last issue of the series, and after Return wraps up we’ll be getting a new Batman status quo, “Batman Incorporated”, with multiple Batmen keeping the peace (and/or busting heads) around the world. It’s certainly a Morrisonesque idea, but again it’s quite far removed from any promise of strong characterization, and frankly I think this exhausts my interest in Morrison’s take on Batman, so I think this will be it for me. It’s been a decidedly mediocre run.

Mark Waid takes on the first few days of Captain America in the modern era, after having been in suspended animation for decades following World War II, in Captain America: Man Out of Time. This issue takes place mainly in those dying days of the Second World War, explaining who Cap and Bucky were as people (Cap the strong silent type, Bucky a bit of a clown – the latter a little at odds with Ed Brubaker’s portrayal in his ongoing Cap series, but there’s enough room for both portrayals, really), before their ill-fated final mission. Waid shifts to a first-person perspective of Cap being knocked unconscious by the blast that kills his partner, and then waking up in the Avengers’ submarine decades later, with a first-person narrative (as a letter to an army general) of his reactions to the Avengers themselves, and their arrival in New York. It’s quite well done, worth the price of admission all by itself.

Waid has an interesting challenge from here on out, though. First of all, given that “today” is now 2010, Cap clearly didn’t wake up in 1963 as he did in the silver age, since he’d be 70 years old now. Therefore he probably woke up around 2000 or so (Brubaker’s run basically says as much), yet we have the Avengers in their goofy 1960s costumes, and I’m sure there are more bits of societal contrasts to come. Also, the story in which Cap was originally found had a pretty awkward strong of coincidences – such as the Avengers being turned to stone, as is alluded to here – which is tricky to write around. Waid heads off the reservation in pretty short order by having Cap have a new encounter at the end of this issue, with a cliffhanger ending. Waid is clearly going to be focusing on Cap all the way, but Cap’s identity after his return quickly became closely tied to that of the Avengers, so I’m wondering what Waid will do there. I could see this series going in any of several different directions, so the question is: What is Waid ultimately trying to accomplish with this story? We’ll see.

The art is quite good, Jorge Molina’s style feeling a bit like Oliver Coipel’s, while Karl Kesel’s inks give it a little more depth and form. The excellent art on Brubaker’s Cap run is a tough act to follow, but these guys do a pretty good job of evoking that feel while having a slightly more superheroic style.

With a new Squadron Supreme hardcover collection out this month, a new generation could discover the late Mark Gruenwald’s magnum opus. On the other hand, it costs $75, so that new generation might not be able to afford it, but us old fogeys enjoy getting a nice repackaging of this story.

It is important to put the book in perspective, though: When this series originally came out, it was contemporary with DC’s 50th anniversary series Crisis on Infinite Earths as well as (at its end) The Dark Knight Returns, and came near the end of the Jim Shooter era at Marvel. It predated Alan Moore’s Watchmen by a few years, and covered similar ground: Superheroes who come to dominate their world. But Mark Gruenwald was working with characters – and within a framework – that still saw them as Justice League-type heroes, flawed in the Marvel sense but essentially heroic. The theme of the series was one of characters doing what they believe is right, in the selfless way that comic book heroes do, but disagreeing with what needs to be done in the wake of a national disaster. While there’s plenty of carnage, betrayal, and death in the series, but it feels tame compared to series that followed it.

Still, it’s quite a good series, dealing with its characters and their differences honestly, especially as various wrenches get through into their plans to save America by instituting a utopian program, even as one former member assembles a team to bring them down. While I’d say it’s not quite as good as Gruenwald’s earlier series, Hawkeye, it’s clearly the one he’s going to be remembered for. The art is also some of the best at Marvel for its era, with the quirky pencils by Bob Hall in the early issues, and the much slicker, more mainstream-Marvel Paul Ryan in the later ones.

Reading it again today, I’d say it’s biggest flaw is that it lacks a denouement: Some individual issues end abruptly (like an issue which ends with the Whizzer thinking, “How can any of them ever trust me again?”, a thought which is ignored for the rest of the series), and the finale of the 12-issue limited series involves a big battle royale between the two sides, but very little examination of why the characters choose the course they do once the battle is over. It feels shallow. The sequel graphic novel, “Death of a Universe”, involves yet more devastation, some of it without meaning (such as one hero who dies just as the mission to save the world is literally taking off), and with a transformative ending which also ends too abruptly. There’s been so much change throughout this series, and no real effort to show how the world assimilates it.

Ultimately the biggest disappointment in the series is that this is all there is, and it feels like there should have been a little bit more. (Later Squadron stories have very little resemblance to those in this volume, although Kurt Busiek tried to evoke Gruenwald’s Squadron when they appeared in his early 2000s Avengers run.) But it laid the groundwork for stories like Watchmen even as it became resoundingly eclipsed by them, and it’s worth reading for that historical context as well as being an interesting take on mainstream superheroes which has not been often attempted in quite the same way.

This Week’s Haul

  • Action Comics #894, by Paul Cornell & Pete Woods (DC)
  • Justice Society of America #44, by Marc Guggenheim & Scott Kolins (DC)
  • Madame Xanadu #28, by Matt Wagner & Marian Churchland (DC/Vertigo)
  • Time Masters: Vanishing Point #4 of 6, by Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC)
  • Wonder Woman #604, by J. Michael Straczynski, Don Kramer, Eduardo Pansica & Jay Leisten (DC)
  • Zatanna #6, by Paul Dini & Jesus Saiz (DC)
  • Captain America #611, by Ed Brubaker & Daniel Acuña (Marvel)
  • Fantastic Four #584, by Jonathan Hickman & Steve Epting (Marvel)
  • Incognito: Bad Influences #1 of 6, by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips (Marvel/Icon)
  • Incorruptible #11, by Mark Waid & Marcio Takara (Boom)
  • Hellboy/Beasts of Burden: Sacrifice #1, by Evan Dorkin, Mike Mignola & Jill Thompson (Dark Horse)
  • Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father #5 of 5, by Jat Faerber & Júlio Brilha (Image Comics)
This month’s Action Comics has gotten a lot of press because it features a rare appearance by a Neil Gaiman character – in this case, Death – in a mainstream DC Universe title. Word is that Gaiman helped script her appearance, although oddly the character doesn’t really “feel” like the Death from Gaiman’s Sandman: She feels a little too much like a teenager, and a little too vague and mysterious than the character we’ve seen before. Yes yes, the whole joke about Death is that she’s a cheerful teenage girl doing this somewhat melancholy job, but the point is that it feels like her portrayal here misses the mark. Whether or not Gaiman wrote her, it feels like someone else. Not that what we have here is unlikeable, it just feels off.

Though Pete Woods does do a boffo job of drawing her.

What of the story itself? Lex Luthor has become so hard-headed these days that it’s basically a case of his irresistible force meeting Death’s immovable object – and she prevails, of course. It’s entertaining, but unfortunately the illumination it shines on Luthor’s character is that he’s pretty one-dimensional these days: Rather than the monomania about Superman that the silver age Luthor had, now he’s got a monomania about acquiring power. It’s unfortunate because it makes me a little more pessimistic that Luthor can really carry the title for much longer, unless Paul Cornell makes him a more nuanced figure.

Speaking of books I’m pessimistic about, the new JSA creative team arrives this month, and the results are not pretty.

