tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63809700661435883022024-03-13T10:31:29.012-04:00COMICS MATTERcomicbook reviews, columns, nattering, etc. Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.comBlogger464125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-62355432194877662412015-08-31T15:17:00.000-04:002015-08-31T15:17:00.112-04:00Monthly Dose: August 2015<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">one issue each month of </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">long-completed series.</span></i></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> </span><br />
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So wow...it's been a whole month since I've posted anything on here. There are lots of reasons for this, most of which center on the fact that m'lady and I are having a baby in November, and this means several other things are happening in our lives between now and then, like having half of our house redone, me getting a new job, etc. The result is that I have way less time for comics. I've already stepped away from writing for PopMatters (much love to them and to Shathley Q in particular for giving me the opportunity) and my 1987 And All That posts on CSBG have also slowed a bit recently (for instance, there should be a new one this Thursday, but it's going to be delayed until next week for sure). So my output has dwindled in all the spaces where I write, and this blog, with its tiny readership and with me as the sole content generator, is no exception. Blah blah blah, the point of this paragraph is mostly to say that, normally, I'd be starting to read a new third series for Monthly Dose, having finished <i>Automatic Kafka</i> last month, but my current living situation doesn't grant me much access to my comics collection, so it's just going to be the 2 titles for now. Hopefully next month, there'll be 3 again, and in an ideal world I will also get back on my <i>Action Comics Weekly</i> reviews then, too.<br />
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<u><i>100 Bullets </i>#34</u>: Brian Azzarello's writing can be extremely clever, but sometimes it's too clever for its own good. This issue is a prime example of that, for two reasons: 1. There are way too many tortured puns in a row, and 2. There is the illusion of narrative progress when really, mostly, we get spinning wheels. The very beginning tells us that Monroe Tannenbaum is dead, which leads Megan Dietrich to provide Milo with a few more details about his current case. From there, we get a lot of Milo making plans that fall through, and then at the end he sees the word "Croatoa" on the painting that this entire arc is based on, and it seems to trigger him as we've seen it do with other Minutemen in the past. So we know that Milo is a Minuteman, though we still don't fully understand the significance of that fact. Point being, the first few pages and final page of this issue actually do push things forward, but the rest is a bunch of idly stewing in Milo's hard-boiled personality. I love him as a character, but I'd much rather follow him while he was doing something important, instead of, for example, staring down Lono for 4 pages before Lono gets up and leaves, making the entire scene feel mostly pointless. It was, at least, very dynamic visually, because Eduardo Risso is in his element doing this sort of gritty noir, and because Milo and Lono are each extremely interesting to look at in their own ways. Not a bad chapter altogether, and Milo being activated as a Minuteman by seeing the painting definitely works as a cliffhanger and makes him an even more compelling character than he already was, but I feel like some fat could definitely have been trimmed here, and Azzarello 100% needs to reign in the wordplay.<br />
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<u><i>The Maximortal </i>#4</u>: In this issue, we learn that, in the reality of <i>The Maximortal</i>, the titular character was used by the U.S. government in WWII to destroy Hiroshima, not an actual atomic bomb. It's an interesting idea, placing a Superman imitation character in that role, because Superman himself certainly has a history of fighting for America, it's just that he's never done anything so extreme as this. Also, of course, in this comic, Wesley isn't in control of himself but is, instead, the captive of the military, their tool as opposed to their ally. Rick Veitch structures the scene of Hiroshima's devastation efficiently, showing us images of the plane moving in, the Japanese citizens living their everyday lives, and then, in the end, Wesley being used t blow everything up. While these are the visuals, though, we get text in the margins showing a transcript of a meeting between President Truman, two members of his team, and Dr. Uppenheimer (an Oppenheimer stand-in, duh). Uppenheimer explains to everyone else that they are not attacking Hiroshima with a bomb as believed, but with the alien child, and he also proposes further studying the child to use him in other ways down the line. Veitch adds a bit of darkness to what is already an extremely dark event in the history of the world, making the bombing of Hiroshima even more morally questionable that it already was by introducing the notion that a living thing, captured by America, was used to destroy the city. Before and after that sequence, the issue focuses on Jerry Spiegal and Joe Schumacher, creators of True-Man, the in-comic comicbook series that features a character very similar to Wesley. Spiegal and Schumacher discover that, contrary to what their publisher Sidney Wallace has told them, their comic is a tremendous success, and that they've been completely screwed out of the resulting profits. This, along with a request from the FBI to use True-Man as a tool of propaganda, moves Spiegal to quit, which in turn lands him in the army since the only thing stopping him from being drafted was Wallace wanting him to keep churning out True-Man scripts. Schumacher decides to stay on as an artist, committing himself to being Wallace's whipping boy if it means he can draw professionally. It's a tragic state of affairs all around, with Wallace as the hyper-greedy villain getting everything he wants and suffering zero consequences. Indeed, this issue may be the most depressing in the series, and certainly up to this point. It's a fairly relentless storm of horrible shit happening to innocent people at the hands of wicked men who seek only to advance their own power.