12.03.09 Reviews (Part 2)

Echo #17 (Abstract Studio): Yeah, that image is of #16, though this review is actually for #17. I always have a hard time finding images of current Echo issues online, it’s really annoying, so I just used the most generic cover I could find, and I think Moore does the same thing for solicits. This cover using the Phi Project symbol was never an actual cover, but it seems to work for my purposes, and his. In my quest to find the cover to #17, I did stumble across this little gem directly from Moore himself: “It’s official. We have made a deal for the film rights to Echo with Watchmen/Hellboy producer Lloyd Levin. The deal was outed today by Variety. Needless to say, I’m very pleased about this. More details later, but my plan is to get Echo made as a movie, and SiP on TV (think HBO).” That’s great! Anyhow, this issue (say it with me, #17) is unlike any previous in that it almost plays like an interlude that cuts away from the action with Julie and is a big data dump that fills in much of the back story surrounding the Phi Project and creation of the Beta (and Alpha!) suit(s). Moore gives you a big huge sign post right at the beginning, signifying that this is something different – something special, with the tightly zoomed shot of the fly perched atop a tomato in scientist Will Dumfries’ salad. The fly to man, is analogous of man to the power of science/nature/nuclear war, you name your own noun that best completes the SAT analogy exercise. Dumfries answers so many of the questions that have lingered with the audience – this is a do-not-miss issue, I can’t say it any more clearly. He covers the genesis of the Phi Project and Annie’s critical role for Dillon and Dan, and provides a history lesson regarding base-10 mathematics and the implications for modern science, all culminating with the creation of alloy 618. There’s plenty of rich text to parse, but it’s never boring, never dull, never obtuse or condescending. Moore understands how to please an audience regardless of topic. In fact, he’s a little bit of a magician here, using some terrific and organic storytelling misdirection. We become so absorbed and engrossed by what Dumfries has to say that we never see what’s coming for him personally. Not only is the book superbly entertaining, but Moore poses some challenging intellectual dilemmas as well. In the march of progress, scientists can become so preoccupied with whether or not they can do something, that they never stop to ask if they should. God damn, my mind keeps going back to Will Dumfries. That scene plays like a confession that will ultimately break your heart. It’s probably one of, if not the, best single scenes in any comic I’ve read all year long. Despite one minor typo, forgeries spelled as “forgories,” I’m inclined to give the ever elusive Grade A+.

Supergod #2 (Avatar Press): In many ways, it’s fitting that I read these two comics back to back. This issue of Supergod felt opposite of Echo #17 in the way it handled quasi-fictional scientific ideas and how they were integrated into the storytelling. In typical Warren Ellis fashion, there’s a lot of science to dissect in this issue. We get lines like, ahem, “forced to meditate upon his own atomic structure until he could perceive the quantum foam of every particle of his being birthing and annihilating under the certainty principle.” Now, I don’t really know what the heck that means, but I have some vague idea because it sounds remarkably similar to what Ambrose Chase just did over in the last issue of Ellis’ own Planetary series in order to save himself. My point is that it sounds like Ellis showing off a wild concept, not like an organic line that one of his characters might deliver. In Moore’s Echo, we get a lot of mind-bending science as well, but it sounds like Will Dumfries the scientist having a natural conversation with another character, not like Warren Ellis the writer having a forced conversation with his readers, simply using his paper man as a cipher. We get plenty of those types of lines here, things like “mega-reactor Buddha’s spine,” which was impressive visually, but I felt distracted. The script calls for an Israeli Uzi sub-machine gun, but Gastonny pencils something a little more akin to an Ingram MAC-10. And I’m not sure why the scene featuring it was even necessary in the first place. Maitreya looks a little too much like Spider Jerusalem for me. I kept getting pushed out by things like this. Gastonny’s art looked a little more simplified here, and not as detailed as the introductory issue. Generally, I thought it was interesting to see all of the different paths that the different countries heros took, China’s hero experimenting with his captors, India’s cleaning up, Iran’s straying, the Soviet Union’s being taken out, and the American on the move, but this issue really felt like a lot of middle, with a lot of exposition that couldn’t be masked as well as the first issue pulled it off. All of this tells me that I’m going to give this series the “No Hero” treatment, and trade-wait it. Grade B.