I must admit I’m not really a fan of Scott Kolins’ art style these days: The overuse of gray tones, mixed with the painterly coloring job that accompanies it just feels overly rendered for the fairly straightforward books he’s illustrated. Honestly I liked the work he did on his run on The Flash with Geoff Johns a decade a ago better: Stylized, but with more interesting linework.

Marc Guggenheim’s story, for me, got a reaction of, “What, this again?” Jay Garrick – the original Flash – is considering retirement, to become mayor of a small city. An immensely powerful individual shows up to threaten that city, kicks the JSA’s ass until they get it together to put him down, but the victory is pyrrhic. The downer tone continues the feeling that Bill Willingham brought to the book, and I didn’t think it worked then, either. And it seems like we’re constantly seeing the golden age JSAers consider retiring, or coming out of retirement, or whatever. The whole issue felt tremendously manipulative and it was difficult to care about any of it, because it felt like the writer didn’t really understand or care about the characters.

Honestly I’m not sure why I’m even buying the book these days, as the team has really not been worth much since most of the golden age members were killed off in the 90s. It’s a sad thing when Geoff Johns’ run on the book looks like the good old days, because they really weren’t much good. With half a year left until issue #50, I’ll likely stick around that long to see if Guggenheim has something interesting planned for the landmark, but I think that’ll be it for me.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips bring us the first issue of the sequel to Incognito, a series I struggled enjoying at first, but which won me over completely in the final issue. This issue takes a step back from that last issue, being perhaps a little too cynical. It also feels like it’s treading on ground Brubaker previously covered in his outstanding series Sleeper (also with Phillips).

So that’s all a little disappointing, but Brubaker is too good a writer to let that keep him down: Zack Overkill is still trying to figure out his purpose in life now that he knows where he came from, and now that he’s working for a superspy-type organization. He has a tragic encounter from a figure from his past (well, not quite his past, but, well, you’ll see), and then gets assigned to infiltrate a villainous organization.

Incognito has struggled to make Zack someone the viewer can really feel for, but it mostly makes up for it in action, suspense, and clever plots. It’s probably the weakest of the Brubaker/Phillips books because of this character deficit, but it’s still quite good and decidedly different from most other superhero comics. If you enjoy a little pulp and noir in your action stories, check it out.

Astro City: The Dark Age

Astro City:
The Dark Age
Book One
Book Two

The Dark Age is the longest Astro City story to date, running 16 issues plus a prologue (now collected in books one and two) – more than twice as long as any earlier story. Chronicling the era in Kurt Busiek’s creation from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s, the story has some interesting backstory: First, when it started running back in 2005, I recall it was heralded as the story that would reveal what happened to the Silver Agent, who was one of Astro City’s greatest heroes back in the day, but whose fate left the city ashamed of its behavior. Second – and this didn’t come out until later – Busiek had originally pitched The Dark Age as a sequel to his seminal series with Alex Ross, Marvels, and ended up reworking it for Astro City instead, later writing a different sequel to Marvels (Eye of the Camera).

There are some spoilers below, so if you want to read the whole thing with every little surprise, then I suggest doing so first. But the story is so sprawling that there is plenty I won’t reveal even if you do forge onwards.

The prologue takes place in 1959, where two children, Royal and Charles Williams, witness a fight between the Honor Guard and a high-tech gang named Pyramid. The younger one, Charles, is shown stealing an apple, but the pair are shamed later when they encounter the Black Badge, one of the few black superheroes. The pair go home to their family, and we learn only later that that evening, in the aftermath of the big battle, that their parents are killed when the Silver Agent pursues a Pyramid agent through their building.

The bulk of the story takes place in four parts, each keyed by one of the four seasons. Summer, 1972, sees Charles having grown to become a policeman, while Royal is now a small-time crook. Viet Nam is raging, a crazy variety of heroes are showing up (including the Apollo Eleven, human spacemen who now resemble aliens), and the Blue Knight is stalking and executing criminals. Royal and Charles barely speak to one another until Royal is tagged for execution by the Knight. Meanwhile, the Silver Agent is arrested for murdering a super villain and is sentenced to death. The sentence is carried out at the end of this part – at the same time the Silver Agent is seen saving the city from an enemy of the First Family.

Part two, Fall, 1976, shows how the city has gotten darker and more dangerous in the years since the Agent’s execution (symbolizing the end of the silver age of heroes): Villains turned heroes, heroes turned vigilantes, or tortured by inner demons. Charles has married a gold-digger, and she’s constantly pushing him to get “on the take” on the force, like his partner and several others, but Charles refuses. Royal hooks up with one of the underworld lords in the city thanks to his cool head and clear thinking under pressure, and learns that his boss has called in Pyramid to help. He realizes after a while that the Pyramid liaison is the man who killed his parents. It all comes to a head at the end of the chapter, when a heroine’s powers go awry causing chaos in the city, the Silver Agent shows up to save the day, and Royal has to make a decision to save Charles’ life.

Winter, 1982, is filled with dark events, but it focuses mainly on Charles and Royal putting their differences behind them to pursue their parents’ killer: Charles becomes a member of the international peacekeeping force E.A.G.L.E., while Royal infiltrates Pyramid, who are interested in capturing the Apollo Eleven to tap the power of their unified entity, the Incarnate. The pair are right in the middle of the final showdown between Pyramid and the Honor Guard, which goes wrong when a reckless hero fires a powerful weapon at the possessed Incarnate in order to destroy him, which rends a hole in the fabric of spacetime.

Spring, 1984, shows the Williams brothers as having put together a collection of high-tech equipment to pursue their foe, hounding him again and again but never quite catching him. They encounter a number of bizarre heroes, while their quarry feels cornered and makes a leap to gain powers himself, succeeding but at great cost, The brothers confront him in the final issue with the help of the Silver Agent, who arrives to seal the rift from part three, but the showdown is bittersweet for Royal and Charles.

The story ends with an epilogue in which the dark age comes to an end with the appearance of the Samaritan, and where we learn what happened to Charles and Royal.

The Dark Age is a big, sprawling story chronicling over a decade in the history of Astro City, a period which mirrors the explosion of diversity in superhero comics of the 1970s, as well as the darkening of those comics as not only did heroes change and get weirder (the new X-Men, and depowered Wonder Woman), but DC and Marvel experimented more with non-superhero books, especially horror titles. The decade seemed to have few keynote series (sure, the X-Men are lauded today but they weren’t really big until the early 80s), any of the creators of the big Marvel books of the 60s had left, and small-press and creator-owned titles were starting to appear. It was a weird decade, and I think that’s what Busiek is getting at in the almost-anything-goes nature of the heroes and villains in Astro City in this story.

The problem is that the magnitude of the setting makes the story feel less focused than past stories, and the setting – which has always been as much a character in Astro City as the people themselves – feels too diffuse, no elements given enough screen time to really satisfy. This is true even of the Silver Agent thread: Even though he’s integral to the progress of the story, what we see is still more tantalizing than satisfying, and at the end we feel like we’ve learned a little more, but not nearly enough. (The rest of the Agent’s story is being filled in via the 2-part specials, the first of which came out last week. But still, that didn’t really help The Dark Age, of which my frustration over the Agent’s part was merely exemplary of my frustration with other little pieces we saw.)

