Welcome to round two of What I’m Reading! This edition is coming a few days later than I’d have liked, but, my work schedule doesn’t always allow for me to make it to the comic shop on Wednesday to get my weekly loot. This was a weird week, with only three Marvel titles (usually my heaviest amount by publisher) and mostly mid-range, left-of-center books coming out. And a three try-outs, one that worked, one that didn’t, and one that made me say, “Whaaa?” So without further ado, here’s the rundown…
1. The Superior Foes of Spider-Man #1 (Marvel, W: Nick Spencer, A: Steve Lieber). Since I bought a comic with the words “superior” and “Spider-Man” in the title, your immediate response may be that I’ve lost my mind. But have no fear, there’s no Spider-Ock here. Superior Foes is about how the losers of the super-villain set live, because after all, not everyone can be Dr. Doom. Or even the Lizard, who usually lives in sewers, but at least carries iconic villain status. No, this book is about the likes of Boomerang, Speed Demon, the Shocker, some new female Beetle no one’s heard of, and Overdrive, whoever the hell that is. These are the guys who NEVER triumph over the forces of good, and are generally robbing banks in order to pay their child support. It’s a concept that’s designed for fun, and for the most part, Spencer pulls it off. The issue is told from Boomerang’s point of view, the sheer audacity and delusion of which is palpable. On the one hand, he’s completely aware of his status as a loser, but on the other, he still believes that someday he’ll be the King of New York. Too bad he’s in jail for the majority of the issue, where he lands in even hotter water dealing with the Chameleon. There’s an outstanding scene where Boomerang, stuck behind bars, has to convince Speed Demon and Shocker to get feed for his pet birds, which, of course, they decide to steal. And not just take a run-of-the-mill five finger discount on; no, they decide to make an entire robbery out of it just on principle. Yes, these guys are such losers, they rob a pet store, which turns into a shouting match with a little girl, which results in them having to mope as they carry the heavy bag of feed up the stairs, which results in…. well, you get the idea. Life is rough for these guys. This is an extremely solid book, with a fun premise. The pacing is perfect; Nick Spencer really knows how to lay panels out on a page for maximum effect with no constraints. Steve Lieber’s art is solid but otherwise unremarkable, however. He is a sort of playful, brightly-colored version of Michael Lark, but lacking in the emotional range that artist displays. There are also a couple of gags that fall flat, but they’re mostly just one-liners here and there. 95% of the time, this book’s hilarious. There’s a scene in particular where the new Beetle is robbing a comic book store that’s laugh out loud hysterical. One other thing that bugged me is the two panels where the main characters’ communication is expressed by use of pictograms in word balloons. Sound familiar? It should, because I raved about this last time around in my review for Hawkeye, but that was because the technique was used for a dog. I don’t know how close Matt Fraction and Nick Spencer work together; obviously, these two issues would have been in development around the same time, but still, the technique’s usage here smacks of uninspired rip-off. Fortunately, nothing too great hinges on it, just a couple of panels. Superior Foes of Spider-Man is a hell of a fun read. Having said that, I worry that all the gags may eventually weigh it down if Spencer doesn’t remember to play serious as well. For this issue alone, though, which was a great first issue, you can’t go wrong with your $2.99 Score: 8/10.