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-37500916558714655042015-07-31T12:50:00.000-04:002015-08-01T12:55:19.165-04:00Monthly Dose: July 2015<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">one issue each month of </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">long-completed series.</span></i></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> </span> <br />
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<i><u>100 Bullets</u></i><u> #33</u>: Something struck me when Megan Dietrich showed up in this issue that has been running underneath this arc from the beginning: we know Milo was in an accident, but ever since this story kicked off, there's been a feeling that the accident isn't over. The crash was just the beginning, and he's been feeding off of the momentum of it even as it propels him toward whatever worse fate awaits him than a fucked-up face. I'm not saying Megan's arrival is the other shoe dropping, at least not yet or not fully, but we already know how connected and powerful she is, and we know Milo has no idea, which means he's about to get in over his head if he isn't drowning unknowingly already. Seeing Lono is the first issue was, I suppose, the first hint of dark days ahead, and Milo's determined brand of self-destructive behavior in the name of revealing hidden truths is always going to cause problems, but it was someone as high-up and precise as Megan who finally brought into focus just how screwed Milo is or will certainly be soon. It's exciting and sad, because Milo is one of the most stylized and stand-out characters, in his dialogue and appearance both, to have graced the pages of this title up to now. But he can't possibly survive going up against Megan without knowing how much wool is in front of his eyes, and he's not a careful or good enough detective to remove all of that wool before it's too late, if he ever does. The rest of what happens in this issue is largely exposition as Milo goes over the facts again, plus a small bit of him dodging a nosy but friendly and seemingly stand-up cop, but that all ends up as background chatter to the growing dread of what's in store for Milo at the end of this storyline.<br />
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<i><u>Automatic Kafka </u></i><u>#9</u>: The final issue of this series goes full-on meta, and also unfortunately drops many threads that are never to be picked up again. Basically, based on what's here, the comic got cancelled, and so since they knew they weren't going be able to finish the way they wanted, Joe Casey and Ash Wood decided instead to insert themselves into the book so they could talk the titular hero through the end of his reality. It's an entertaining conversation, and I particularly enjoy the bit where Casey and Wood make it clear that they're doing this mostly to prevent other creators from getting their hands on Kafka in the future and misusing or mishandling him. They wanted some real finality, so they unmake him completely, send him into the oblivion of cancelled comicbook characters. It's a good way to bring closure to the title even without wrapping up the narrative, and this is a good story in which to do something like that. Sure, there were some throughlines established, like the baby bombs that the Warning was making or the Constitution of the United States becoming a porn star (which they make reference to in this final issue but don't exactly resolve). But mostly, <i>Automatic Kafka</i> tried to tell new, short, complete stories in every issue, so there's no sense of a master plan being undone by the cancellation. It's definitely a shame this book didn't get to last any longer, because there was some truly ambitious, hilarious stuff that came out of it, but at least Casey and Wood got to say goodbye, and no amount of truncation can undo the material they did get to produce. I revisit this book every so often and, while it's definitely flawed, it's also a very worthwhile read, especially if, like me, you find superheroes equal parts fantastic and ridiculous. <i>Automatic Kafka</i> celebrates both of those aspects, and Wood's controlled chaos art style complements both of them perfectly.<br />