Busiek was consistent in saying that The Dark Age is the story of Royal and Charles Williams, and while it’s true that much of the focus lay on them, it got spread around a lot too. And the problem with them is that they don’t number among the most interesting characters we’ve seen in Astro City. I can’t say that they’re ciphers, but their story arc just ended up being disappointing. I think the problem came mid-way through the series, after the brothers had essentially cut ties with the police and the underworld in order to pursue the killer of their parents. Normally leaving your life behind to pursue your own goals would be a defining moment, but instead it feels like they become less men than just overriding drives, making them less interesting to follow. I think to some degree this is the point of their evolution, but in the climax things just abruptly come to an end, and while it’s clearly frustrating to the Williams brothers how things turn out, it’s also a letdown to the reader, where it’s not clear what the dramatic point of it all was.

To boil it down even more, ultimately the story is more that of Royal than of Charles. Charles essentially “grows up” at the very beginning, in the prologue, then he becomes a cop, and is put in an untenable situation and is forced essentially to regress because everything he’s believed in has been torn down. His arc is especially unsatisfying because there isn’t the corresponding build-up at the climax making him into a new mature person; he’s just left dangling (and the epilogue doesn’t really do justice to him, either). Royal has a more traditional arc, of being a crook who finds redemption by helping his brother find purpose after he leaves the police, and then helping his brother see what their quest for vengeance has turned them into. It’s not a bad arc, really, but it feels so understated, so overwhelmed by the other elements in the story, even up to the climax, that it’s not enough to really build the meaning of the story around.

To be fair, one of the big frustrations with The Dark Age is that the series came out very gradually over about five years, which meant it was difficult to really care about it when you’re in part 10 of 16 and it’s not clear how long it will be until the next issue arrives. I re-read the whole thing after the final part came out, and while it holds up better on re-reading, it’s still nowhere near as good as earlier long-form stories in the series (of which Confession is in my opinion the gold standard). There’s too much… and yet not enough of any one (or two or three) things.

Fundamentally, I think the problem is that The Dark Age really did turn out to be about the age and not about the characters. Confession and The Tarnished Angel are both unequivocally about their protagonists, and Busiek throws in characters and background and situations and history as needs dictate. The climax of Confession suffers a little from not going into some of the background of its players (E.A.G.L.E., and the other heroes who join in the fight) enough, and The Tarnished Angel has an awkward twist in the middle before coming back to the main story, but both largely stay focused on their main arc. The Dark Age runs here and runs there, comes back to visit the main characters, then covers some more territory, and keeps going back to show how dark everything’s gotten.

I haven’t said much about the art, and that’s because Brent Anderson is one of the most consistent – and consistently good – artists in comics today, so if you’re familiar with his work on the series in the past, then you have a good idea what you’ll be getting here. He’s not especially flashy, and his work doesn’t gosh-wow me the way George Pérez’s or Jerry Ordway’s does, but you have to give him props in that he draws both the heroes and the ordinary folks, the fantastic landscapes and the mundane cityscapes, and pulls it all together into a coherent visual whole. The book would be a very different thing without him, with someone else on the art chores.

In the end I admit some of my disappointment in The Dark Age is that it was very ambitious and didn’t really achieve its ambitions, to my mind, and also that its emphasis (the Williams brothers rather than the Silver Agent) wasn’t what I’d been hoping to read. But I think it had some real problems in focus and storytelling, too.

This Week’s Haul

  • Astro City: The Dark Age vol 2 HC, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson & Alex Ross (DC/Wildstorm)
  • Batman Beyond #5 of 6, by Adam Beechen, Ryan Benjamin & John Stanisci (DC)
  • Batman and Robin #15, by Grant Morrison & Frazer Irving (DC)
  • DC Universe: Legacies #6 of 10, by Len Wein, Scott Kolins, Jerry Ordway, George Pérez, Scott Koblish, Keith Giffen & Al Milgrom (DC)
  • Fables #99, by Bill Willingham & Inaki Miranda (DC/Vertigo)
  • Green Lantern Corps #53, by Tony Bedard, Tyler Kirkham & Batt (DC)
  • Legion of Super-Heroes #6, by Paul Levitz, Francis Portela, Phil Jimenez, Scott Koblish, Yildiray Cinar & Wayne Faucher (DC)
  • Power Girl #17, by Judd Winick & Sami Basri (DC)
  • Steve Rogers: Super-Soldier #4 of 4, by Ed Brubaker & Dale Eaglesham (Marvel)
  • Morning Glories #3, by Nick Spencer & Joe Eisma (Image)
  • The Sixth Gun #5, by Cullen Bunn & Brian Hurtt (Oni)
I was rather perplexed at the end of the previous issue of Batman Beyond, but this issue does a fine job in clearing up my confusion, and making sense of the identity of the new Hush – he’s a clone of Dick Grayson, the same way Terry McGinnis is a clone of Bruce Wayne. Part of the problem is that Ryan Benjamin and John Stanisci’s art is often not very clear, trying to look a little like the cartoon series but with a heavy dose of latter-day Frank Miller in their style (which in my opinion is not a good thing). In this issue they draw Hush in a strong Miller-esque style, which makes his emotions and identity very difficult to read. It just seems sloppy, really.

(Although, I wonder if the Miller-like art is an homage to The Dark Knight Strikes Again, in which an older Bruce Wayne deals with a psychotic Dick Grayson. The parallel is passingly interesting, but since TDKSA was basically self-indulgent drek, it’s not really a selling point for this series.)

The series has been something of a mixed bag, but ultimately it’s been fun despite its flaws. I look forward to the wrap-up next month.

That cover has almost nothing to do with the latest issue of Legion of Super-Heroes, just a couple of pages where people talk about the fact that Shadow Lass slept with Earth-Man (is she not still with Mon-El? How confusing). But otherwise it features two stories, one mostly involving moving characters around (Levitz loves writing these little in-between bits which don’t really advance the plot), and the other featuring members of the Legion Academy. It’s a filler issue.

But then there’s the last page:

So whom should I vote for in the Legion leader election? Element Lad’s always been my favorite – except I can’t stand his pink costume, especially since it replaced the excellent Dave Cockrum-designed blue-and-green one. Among the candidates, I think I’d go with either Mon-El or Dawnstar.

Steve Rogers: Super-Soldier wraps up with a nifty confrontation between Steve and Machinesmith, and a neat coda which puts a rather different spin on the rest of the series, leaving our hero confused as to what exactly was going on. As with Brubaker’s Captain America run, this has been quite good. But it kind of underscores that Steve Rogers really needs to be Cap; Bucky has been a decent fill-in, but it’s becoming clear that he doesn’t have the temperament or skills to really be Cap, that his road leads elsewhere.

With “The Trial of Captain America” right around the corner, I hope these points get handled over the next year.

