|
|
| Tuesday, April 1, 2008 09:05 PM |
| The Take |
 by Fëanor |
Fëanor's weekly comic book review post.
Star's old comics
The Children's Crusade #1
Back in '93, Vertigo did a big crossover story that connected across the Annuals of their various titles. A special two-part miniseries called The Children's Crusade book-ended the crossover series. This is the first issue of that miniseries, which launches the crossover story. It's written by Neil Gaiman with art by Chris Bachalo, inks by Mike Barreiro, and colors by Daniel Vozzo. The issue is quite long - 58 pages - and is separated into eight chapters. The first chapter is just a bunch of narrative boxes, with pictures of scenery behind them, telling us about the incident that really initiates the story: the disappearance one day of all of the children from a small village in rural England. Even though it's all narration, it's very well written, and very disturbing and effective. In chapter two, the tone and method of storytelling change completely; everything is much lighter and sillier, and there are no narrative boxes. Instead we get a more traditional comic book format of characters and dialogue balloons. We learn that one girl wasn't in the town the day all the other children disappeared, and she wants to know what happened to them. Actually, more specifically, she wants to know what happened to her brother. So she goes to a detective agency and asks for help. The detectives, who are actually two little dead boys (characters created by Gaiman in Sandman), agree to take her case, after much bumbling and ridiculousness.
This second chapter threw me off a bit. The silly humor following so closely upon the dark disturbing opening felt out of place and wrong. It really kind of turned me off, but I continued reading anyway. In Chapter Three, Gaiman gives us a history lesson (which in my case was badly needed) about the actual Children's Crusade, when thousands of children from all over Europe boarded ships to help in the crusades, only to die or be sold into slavery. This is another section that is entirely told using narration and exposition, but is still very effective. In Chapter Four the dead boys start to pick up the threads of the mystery when they travel to the village of disappeared children and there meet a mysterious child who seems to have magical powers. Now things are starting to get interesting. Chapter Five tells a slightly different version of the story of the Pied Piper, which is quite creepy and sheds light on what really happened to the children. In Chapter Six one of the dead boys has a strange vision that seems prophetic and of great importance, although difficult to puzzle out. Chapter Seven is the powerful and eerie tale, told in first person, of a boy who went on the Children's Crusade and managed to escape to a "free country" using deadly magic. Chapter Eight puts us back with the dead boy detectives, who meet up with another mysterious child who explains in more detail where the children went and why, and reveals that soon all the rest of the children of the Earth will follow them. Realizing that this case is bigger and more important than they could have imagined, the boys set out to solve it.
Like I said, for a while there near the beginning I really wasn't sure about this book, but as it went on it really pulled me in. It's a powerful, effective, imaginative story, and I'm rather sad I don't have the rest of it so I can figure out what happens. Maybe I'll see if I can track down the trade paperback collection some day...
Thumbs Up
New releases
All-Star Superman #10
I know I often speak in hyperbole, but I am serious when I say that this is not only one of the greatest Superman comics I've ever read, but easily one of the greatest comics I've ever read, period. It covers one day in the life of Superman, but tells the story of that day out of chronological order, jumping around from moment to moment, in order to create a more thematically connected and emotionally powerful story. (Some spoilers ahead.) As the day unfolds, we read excerpts from his last will and testament as he tries desperately to put his affairs in order and complete as many important tasks as he can before he's too weak to go on. He helps some terminally ill children; he gives the people of the bottle city of Kandor a chance at a new life; he reads an enigmatic message from the future which might hold some hope for him; he saves Lois from a gigantic robot; he stops a young person from committing suicide; he repairs the Earth's bridges; he tries to convince Luthor to do good with the planet when he's gone; he leaves behind genetic material that may allow scientists to some day create a new Superman; and, perhaps most importantly, he performs an experiment to determine what a world without Superman would be like, and in the process, creates our own world, Earth Q, where ages pass in less than a second, and where Superman is born after all, out of the minds of men. Indeed, because there was no Superman, we had to invent him.
Ultimately the story is a summing up of Superman's life and legacy, and an analysis of him - this Kryptonian, this alien - as the most noble and human of characters. Grant Morrison's words and Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant's art combine to produce a deeply insightful, profoundly moving, extremely beautiful work of art.
Thumbs Up
Dan Dare #5
Dare wastes little time in establishing his new sidekick, or in cooking up a crazy, incredibly dangerous plan for defeating the Mekon, and then enacting it. Some serious violence is going to go down next issue. But even without any violence, the meeting between the Mekon and Dare in this issue is a pretty powerful moment. Dare has that uniquely British cold hard bad-assery about him that is really fantastic. Yep, still loving this series. I don't know if I've done it before, but I definitely want to give props to artist Gary Erskine. Of course its Ennis' brilliant writing that's the backbone of the title, but Erskine's work is nearly as important. I also love Garry Leach's fantastic cover for this issue, which includes a wonderfully eerie and evocative portrait of the Mekon.
