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| Friday, February 8, 2008 09:58 PM |
| The Take |
 by Fëanor |
Fëanor's weekly comic book review post.
Abe Sapien: The Drowning #1
This new solo series for Abe (of Hellboy and B.P.R.D. fame, of course) is written by Mike Mignola with art by Jason Shawn Alexander and colors by Mignola-verse veteran Dave Stewart (natch), and it chronicles Abe's first mission without Hellboy, in 1981. Bruttenholm discovers that Sir Edward Grey, an occult detective active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, left a very rare magical dagger at the bottom of the ocean after using it to defeat a warlock at sea near an island called Saint-Sebastien. He sends Abe out to retrieve it, with everyone assuming it will be a very easy mission. But of course, things are rarely as they appear, and by the end of this issue Abe and his fellow agent are in some pretty serious trouble, thanks to some black magic and some big nasty sea creatures.
It's a great story - especially the crazy prologue featuring Grey - and Alexander's art is quite good (though not as good as Mignola's). Definitely looking forward to seeing where this series will go.
Annihilation: Conquest #4
Wow. I thought things looked bad for our heroes at the end of last issue, but at the end of this one they look even worse! Well, except for Ronan the Accuser and his crew; they're doing pretty well, what with the army of secret weapons they unearthed and all. But anyway, yeah, lots of exciting stuff going on in here - plenty of action, suspense, and thrills; torture, creepiness, and betrayal. And plus, Adam Warlock finally tells Quasar to quit her damn whining and suck it up, which is what I've been wishing someone would say to her since this series started, so bravo Adam! Overall, another great issue with a great story and great art. Huzzah!
Buffy Season 8 #11
Buffy has an awkward chat with one of her lady friends and gets her first face-to-face with the Big Bad in another exciting, funny, and moving one-off issue of this series, again written by the mighty Joss Whedon. It even has a hilarious little sequence where Joss teases us by almost revealing the identity of said Big Bad. Oh, you scamp, you! Sadly, next issue Whedon gives up the writing duties again, handing them off this time to Drew Goddard. Goddard apparently wrote a number of episodes of the Buffy and Angel TV series, as well as episodes of Lost, and he worked on the screenplay for Cloverfield, which is a pretty impressive resume, so hopefully he'll do an okay job on the comic.
ClanDestine #1
I'd gotten it into my head somehow that this series - even though it's published by Marvel - wouldn't actually be integrated all that much into the Marvel universe. I thought creator Alan Grant had carved out his own separate little space for his family of secretive super-powered immortals and that they wouldn't have anything to do with the usual array of heroes and villains. These ideas were quickly wiped away, however, when I opened to the first page and saw Spider-Man having a giant fight with all his biggest enemies. Of course it's just a dream, but it's a good way to ground the story in the 616 and connect these characters to other characters that readers will probably be more familiar with.
Even so, I still found myself having a hard time really getting into the story, because besides the guys in that dream, there's nobody in this book that I've ever heard of before. There's a whole family of people here with their own personalities, powers, and complex background stories that I know nothing about. Davis does his best to try to get us up to speed on what's going on without getting too expositiony, but his writing's pretty corny and melodramatic, and I just didn't find anything or anybody in here to draw me in or keep me interested. I think I'm going to go ahead and drop this one before I even get started with it.
Also included in the back of this comic is a Portfolio Review featuring the art of the upcoming Young X-Men title. I'm not interested in the book, and nothing here convinced me otherwise. The characters look pretty dull. The next feature, however - an interview with Mark Millar - is a little more interesting, as Millar is taking over writing duties on the next issue of a book I'm reading (that being Fantastic Four), and he gives out some hints here as to where he's planning to take the characters and the story. Fascinating...
Ms. Marvel #24
Even with the big surprise reveal at the end that promises to drag this book into the big Secret Invasion storyline, I just didn't care much for this issue. It's basically a whole lot of cliches, melodrama, and unnecessary narration accompanied by an irritating and repetitive climactic fight in which people keep seemingly dying, coming back, seemingly dying again, and on and on. The pacing is also very erratic, especially near the end. It's just not a very good comic, I'm afraid. I'm dropping it.
Omega: The Unknown #5
Another great issue of this amazing series from author Jonathan Lethem and artist Farel Dalrymple about the mute, super-powered alien and the mysterious young Earth boy with whom he has a strange connection. In this issue, local superhero The Mink hilariously fails at forging a relationship with Alex, who runs off with his school pal and discovers some interesting secrets at his family home, before getting into another fight with the creepy robots. Meanwhile, Omega ends up in a fight, too, with the robots' human slaves, only to be defeated and find himself the prisoner of The Mink. But when the robots infiltrate The Mink's hideout, he ends up with some problems of his own.
Exciting, imaginative, crazy, funny, and just a little bit disturbing. That's Omega!
Scalped #13
Scalped #14
It wasn't very long at all after I opened the first issue of this title that it became obvious to me why EverMike is a fan of it. After all, it's got all of his favorite stuff: crime, extreme violence, high drama, and plenty of emotion. It's also extremely well written and completely excellent.
Scalped is a Vertigo title set on an Indian reservation, with no superheroes in sight. As the head of both the tribe as a whole and of the tribal police, anything Chief Red Crow says goes. The problem is, he's also corrupt and a criminal, and undercover FBI agent Dashiell Bad Horse has returned to the rez after many years to take him down. He's managed to get himself hired by Red Crow as a tribal policeman. As this story arc - entitled "Dead Mothers" - opens, Bad Horse's mother (who also happens to be an old flame of Red Crow's) is found murdered, and Bad Horse himself finds another murdered woman while clearing out a meth house - along with a whole gaggle of her kids in the next room. Dashiell sees himself in the oldest boy, and becomes instantly obsessed with the case of the dead woman, to the point of completely ignoring the death of his own mother, and losing sight of his ultimate mission of taking down Red Crow. But it quickly becomes clear that there's more to both cases than he at first realizes.
It's a deeply engaging, exciting, intriguing, and moving story that's extremely well told (by writer Jason Aaron), with beautiful, evocative art (by artist R.M. Guera). I'll definitely be collecting this title from now on, and I'll probably also try to catch up on the previous story arcs by picking up the first two collected volumes in TPB. I'm doubly glad that Aaron is such a good writer, because I just read in the Comic News that he signed a deal with Marvel and he'll be taking over Ghost Rider - another book I collect - on its next issue. |
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Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