2. Avengers #15 (Marvel, W: Jonathan Hickman & Nick Spencer, A: Stefano Caselli). I’m gonna get nit-picky on this one, because fifteen issues in, Hickman’s long game is at the point where it needs to start wrapping up. But let’s start with that damn cover, first. Lienil Yu is a great artist, but he does have one flaw that perpetually bugs the shit out of me: he draws women as grossly misproportioned as badly as any hack from the ’90s. Here we have Black Widow’s boobs trying desperately to escape her little black bodysuit for no reason in particular other than to titillate 14-year-old fanboys. At the same time, they’re disturbingly outsized: check those proportions, because at a mere glance, each boob is literally the size of her head. What the fuck, Yu? The next thing that bothers me about the cover is that what’s being portrayed is a scene that’s absolutely nowhere in the comic. It would be one thing if it were, say, a poster-type image of the team standing there posing or whatever, especially since that’s been par for the course for most Marvel books in the last ten or twelve years. I guess it’s also possible that Yu didn’t have a clear idea as to the book’s content other than in the broadest sense: “the Avengers fight some guys.” But what we have here is Cap, Widow, and the Falcon covering their ears and crying out in pain as though they’ve been forced to attend a Bieber concert. THIS FUCKING SCENE IS NOWHERE IN THE COMIC, DAMMIT!! Since this review has thus far consisted of me dissecting the cover to the Nth degree, let me hit on one more point: that banner across the top. If this issue is a “Prelude to Infinity,” couldn’t it be said that every issue of Hickman’s run thus far has been that, since it’s been one long, ongoing arc? This is just gross advertising that by this point I should probably be numb to, but it just rubs me the wrong way to be pandered to like the drooling fanboy that they think I am. Bill Hicks once wisely proclaimed that if you’re in marketing, you should kill yourself. Here, I certainly agree. We all know Infinity is coming up next month thanks to the interwebs and various industry magazines, and that it’s spilling out of Hickman’s Avengers run. I don’t need it shoved in my face, though, before I even open the comic I’m trying to read. So how ’bout that comic, huh? What happens? In a nutshell, Cap and his posse fight some giant bugs and guys with cubes for heads. Bruce Banner figures some stuff out. The thing on AIM Island wakes up, and it’s pissy and tearing stuff up. There’s a really nifty two-page sequence where one of the bugs sends a signal out across the universe to a robot for some unspecified purpose which utilizes some very original visual effects, and by issue’s end said robot’s on its way to Earth. If it sounds like not much happens in this issue…. well, you’re right. This would be a TERRIBLE first issue for someone to pick up, but that’s part of the risk involved with playing the long game in comics. And it’s backfired for Hickman before: Fantastic Four and SHIELD both became unreadable because of the sheer amount of layering on of subplots without first wrapping anything up. It’s a lot to ask of readers to have the patience to wait for well over a year, maybe even two years in some cases, to see stories come to fruition. So far Hickman has enough balls in the air that he’s pulling if off in Avengers, with Infinity positioned to wrap up his first major arc. Occasionally, his dialogue hits a bump in the road, though. Take this sample from the new Captain Universe: “It never ends until it has to end, and then too late to begin. Now is a time for beginnings, and so we have to start–and the start is what happens before our very ends.” What the fuck does that even MEAN?! It means, “I’m a pretentious douchebag with delusions of philosophy.” Bad move, Hickman. I realize he’s trying to make certain cosmic characters sound a bit more cosmic in nature, for lack of a better term, but wouldn’t anything be a better approach than the above tripe? (Yes, it would.) This issue of Avengers was a real mixed bag, possibly the weakest of Hickman’s run to date. It’s not unreadable, but it’s certainly impenetrable if you don’t have prior knowledge of the last fourteen issues going for you. Score: 6/10.
3. Daredevil: Dark Nights #2 (of 8) (Marvel, W & A: Lee Weeks). With Dark Nights, artist Lee Weeks has revealed himself to be a serious writing talent. There’s more heart and pathos in this comic than most writers fit into an entire year’s worth of issues. Having said that, though, it’s a more than a bit heavy-handed. Even the issue’s title, “Hannah’s Heart, Hannah’s Hope,” hits you over the head like a psychotic Cupid with a mush-mush club. (Especially since that title is recited as an actual line of dialogue later in the issue.) The premise, however, is simple, yet great: in the midst of a great, city-crushing blizzard, Daredevil must retrieve a transplant heart for a little girl (that’d be our Hannah) from a helicopter that’s gone down somewhere in the city. All of New York is shut down for the duration of this storm, so Daredevil must rely on only his radar senses to navigate the city and find the helicopter. There’s striking use of his power that’s never occurred to me before, though: for all that Daredevil hears and responds to, there’s so much more that he hears and has to choose to ignore because, quite simply, he can’t be everywhere at once. The opening sequence features a degenerate gambler taking a beatdown from some mob guys he owes money to. Daredevil hears the situation, but must make the conscious decision to ignore it because time is of the essence for Hannah. He reasons that the man, who in the past has been gotten out of trouble by DD but refuses to learn his lesson, will ultimately live, but the little girl who is waiting for the heart, Hannah, will not. It’s a race against time that forces Matt Murdock to make some painful decisions at the drop of a hat. There’s also an outstanding sequence that comes when Matt eventually finds the helicopter; I don’t want to spoil the details but suffice to say, it could fit easily into any summer blockbuster (that wasn’t directed by Michael Bay). Like I said, this book is full of heart–sometimes too much, though. There’s some seriously sappy dialogue between Hannah’s parents that was positively cringe-worthy:
“Oh, Doctor! Thank you! It’s an answer to my prayer!”