Thumbs Up
Gravel #2
It's business as usual this issue as Gravel takes out another member of the Minor Seven, and picks up another fragment of the Sigsand Manuscript. A little more light is shed on just why the other members of the Seven were so quick to oust Gravel. And Gravel gets himself a base to work out of as well as a kind of arsenal for continuing his war against the Seven. Fantastic stuff; I particularly like the way Gravel turns the tables on his nemesis here. And I'm very much looking forward to seeing how he takes care of the rest of the Minors, and whether or not he'll actually get to face-off against any of the Major Seven.
Thumbs Up
Green Lantern #29
I was against the idea of revisiting Hal Jordan's origin story, but I have to admit, Johns is doing a good job with it, crafting a fascinating family, dramatic childhood, and painful adolescence for Jordan that all help inform and explain what we already know about him and his personality. At the end Johns also introduces Abin Sur, the Lantern who will pass his ring onto Jordan, and connects Sur's story with the prophecy of the Blackest Night which has been at the center of all of the recent Green Lantern story arcs. Very cool stuff. I'm impressed.
Thumbs Up
Jack of Fables #21
This issue goes back in time to when all the Fables were still trapped in Revise's prison, before Jack had even arrived there yet, and tells the story of how the Pathetic Fallacy tried to put on a production of Hamlet, only for it to be interrupted by a crazed escape attempt. Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges do a fine job on the writing, keeping things lively, amusing, and clever, and I love Tony Akins' art and Daniel Vozzo's colors. Willingham and Sturges are about to launch an anthology series called House of Mystery for Vertigo, and now I'm feeling like I'm going to have to at least give it a try...
Thumbs Up
Secret History of the Authority: Jack Hawksmoor #1
This is, to my great surprise, really, really good. I am so pleased. It's so excellent to have a legitimately decent book about the Authority on comic store shelves again. This first issue opens up in the present, with the Authority facing off against a giant Slavic God that seems to have somehow turned off Hawksmoor's ability to communicate with and control cities. As that whole situation goes down the crapper, we flash back to 1994, before Jack even joined StormWatch, and see him doing his thing solo in San Francisco, taking out a giant robot and meeting a beautiful femme fatale on the scene. Then the city points him toward a mysterious murder scene, only to stay weirdly quiet on the details. Finally, inevitably, that femme fatale shows up again.
This one is shaping up to be a good old fashioned film noir murder mystery, with Hawksmoor (one of my favorite characters from StormWatch and The Authority) as the super-powered gumshoe. The art, by Fiona Staples, is quite lovely, and Mike Costa's writing is clever and interesting, and includes lots of fun comic booky action. Best of all, Costa really gets the characters. The point is, this book is shockingly good, and I couldn't be more pleased about it.
Thumbs Up
Ultimate Fantastic Four #51
Ultimate Fantastic Four #52
I deliberately picked up these particular two issues in this series because I thought they were the start of a new arc, and I wanted to start reading this book at the beginning of something, but in fact #51 is pretty clearly opening up right in the middle of something. Ah, well. Anyway, the story is that Reed just created something known as the Cosmic Cube, but what he didn't know is that as he was making it, he was actually under the influence of evil megalomaniac Thanos. A group of apparently good aliens show up to get the Cube, but only succeed in activating its defensive measures, which causes a huge section of New York City to be trapped in a giant impenetrable cube. The aliens decide to just take the entire chunk of NYC with them, but they're ambushed by Thanos, who transports the city and the Fantastic Four to another planet and unleashes a whole army on them. But the army's just a distraction; Thanos just wants to see what Reed can do with the Cube before beating his ass and taking it from him. Once he gets the cube, things really go downhill; he starts converting all your favorite Marvel heroes into his evil slaves and reconstructing the Earth according to his wishes. Things look bad, but I think we can safely assume it will all turn out okay in the end.
So I think I will go ahead and assume that, and not bother reading any more of this series. It's not really awful or anything, but it's also just not really very interesting. The dialogue is pretty cheesy, the story rather silly, and the whole thing manages to be both over-the-top and dull at the same time. It's a little hard to understand how Mike Carey, the author of the truly fantastic Lucifer series that spun out of Sandman, could be responsible for this. I guess the standard superhero stuff is just not his strong point.
Thumbs Down
Ultimate Human #3
For the latest issue in Warren Ellis' miniseries about Hulk, Iron Man, and the Leader, he takes a look back in time at the origin of the Ultimate version of the Leader, Peter Wisdom. Turns out Wisdom was a pretty big guy in British Intelligence, and was championing a British version of the American super soldier program, a program that essentially led to the creation of Hulk and Iron Man. He saw the possibility of a purely British super soldier slipping out of his hands, which made him desperate enough to have an experimental super soldier procedure performed on himself. Thus he becomes the psychotic, physically deformed, but super-intelligent and psychically powered, Leader. His superiors don't like his transformation and fire him. And so he has kidnapped Banner and Stark in order to get the nanites and DNA inside them, with which he plans to fix himself and his career, and build a credible British super soldier program with which he can save his country.
So, yeah. My plot summary went on a little longer and got a little more detailed than I'd planned. The point is, it's a great story, with great art, and I can't wait to see what happens next. But it's Warren Ellis, so all of that practically goes without saying.
Thumbs Up |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
