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| The Comics Grab-Bag! | ||||||||||||||||||||
| [Yeah, I need to come up with a graphic for this...] | ||||||||||||||||||||
| August 31, 2002 edition Some of the comics and related mags I've read most recently. If you're all up to date, well la-de-da... I get my comics weeks after the weekly buyers do, and I'm a busy guy doing important, busy-guy type stuff here. In future attempts I might include some cover graphics, but this time out the pictures are all in your head. Just match them up with the voices you have in there and it'll work out fine. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Alias #13 Still a fine read. I was a little surprised to see that this arc has at least another issue to go - not that I'm complaining. Ex-superhero turned private eye, Jessica Jones, is looking into the small-town disappearance of a teenage girl and has run into the dark side of small-town America. Excellent character work, this remains the head-and-shoulders best from Marvel's Max line so far. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Thor #52 This issue can either be seen as a digression or a further insight into why Thor's decided the Norse gods must take more of a lordly role in the lives of mankind again. I'm interested to see where this plotline goes, and hope it is sustained well and long enough to become a background element in other series. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Suicide Squad #12 Final issue. The story kicked up a notch or two in the final two issues, with Task Force X coming back to take down the current Squad. The Medina art is still unappealing, and the series is dead anyway, so it's not worth the time to speculate whether or not this might have worked had Giffen teamed up with a more suitable artist, particularly one who was a fan of the original series and so might've made a better sounding board/ co-plotter. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Avengers Icons: The Vision #1: Visually nice (art team of Ivan Reis and Joe Pimental), the story strikes me as uncomfortably revisionist {sorry} especially as it's coming from the new series writer for The Avengers. So, we're now looking at a lost prototype of the Human Torch that operated on principles more like the version after Ultron reworked him into the Vision. Oh, and now the solar gem is also the seat of the being's intelligence? Working "...like a human brain... but hundreds of times more powerful"? I'm getting a headache. Didn't Kurt Busiek spent a chunk of the generally wonderful (and no 16,704-word textual assault on it has succeeded in changing my mind on that - though your mileage may vary) Avengers Forever undoing much of the damage Johnny Redbeard (John Byrne to you) had done to the character during his run on Avengers West Coast? Ordering these nearly two months ahead of time I'm already ordered through #3 and, compulsive completist that I am, will be ordering #4... so all I can hope is that a) this somehow straightens itself out and comes to make some in-continuity sense, or b) it won't prove a plot seed for later stories and we can try to forget it. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Power Company #7 This bounced back for me a couple issues ago and remains on my list. Hopefully the renewed push the creative team and DC are making will pull in more readers - at least enough to get it well into Diamond's Top 100 . Kurt Busiek and guest penciler Steve Sadowski put out a beautiful-looking, competently-written fill-in issue this time, focusing on Striker Z (terrible name, btw) A little time for focused character development? Sure, Kurt makes some good use of this tangent piece, but it still feels like a fill-in issue (consider that #6 ended with a story arc in full swing, including Ollie Queen (Green Arrow) getting into his fighting gear) while issue #8's new direction story is being worked on. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Thunderbolts #69 Catching my interest again. Writer Nicieza's still not anything like a favorite for me, but he gets points for dealing with so many villainous and heroic legacy issues and making interesting use of such usually forgettable characters as Hydro-man, Plant-man and Black Momba. (No, seriously. It only sounds like a condom.) Also, the series appears to have picked up a good art team {Dzialowski and Vey} when I wasn't looking, and that helps a great deal. The current look and feel reminds me very much of the Injustice Society issues of JSA, with a little bit of a Vertigo twist. This is one of those strong concept comics that could have made a big name for itself from the start had a more appealing artist been selected. Unfortunately Busiek selected Mark Bagley - whose angular, almost emaciated and generally facially unappealing faces I've never enjoyed - who stayed on even after Kurt left. Had he worked with someone more like Tom Grummet on this those first two or three years Thunderbolts might have become a top-seller for Marvel. Yeah, I know Bagley is on Ultimate Spider-Man and it's selling great while Grummet's on Power Company and its sales have been poor, but the dynamics are different. Wha--? "Double talk"? Why I outta... Okay, one's a Marvel title featuring a version of their most well-known character, while the other's from DC and featuring new characters. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Iron Man #58 zzzzzzz. Grell phones in another one. A weak technopremise not worth going into here or anywhere leads into a tale so hackneyed I can't tell if the ending would be telegraphed even to a lesser-read comics reader. I can't stay awake through these long enough to figure out what my reaction is to having Tony Stark known to the world as also being Iron Man. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Fantastic Four #59 The end of a three-part fill-in story that seems to exist for three reasons: 1. to provide three paychecks each to the creative team, 2. to kill time while the incoming team of Waid and Weiringo get their act together, and 3. to help set things up for Waid by removing Ben's ability to change back and forth between human and Thing form - a move I approve of. Next issue - which came out this week, come to think of it - is the much-ballyhooed 9 cent issue. I sure hope Waid has some good stories in hand, because it's going to be a struggle for me to look past Weiringo's ugly, manga-styled distortions that attempt to pass for hands, feet and faces. I hope he's replaced by someone more pleasing to my eye before long, but so far there's no hint of that. He's another "fan favorite" I keep hearing. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Comic Book Artist #21 This issue features pieces on John Buscema and Adam Hughes, with plenty of artwork. The Hughes section is huge, and while it's almost 90% cheesecake it's wonderfully-rendered cheesecake, and reveals the man's sense of humor about it all. Set up in a flip-book fashion, the (very roughly) half given over mostly to John Buscema includes comments from various industry luminaries, a separate inverview with his brother Sal, and an interview with John from a UK event back in '94 which concludes with a shots at Byrne ("Cutesy stuff does not go with me, okay?") and Miller (".. he may be a good writer but he's a lousy artist.") being coaxed out of him. Back on the other side of the mag there's a three-page "Day in the Life" visit with Alex Ross, too. An expensive magazine at $6.95 - part of the reason I often give it a misss - but this issue's a pleasure to go through even if you just irritate the store owner by going through the copy in the store. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Powers #22: Brian Michael Bendis (again.) A fine blend of police detective drama and superhero tale, ably illustrated by Michael Avon (he's excellent here, working on characters he co-created, but please don't put him on a mainstream title I enjoy because the faces often look as if they escaped from episodes of The Critic) Oeming. This issue's deep, deep into a high profile murder investigation, so don't jump in here. So far the series has been going the trade collection route, though, with volume three already out now or soon to be, so maybe you should start there? Who Killed Retro Girl was the first one, and it's only gotten better since. Between this, Alias and recently (for me) Daredevil Bendis is doing a lot of comics entertaining here in Nortonland. I wouldn't support Ultimate Spider-man even with your money, though. I have principles, I do. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Amazing Spider-Man #43: "Cold Arms" A choice title for the latest (for me) issue of what writer J. Michael Straczynski (he's good enough that you should learn to spell his name) has once more made a choice title. [Work with me, folks.] Pete's likeable (as he should be - even if he irritates me a little this issue by being such a willing, emotional punching bag), Aunt May's interesting (as she never seemed to be before JMS) and, damn, if Mary Jane isn't the miserable bitch I always knew she was, deep down. All this and a nice Doc Ock appearance, including a little unwilling, supervillain-legacy plotline heading us for what might become a three-way (hey-hey! clean up that mind!) fighting in an issue or two. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Black Panther #'s 46-48 (I caught up in one sweep) Following the well-intentioned, intricate international corporate intrigue that was "Enemy of the State II", issues 46 & 47 made better use of an old Kirby gimmick (you're going to force me to type "King Solomon's Frogs," aren't you?) to send this weird band of kings, political functionaries, a sidekick and former(?) love interest back to Danville, Texas in 1875, where we soon find that gods rode the plains, too. A fun diversion, that. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Issue #48 brought us back to the present and the intricate, non-linear storytelling that so helped make this series work in the first place. It also brought us more answers to recent puzzles and several grim realities. Issue #49 is supposed to wrap up "The King is Dead" in a fashion that suggests a (mostly) clean sweep and some new plot direction for #50. I'll be there to find out what it is, whatever it is.. at least until I see where it's going. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| While the series has become difficult to give blanket recommendations for in the past year, I still find it to be one of the most well and densely-written Marvel titles from the one writer they have left (now that Kurt's out of Marvel's door for the time being) for whom long-term continuity elements appear to be essential. What's made it difficult to recommend in the past year - aside from some surprisingly disastrous art - & has been that Chris Priest (it would be nice to finally mention the writer's name, wouldn't it?) was trying to reconcile the wacky, over-the-top Black Panther Jack Kirby gave us in the middle-late 1970's, with the Marvel universe as we know it. Now that it's all over, yes, it does make considerably greater sense, but as they used to ask during World War II: Was this trip necessary? | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ....and that's all for this time out. Any comments? Agreements? Disagreements? Questions? Drop by the messageboard and post! There are no stupid questions, just stupid answers, and I have more than enough to go around. Failing that, O' great party poop that you must be, just scoot back to The Embassy to stare in silence. ===MJN | ||||||||||||||||||||