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| Wednesday, December 12, 2007 02:32 PM |
| The Take |
 by Fëanor |
Buffy Season 8 #9
This issue marks the end of Brian K. Vaughan's "No Future for You" story arc, and features lots of extreme violence; character development of Giles, Faith, and Buffy; further analysis of the complex relationships between Faith and Buffy, Giles and Buffy, and Giles and Faith; more on just how much of a stone cold badass Giles really is; and the reveal of who the actual Big Bad for the season is (sort of; I mean, you see the guy, but exactly who he is and what his deal is remains a mystery). So, in other words, it's pretty packed with stuff, and quite exciting! And it looks like Whedon is back on writing duties for the next couple of issues, so that should be exciting, as well.
Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus #4
Things take a turn for the crazy and the awesome in this issue of Lobster Johnson. An undead super-evolved metahuman takes revenge on a dragon from beyond the grave! Crazy monkey people attack! The Nazis capture our hero! This is what I was hoping a Lobster Johnson miniseries would be. I feel like it's really starting to fulfill its potential now (in the second to last issue, it's true, but still). I don't know what's going on, but it totally doesn't matter. Oh, and there's a completely brilliant episode in the continuing article The True History of Lobster Johnson in the back of this issue, this time discussing the extremely bad, extremely low budget Lobster Johnson Luchador movies, and the potential of a big-budget remake by Guillermo del Toro. Bah ha ha ha!
Omega: The Unknown #3
Robot boy discovers the horrors of public school and briefly reconnects with Omega. Meanwhile, some seriously weird and freaky stuff starts to happen to Mink and his friends. It's another fantastic, hilarious, mysterious, brilliant, and seriously creepy issue. I don't know where Lethem's going with this, but I am definitely along for the rest of the ride.
The Order #5
This time we get to learn more about the Order's PR lady, and discover why you should never piss off a turtle (see below). Meanwhile, the Order gets a new headquarters, and finds out that there's a team of goth metahumans who want them dead ("Apparently Tim Burton sponsors a women's golf team." Bah ha ha ha!). This issue, with an action-packed and intriguing story, hilariously clever dialogue, and great characters, reminded me why this is one of my favorite titles on the shelves right now.
Ultimates 3 #1
This book has left me feeling the usual mix of relief and displeasure at having discovered another comic that is quite terrible, but that I also won't have to collect. But this time there's a bit more on the displeasure side, as the author of this, Jeph Loeb, is also the guy who's doing the new Hulk title coming out next year. Disappointing! Still, I know a lot of comic authors who are pretty uneven from book to book; maybe he'll be better on the Hulk.
Anyway, besides the fact that this comic is written poorly, with clumsy, melodramatic dialogue, boring characters, and a story that's going nowhere fast, it's also visually terrible. Joe Madureira's characters are all drawn in that same stereotypical "comic book" fashion: impossibly tall; impossibly bulging muscles; impossibly slim waistlines; ridiculous boobs; the same cartoonish, angular faces. It makes me want to throw up. To make things even worse, Christian Lichtner colors the whole thing as darkly as possible, as if everything is taking place in a soupy fog in the middle of the night. And the names of the characters are always popping up next to them in huge boxes, admittedly sometimes at a time that's useful and makes sense. But in the case of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, it happens long after they've already been introduced, at the most ridiculous and melodramatic moment, as if to deliberately make an already overdone scene even more so. Blargh!
Yep, I still dislike the Ultimates.
World War Hulk: Aftersmash #1
This, sadly, is also pretty disappointing. Pak lets the emotion of the aftermath of WWH overtake him and gets carried away into melodrama and overnarration. There are some neat moments, especially the scene where the Warbound and the Thing work together to seal up a crack in the Earth and save the city. And the ending is rather effective. But overall the comic is not nearly as strong or as interesting as it could be. After the main story, there are a series of black and white previews of other upcoming Hulk-related books, including Incredible Herc, Warbound, and Damage Control, and then a final comical back-up story called "World War Hulk: Rally the Troops." This last is actually a very cute and clever parody of World War Hulk as a whole that strikes almost a little too close to home; I'm a little surprised Marvel even ran it! But it's very good. I can't say I found any of the previews particularly exciting, but I'll probably try at least one or two of those books anyway because, y'know, that's the way we do.
Robin #169
The book I didn't want to buy, but did anyway, because I felt I had to! And, as I suspected, it's quite bad. It's interesting seeing all these different authors and artists trying to tell one sequential story with all the same characters, and failing on the continuity in some ways. Or at least, I think they are; either that or I'm just forgetting stuff. Like, I totally don't remember this White Ghost guy, and I also don't remember Talia wearing that ridiculous outfit before. And I thought Ra's al Ghul was only burning out his old body because it was a dead body. Why is this new, young monk's body decaying immediately, too? That doesn't even make sense. I'll admit there are a couple of interesting moments in here, and it isn't completely terrible. But the art is annoyingly cartoonish, and the central conceit - that Robin is seriously considering joining Ra's al Ghul because the guy (who is, remember, Robin's nemesis, a person who only a few hours ago tried to steal his body, and who has lied and tricked and tried to kill him and Batman many times before) claims he could bring his dead loved ones back to life - is pretty hard to believe, for reasons that I've already made obvious. But also, c'mon, Batman taught him better. And Robin of all people should know that having an evil guy bring people back to life never goes well.
Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons #1
You'll notice that this book does not appear in last week's Setup. That's because I'd never heard of it before I saw it on the shelf in the comic shop. And flipping through it in said shop, I thought it looked like it would probably be pretentious, weird, and sucky. But... I just couldn't resist that title. Zombies, robots, and amazons! Fighting! I had no choice.
Anyway, as it turns out, the book isn't particularly pretentious, but it is weird and sucky. The story is set post-apocalypse. Robots set off a nuclear holocaust, apparently to rid the world of zombies? Or maybe the zombies came after? It's not entirely clear. Anyway, there's a society of amazons living under the protection of a magic computer system, but everything goes awry when the young kids open a door they shouldn't and let the zombies loose. A zombie-killing robot shows up to help, and the fight is on. The art is very abstract and artsy - so much so that it's often hard to figure out exactly what's going on. Art of this type seems an odd fit with the goofy and comical dialogue. And by comical I mean that it's meant to be comical, not that it actually made me laugh, because it very rarely did. Mostly the writing is just rather clumsy and dumb. The only mildly interesting bits are the lesbian orgy and the near constant female nudity, but even that just seems gratuitous and clumsy. I definitely won't let this title trick me again!
Jack of Fables #17
This is another book that wasn't in the Setup. But I enjoyed the trade collection I found at the library of the first handful of issues of this title, so when I saw it was starting a new story arc this week, I decided to pick it up. And luckily for me, it seems as if not really all that much has happened in the big scheme of things since the end of that collection; I recognize most of the characters in this story, and they're all at around the same status at which I last left them. Jack is still hanging with some of the folks he helped spring from the retirement home, and still looking for a fortune in cash, which he hopes Humpty will help him find. So he spends days putting the egg back together, and Humpty shows him how to find and board the Great Train that will supposedly take them to Americana, the land where all the American folk tales live. But meanwhile, the sadly stunted Paul Bunyan and his ox, along with a woman whom I don't recognize, are on the same path. This issue is intriguing, with fun ideas and humorous dialogue (I almost fell over laughing during the scene wherein Babe imagines himself as a dashing insurance agent while waiting outside a big box store for his pals to come out), so I expect I'll be picking up the next one to see where this goes.
Kingdom Come
Even though I'd already read the first two issues collected in this great big thick TPB, I decided to read the entire thing over again from the beginning, partially just to refresh my memory, and partially because the first time through I'd read them in the wrong order, due to the fact that issue one is confusingly labelled with a roman numeral two on the cover (still not sure what that's about). Reading it again was an interesting experience. The religious elements and the corny, overdone bits stuck out for me more, but at the same time, I was struck again by how beautiful the art is, and I noticed this time around how wonderfully the voices of some of the characters had been captured (the scene with Blue Beetle, Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Batman all palling around together works particularly well).
I'm glad I read those first two chapters again, not only because it helped refresh my memory and helped confirm and augment how I felt about that part of the book, but also because for this collected version they've added a new scene in chapter two covering a short trip that Superman takes to Apokolips looking for advice and more converts - a section which I found a bit confusing because I wasn't familiar with all the characters, but that I'm glad I read nonetheless.
As for the new chapters, and the book as a whole... In a word, excellent. I was afraid it might go off the rails and get all preachy and melodramatic, but in fact, although there is some literal preaching, the conclusion is very exciting, well handled, and deeply moving. Sure, it kind of skims over the details of exactly how the great conflict is ended and the healing is begun, but that's mostly because building a peace is a long and complicated business that's pretty hard to dramatize. Besides, we do see the actions and moments that lead into, and symbolize, the peace to come: Captain Marvel's reawakening and his act of sacrifice, Superman's rage and how it's broken, and, in one of the most important and greatest scenes in the book, Superman reclaiming his humanity by putting on the gift that Wonder Woman brings him.
The epilogue at the end that takes place a year after the main events of the book is one of my favorite sequences, because it's very funny and warm, full of clever in-jokes and references (it takes place in a restaurant that's pretty much a Planet Hollywood for superheroes, with all the silly meal names and props on the walls that you'd expect - like the Cosmic Treadmill. Ha!), and it perfectly captures the central characters of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, and their relationships with each other.
In the very back of the book are a series of character sketches (drawings and short descriptions), a wonderful guide explaining who every single one of the heroes in the big line-up paintings are, a short making-of special on the added scene in chapter two, and finally some miscellaneous extra artwork. These little special features are a wonderful addition to an already excellent book. Kingdom Come isn't absolutely perfect... but it nearly is. It's a triumph, and a great addition to my collection. |
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