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<i><u>The Maximortal </u></i><u>#3</u>: This issue contains three short stories, related to one another through Wesley/True-Man but not directly connected. First, and somewhat confusingly, we see an elderly, mostly retired Sherlock Holmes take the case of the little boy who murdered an entire old west town, and it kills him. He summons with his violin both the "angel" from earlier issues who seems to have created Wesley, and El Guapo, the mystery man who somehow seems to be fighting against the angel, and who is the biggest connection between the stories in this issue. Those two beings indriectly cause Holmes to fall into his beehives, and the bees he so loved attack and kill him. It's a nicely written, haunting, beautifully disturbing bit of comics, but I'm not sure what Sherlock Holmes has to do with anything. Next we see the origin of True-Man as a comicbook character, which is quite similar to Superman's own history in the real world, and feels like the first part of a larger commentary on comic creators' rights in general. The two earnest creators of True-Man sign a contract without reading it, which is never good, and the assumption is that, in the future, they're going to get as screwed out of ownership of their creation as Siegel and Shuster and so many others like them have over the years. The person they sell the idea to, however, is Sidney Wallace, who we met last time as the wannabe stuntman who got his testicles crushed during an encounter with the real Wesley. So Wallace having dealt with a real, warped version of Superman makes him an interesting person to buy the rights to a fictional Superman knock-off, and is bound to provide some strong storytelling possibilities down the line. In the context of a series examining all the angles of Superman, this middle story is the most obviously relevant, as it switches from following a twisted take on Superman to following a twisted-but-less-so take on Superman's creators and publishers. Finally, we see Wesley get discovered in a secret bunker where the military is holding him, uncovered as part of a semi-fictionalized version of the Manhattan Project. This feels like a tale only half-told so far, with Wesley's discovery and the discovery of his heat vision are the end of this issue, but clearly only the beginning of his significance for a group of scientists trying to build the ultimate weapon. Wesley is the ultimate weapon, so this is clearly setting up for things to come. These stories are ordered chronologically, but also logically, with the strangest and most distant first, the most thematically connected coming second, and the most narratively connected and biggest cliffhanger closing things off. A well-done example structural play, and I'd say the best overall issue of the first three in the series.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-43650571089947295322015-07-26T20:00:00.002-04:002015-07-26T20:00:58.450-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #628<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">.
It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to
review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks.
This is the twenty-eighth of those reviews.</i> <br />
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I should maybe change the name of this series of posts, since they are not weekly anymore by any stretch. Then again, "Randomly Scheduled Action Comics Weekly Reviews" doesn't have nearly as nice a ring to it...Anyway, this is late and I have kind of a lot to do today so I'm going to burn through these super-fast. Watch me.<br />
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Green Lantern is an ass to Captain Atom and feels kind of bad about. Captain Atom is a slightly bigger ass to Green Lantern and feels just as bad about it. They both desperately try to find the destructive alien intruder with no luck until, at the end, they figure out that it is responsible for causing a building to collapse. While GL holds the structure in place, CA prickishly decides to take out the alien on his own, and that's where things end. So not a lot of action here, but some very nice character work from both James Owsley and M.D. Bright, who make GL and CA seems like two sides of the same coin. They're both a bit arrogant, they both have trouble working well with others, and they both want to do what's right but aren't sure how in this case. It's tricky trying to be a professional good guy, and that's what this story is all about. In that sense, it worked, though it was admittedly not the most thrilling installment, what with the alien itself never being on the page.<br />
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Uh-oh. Black Canary is starting to slip into the kind of confusing territory it spent so much time in on the last go round. I think my biggest issue is it's hard for me to keep all the characters straight from one week to the next. There are a lot of players involved, it's not clear how everyone's connected, and they all spend a fair amount of time at least partially obscured by shadow, so remember who's who is not the easiest task. I probably should be better at it, and it's not as thought the creators do a bad job of distinguishing between people, but for whatever reason I'm not quite keeping up. That said, this is still a nicely moody story, and I'm really enjoying Black Canary as the stoic detective, so this is still a good read. I just need to trust that the befuddling bits will be clear soon, and enjoy the rest of the show in the meantime.<br />
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Alright, an all-Speedy chapter of the Nightwing and Speedy story. I like that there's no obligation felt to include both characters in every section. They're physically separated right now, so why not follow each of them individually for a bit? Here we see Speedy save himself and his daughter from the mysterious Friends of the Empire, the criminal organization that our heroes crossed paths with last time. As serviceable as that is, it's also a bit poorly paced. There's a certain amount of Speedy rushing through the action without any time to properly react to what's going on. He gets upset when Lian is taken from him and is of course happy once he saves her, but the real urgency of a father losing his child doesn't come through here, and as far as I can see, there's no attempt to make it do so. The story is concerned with banging out the plot points more than making each one or even any one of them count for anything. That's too bad, because it's not a bad plot for a simple superhero tale, but it's played all wrong here and ends up being too subdued to be interesting.<br />