I also picked up;

Ex Machina: Deluxe Edition: Volume 02 (DC/Wildstorm): This volume collects issues 12-20, including the two-part specials penciled by Chris Sprouse. Yay! Chris Sprouse! Why isn’t he working more?

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12.03.09 Reviews (Part 1)

Scalped #33 (DC/Vertigo): Right from the opening page, there’s an air of real world authenticity to the clipped dialogue from Jason Aaron and the lean anemic lines of R.M. Guera. As usual, the book is dripping with attitude, and everything that’s been bubbling up for what feels like a beautiful excruciating eternity is now finally starting to boil over. Diesel, Carol, Nitz, Catcher, Falls Down, the lost informant, and the Hmongs all have their own threads, they’re all gonna’ converge, and it’s gonna’ be cataclysmically entertainingly fucking grand. There are so many developments here that hum with energy and begin to pay off faithful readers. I can’t really say very much without spoiling things, but damn! Agent Newsome! Damn! Shunka knows a big secret! Aaron is laying down a modern crime epic that is poised to eclipse 100 Bullets as a flagship for the line, and Guera is bringing his best claustrophobic tight, dark, and, murky action. It really doesn’t get any better than this. Grade A+.

Uncanny X-Men #518 (Marvel): Oh, why do I keep doing this to myself? The good is that we finally get an explanation as to why Emma is/was stuck in diamond form, and Dodson’s art is much less offensive than Land’s (though Psylocke’s boobs are way too big to be consistent with her previous depictions, or even physically plausible in some shots), but I don’t know why Scott is in uniform on the cover, and then in the same scene in the book he’s in a suit. Aside from those two redeeming (kinda’ I guess?) qualities, I’m left with a few questions and concerns. The scenes, and series as a whole for at least the last six months or so, have felt very disjointed, with very rough jump cuts that flit around indiscriminantly. The story itself in this issue is a little more coherent than usual, but there’s definitely some instances of awkward dialogue. There’s a double “is” making a sentence read (minus a parenthetical phrase) “Dr. Rao is saying is that with you being the Master of Magnetism…” Why is bloody Beast saying “bloody” so bloody much? Did he get his Madonna on and suddenly become British? Beast keeps saying “they tortured me,” but I have no clue what he’s talking about. I’m pretty sure that never occurred in this title, not in my recollection anyway, must have been some crossover thing. If Scott is a psychic projection inside Emma’s fractured mind, why can he use his optic blasts to harm something? They’re psychic projections, not real or tangible. Why am I still buying this book? Grade C-.

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Automatic Kafka @ CBR

I don’t usually link to other people’s reviews that often, unless I think they’re exceptional. That said, please check out Greg Burgas’ wonderful retrospective on one of my favorite long gone series, Automatic Kafka by Joe Casey and Ashley Wood, over at CBR.

Cartooning Showcase @ Poopsheet Foundation

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Graphic Novel(s) Of The Month

Driven by Lemons (AdHouse Books): Josh Cotter’s follow up to the indomitable Skyscrapers of the Midwest comes at us as a pseudo-sketchbook, feeling informed by the design sensibility of Gary Panter, but with a touch of Tony Millionaire’s figure work. While that might sound like high praise, just wait, I saved the criticism for later. I think Cotter sort of philosophically takes the stance that if life gives you lemons, and those circumstances drive your life, this is how one might attempt the proverbial lemonade by navigating existence. What I enjoyed the most about Driven by Lemons was that it’s still recognizable as a “comic,” but his experimentations with the form and structure of the book make that definition highly malleable. There’s a playful level of interaction with the reading audience, the invention of communication devices like blue triangles and red squares that symbolize the very paradigm shift his work tends to comment on. I thought Skyscrapers was largely a comment on the collapse of the American ideal, the disintegration of the “Red State” ethos, in favor of a more “Blue State” liberal acceptance. I get the same vibe here, though it’s much more subtle. Those opening scenes tell me that this is a post-9/11 piece of work, susceptible to implausible types of occurrences, more interested in the idea of the American Heartland potentially looking like downtown Beirut than a Republican Utopia. Am I getting too political? Shit, I feel like I’m getting too political. Let’s talk about the text. It would be easy to dismiss this as “John Doe” (see Kevin Spacey in Seven) style ramblings, but they’re more. They’re not quite rhyme, but they are rhythmic: “Piston. Gravel. Ice cream headache. It moves from the lower left, pulsing neon invertebrae.” Man’s existence being reduced to attempts at navigating a sense of pervasive chaos is presented visually as well as verbally. Some of the panels and actions remind me of Tom Neely’s work on The Blot. This is a new school of visual communication; symbols, actions, and lateral movement all become a language in lieu of the traditional alphabet. During the section entitled Scope Creep, I felt that the story was being informed by the type of Big Brother Orwellian Paranoia found in The Prisoner, as society moves toward homogenization and the individual personality is systematically subdued. My one big gripe is that Driven by Lemons isn’t super-accessible by any means, it requires conscious effort to surrender and not cling to the need for a more straightforward “story.” But for those who are up to the task, you’ll find thematic notes on the cycle of life and death, and the elusive search for the meaning sometimes lost in between. Grade A.