“Can’t–believe it. A second chance.This time I–I’ll–I know what to do.”
“No, Simon–It’s time we rely on a higher power.”
“Yes, you’re right, Maria… the time has come to seek a higher power.”
Simon, the father, is talking about summoning the mass of his influence to bring a resolution to bear. He’s a wealthy, relatively powerful man, you see–so he has connections, he knows people. So what a guy like this is doing married to a chick whose immediate response to crises is to pray is beyond me, because they don’t seem very compatable. He’s a pragmatist, she’s…not. Instead of a realistic relationship between two adults, what we have here are two stock characters used to fulfill story beats. That’s not good, but fortunately, Hannah’s parents take up a very small amount of real estate in this issue. The main focus is on DD, and that is good, because forget about Hannah for a second: Daredevil is the real heart here. Score: 8/10.
4. Batman, Incorporated #12 (DC, W: Grant Morrison, A: Chris Burnham). After last issue’s completely nonsensical fill-in detour (why didn’t they just let this issue be a little late?), things are back on track here as Morrison brings his 7-year Batman opus to a close… sort of. It’s been a long trek, with many ups and downs, as tends to be Morrison’s way when he plays the long game. In his penultimate issue here, though, he’s trending downward: the issue is, pretty much, one big fight scene between Batman and Talia’s vat-grown bastard. Not exactly the best way to send off a character for whom he’s given so much. The recent death of Damian Wayne has sent Bruce on one hell of a rampage, hellbent on taking down the SOBs responsible, starting with the bastard, and then moving onto Talia al Gul, who has become her father in all but gender. But really, after so many years of head-warping twists, turns, and variations on the Dark Knight mythos, is this really how it ends? Batman, ‘roided up on Man-Bat juice, throwing down with a fairly nondescript villain? For 20 pages? It’s not what I wanted, and maybe next issue will help to redeem this one. But it’s sorely disappointing in its own right, so I can’t score this one any higher than 5/10.
5. Green Arrow #22 (DC, W: Jeff Lemire, A: Andrea Sorrentino). Green Arrow’s a hard sell. After all, he’s the bow-and-arrow-using, powerless, super-liberal everyman in a universe populated by Amazonian warrior women, all-powerful Kryptonian demigods, the Green Lantern Corps, and a guy who can outrun the speed of light. Plus, he’s got Hawkeye to compete with over at Marvel, whose own title is currently one of the best reads on the stands. So what makes this schmuck stand out? How does he rise above it? Well, having a seriously popular TV spinoff helps. The next best thing is having Jeff Lemire completely reinvent the character from the ground up, starting with stripping away his fortune (not the first time this has happened in GA history), then his identity, as he finds out his origins as the Emerald Archer aren’t quite what they seemed. There’s family history bound up here, linking back to the mysterious island Ollie was stranded on and learned to shoot an arrow with better-than-average skill. That’s all been the focus the last few issues, and Lemire, aided by the sensational artistic find Andrea Sorrentino (think Jock but with JH Williams III’s layout sensibilites), continues to propel the story forward like a bullet. GA’s on a mission to break into the castle stronghold of the ruler of Vlatava (a small eastern European nation that’s not at all like Latveria), because said ruler has something to do with the labyrinthine mystery of Ollie’s family. He breaks into the castle with the help of his friends Fyff and Naomi, who have armed him with an arsenal of cool trick arrows, including a mapping arrow that creates a digital reading of the entire castle’s layout. Inside, he encounters a prisoner named Shado (making her New 52 debut), and a wayward supervillain named, ahem, Count Vertigo (also making his New 52 debut), who has the power to make you really, really dizzy. GA and Count Vertigo get into it, and that’s when Sorrentino really lets loose–his crazy sense of page layout is perfectly suited to creating a sense of physical disruption and dizziness as Ollie finds himself completely over his head. There’s a two-page spread of the Count putting his mental whammy on Oliver that is stunningly gorgeous and frankly makes the comic utterly worth the price of admission all by itself. Fyff and Naomi continue to vex me, however; thus far there is very little depth to their personalities other than “spunky young people who are smart.” But having said that, Lemire has crafted a superb comic overall, though, minor complaints notwithstanding. And right now, DC needs all the great books they can get. Score: 8/10.