This Week’s Haul

Actually not this week’s haul (which came out today), but the last two weeks’ hauls. You know how it goes…

Two Weeks Ago:

  • American Vampire #7, by Scott Snyder & Rafael Albuquerque (DC/Vertigo)
  • Madame Xanadu #27, by Matt Wagner & Celia Calle (DC/Vertigo)
  • Secret Six #26, by Gail Simone & Jim Calafiore (DC)
  • Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #5 of 6, by Peter Hogan, Chris Sprouse & Karl Story (DC/America’s Best Comics)
  • Captain America: Forever Allies #3 of 4, by Roger Stern, Nick Dragotta & Marco Santucci (Marvel)
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. #4, by Jonathan Hickman & Dustin Weaver (Marvel)
  • Incorruptible #10, by Mark Waid, Horacio Domingues, Juan Castro & Michael Babinski (Boom)
  • The Boys #47, by Garth Ennis & Russ Braun (Dynamite)

Last Week:

  • Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5 of 6, by Grant Morrison, Ryan Sook, Pere Pérez & Mick Gray (DC)
  • Green Lantern #58, by Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke & Christian Alamy (DC)
  • Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #3, by Peter J. Tomasi, Fernando Pasarin & Cam Smith (DC)
  • Knight & Squire #1 of 6, by Paul Cornell & Jimmy Broxton (DC)
  • Superman #703, by J. Michael Straczynski, Eddy Barrows & J.P. Mayer (DC)
  • The Unwritten #18, by Mike Carey & Peter Gross (DC/Vertigo)
  • Victorian Undead: Sherlock Holmes vs. Jeckyll/Hyde special, by Ian Edginton & Horacio Domingues (DC/Wildstorm)
  • Casanova #4, by Matt Fraction & Gabriel Bá (Marvel/Icon)
  • Echo #25, by Terry Moore (Abstract)
  • Irredeemable #18, by Mark Waid & Peter Krause (Boom)
I’m not entirely sure what to make of Paul Cornell. He’s a very inventive writer, but his plotting is rather scattershot, and more portentous than meaningful. I had this feeling when I read his novel Something More, and the first episode of Doctor Who he wrote, “Father’s Day” (though he did get the emotional center of that one right, even if the story didn’t make a lot of sense). His current run on Action Comics is in a similar vein. In a way he seems like Grant Morrison lite: An idea man, but his execution can feel haphazard and unsatisfying.

In fact, he’s picking up a couple of Grant Morrison creations in this new mini-series, Knight and Squire (okay, they first appeared in the silver age, but Morrison basically recreated them from whole cloth, since it’s not like “the English Batman and Robin” is a concept with legs all by itself), and Cornell reintroduces them here in a pub where heroes and villains gather to hang out, compelled by the magic of the place not to fight. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s an awkward way to introduce the main characters, throwing them into an Alan-Moore-esque “let’s introduce a hodge-podge of British heroes and villains all at once” story, characters that the reader really has no investment in. It’s more of a neat concept than a story – which again feels very Morrison-like.

So, it’s an okay beginning, but felt kind of inconsequential. Broxton’s art is nice, sort of Alan Davis crossed with Ed McGuinness. If this series is just going to be six cute vignettes, though, then I think it’ll be a disappointment. Hopefully Cornell’s got something larger planned, and something that focuses on the main characters.


Last month Mark Waid tweeted:

"In stores today: IRREDEEMABLE #17 -- maybe my favorite cliffhanger I've ever written, and @petergkrause nails it."

While it was a pretty good cliffhanger, honestly I’d kind of seen it coming. Partly as a result, I think both of Waid’s cliffhangers in this month’s books are better than that one: Incorruptible sees our villain-turned-hero and new sidekick rescuing (after a fashion) the Plutonian’s former girlfriend, and learning what her captors had planned – a plan which they apparently execute on the last page. Irredeemable builds a new plot thread out of whole cloth – plausibly, since it revolves around the world’s Batman-type character – with truly world-changing consequences (even by the standards of a Superman figure turned evil) on the final page.

Irredeemable has been consistently solid, but it felt like it was marking time until artist Peter Krause returned, and now it’s kicking into high gear. Incorruptible has been thrashing a bit, trying to find its voice and purpose (and it hasn’t really done so yet), being somewhat overwhelmed by the events in its companion title that the main character hasn’t really had much of a chance to shine, but it’s still got some good stuff, and I think it still has a good chance to improve – I’m just not quite sure what I want to see it do that would make it better. I think I’d like more of a focus on Max and the implications of his decision to turn good, since so far it mostly seems like a lot of adventuring and those implications are dealt with almost incidentally.

Going (to) APE

Yesterday I went up to the Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco. I’ve known about it for years, but I’ve never gone; it seems like every year someone at the comics shop would ask if I was going, and I’d say, “Oh, is that this weekend? I already have plans…” But this year I planned ahead and put it on my calendar. It helps that you don’t have to preregister to attend (if you arrive just as the doors open, it doesn’t even really save you much time in line).

When I arrived, I wondered how long it had been since I’d gone to a comics convention. As best I can recall, I haven’t actually been to one since a little convention in New Orleans back in college, around 1989. Madison didn’t have any, and I know I didn’t go out of town for them, and I’ve never gone to any of the local cons (although I hope to get to Wonder Con next spring).

APE is being held in the Concourse Exhibition Center, which is in a part of town I’d never been to before. It’s about 4 blocks from the CalTrain station, in an area that seems to have been renovated since AT&T Park as built 10 years ago, but which still has some older buildings. It’s across from the “San Francisco Fashion Collective”, which seems like an “only in the first world” sort of organization.

The con itself is primarily a large showroom of vendors and artists, with some programming and some sessions on creating and producing comics. As the name says, the con is geared towards independent comics companies, not the major ones. The “big name” publishers at APE are Fantagraphics, Slave Labor Graphics (SLG), Last Gasp and Top Shelf. So my goal in going up to the con was to find some comics to read that I wasn’t familiar with, and get exposed to some new stuff. On the other hand, I’m not really a fan of “slice of life” comics which have been hallmarks of independent comics over the last 20 years (the sorts of books by APE guests Lynda Barry and Daniel Clowes), and I also have a strong preference for polished artwork and a mild preference for colored artwork. So, would APE be for me?

Going to conventions is always a little awkward for me anyway, since I’m never really sure how to approach them, and it reminds me that I am, at heart, not very social, so I feel uncomfortable chatting with the people in the booths. I also feel awkward around actual writers and artists, partly because I don’t want to offend them, by looking at their wares and not buying them or by saying that I’ve never seen their work before. APE worked both in my favor and against it, since I assumed that most creators at the con were there in large part to get their work in front of a larger audience who’d never seen it before, but on the other hand most of the people behind the booths were the actual creators and not, say, staffers from a retail store.

I got to the con shortly after opening and spent the first couple of hours walking around looking fairly briefly at each booth, planning to look at the ones that looked interesting to me in more detail later. Some of the vendors had “sales pitches” as you walked by, while others didn’t (perhaps unsurprisingly, the degree of personal outgoingness among these folks who are writers and artists varied widely). My first purchase was from Barry Deutsch, creator of Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, largely because he did have a witty sales pitch, asking if you’ve been looking for a young adult story of an orthodox Jewish girl who really wants to go off on fantasy adventures. It’s a nice hardcover with attractive artwork, so I picked up a copy (here it is at Amazon).

The next artist to grab me was nearly the last one I walked by: He had a set of nice color art prints up, and one titled “The Adventurers” attracted my attention because it was large and colorful and extremely detailed, but the one underneath it, “Wishing Well”, really sucked me in because it had a terrific color scheme, beautiful execution, and a really neat idea behind it. The artist was Travis Hanson, who specializes in fantasy art focused on children and young teenagers, and who also does free sketches – lots and lots of free sketches – a sketch in every book you buy from him, and an additional free sketch on sketch paper. His sign said he’s done over 900 sketches at some conventions! He and his friend who was working the booth were both friendly and talkative and very approachable. I picked up all 6 issues (to date) of his series The Bean, and went back later for some of the prints. Really nice stuff.