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I forgot Bob Galt had a superpower, which made it doubly exciting to see him use it here. It was also real progress in the narrative, because now Superman and Galt have enemies they can question and not just run away from. I am feeling the limitations of the two-page chapters a lot more in this part of the story than I did before. Now that the heroes and villains are so close to fully confronting one another, and because Galt and Supes have been on the move for so many issues in a row, I find myself wishing hard that I could get a bit more story each week than I do. Even two more pages might suffice, just something so I didn't have to consume this one scene at a time. Or not even...it's like one-half or one-third of a full scene at best. Roger Stern and Curt Swan handle their tiny space well, as they have from the beginning, but things are heated up enough now that it's always a little frustrating to have the story end so abruptly. Still, as I said, this week something significant actually went down, so it was better than the last few.<br />
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No big surprise, Mockingbird is Rafael's father. Sort of an inevitable reveal, actually, and for sure the most expected option for his identity, considering Rafael stopped being pissed off as soon as he saw Mockingbird's face last time. This story is clearly in its final act, which has been a long time coming and is, so far, quite good. It's moving fast now, and there's a pervasive sense of imminent danger that pushes things forward and carries the reader along. Plus this time, the Secret Six got to kick all kinds of ass, taking down baddies and blowing shit up and just generally pulling off everything they wanted to without much resistance form the opposition. They're clicking as a tea on a whole new level, and Mockingbird is being more transparent than ever, so the heroes are definitely on the upswing while the villains, we see, can't even get along with one another. With the promise of answers next week and the villains so badly beaten this week, I feel like the conclusion can't be more than 1-3 chapters away. I'm going to miss the Secret Six in this book. It's been a reliably entertaining ride.<br />
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Blackhawk is back(hawk). Picking up pretty much exactly where it left off several issues ago, the team discovers that Marcia was hit during the plane-on-plane firefight from the last chapter, while Blackhawk tries to turn down an offer to be part of the newly-formed CIA. We also see some Germans doing some kind of horrible medical stuff to a guy who's strapped to a table, followed by one of those Germans going to deliver something somewhere but getting show to death by soldiers instead. So...no idea what that was about or where it will lead, but it happened right in the middle of everything. Oh, and at the start of the story we see Blackhawk's newest team member, whose name I forget—I forget the entire cast's names except for the title character—upset over how far away she has to be from her son. A lot of moving pieces in this story and several plotlines that at this point have no obvious connective tissue, but we'll see where it goes. My hopes are not super high, but I do always love seeing Rick Burchett draw these characters and this world, so that's something.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Nightwing and Speedy/"Rocks and Hard Places Chapter Three: Arrival"<br />
5. Blackhawk/"...And a Time to Gather Stones Together"<br />
4. Black Canary/"Knock 'em Dead Part 5"<br />
3. Superman/"Wipeout!"<br />
2. Secret Six/"Remains to be Seen"<br />
1. Green Lantern/"Heroes"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-17432936494976809742015-07-19T17:00:00.001-04:002015-07-19T17:00:48.556-04:00ElsewhereTwo weeks ago I wrote on PopMatters about <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/195267-mccreas-fun-loving-magical-terrors-in-mythic/">John McCrea's artwork for <i>Mythic</i></a>, then this week I wrote on CSBG about 1987's <a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/07/16/1987-and-all-that-3-d-three-stooges-3/"><i>3-D Three Stooges </i>#3</a>. While McCrea's art is a blast, the rest of <i>Mythic</i> has yet to find its footing, and <i>3-D Three Stooges</i> #3 was a letdown in all ways, so...not the most exciting material overall, but that's how it goes sometimes, as we all know.<br />
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<u>Something I Failed to Mention</u><br />