6. Batman/Superman #1 (DC, W: Greg Pak, A: Jae Lee). Hoooo boy, now here’s a DC comic with some problems. Where to start? The story shifts between the perspectives of Batman and Superman, which is a good idea since both characters’ names are in the title. Too bad they’re both completely out of character. Batman starts the issue out working the streets undercover, just sitting by as a Muslim boy is about to get beat down by some bullies. You would think that Bruce Wayne of all people would a bit more sensitive to the plight of children; I guess in writer Greg Pak’s mind, Bruce’s own experiences have made him decide that getting a beatdown is actually good for a kid, as it teaches him to stand up for himself. Sounds a little too Randian to me, though. Maybe New 52’s Bruce Wayne vacations with Paul Ryan or something. Anyway, in the midst of the oh-so-compassionate Batman watching a hate crime take place, Clark Kent blunders onto the scene to break up the fight. He feels he’s done the right thing, which of course Bruce refutes by saying the bullies will just be back tomorrow and then Pak decides to ram that point home by having the Muslim kid flip Clark off. Yes, this comic features a kid giving Superman the finger. So Clark and Bruce verbally square off, sizing each other up, both realizing the other is more than they appear. And there you have it: the New 52’s first meeting of its most iconic characters. This is canon now, folks. Anyway, the issue goes on and it’s revealed that Clark’s in town to interview Bruce Wayne about the three Waynetech employees who were recently murdered in Metropolis. It goes on to reveal a Catwoman who’s been possessed by a ghostlike body-snatcher is doing the killing, a wonderfully lame cliche of a plot device. This ghosty-ghosty has been the one doing the killings, but really, who cares? The body possession plot has been used so much in popular fiction that I care so little about it I can barely finish this sentence. Let’s see, what else do we have? Well, at one point in the comic, Superman refers to Batman as an idiot. Yup, that really sounds like something Superman would say. When they meet for the first time in costume, they have a “misunderstanding fight,” of course, yet another sad old cliche Pak trots out. Jae Lee’s art looks great, but he’s totally wrong for this book. His art has taken on such a creepy look to it over the years, that it feel out of place in anything other than a horror or sci-fi book of some sort (I’d love to see what he could do with Hellboy). And the other artist, Daniel Brown, who draws the sequence when Batman and Superman wind up shunted into an alternate world (yet another cliche), is utterly nondescript. This comic fails at every conceivable level; yet it didn’t actually make me angry (because it was too half-assed to elicit that sort of reaction from me), so I’m very generously rewarding this book a 2/10 score based on the strength of Lee’s art, even if it is out of place.