Other things I bought:

A pretty good haul, all things considered. For the most part I picked books which initially attracted me with art styles I liked, and which seemed to have interesting stories too on closer inspection. There were a few books that had nice-looking art, but whose stories didn’t grab me when I thumbed through them, and one or two others which had stories that seemed interesting but the art just wasn’t for me. Given how much I picked up, I don’t feel like I really missed out on anything. Two books I arguably “should” have picked up, but which I decided instead to read first in their Webcomic form, were Templar, Arizona (which I’m already part-way through) and Family Man.

A friend of mine, Becky, also went up to the con, and we had lunch together, and later rode the train home. (Well, I got off a little early to meet Debbi for dinner in Menlo Park.) I don’t see her very often, so it was fun to hang out and chat with her.

All-in-all I had fun, even if I did feel awkward for much of the con. Despite being a life-long comic book fan, I’ve never really felt connected to the larger comic book community, other than occasionally chatting with folks at my local store. But I found a lot of neat stuff at APE, and I certainly hope to go back next year!

This Week’s Haul

  • Action Comics #893, by Paul Cornell, Sean Chen & Wayne Faucher, and Nick Spencer & RB Silva (DC)
  • First Wave #4 of 6, by Brian Azzarello, Rags Morales & Rick Bryant (DC)
  • Justice Society of America #43, by James Robinson, Jesus Merino & Jesse Delperdang (DC)
  • Time Masters: Vanishing Point #3 of 6, by Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC)
  • Wonder Woman #603, by J. Michael Straczynski, Don Kramer, Eduardo Pansica, Allan Goldman, Jay Leisten & Scott Koblish (DC)
  • Captain America #610, by Ed Brubaker, Butch Guice & Rick Magyar (Marvel)
  • Casanova #3, by Matt Fraction & Gabriel Bá (Marvel/Icon)
  • Powers #6, by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming (Marvel/Icon)
  • Chew #14, by John Layman & Rob Guillory (Image)
In Action Comics Lex Luthor outthinks Gorilla Grodd, but later events set up next issue’s much-heralded story with Death from Sandman appearing in the DC Universe. Of more significance (to my mind) is that the fill-in artist is Sean Chen, whose work I’ve enjoyed ever since he illustrated Kurt Busiek’s Iron Man series a decade ago. Unfortunately he hasn’t regularly drawn a comic since then, so we only see him for a few issues at a time.

The back-up story has gotten some advance press because it introduces Chloe Sullivan (from Smallville) into the DCU, as a rather grumpy ex-girlfriend of Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy’s now being portrayed as something of a slacker, compared to more successful members of his generation, and his friendship with Superman being a bit overblown. It’s rather the opposite of what Grant Morrison did with the character in All-Star Superman, and though I give Morrison a hard time these days, I much prefer his take on Olsen. So the story is actually rather depressing, and the sudden reverse at the end (in which Jimmy seems a bit more heroic, albeit contingent on him actually doing something) just makes it seem ridiculous on top of that. One wonders what the point of this exercise is – I’d rather see Cornell write a companion story to the lead, as I’m sure he’s got plenty of ideas in his head. But this Olson story is not really much fun, so why bother?

More Webcomics I Read

It’s been a little over a year, so I thought this would be a good time to follow up on my post “Webcomics I Read” with a list of some others I’ve started following since then:

  • Aardehn, by Eric Vedder: A high fantasy comic involving a heroine who’s bonded to a demon, and maybe the subject of a prophecy, as well as an evil sorceress consorting with demons and an elf trying to escape her clutches. The story doesn’t set the world on fire, but Vedder’s art is gorgeous (though decidedly on the hot-babe end of the art spectrum, in case that’s not your cup of tea). Seems to be on hiatus since June.
  • Bad Guy High, by TheRedDeath: A straight-up superhero parody about a young villain at a school for villains, and his best friend, SuperDan (who got his powers when he was bitten by a radioactive Superman). The parodies are (deliberately, I think) heavy-handed, but sometimes quite clever when you see where he’s going with a joke. The writing style is one of action-adventure, not gag-a-day. The art has advanced from crude to actually pretty solid superhero fare. You pretty much have to like superhero parody to enjoy this one, but within those bounds, it works well.
  • Bad Machinery, by John Allison: Allison’s earlier strip Scary Go Round had been recommended to me, but it came to an end before I started reading it. Bad Machinery features a group of schoolchildren in England, and conducting investigations into the strange goings-on in their town. The strip is very English in temperament and dialogue, and the characters are all emotionally vivid, whether angry or insecure or whatever, which makes for some unique reading. Allison’s story meanders all over the place, focusing mainly on the characters’ interactions, while the individual stories move forward slowly (the second story is nearing its end right now).

    I was dubious about the strip for a while, but the first story ended quite satisfactorily, with some nice surprises and a nifty denouement. I’m hoping the second story ends as strongly. Allison’s style involves crisp lines and figures with gangly arms, but he also fills in all the backgrounds and gives the strip a distinct, yet fully-realized look. While not everything in the strip is my cup of tea, it’s a good one.

  • Blip, by Sage Leaves: The premise of this is that the heroine, K, was born outside of God’s plan, and so her actions – especially when she writes or draws – can shape the world in unplanned ways. She’s a “blip” in the universe. Consequently there are angels who watch her to keep her from being creative, and the forces of Lucifer who are trying to pull her in another direction. And her best friends are a witch, a robot and a vampire – although K knows none of this.

    Despite the fantastic overtones (and there’s a lot of conflict among the various empowered characters), Blip is largely a slice-of-life comic, especially where K is concerned, a far more whimsical Questionable Content, overlaid with elements of Gunnerkrigg Court. The art is cartoony and energetic, especially when portraying K, who is very expressive (elated, angry, frustrated, etc.). On weekends the creator runs sketch panels which nonetheless fill out the story and sometimes move it forward, so it’s a true 7-days-a-week strip. This strip is pretty representative of the strip’s sense of humor.

    Overall I’d say it’s quite good, maybe a bit light; I’d like to see the fantastic elements move forward a little faster.

  • Border Crossings, by Christian Sager & Andrew Sides: A serious fantasy adventure in which a surfer girl, falls through a hole into an alternate universe, a world which is nearly all water, with a single island and city on it, where humans are unknown and elements of our world’s culture occasionally fall through to bewilder its inhabitants. She ends up as a crewmember of a nautilus-like submarine, perhaps the only outpost of freedom on the planet, and also learns to use wield some of the world’s magic.

    I’m not quite sure where it’s going, and it’s hard to relate to Venetia as the nominal protagonist, but it’s entertaining. The art is good, but not quite doing justice to the designs, which are often amazing – the best element of the strip.

  • The Guns of Shadow Valley, by David Wachter, James Andrew Clark & Thomas Mauer: This is the stuff! A supernatural old west adventure. Despite raving about the comic book The Sixth Gun and this one, I don’t have any particular love for westerns, these are both just really good stories. Here a sheriff puts together a posse to head into Shadow Valley, a mysterious place where weird things happen, and where a mysterious treasure is apparently there to be found and taken. Of course, the posse has a few special individuals itself, including an outlaw named Frank who can draw a gun faster than any other man – and has a few other special talents besides. On the other hand, a Colonel leading a force including some supernatural beings seems to be on the same quest.

