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| Thursday, May 15, 2008 02:51 PM |
| The Take |
 by Fëanor |
Fëanor's weekly comic book review post.
Avengers/Invaders #1
This is a new miniseries from Marvel and Dynamite about the old school Invaders team (which included Captain America, Bucky, Namor, the original Human Torch, and the Torch's sidekick Toro) from WWII somehow suddenly showing up in modern day America. Jim Krueger wrote it, with some help on the plot by Alex Ross (who is all about the old school meeting the new school). Art is by Steve Sadowski. Quite simply, it's an awful piece of garbage. The writing is bad, bad, bad. There's way too much narration from Bucky, and everybody, especially Spider-Man, is just really annoying. The art is okay, but I definitely won't be picking up another issue of this.
Like most of the Marvel comics this week, this includes an interview with Aron Coleite and a preview of an ongoing series coming next month, Eternals. Coleite is very sarcastic and dodges most of the questions with silly humor. It's a mildly entertaining interview, but I couldn't work up much excitement about it, as it doesn't cover anything I really care about; Coleite writes for Heroes, which I don't watch, and Ultimate X-Men, which I don't read. As for the preview... well, I was looking forward to a new Eternals series, as I enjoyed Gaiman's miniseries about the characters, but this isn't particularly promising. Oddly enough, they chose to include page 2, page 3, and page 20 of Eternals #1, so you can't get too much of a feel for what the story is about, but what's here is wordy, kind of dull, and uses a lame excuse to do a kind of tour of the major Marvel heroes and villains. It's disappointing. I'll still pick up the book, of course (you know me!), but my hopes for it have been somewhat dashed.
Thumbs Down
Secret Invasion #2
Hey, it's the other book out this week that features Captain America reappearing in a weird and unlikely way! Way to be original and creative, Marvel. Anyway, the first issue of this series I kind of liked, but this one I mostly didn't. Sure, it includes a huge battle amongst two different sets of Marvel heroes (some of whom are Skrulls), pretty decent art, and a rather impressive two-page splash reveal at the end. But it's also got lots and lots of really bad dialogue, and not much else. I mean, it's just not very interesting or exciting at all. I would really like to just stop collecting Secret Invasion, but I have a feeling my desire to see what happens next is going to overcome my better judgement when #3 comes out. We'll see.
Thumbs Down
Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas #1
Marvel is making sure to have lots of Iron Man books in the stores now that the Iron Man movie is out. This new four-issue miniseries was even written by the director of the movie, Jon Favreau, with art by Adi Granov. In it, Stark decides to take a vacation to Vegas, but unbeknownst to him, somebody has purchased and reassembled an ancient statue to sit outside their brand new Golden Dragon Casino, and it seems to be having a rather unexpected effect on the local wildlife. I'm betting Iron Man won't be having much of a vacation.
The art is kind of odd. The backgrounds often include photo-realistic images (which may actually be altered photographs), and the people in front of those backgrounds are both hyper-realistic and really fake looking. I guess it's that whole uncanny valley thing. Still, the girls in bikinis with the tattoos are kind of hot.
The writing is generally okay, but the story is pretty simplistic, and nothing about it is really grabbing me. Plus, the scene with the suicide bomber is in rather poor taste. I doubt I'll pick up another issue of this.
Thumbs Down
Abe Sapien: The Drowning #4
Mignola and friends deliver again! This, the penultimate issue of this miniseries about Abe's first solo mission for the B.P.R.D., opens up with a fantastic and visually stunning sequence depicting a magic ritual. Then most of the mysteries introduced so far are finally explained via some wonderful flashback stories told by the old lady. Then the stage is set for the final, climactic confrontation. As usual for a book set in the Hellboy-verse, we get the full package: amazing art; great characters; totally creepy, imaginative, and engaging story; and excellent dialogue. It's stuff like this that keeps me reading comics.
Thumbs Up
Thor: Ages of Thunder
I've been talking a lot recently about my growing dissatisfaction with Matt Fraction as a writer. This lengthy one-shot by Fraction actually came out two weeks ago, but sold out before I got to the store. So I had a second chance to not buy it! But Sims named it his "Best of the Week" on the Invincible Super-Blog, so I made it a priority to find a copy of it this past week. After all, this was meant to be a sort of summary of Thor's past, and I really like him as a character, even though I have yet to read a good book about him.
Sadly, after acquiring this and reading it, that latter statement remains true. This story, which goes way, way back in time to re-tell a few ancient myths about the Norse God Thor, is plagued by one of my current huge comic book pet peeves: over-narration. Most of the story in this book could have been told wordlessly, but instead Fraction insists on explaining everything we're seeing in pointless, agonizing detail. There is so much narration in this book, it's ridiculous. Fraction even adds "he said" after some of the word bubbles. WTF? The entire point of a word bubble is to make it visually obvious who's speaking! That's what the little arrow on the end of it is for! Why would you add a narrative box explaining further what anybody can already see?