Luna Park (DC/Vertigo): If there’s one thing that Danijel Zezelj knows how to do, it’s capturing the essence of a city in ink. In his book REX by Optimum Wound, he captured a media saturated, pre-apocalyptic urban wasteland. Here in Luna Park, he’s able to capture the dreamy new world of hopeful and desperate New York City, specifically the out-of-time ethereal wonderment of Coney Island. Novelist Kevin Baker lays down some great prose, with a sort of “triple cadence” that I really enjoyed. “Every day he walks out to the beach, and every day he walks back, past the stands with their shut-up summer mirth.” That line sounds sort of sing-songy to me, and I don’t mean that as a pejorative, it’s lyrical and beautiful. This tale of a low level mob enforcer with a heart and conscience is bleak and beautiful. It’s full of that dichotomy, dreary but vibrant, a complex world full of simple base choices. That framework suits the exploration of the gray and rejects simplistic notions of it being a black and white reality. Baker truly gets the dynamic duality of the medium; for example, there’s a shot of a heroin needle with the line “Sometimes he needs something more” in unison. There are the (we assume) drug induced flashbacks, the “memories” of past turmoil and warfare, with beautiful lines like “Is all our life nothing but an empty dream, heaven’s jest?” Baker also juggles metaphor interestingly, we see Coney Island in transition, symbolic of Marina and Alik, and man’s interaction with the eternal constant of change. Baker gets certain details down pat. The juxtaposition of Coney Island and Brighton Beach being contrasting sides of the same coin, Anastasia’s Club being the epicenter of Eastern European culture, fortunetellers succeeding in large part due to their slick skills of observation (Alik is a soldier because of his regimental tattoo). There are several themes Baker plays with that are interesting as well, soldiers feeling lost without a country to fight for, the meaningless nature of war in the modern age, Feliks as the devil making deals, war and love continually being connected for Alik. Then there’s the sudden ethereal magical twist of Alik being reborn and with his parents, a child doing his life over, but a generation in the past. Is it a dream? Has he died and gone to heaven? Has Eastern philosophy invaded and provided some reincarnation? I enjoyed this twist and the thought-provoking questions it introduced. Luna Park itself was portrayed as magical in the figurative sense, so this literal mystical time portal, dooming the protagonists to repeat the mistakes of the past throughout history was fantastic. The nightmare cycle was being fueled by betrayal and base motivations, entangled with the wars that were used as backdrops. “America is an illusion of change.” Yes, I was enjoying it all... You’re waiting for the “but” aren’t you? Well, in an odd move, and I mean abrupt, more than unexpected – seemingly random – without a complete spoiler, umm, this all gets connected to the JFK assassination. Really? Wow. It’s almost as if this disconnected idea just popped into the writer’s head and was begging to be used no matter how disparate an element it created when juxtaposed with the remainder of the story. I felt strongly that the magical reincarnation motif was already enough of a twist ending that another was not necessary. It doesn’t quite fit the pattern of war/love/betrayal that all the other story threads inhabit. It’s jarring, and while it doesn’t derail the whole affair by any means, it did really push me out, and was a sour way to end something that I was really enjoying up until that point. Why is it a Graphic Novel of the Month, then? Two words, Danijel Zezelj. I don’t think his work has ever looked more beautiful, he really outdoes himself here, and it’s worth picking up for that alone. Luna Park is near perfect, an absorbing but flawed book, and if not for the one isolated big odd narrative choice, it would have scored higher than Grade A-.