I think I said all I wanted to about both of the above topics in each of the above columns. They were more narrowly focused pieces than I often write, so not as much got missed as usual. I did just watch the episode of <i>House</i> where Kutner kills himself, and I must say, it seemed like a completely pointless death that they threw in because they needed an easy excuse to get rid of Kal Penn before he left for his job at the White House. The whole storyline centers on House being bothered by how out of nowhere the suicide was, how there was no evidence or reason for it, and I totally agree. Now, of course, I understand that there have been suicides like that before, that not everyone's depression is obvious and that not all suicides have explicit reasons or specific motives behind them. But any deaths of characters in fiction, no matter the cause, ought to have reasons in-story, even if not in-world, and they ought to fit with the established truths of the character's life. This was not that case with Kutner at all. This has nothing to do with comics, but it's where my head's at right now.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-62383967607716524892015-07-14T20:24:00.002-04:002015-07-14T20:24:27.002-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #627<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">. It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks. This is the twenty-seventh of those reviews.</i><br />
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For the first time ever, this issue only had five stories, the last one being double-sized. Or, technically I guess it was two normal-sized chapters back-to-back, but that's pretty much the same thing. To celebrate/honor that fact, I'm only going to write five sentences per story, <a href="http://comicsmatter.blogspot.com/2015/05/weekly-action-comics-weekly-review.html">just like I did that other time</a>. For this cover, I've got nothing. It's boring, and the decision to do a close-up of Nightwing's face as well as a shot of his full body, both making similarly serious but not exactly the same expressions, is truly baffling.<br />
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A guest appearance by Captain Atom? <a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/07/02/1987-and-all-that-captain-atom-1-10/">Sweet, I love that guy!</a> I was not wild about what a tremendous, overly-zealous ass he was here, but I do like that the alien's vessel was destroyed because it makes the whole situation more dangerous and complicated, and I'm glad it wasn't Green Lantern who did the destroying. He needs to be able to be the hero of his own story, so this seems like a good way to keep that intact while still worsening the circumstances. And while all the action was good, the moment of the alien ship's destruction was the best, elegantly simple while fittingly bombastic.<br />
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Mockingbird removing his hood is the headline here. The reader still doesn't get to see his face (I am saying "he" because everyone else has so far but I would bet it'll actually be a woman, not sure why just a hunch) but the fact that Rafael now knows Mockingbird's identity means we ought to be filled in very soon. That mystery has been central to the Secret Six from the start, and coupled with just how much the team seems to have uncovered about their enemies and Mockingbird's ultimate goals by now, things appear to be coming to a close. I'm going to miss this narrative when it wraps up. It wasn't always the best, but it's been solid fun and extremely well-paced all along, especially considering it's a bunch of seven- or eight-page installments.<br />
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I really enjoy the tense darkness that pervades this story. It's the atmosphere that both Sharon Wright and Randy DuBurke seemed to be shooting for last time Black Canary was in this book, but back then they kind of lost their way while with this arc they are nailing it. There's just as much mystery as before, but it's more compelling now, and easier to follow. I also loved seeing Black Canary do some old-school, beat-cop-style investigating. She makes a great noir detective, because she's as hard-boiled as anyone but more noble than most.<br />
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The bulk of this is Superman imagining what might happen if he chose to fight his foes. That's lame. Don't spend a whole chapter showing me something that doesn't count while literally zero progress gets made. There's some value to gaining insight into Superman's thoughts, but we've had that all along, and the balancing act between saving Bob Galt without encouraging his worship is the entire point of this storyline, so not much new gets added here, if anything at all. That said, it was high time we got to see Curt Swan drawing Superman in costume and in action again, so yay for that, but boo for it being fake.<br />
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Nightwing and Speedy are on a boat to Ireland, Speedy hoping to take a six-month vacation to connect with his daughter and his roots, but of course things don't go as smoothly as planned. The young heroes end up involving themselves in some kind of drug smuggling operation, and becoming targets for whatever criminal organization is behind it. The story is a bit boringly straightforward thus far, but I dug Tom Mandrake's art. It was moody and grounded but still fantastical at all the peaks in action. The best example of this is when one bad guy gets his head blown off by another to keep him from talking, and rather than being gory and horrible, it's a literal explosion, the man's skull bursting apart almost comically but with such force and suddenness that it still has the intended impact.<br />
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In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
5. Superman/"Panic in the Sands!"<br />
4. Nightwing and Speedy/"Rocks and Hard Places"<br />
3. Green Lantern/"And Now...Captain Atom"<br />
2. Secret Six/"A Bird in the Hand..."<br />