    The level of craftsmanship in this series is high: The characters and dialogue are both compelling, and Wachter’s artwork is amazing, nailing the period look as well as the supernatural elements, while drawing a bunch of characters with distinctive faces. His style reminds me of Tim Truman’s, but with more fluid layouts and figures. Excellent all around.

  • Maya, by Chris Noeth: Another adventure strip, this one with a female Indiana Jones-type adventurer. I don’t have a lot to say about it, since only 13 pages have appeared, mostly early in 2010, and it seems to be on hiatus. Noeth is a good artist, not quite as good as Eric Vedder of Ardehn for my money, although this one’s in color, which I appreciate. If it can get on a regular schedule, there’s potential here, but at the moment the story’s still in its prologue, so it’s hard to judge.
  • Ménage à 3, by Gisèle Lagacé: Recommended by a cow-orker of mine, this is a straight-up relationship comic with a heavy dose of farce: Introverted virgin Gary learns his roommates are gay lovers; they move out and in move the enthusiastic Zii and the busty French-Canadian Didi. Mix in heavy doses of bisexuality, misunderstandings, and a strong manga-influenced art style, and hijinks ensue on a regular basis. I find it a little disappointing that the hijinks have overshadowed the characters in the strip, as it feels like the strip has achieved a steady state of comedy-without-development (putting it more in the gag-a-day category than the slice-of-life category, I guess). But it’s often funny and the art is quite good (although, as they say in TV listings, it contains “nudity and strong sexual content”).
  • Moon Town, by Steve Ogden: Straight-ahead space opera adventure involving an inspector who’s come to check out some suspicious goings-on in a mining town on the moon. The story is still in its early stages, and progress has been slow because Ogden keeps putting the strip on hiatus to deal with his real life. But if you’re willing to stick with it through that, this is a quality adventure strip, a worthy descendant of SF newspapers strips of the past. I hope he can get back on a regular schedule, because I want to read more of it.
  • Possessed!, by Bryan Burke & Eryck Webb: A fairly new strip about three women who move into a haunted apartment, and make friends with the ghost living there. The story’s just getting started, but Webb’s art is already improving by leaps and bounds. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.
  • Sister Claire, by Yamino (a.k.a. Elena Barbarich): Its tag line is “Pregnant nun. Holy crap.” Though that might sound like a different sort of strip, in fact this is a post-apocalyptic adventure: Sister Claire is in fact pregnant, apparently with a messiah, which is a problem not just because she’s a nun, but because the other nuns regard her as something of a screw-up. But with the forces of evil interested in capturing her, the other nuns realize they need to take care of her and help her learn to take care of herself.

    My biggest criticism of the strip is that it’s slow-moving: Other than a few encounters with the forces of evil, it seems like not a lot has really happened since the strip began. It is well-drawn and amusing, but feels like it hasn’t lived up to its potential. Plan B has a similar feel but I think is a better strip. Updating can be sporadic due to the artist having (I think) repetitive stress issues. Not a favorite, but I’m sticking with it to see where it goes.

  • Something Positive, by R.K. Milholland: I discovered this one through Girls With Slingshots, as the two strips cross continuity on occasion. But I just haven’t been able to get into this one. The characters are an array of smartasses (from the seemingly-innocent to the just-plain-angry variety), and the strip is very wordy, though it doesn’t often make me laugh. I have trouble telling the characters apart, and would have a hard time recapping what’s happened in the strip over the last six months: One woman escaped from apparently being held captive, the main character, Davon, is apparently trying to reform from what I infer are his past womanizing ways and settle down with one woman, and one young woman seems to have run away from home. But it’s difficult to keep straight. There are also frequent interludes in which Davon’s cat talks to the reader – I mostly blip over those.

    Milholland’s art is simple and repetitive, stylistically it bears some resemblance to Jeph Jacques’ over at Questionable Content, but I think Jacques has lapped Milholland in his skills.

    I’m nearing the point where I feel I’ve given Something Positive a real try and deciding that it’s just not for me, and/or I just don’t get it.

Since my earlier entry I’ve also stopped reading a few strips: Garfield Minus Garfield got too repetitive for me. Inktank stopped updating, but I’d still read it if he kept doing it (it was never as good as his earlier strip Angst Technology, though). Afterstrife came to an end, and I haven’t checked in to see if he’s doing anything new. The artist on Sweet Fat Life departed, the writer tried her hand at drawing, but stopped updating after only a few episodes.

So what else should I be reading?

This Week’s Haul

The last two weeks, spanning my recent vacation:

Two Weeks Ago:

  • Batman Beyond #4 of 6, by Adam Beechen, Ryan Benjamin & John Stanisci (DC)
  • Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #2, by Peter J. Tomasi, Fernando Pasarin & Cam Smith (DC)
  • The Unwritten #17, by Mike Carey & Peter Gross (DC/Vertigo)
  • Zatanna #5, by Paul Dini, Chad Hardin & Wayne Faucher (DC)
  • Steve Rogers: Super-Soldier #3 of 4, by Ed Brubaker & Dale Eaglesham (Marvel)
  • The Mystery Society #3 of 5, by Steve Niles & Fiona Staples (IDW)
  • Morning Glories #1 & 2, by Nick Spencer & Joe Eisma (Image)

Last Week:

  • DC Universe: Legacies #5 of 10, by Len Wein, Scott Kolins, George Pérez, Walt Simonson & Scott Koblish (DC)
  • Fables #98, by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham & Steve Leialoha (DC/Vertigo)
  • The Flash #4, by Geoff Johns & Francis Manapul (DC)
  • Green Lantern Corps #52, by Tony Bedard, Ardian Syaf & Vicente Cifuentes (DC)
  • Legion of Super-Heroes #5, by Paul Levitz, Yildiray Cinar, Francis Portela & Wayne Faucher (DC)
  • Power Girl #16, by Judd Winick & Sami Basri (DC)
  • Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #3 of 5, by Warren Ellis & Kaare Andrews (Marvel)
  • Captain America: Reborn TPB, by Ed Brubaker, Bryan Hitch, Butch Guice, Luke Ross & Rick Magyar (Marvel)
  • Fantastic Four #583, by Jonathan Hickman & Steve Epting (Marvel)
  • Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father #4 of 5, by Jay Faerber & Júlio Brilha (Image)

 The new series Morning Glories has gotten some good word-of-mouth, so I picked up the first two issues to check it out. At a glance, it looks like it’s going to be a thriller story with a dash of horror: The Morning Glory Academy is a private high school recruiting the best and the brightest – but it has some horrific secrets within its walls. The opening sequence shows a pair of students trying to plumb its depths, and one of them comes to a terrible – well, not end, but close. Then we’re introduced to six new students joining the academy this year, who learn a couple of things: First, that when they contact their parents or anyone outside the school, no one remembers them, and second, that they all share the same birthday.