Coming This Week: Is It Thursday Yet? What's In A Title?

Every week I review Diamond's “New Releases” to determine what I’ll definitely be buying sight unseen, what I’m interested in enough to do a quick scan of at the LCS to see if it can win me over, and note any other items that catch my eye. Here’s a look…

Buying:

Scalped #33 (DC/Vertigo): If you’re not buying this, you probably don’t like good comics.

Supergod #2 (Avatar Press): If you’re not buying this, you probably don’t like Warren Ellis.

Echo #17 (Abstract Studio): If you’re not buying this, you probably can’t be helped. PS – Didn’t this just come out three weeks ago? Of course I got it two weeks ago thanks to Sea Donkey, but still it seems soon-ish. Not that I’m complaining, it’s just odd.

Considering:

Uncanny X-Men #518 (Marvel): If you’re buying this, it’s probably just out of habit at this point. PS - It's me again. Hi. Yeah, this *just* came out last week! Did we switch to two per month? What gives? Is this an end of calendar year thing?

Ex Machina: Deluxe Edition HC: Volume 02 (DC/Wildstorm): If you’re buying this, you’re buying Brian K. Vaughan’s best work.

Noting:

Great Ten #2 (DC): If you’re buying this, you probably just really like Scott McDaniel’s art, which is understandable.

Captain America: Theater of War: Prisoners of Duty (Marvel): If you’re buying this, then it means you really like titles: with: as: many: colons: as: possible. I mean, really, that’s just silly. Has titling become such a lost art? Do your branding guidelines really necessitate that it must say “Captain America” somewhere in the title? It's total coincidence, but notice how all of the books I actually will be buying this week have just one word titles that pretty much give you an idea of what the book is going to be about thematically. Scalped didn’t opt for “The Tales of Dash Bad Horse: Undercover Lakota: Hmong Gangsters on the Rez: Volume 5” and there’s a reason why. I'm just sayin'...

Secret History: Book 07 (Archaia): If you’re buying this, perhaps you’re like me and really enjoy historical fiction, but unlike me, you will not be waiting to find it in a $1 bin.

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11.25.09 Reviews (Part 2)

Detective Comics #859 (DC): While there are a few minor mix-ups between the Army and Marine Corps, Rucka’s script hones in on the reasoning behind Kate’s inherent distrust of organizations and perhaps why she has a penchant to go it alone. It’s also interesting that we see Kate not as a stereotypical closeted homosexual, but someone who isn’t afraid to be open, honest, and proud of her sexuality, which is all capped off by an unexpected and touching scene with her father about a personal code of ethics and sense of honor. Williams’ pencils still delight, the highlight here for me isn’t the bestial scenes that some might cite for his unique panel layouts, but a speechless sequence featuring Batman, that not only inspires a direction in Kate’s life, but showcases Williams’ strengths as a visual storyteller, capable of relaying a critical moment in the heroine's personal history without a single piece of text. It sounds odd to say, but in terms of art and writing, if you were to combine the experimental confidence of Promethea and well researched industrial parlance of Queen & Country, you'd land somewhere around Batwoman in Detective Comics. Grade A.

I Am Legion #6 (DDP/Humanoids): My knee jerk reaction once I got a few pages in was that this will read much better when collected. It’s a pretty intricate plot with so many names, motives, and sets being thrown around. As usual, John Cassaday’s pencils are on fire. Look at the close up shot of a man’s eyes welling up, on the verge of crying. In that one small panel, there is so much realism, so much emotion captured, so much energy just pouring out of that panel, you can almost see the man’s chin quivering as he fights back the tears. It’s just one small example of the kinetic detail crammed into every panel. This won't be Cassaday's most popular penciling effort, but it is surely one of his best. He does the action, the silhouettes, and the talky bits all with equal precision. At the end, I Am Legion proved to be a bit of a text heavy slow burn with delicious pencils, but for the patient and willing audience it’s a strong tale that blends the paranormal vampire mythos with historical fiction, ending with high level politics and an open-ended denouement. Grade A.