1. Black Canary/"Knock 'em Dead Part 4"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-853628271381228962015-07-06T13:41:00.000-04:002015-07-06T13:41:00.067-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #626<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">. It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks. This is the twenty-sixth of those reviews.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> </span><br />
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Paul Chadwick cover. Nice. Not the greatest image, but still cool that he did it.<br />
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Well I was wrong about the creative team changing again, but who cares? I loved this story. I'm always a fan of narratives where the villain is neither evil nor good, but simply a powerful force who has no sense of morality. This is about an alien who just wants to fix his ship, but because of what he sees on a TV and how little he understands human culture, he kills a bunch of people and steals their materials to use for his repairs. He's terrifying but also somewhat sympathetic, insofar as we know that he means no harm, that he's acting not out of malice but ignorance. And because Green Lantern, in their brief interaction at the start of the story, tries to hard to communicate with this alien, I'm excited to see how this all resolves. It may end up being just another fight, but my hope and expectation based on this initial chapter is that it'll be more about Green Lantern finding a way to explain morals to this alien than simply beating him with violence. It's an awesome set-up wherever it leads, and I dug M.D. Bright's design for the all-wooden spaceship, too. It was recognizably wood and also recognizably a spaceship, neither aspect taking precedence over the other. That plus the close-up on the alien's face right before he eye-blasts a random human to death were the high points of the art here, all of which was as great-looking as any of Bright's previous work on this book.<br />
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This story ends as it always had to, with Billy Batson breaking free of his bonds, becoming Shazam, and stomping all over the Sons of Valhalla and their infuriating Captain Nazi. What I liked about it, though, was that even with the largely predictable conclusion, the story managed to swerve a bit at the end, because Shazam has to admit to himself that it wasn't a perfect victory. Sure, he stopped the water supply from being poisoned, but there's damage already done to all the young men who the Sons of Valhalla recruited, Captain Nazi is temporarily defeated but still technically out there, and the death that started all of this can never be reversed. So Shazam did as much as he could, but there's still plenty to be upset by in the big picture, and I appreciate that Shazam openly acknowledges this, and that it doesn't really get him down. He says, "maybe all victories are really only partial ones. But that sure doesn't mean we can afford to stop trying for 'em." That's kind of the perfect attitude for a superhero, able to handle the small losses in the name of fighting for the greater good. In the final panel, there is a teaser for the (at the time) upcoming <i>Shazam</i> monthly comic, and I must say that if I had been reading <i>Action Comics Weekly</i> back when it was new, this would 100% have sold me on the <i>Shazam</i> title, too. It's been a fantastic narrative since the start, and it made me like this character more than anything I've ever seen with him in it before.<br />
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Though it only happens in the last two pages, the headline here finally see Rafael again, after he got kidnapped many issues ago. We pretty much knew it was Mockingbird who had him, but now it's confirmed, and the two characters are face-to-face at last, which is bound to lead to some real, solid answers about Mockingbird's identity and motives. There's also a lot of excellent action throughout this story, Frank Springer and Frank McLaughlin getting to shine in a way they haven't previously. The best sequence was Lucas attacking his captors, using his handcuffs and bionic legs both as weapons, really taking full advantage of every part of his situation. The three panels where he uses his metal knee to deflect a bullet and then kicks the shooter in the face with the same leg is excellent. At this point, the Secret Six narrative has found a consistent groove, and a lot of the essential information is on the table, so things are coming to a head in all directions. Bad guys are dropping left and right, we're finally seeing Mockingbird in real life instead of on a screen, and Rafael is a factor again. It's an exciting time, close to the end but with plenty of mystery left to bring things home in an entertaining and enthralling way.<br />
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Yet another chapter in which Clark Kent and Bob Galt travel while the villains try to track them, but this time we get a brief burst of action at the end, so things are looking up. Basically, I found this boring and repetitive, the weakest section of this issue overall, but it's a sure thing that next week will be more exciting, so that's something. I did get a chuckle out of Kent being described as a "media stooge," but other than that this seemed like mostly wasted space. I feel like if that last few Superman parts had all been part of the same issue, if this character got 7-8 pages like everyone else instead of just 2, it would've made for a solid, brief, enjoyable road trip portion of this larger narrative. The problem is that splitting it up 2 pages at a time makes each part less effective or compelling. That said, the final panel here is great, particularly the way Kent pushes Galt's head down to protect him. It's a small touch but it fits perfectly with Superman's whole deal and especially his relationship with Galt, who needs extra protection, since he's at risk not just because of his enemies but also from his own faith in Superman. This is still a story I'm enjoying immensely, but this week was just one too many chapters where all that happens is travel without a destination being reached or any new info being revealed.<br />