7. Ten Grand #3 (Image, W: J. Michael Straczynski, A: Ben Templesmith). This is a pretty damn high-concept book, right up Straczynski’s alley, provided he doesn’t Straczynski it up half way through… by which I mean let it get bogged down and saggy in the middle of the story, losing all momentum. There’s a lot of potential for that to happen already, though, and we’re only three issues in. Even the basic plot is tangled: Joe Fitzgerald is a former mob enforcer who died when a job he went on turned out to have supernatural elements to it, and he was killed, along with his girlfriend, Laura, who is up to this point a paragon of virtue who wants to see Joe leave the business and little else. But anyway, they both die, Laura goes to Heaven (maybe, maybe not, as it turns out), but Joe is resurrected by angels, who give him a proposal: if he dies doing good deeds, he will get five minutes with Laura in Heaven and then be brought back to life so that he can do more good. So now Joe runs a business helping people for $10,000 (hence the comic’s title), in the vain hope that he can die helping someone in a worthwhile way so that he can see Laura again. WHEW!!! And that’s just the basic plot! See what I mean about the potential for Straczynski-sagging? So this issue sees Joe continuing his pursuit of his current client’s (who died, along with Joe, last issue taking a swan dive off a building) sister, who turns out to already be dead herself. D’OH! Things persist from there; we get a nicely rendered flashback sequence showing how Joe and Laura first met, and a cool scene in the morgue where Joe uses a “soul-stone” to talk to the “soul echo” in the sister’s corpse to find out who killed her. Visually cool, anyway: the dialogue gets too expository, with Joe taking time to explain what a soul echo is mid-sentence while talking to himself. Ben Templesmith’s art is characteristically cool, the term “psychadelic horror” comes to mind when looking at it. One thing that bugs me about this book, and this is a relatively minor complaint, but Troy Peteri’s lettering is waaaaay too obviously computer-generated and thus unnatural-looking for my liking. This distracts from the art and story even as you’re just trying to read it. Overall, Ten Grand is a solid book with a lot of potential, but Straczynski needs to cool it with the heavy dialogue and exposition and just let the story happen. Otherwise, its pacing is going to grind to a halt, and this innovative book is going to become one big snooze. Score: 7/10.
8. Satellite Sam #1 (of 4) (Image, W: Matt Fraction, A: Howard Chaykin). There’s nothing about this book that isn’t off-kilter. It’s Fraction’s ode to the dawn of TV, set in the mid-’50s, with a dash of noir thrown in the mix courtesy of Chaykin, who, in black-and-white, is doing the best work I’ve seen from him in awhile. (Compare the B&W interiors to the gaudily-computer-colored cover art, which has been his stock in trade for awhile now.) The issue opens on the set of “Satellite Sam,” a TV show in the vein of such ’50s shows as “Captain Kangaroo,” complete with in-your-face product placement, cardboard sets, and cheap costumes. Just as the show is fixing to film, its star, Carlyle White, is MIA. We see the behind-the-camera panic as the countdown to “go-time” is on, and the desperate last-minute attempts of the directors and producers to figure out how to proceed without him. There’s the token asshole writer, annoyed that his scripts are being shit on by the actors and directors. There’s the beautiful PA, there’s the cool-under-pressure director, and lastly there’s Michael, who does some unspecified thing there behind the camera, who is actually Carlyle’s son. The two men apparently have a strained relationship at best, as Michael could care less when he’s asked where he thinks his father might be. As all this is going on, a there’s a group of investors walking around with the studio boss, talking about how they’re going to have better cameras and become the top in the business and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, after some searching around, we find out that Carlyle is dead, and Michael, going through his possessions, finds a box of girlie pictures that apparently Carlyle took himself, which are insinuated to be connected to his murder. What does all this add up to, exactly? Well, not much, truth be told. The portrait of life behind the TV camera in the ’50s is nicely done, but there are no real characters to anchor it and make me care about any of the proceedings. Even Michael, our ostensible main character, is little more than a tabula rasa. This issue is basically all set-up, no depth. I don’t think I’ll be returning for the remainder of the series, as Fraction has given me nothing to really care about to warrant another visit. Score: 5/10.
And that’s it, folks! Hopefully next week will merit some stronger books. Until then, I remain…
ILL DIABLO
Ill Diablo Likes Comics 