Invincible Iron Man #20 (Marvel): “Dying is the superhero retirement plan.” This is the Matt Fraction I want to be writing Uncanny X-Men. This incarnation of Iron Man is still basically a perfect modern superhero epic. The Rian Hughes cover pulls you right in to all of the different threads inside Tony’s mind. There’s him with his parents in a sort of purgatory style limbo. There’s his automated message from beyond that is part apology, part confession, part tactician’s plan, part gift to his closest friends. It’s fascinating that Pepper is one member of the “team” who needs more time to decide if Tony is worth resurrecting. There’s continued machinations with Whitney, nice bonus material in the saga supplement, and while there’s multiple taking heads pages, literally, Larroca makes it convincing, it’s never boring, always compelling. Grade A.

11.25.09 Reviews (Part 1)

Northlanders #22 (DC/Vertigo): Leandro Fernandez has really refined his style in the last few years. At times, I still see a lot of Eduardo Risso in his lines, but with Dave McCaig’s beautiful coloring the overall effect is much warmer and more emotive than any issue of 100 Bullets ever was. As usual, Brian Wood gives us the surface story. It’s about the strength of a mother, about a grueling attempt to maintain a sense of normalcy, and the idea that all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. When you step back from it all and lose some of the period context, you see that parent struggling to provide for the safety of their child, trying to influence the common good of the community, while making choices in an attempt to navigate this tragedy. Yeah, it’s all set in the year 1020, but those ideas are much more current themes than we’re probably comfortable admitting. Whether consciously intentional or not, bits of this arc are oddly relevant to today, the plague itself a stand in for swine flu paranoia, but also for the economic crisis. Gunborg as the inevitable taxman who comes calling just like the IRS, parents struggling to make ends meet and protect the future stability of their children's lives. When you start making those links in your mind, it becomes a powerful piece of work that touches on our collective perception about today’s fragile existence. Grade A.

The Lone Ranger #19 (Dynamite Entertainment): Hrmm. Something felt off about this issue. It picks right up where the last issue left off, with The Lone Ranger and Tonto being framed up for some murders, but there are some odd artistic choices that make the storytelling a little unclear. Ranger… hits Sheriff Loring? Why? Was it misdirection to give him an alibi in front of the Fed? If so, that was really not clear. The entire scene with the time constraint and the intercut shots of Sheriff Loring, the Fed, and Cavendish wasn’t clear at all. Ambitious, but murky. I’m still not clear on what happened there. Lastly, there is a very unexpected, almost completely out of character, weird ass turn at the end. It really pushed me out of the story and the budding relationship that was already being clearly established in previous issues. On top of it all, this title usually reads extremely quickly. When everything’s clicking, as it normally does, it just feels like a quick satisfying read, something that leaves you wanting more. However, when there are a series of mis-steps, as was the anomalous case this time out, that seems to be all you can dwell on or remember. For the first time ever, I actually thought to myself “hrmm, maybe it’s time to trade-wait this.” I certainly hope this was an isolated occurrence that’ll read better collected. Giving it the benefit of the doubt with a low Grade B.

Uncanny X-Men #517 (Marvel): I’m really upset by this. I relented and bought the issue even though I keep telling myself I should drop it and put it on the quarter bin list. It started ok, with some fast action fun. At first I thought maybe it could stay in that mindless summer movie, guilty pleasure zone, but then I started looking closely. Land’s backgrounds are so skimpy, sometimes non-existent. Boom Boom saying “Sup, bee-otches?” just sounds so desperately trying to be hip, rendering it not so. Why is Storm’s uniform different all the time? Why are the Predator X’s so… dumb? They are metallic dinosaurs who want to kill mutants. Sorry, but that’s just bush league awful. Why is Thunderbird suddenly popping out of the Predator X? Or is that Warpath? Where'd he come from? Huh? What? And call me too serious, but I'm generally not up for quips during a battle that threatens the very existence of my species. There are minor clever things happening, like the way Rogue uses her powers, but overall Matt Fraction is just capable of so much more. Grade B-.