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I am so sick of reviewing this Deadman story, so thank goodness it's over. I have nothing new to say; the problems of this final installment are the same as everything that came before. It's unfocused as hell, right down to the very last, extra confusing and unsatisfying scene. Luckily, this did have the most and the best Kelley Jones artwork so far. Just look at the page above to see how fucking incredible Jones' Deadman looks. He is gloriously bony, ghastly, and fierce. With a stronger script, or even just a story that followed some kind of logical forward progression, this might well have been my favorite part of ever issue of <i>Action Comics</i> <i>Weekly</i> in which is was featured. But Mike Baron doesn't seem to even know what he wants out of this story, which means I don't know what to take from him, so all I can do is enjoy the visuals and be grateful that, for now at least, this is over.<br />
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The last page of this Black Canary story is chillingly beautiful. As I sit here typing this, I'm kind of kicking myself for not scanning it, too, but it didn't occur to me until now, and I'm mere minutes away from being done writing this, and I really, really don't feel like getting off the couch just to scan another page. It's separated into three rows, the top of which is the tallest and is sectioned off in thirds. Three long rectangles, each with a close-up of Black Canary's hand holding something against a solid black background: first her bared hand holding her gloves, then her gloved hand holding her belt, and then her gloved hand again holding her wig. This then leads to the second row, a single panel, shorter than the top row but also longer. It also has a black background, and is a short of Black Canary from the chest up, her body facing front and her face looking to the reader's right. She is in full costume now, her blonde wig flowing behind her face and being cut off by the panel's right border. She looks so intense, prepared, intimidating, and heroic, it makes you want to cheer. The final row is another single panel, shorter than either of the rows above and not quite as long as the second, placed at the bottom almost as an afterthought. It's a punctuation mark, a cityscape against a blue background, just a place to hold the caption that says, "Continued..." As insignificant as it is, its inclusion is important, because it gives us a place to come down after the pure awesomeness of what comes before it. It's a wonderfully constructed page and Randy DuBurke's best moment with this character so far, and ditto inker Pablo Marcos and colorist Gene D'Angelo. A perfect page by the whole artistic team. The rest of the story is good, giving us some insight into the murder from last week but still letting some mystery hang over the whole thing. This round of Black Canary has done a much better job of balancing the questions and answers than last time, and this week is no different. But the last page is what I remember most and liked best. It was a doozy.<br />
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In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Superman/"...Into the Fire!"<br />
5. Deadman/"Finale"<br />
4. Secret Six/"Capitol Offenses"<br />
3. Shazam/Untitled<br />
2. Black Canary/"Knock 'em Dead Part 3"<br />
1. Green Lantern/"Bethel"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-72716407937140414352015-07-05T12:37:00.002-04:002015-07-05T12:37:59.729-04:00ElsewhereTwo weeks ago I wrote about all the things I love the most in <i><a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/194868-four-great-things-about-nonplayer/">Nonplayer</a></i>. That's a book I've been anxiously waiting to see a second issue of for years, and now that it's finally in my hands, I can say confidently that it did not disappoint in the least. This week, I wrote another 1987 and All That column on Comics Should Be Good about the <a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/07/02/1987-and-all-that-captain-atom-1-10/">first ten issues of <i>Captain Atom</i></a>. Considering how minimal my experience was with that character before, I had almost no sense of what to expect, so it was quite a delight t find the book to be an exceptional take on the complexity and fluidity of human morality.<br />
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<u>Something I Failed to Mention</u><br />