I’m not familiar with writer Nick Spencer, but his writing doles out just enough surprises and shocks to keep this being a page-turner (although the first issue bogs down a bit showing us perhaps more of the six protagonists’ home lives than was really needed – it’s a classic first issue problem, easing into the story a bit too gradually), and certainly there’s a strong sense of “what the hell is going on here?” Who benefits from terrorizing and molding these students, and what are their goals? There’s some sort of supernatural force at work, but I hope there will be much more behind the academy than simple horror film schtick. There’s too much good stuff here for the story to devolve into being just a horror comic (that, ultimately, was the problem with Joe Hill’s Locke and Key – ultimately, it was just a horror comic).

The gorgeous covers to the series are by Rodin Esquejo, but the interior art is by Joe Eisma, whose angular drawings and awkward layouts don’t really do justice to Spencer’s stories. In particular his faces are generic and it’s difficult to tell the characters apart – a fact which left me confused about the surprise at the end of the second issue until I realized the text was meant to be taken literally. I hope he’ll tighten up his pencils and add some more detail and variety to his art as the series progresses, because right now the art sometimes makes it difficult to follow.

So I can see what the buzz about Morning Glories is about, but it’s still very much a work-in-progress. Nonetheless, it’s pretty different from most of what’s out there, and overall it’s professionally executed, so I’m glad I picked it up. I’m just curious to see how high the ambitions rise for this series.

Yeah, I really just wanted to include this issue of Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis because the cover is so terrible. Worst cover ever? That’s probably pushing it, but it’s really awful, and of course has absolutely nothing to do with the story. A waste.

Warren Ellis’ story is both a little more interesting and a little less interesting this issue: Much of it is spent with Cyclops and an African dictator posturing and lecturing each other – the sort of moralizing Ellis always enjoys writing, but it’s terribly tediously done here. Otherwise the story is turning into a sequel the Captain Britain stories by Alan Moore and Alan Davis from 30 years ago. (If you want to plunk down the money for it – and it’s very good stuff, but perhaps not this good – you can read it all in the omnibus edition.) Ellis has already brought back the Warpies – grotesquely empowered children formed by a nearby dimensional breach – and brings back a couple of other surprising figures from the Moore/Davis stuff too. I’m mildly curious as to what he’s going to do with them, although I can’t shake the feeling that he’s just plumbing the depths of yet more ancient Marvel history. What’s the point? Why not create something new? Ellis has done some great stuff reworking old comics themes before, but Astonishing X-Men has been far from his best work, stuttering around the edges of the X-Men universe and not really getting to the point – there’s never any payoff. I understand the book has been plagued by delays, but still.

Kaare Andrews’ art: Okay at best. He has all of the weaknesses of Frank Quitely (somewhat-inhuman-looking people, poor backgrounds) with few of his strengths (his characters look ethereal where Quitely’s look solid, Quitely’s layouts are usually strong if stiff, while Andrews’ seem awkward). Visually, the book is a mess, and particular a disappointment given the artists Ellis has been working with in earlier issues of Astonishing.

If you want to see some great art, look no farther than Captain America: Reborn, the paperback collection of the series from a couple of years ago, which gets me nearly caught up on Ed Brubaker’s run on the character. Well okay, I think Bryan Hitch is a tad overrated as an artist, his figures being a little too perfect, and he never quite sells me on his characters’ emotions, but boy, you can’t fault him for his layouts or renderings, which are truly gorgeous.

Reborn features Brubaker once again attempting the impossible: Having convincingly brought Bucky Barnes back from the dead, he now bring back Steve Rogers, who was shot twice – once at very close range, by his mind-controlled lover – setting off months or mourning in the Marvel Universe. The kicker, of course, is that Steve wasn’t actually killed, something else happened, something that the mastermind behind events wanted to use to bring Cap around to his side, and Cap’s friends have to prevent the bad guys from finishing the job.

Brubaker doesn’t pull it off as well as he did Bucky’s revival, in large part because Bucky’s story was steeped in cold war black ops and shadowy figures, the sort of stuff Brubaker does best. This is an over-the-top fantasy, which doesn’t play to Brubaker’s strengths, and which features a chain of events which borders close enough to the absurd to make it hard to swallow. It is, in short, a Lee-and-Kirby plot written by a noir detective story guy. Brubaker gives it all he’s got, but I don’t think he quite pulls it off. It’s a fun ride, with many good moments, but it feels a bit awkward next to Brubaker’s other Cap stuff.

But really, if you just want some escapist fiction to entertain you for a couple of hours, you could do a lot worse. As a sort of “event” comic unto itself, and carefully integrated into the larger goings-on in the Marvel Universe, Brubaker naturally has some strict confines to work within. So I think this can be chalked up as a good try, which kept the overall story moving forward. Not bad stuff, really.

And man, the art sure is gorgeous.

This Week’s Haul

Hey, look! It’s another late entry! You’d think I was running out of gas on writing these every week or something!

Last Week:

  • Astro City Special: Silver Agent #2 of 2, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson & Alex Ross (DC/Wildstorm)
  • Secret Six #25, by Gail Simone & Jim Calafiore (DC)
  • Tom Strong and the Robots of Soom #4 of 6, by Peter Hogan, Chris Sprouse & Karl Story (DC/America’s Best Comics)
  • Captain America: Forever Allies #2 of 4, by Roger Stern, Nick Dragotta, Marco Santucci & Patrick Piazzaguta (Marvel)
  • Hercules: Twilight of a God #4 of 4, by Bob Layton & Ron Lim (Marvel)
  • Scarlet #2, by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev (Marvel/Icon)
  • Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #3 of 4, by David Petersen, Katie Cook, Guy Davis, Nate Pride & Jason Shawn Alexander (Archaia)
  • Incorruptible #9, by Mark Waid & Horacio Domingues (Boom)
  • Hellboy: The Storm #3 of 3, by Mike Mignola & Duncan Fegredo (Dark Horse)
  • The Boys #46, by Garth Ennis & Russ Braun (Dynamite)

This Week:

  • American Vampire #6, by Scott Snyder & Rafael Albuquerque (DC/Vertigo)
  • Batman and Robin #14, by Grant Morrison & Frazer Irving (DC)
  • Green Lantern #57, by Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke & Christian Alamy (DC)
  • Wolverine: Old Man Logan TPB, by Mark Millar & Steve McNiven (Marvel)
  • Irredeemable #17, by Mark Waid & Peter Krause (Boom)
  • The Sixth Gun #4, by Cullen Bunn & Brian Hurtt (Oni)
The second half of Astro City‘s Silver Agent story came out last week, and it wraps up (or winds down?) the story of the Agent, one of the tragic figures in the city’s history, and one of the most-anticipated mysteries from the early days of the series. But I was a little disappointed, not for the reasons Greg Burgas was in that I think he doesn’t see that the Agent’s point of view is just as interesting as the man-in-the-street’s (or, at least, he doesn’t think it’s as interesting), but that it feels like it wasn’t quite worthy of all the attention and build-up.

To be fair, the fact that Astro City has been on an erratic publishing schedule for a decade, and that The Dark Age initially seemed to promise to be the Agent’s story but ended up being something else, perhaps build up anticipation for the Agent’s story way beyond what it deserved. And yet.

Having in the first half seen the Agent (a Captain America character) being saved by a Legion of Super-Heroes type group from the future, now we see him walking back through time to meet his eventually end in the electric chair, and excerpts of his experiences along the way, with a focus on his last two visits, with his nephew. And he does meet his end, but in a weirdly ambiguous way, which seems like it can only be satisfying if it’s the seed for further revelations about Astro City in the future, since it suggests things about the source of the Agent’s powers which aren’t really meaningful in isolation.