I'll admit the art in this is quite good, some of the action is exciting, and the actual stories, at least in the abstract, are pretty cool. But they'd be a lot better if they were actually told well. Without all that damn narration!
Thumbs Down
Action Comics Annual #11
I figured this extra-long issue of Action Comics would either continue the story that's being told in the series at the moment, or offer some kind of random one-off story. Instead, it's the conclusion of a storyline I was completely unfamiliar with called "Last Son." A quick visit to Wikipedia answered a lot of my questions about it, but I read the issue before I read that article, and I still didn't really have any trouble following what was going on. The issue reminded me a lot of Superman 2, what with the story being about General Zod and his friends escaping from the Phantom Zone to conquer the Earth and have revenge on the son of their jailer. Then I saw that it was co-written by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, the writer/director of Superman 2, and everything made sense.
But really, if anything, the comic is better than Superman 2, as it's nowhere near as cheesy, and is loaded with exciting action, with some of Superman's biggest enemies teaming up with him to fight a whole army of evil super-powered Kryptonians. There's also a really moving subplot involving Zod's son, whom Clark and Lois have adopted under the name Christopher Kent. And although Adam Kubert's art isn't always perfect, there's a two-page spread near the end, depicting Superman standing forlornly in the aftermath of the battle, that is just breath-takingly beautiful. Johns and Donner have the characters nailed down pretty well, and they tell a great story here. The main body of the comic is followed by three two-page spreads (apparently included just to fill up space) which feature tableau of some of the major characters and short bios of each one. They're nice enough, and fill in some vaguely interesting details.
Thumbs Up
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 #14
This is another fantastic issue of Buffy, perfectly capturing and recreating everything that was great about the TV show. It's thrilling, suspenseful, imaginative, creepy, funny, and clever, all at the same time. It's an action-packed horror sci-fi comedy soap opera. And Dracula is hilarious.
Thumbs Up
The Exterminators #29
Someone (I think it was EverMike?) recommended this Vertigo title to me a while back, so when I saw a new issue was coming out, I picked it up. Sadly, I was not impressed, or entertained. Of course, part of the problem could be that this is #29 of an ongoing series, and part two of the latest story arc, so I was slightly confused as to who everybody was and what they were doing. But the overall plot isn't all that complicated: it's exterminators (and the LAPD) versus evil giant bugs. There just isn't anything here that really grabbed me. I didn't like any of the characters, I didn't care for the humor, the dialogue was poor, and I didn't think the storytelling was very strong. I would be willing to give it another try and read another issue... but only if I didn't have to pay for it.
Thumbs Down
House of Mystery #1
I've been reading the pre-release buzz on this new Vertigo series for a long time now, so it was good to finally get my hands on the first issue. It's sort of a relaunch of an old anthology series, but not really; the only thing they kept from the original was the title. The writers are Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham of Jack of Fables fame; their involvement is what attracted me to this series in the first place. The concept is that there's a mysterious house (in fact, it belongs to Cain, of the Cain and Abel duo from Sandman), and random people from all over just end up there sometimes. Most of them get to leave, but a select few are trapped there for good for some reason. The ones trapped there have started a bar/restaurant and all they ask for in payment is stories. This first issue consists of the story of how one young woman arrives at the house, intercut with scenes from inside the house before her arrival, and a story (called "The Hollows") told by one of the current residents. The young woman's story is eerie, mysterious, and fascinating and will no doubt be continued in future issues. "The Hollows" is... interesting. If you just read the narration boxes, it's a pretty plain story about how a woman fell in love, got married, had kids, found she couldn't love her children, and out of shame left her home and family. But the pictures that accompany the story give it an entirely different meaning that is truly sickening and horrifying. It's pretty great. Lucca Rossi's art in the rest of the book is quite good, but Ross Campbell's art in "The Hollows" really blew me away.
After reading all the build-up for this series, and then seeing the rather mediocre preview, I was afraid I was going to be really disappointed by it, but it turned out to be really good. I'm looking forward to picking up the next issue.
Thumbs Up
The Invincible Iron Man #1
I keep saying how much I dislike Matt Fraction, and then I keep buying more comics by him. This is the first issue of the new Iron Man series he's writing. It's called "The Five Nightmares," and as the story goes on, Tony describes in narration the five things he fears the most, some of which overlap each other, and all of which involve the Iron Man suit. And of course, by the end, all of his nightmares have been realized in the form of a weird, new, terroristic application of his Iron Man technology. The man behind it is, unsurprisingly, Ezekiel Stane, the guy Fraction introduced as Tony's latest arch-enemy in The Order. Stane totally steals the issue in his one scene in the middle of the book, wherein he pwns some cigarette company executives while showing off his crazy and impressive new technology.