Justice League: Cry for Justice #5 (DC): This is really the first issue that I can’t completely dog out. True, there are many head-scratchers, gaffes, and weird insinuations, but there are also, surprisingly, a few redeeming qualities. Kara and Freddie are kissing on the cover. For no apparent reason, I guess, since they never do in the actual issue, nor is the cover embrace ever explained. They don’t even flirt in this issue, as they kinda’ have in the past. Moving along, so Kory likes to sunbathe in the nude. Sigh. Ok. Then we learn that Megan Fox, oh, I meant Donna (she’s just clearly had Megan Fox used as photoref), is with her. That leads me to an odd inference that not only are they friends, but that there could be some sort of lesbian thing happening. Since when is one of your best friends the ex-girlfriend of your ex-boyfriend, and why would you want to hook up with that person? That’s a little creepy in itself. On top of that, Robinson has already force fed us the idea that Hal is running around having threesomes with Lady Blackhawk and whoever, so I feel like this is all a big set up to later inform us that Dick must have refereed a little clam-fighting session between Donna and Kory up in Titans Tower. Also note that Kory used to clearly be an orange colored Tamaranian; here she looks like she just got a little bronze skin color by sunbathing nude with Donna. From there, we get Ollie calling Dinah “ugly,” which I could just never see happening, Atom’s speech balloon attributed to the wrong character, and Firestorm suddenly appearing when he hasn’t been in any of the preceding panels. Yeah, lots of issues with Firestorm. He shows up mysteriously to say he’ll immediately leave and go handle something in Gotham, and then he continues to be in the next few pages. This is continuity like in the most basic sense of the word. It’s like a character on TV wearing a blue shirt in one scene, the camera cuts away to a different angle of the same scene and then they’re wearing a red shirt with no explanation. Firestorm literally said he was leaving, and then proceeded… not to. Roy being in danger is extremely telegraphed with everyone offering well wishes for Lian, he might as well be the extra who beams down to the planet on a Star Trek mission. I guess we’re supposed to infer that Congorilla smelled something, or something(?), and went off to investigate suddenly. But, what was he supposed to smell? And if he smelled something, why didn’t anyone else? Supergirl has uhh, super-smelling or something, right? I don’t know. Maybe it’s all misdirection. That last panel is odd. I think we’re supposed to believe that Freddie standing over some ravaged bodies (and where the hell did Flash come from?!) means he’s evil, but the way the bodies are posed, he and Supergirl could certainly be taking on some villain who’s off panel. Over in JLA, Plastic Man is really effed up at the moment, so uhh, does this story pre-date that, or what? Robinson’s writing both, so I’d expect the continuity to be sorted out. Is it? Not sure, didn’t buy this week’s issue of JLA ‘cuz it was basically an issue of Blackest Night. Robinson’s rambling text piece is as obtuse as ever, having not much at all to do with this story per se, only highlighting his adoration for an artist who once worked on Captain Marvel, Jr. Are we meant to believe that Elvis really based his hairdo on Freddie Freeman’s? That sounds really bogus to me, but who knows. What is an odd confession is Robinson saying that he initially got into writing, not because he liked writing, or even wanted to be a writer, but because he wanted the fame. Wow. Oh, and Dinah clearly looks like Jessica Alba in Fantastic Four in some panels. Awesome. The things I liked… well, the Starfire/Animal Man bits of 52 were one of the only small bits of that mess I enjoyed, and they’re juggled well here at the Baker’s pad. If managed correctly, this has the potential to work well as a prelude to the new JLA lineup, but we’re on issue five, so the next two issues had better bring the thunder. Superficially, I liked Roy’s line “she’s cool” about Batwoman, the idea that Dick had told Roy about her. It figures they’d talk, right? They’re pretty tight. But umm, does everyone in that room know that Dick is Batman, or that Dick is even a hero? If not, well, Roy just outed him, and it seems like a rookie move, especially for a guy who was in Checkmate and all. I like that Supergirl is played a bit inexperienced. She doesn’t know who Congorilla is, she’s unfamiliar with Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad. That’s neat characterization. I like the idea of Shade travelling to the satellite, I like that Hawkman picked up on the relationship between Hawkgirl and Roy. I like that the JLA seems to be finally using all of the resources at their disposal, the JSA, the Titans, reservists, loosely affiliated others, etc. And overall, Mauro Cascioli’s pencils are improving, at times reminding me of an uneasy blend of Simone Bianchi and JH Williams III with some of the panel designs and layouts. It’s not perfect, but it’s… interesting. Not completely unmitigated disaster laughable dogshit like the first few issues (which actually hampers my enjoyment), but simply a train wreck. Grade C-.