I think what I feel is missing from this story is that the world at large felt a great deal of guilt over the Agent’s wrongful execution (which is why they erected the statue, after all), but given that this is a time travel story, I was very disappointed that there’s no interaction between him and the world in the future in which both he and they (obviously representatives of those who convicted and executed him) deal with the issue. He comes to terms with his fate, but the rest of the world doesn’t, and while maybe that’s a lost cause, the fact that this is a time travel story and there’s not even an attempt to try makes it feel like the whole story has been dramatically undermined.

At his core, the Agent is a symbol to Astro City: First, a symbol of the greatness of the silver age, and later, a symbol of the shame of what the city went through in the dark age. While this story focuses on the agent as a man and not a symbol (other than as a symbol out of distant memory in the far future, which is not the same thing), a satisfying treatment of the character I think needed to address both sides, and that’s missing here.

The story is itself fine, and we get a lot of tantalizing glimpses of the future of the world, but I think it went off-track in some basic way, and ended up being less than it should have been.

I’m not quite sure what I think of the finale of Hercules: Twilight of a God. Though it’s refreshing in a way that the title is absolutely truthful: This is the chronicle of the last days of Hercules, in Bob Layton’s future-outer-space milieu. Having suffered brain damage, and with his comrades from his earlier adventures in their own old age, Herc is called on for one final task, to prevent Galactus – who is collapsing into a black hole – from destroying the galactic region where Herc has made his home and spawned a family. He completes his quest, and we see the aftermath and denouement of his adventure. While it’s a glorious end, it also feels rather anticlimactic; Hercules in his dotage is not nearly as entertaining as Hercules in his prime, and the sense of foreboding and gloom surrounding this story is just not as much fun as the earlier tales (especially the second mini-series, chronicling the fall of the Olympians, which was itself a bit gloomy yet was a much better story).

So there’s stuff to like here, but… it’s not the same. And it’s also clearly the end of this series of Hercules adventures, which is in itself saddening.

Ron Lim’s art is okay, but it feels stiff, and not as dynamic as Layton’s own art on the original stories. Sometimes Lim can be quite a good artist, but it feels like he phoned this one in.

I’ll put this series on the shelf next to the nice hardcover copy of Herc’s earlier adventures, but it’s not really the same.

Hey look, I bought something written by Mark Millar this week!

I kvetch about Millar a lot. I think he’s one of the worst writers working in comics these days, and I feel no shame in kvetching because he’s also one of the most popular and successful writers in comics these days. It makes no sense to me, but, well, it’s not the only thing. My basic problem with Millar is that I think his stories are mean-spirited and un-fun, and he frequently just misses the mark in depicting existing characters. I loathed his gratuitously nasty run on The Authority, I hated his depiction of guys who happened to be wearing Avengers costumes in The Ultimates, and I hated pretty much everything about Civil War.

But I was still moved to pick up Wolverine: Old Man Logan, and frankly the main reason is that I’m just a sucker for alternate-future stories. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, but I read most of them (at least featuring characters I’m familiar with) because I just like the genre.

The premise of this one is so simple you can almost see Millar thinking it up: One day all the super-villains team up to take down all the super-heroes, and the ringleaders divide up the United States among themselves. Naturally, a few heroes survive, and 50 years later, Wolverine is living outside Sacramento, an old man who refuses to fight anymore, having been broken in the villain attack. But when the Hulk gang demands their rent, he hooks up with Hawkeye to drive across the country to deliver a package in Washington.

So the story is mostly a travelogue in which we see what happened to the heroes and the country, and learn what happened to Logan.

Considering my biggest problem with Millar is usually that he can’t get characterizations right, he nails Wolverine here, as a broken yet still strong-minded man. The story wouldn’t work at all if he hadn’t made Wolverine work. On the other hand, the story is thin, little more than a reworking of films like Unforgiven, with the Marvel Universe future-travelogue stuff thrown in.

Indeed, almost everywhere you look in Old Man Logan you can see bits that feel lifted from other stories: The Hulk as a tyrant whose creed is that he survives when the weak die (from Peter David’s excellent Hulk: Future Imperfect), Hawkeye being blind (from another David yarn, The Last Avengers Story), the Red Skull’s trophy room (also from Future Imperfect), and one of the signature spreads of art in the story, that of a gargantuan skeleton of Goliath lying outside a city, feels like it came right out of Warren Ellis’ Planetary. A lot of what would otherwise be “the neat stuff” has been done before.

Besides that, the story is decent enough. My biggest gripe in terms of characters is the notion that the Hulk would mate with his cousin, the She-Hulk, and produce a clan of hillbilly enforcers. This so runs against the grain of Bruce Banner and Jennifer Walters’ characters that although the final visuals are cute (Steve McNiven draws some ugly-looking redneck Hulklings) it seems gratuitous and implausible. And while the story’s climax is cathartic, it doesn’t really work if you think about it, either.

McNiven is a terrific artist – he was certainly the best part of Civil War – and there’s really nothing to complain about in any aspect of his work. While his style has echoes of John Cassaday and Gary Frank, I’d say he’s better than either of them, with more intricate designs than Cassaday, a better sense of anatomy than Frank, and more dynamic layouts and figures than either of them. Unfortunately he seems to be a bit too slow of an artist to maintain a monthly schedule, because he has all the tools to be one of the greatest comics artists of his generation.

So all-in-all Old Man Logan may be the best Millar story I’ve read, but it’s still merely okay. At least it’s not downright repugnant like other stuff I’ve read by him, so maybe this is the first of several steps forward.

Is The Sixth Gun the best comic being published today? That’s high praise, and frankly it’s hard to make a firm decision, but wow, it’s awfully good. This Old West supernatural horror adventure (that’s a mouthful!) involves a Confederate general who – we learn in this issue – somehow got hold of six enchanted handguns for himself and his five henchmen. One of his posse, Sinclair, decided this was too much for him and bolted, managing to escape the General’s revenge. At some later point the General was defeated and imprisoned, having somehow become immensely powerful in the meantime. Now he’s back and he’s looking for his gun, now in the possession of Becky, the daughter of the reverend who apparently took down the General.

The comic’s full of foreboding, supernatural conflict, and mystical beings hanging out in the Old West, and features a pair of strong female characters in Becky (coming to grips with the position she’s been put in) and the General’s wife, who matches her husband in ambition and spirit. The backstory is being revealed slowly – but not so slowly as to be frustrating – and it’s not yet clear exactly what stakes are being played for (just how powerful will the General be once he recovers from his imprisonment and if he gets his gun back?). But just four issues in The Sixth Gun has covered more ground than many comics today cover in a dozen (I’m looking at you RASL). And Brian Hurtt’s artwork is terrific, cartoony in the sense that Charles Addams’ work was cartoony, but still dramatic and menacing. His style might not translate into mainstream superhero comics (where he’d surely earn a lot more money), but it’s perfect here.

The only downside is that I don’t know if this is a mini-series or an ongoing series. The story doesn’t feel like it’s poised to end in a couple of issues, but you never know. Nevertheless, this series is a lot of fun: Go buy it.