This is not a terrible comic. It's not the worst, or the best, stuff I've ever read by Fraction. The dialogue often falls flat, and I don't know what is with the guy's obsession with narration, but the story is interesting, and there are some funny lines. I'm actually tempted to pick up the next issue. But Fraction has disappointed me so many times before. I think it might finally be time for me to put my foot down and say, "No more." But we'll see what happens...
Thumbs Sideways
The Mighty Avengers #13
Yes, I bought another Secret Invasion tie-in. I know, I know! But this one was good! It again goes back in time to fill us in further on what Nick Fury has been up to. Turns out he sought out an old agent of his - a super-powered human he was sure no one else knew about, and who was thus safe from Skrull contamination - and recruited her to track down and bring together a bunch of other people like her to become Fury's own Skrull-fighting taskforce. It's a cool idea, it's pretty well handled here, and it's accompanied by more excellent art from Alex Maleev. Brian Michael Bendis is definitely uneven, but I like what he's been doing with these Mighty Avengers Secret Invasion tie-ins, at least.
Thumbs Up
Nova #13
The first issue of Nova post-Phalanx is definitely not my favorite issue of the series. Nova responds to the most urgent of the many distress calls he's been receiving only to find a planet in the midst of being eaten by Galactus. It's too late to save the planet, but it's not too late to save the people, so Nova flies around trying to round up as many as he can. As he's doing this, he runs into a Red Jack-type of psychic monster that jumps from body to body committing mass murder, but that turns out to be only a minor annoyance when a malfunction in the evacuation ships forces him to go have a conversation with Galactus himself - which means a fight with the Silver Surfer. The cover seems to promise said fight will occur in this issue, but in fact this issue is just the setup for it, and we won't get the fight until next time. What is this, Dragonball Z? Anyways, the psychic entity subplot feels mostly like filler, and is handled in a rather melodramatic and cliched fashion. The dialogue in general is pretty uninspired, and the whole thing with Nova getting self-righteous with the rulers of the planet just feels contrived and lame. Still, the story is interesting enough that I kept reading, the art continues to be quite good, and I'm looking forward to that fight with the Silver Surfer.
Thumbs Sideways
Omega the Unknown #8
This issue tells us the backstory of the other Omega guy that Alex and his friends found last issue, and in the process explains away pretty much all of the remaining mysteries of the series. Then Alex finds Omega, helps revive him, and has a pretty hilarious and exciting showdown with the Robotics Department. Things are heading towards the big climax now, and it's looking like Alex is going to take on the mantle of Omega pretty soon. My only real problem with this issue was the odd and disappointing way that authors Lethem and Rusnak chose to deliver the backstory of the first Omega, Silliman Renfrew: the Overthinker whips out a harp and sings it to us. Pretty badly, I might add. It's an interesting story, and it was nice to finally get the gaps filled in and figure out what the deal is with Omega and where Alex came from and so forth. But surely there must have been a better way to handle it all than badly sung exposition?
Thumbs Sideways
Star Wars: Legacy #23
In this issue, Legacy returns to its main characters: bounty hunter Cade Skywalker and his buddies. Since he's a Skywalker, Cade of course has Force abilities, some of them pretty Dark Side-y. He's a Han Solo-type character, but even more morally questionable. As our story opens, Cade and his friends have recently escaped from the Sith, and they celebrate their freedom by getting revenge on an old boss who betrayed them. Then they run off to hide out for a while with some old buddies, only to find themselves in the middle of another fight. Meanwhile, a mysterious cloaked figure is secretly following them...
The dialogue is often pretty corny, in large part due to the overuse of Huttese slang terms, and the plot and characters are a bit cliche. But the comic is set in the Star Wars universe and it includes exciting, Force-fueled action scenes, so it's pretty hard for me not to like it. Besides, the story, though rather familiar, was intriguing enough to keep me reading. I will probably buy another issue.
Thumbs Sideways
George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards #2
This is the second issue of the new Dabel Brothers series about an alternate history Earth plagued by a virus that can mutate you into a freak (Joker), kill you (Black Queen), or transform you into a superhuman (Ace). A councillor tries to help some of the kids who survived the latest outbreak of the virus, while an old Ace known as The Sleeper tries to solve a murder mystery. There are some corny bits in here, in the scenes that concentrate on main character Mike trying to deal with what has happened to him. But they're not as corny as they could be, and the story remains interesting. I'll probably stick with this book for now.
Thumbs Sideways |
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