Thought my <i>Nonplayer</i> piece was fairly comprehensive in terms of discussing the series itself, there was a more personal reason for writing it at this time that I didn't get into. I mean, the main reason is obviously because issue #2 just came out last month, but I was inspired to focus on that title in particular because lately I've been unexpectedly getting into video game culture. I have never been a very serious gamer. Growing up I had a Nintendo 64, and I played it with some regularity, but it was never a real passion of mine. I did beat <i>Quest 64</i>, but that's the only game I ever played all the way through. Later, in college, one of my roommates had an Xbox, and I got briefly obsessed with both <i>Fallout 3</i> and <i>Oblivion</i>, logging many, many hours on each of them. Other than those 3 games, though, I never played anything too seriously, and my main exposure to video games was watching my friends play them while we hung out and ate junk food and shot the shit together. I would spend hours watching my buddy Aaron play <i>World of Warcraft</i>, or a group of us would get together at Brad's house and take turns wreaking as much havoc as possible in <i>Grand Theft Auto III</i>. Stuff like that. Video games have always been a tangential part of my life, something I enjoyed but never cared about too deeply or paid any serious attention to. Over the past few months, that has started to change little by little. I am still not a gamer myself, nor do I ever expect I will be. Too much money and time goes into that hobby, and I've got comics for that already. But I'm a huge fan of video game podcast <a href="http://nerdist.com/tag/indoor-kids/">The Indoor Kids</a>, and I've been getting really into some <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_Play_(video_gaming)">Let's Play</a> stuff, specifically <a href="http://youtube.wikia.com/wiki/ChaoticMonki">Cry and the Late Night Crew</a>. For instance, just last night I stayed up until 3:30am watching the livestream of Late Night with Cry and Russ (which, to be clear, was not when it ended, that's just when I tapped out from exhaustion). It was awesome and hilarious. So all of this newfound interest in video games, even though it's all based on other people playing them, was picking up steam right when <i>Nonplayer</i> #2 came out, so it seemed like the perfect time to get that issue at last, and I almost couldn't help but write about it.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-85813596863547436542015-06-30T16:43:00.001-04:002015-06-30T16:43:06.138-04:00Monthly Dose: June 2015<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">one issue each month of </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">long-completed series.</span></i></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> </span> <br />
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<i><u>100 Bullets </u></i><u>#32</u>: Kind of a slow issue, but it works because of the lovely pulpy tension Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso are infusing into this arc. Milo is such an over-the-top hard-boiled guy that it's fun to watch him work, constantly smoking, being aggressively sexual, threatening to shoot people in the genitals if they don't tell him what he wants to know. He's hilarious, practically a caricature, his internal darkness spilling all over the page even when he's getting laid. There's not a ton of new info, but the little bit we get is super valuable. Milo figures out that Lono, who caught only a glimpse of last issue, is responsible for killing Karl Reynolds. The why of it all is still a total mystery, except that it is in some way connected to a painting Karl was trying to get his hands on. So Milo's got a solid start, a lead that led to another lead that hopefully will help him put all the pieces together. Things are progressing, however slowly, and through it all he's a fantastic character to watch, especially with the bandages all over his face. It gives him a baseline look of intimidation and meanness that helps him in his work and makes him all the more entertaining. It does feel like it's about time for something to break, though, for a major reveal instead of more tiny odds and ends. After two full issues of him as the star and narrator, I have a pretty solid handle on Milo, so now it's time to really put him through the ringer and see if he makes it out. Luckily, his last line is one of intense foreboding, so next month we ought to some some shit connect with some fans. If so, it'll come at just the right time, and might help push this arc officially into my favorite so far in this book.<br />
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<i><u>Automatic Kafka</u></i><u> #8</u>: After playing a bit of a back-up role for a few issues in a row, Kafka himself becomes central again here, which was nice. The issue is basically spit into two halves, the first centering on Kafka's new show as well as the suicide of Diesel Quake, his drug dealer/assistant. The second half deals with Kafka confronting the Warning about the latter's various shady dealings, with a splash of the Constitution's adventures in professional pornography thrown in as well. I much prefer the opening, where we see Kafka going through the motions of his continued celebrity while reading in captions the body of Diesel's suicide note. The note provides a nice bit of insight into the psychology of a character who's been two-dimensional at best up to now, and it's a nice reminder that everyone thinks they are the good guys, even the supervillains. Diesel doesn't necessarily try to take the moral high ground or present himself as a misunderstood do-gooder, but he does point out that the $tranger$ operated in less-than-righteous ways, that Kafka in particular seemed to take a weird joy in causing his enemies pain, and that he and all of his former teammates ultimately took fairly significant falls from grace, ending up with lives that reflect their biggest flaws rather than their greatest deeds. All of that is compelling to read, and Joe Casey writes it well. He also takes away Kafka's source of nanotecheroin, meaning we get to see what it looks like when a robot suffers from withdrawal. It's not all that dramatic, but it does lead Kafka to question the Warning, though as with most people who try to challenge the Warning, things don't go very far. In the end, we see Kafka approached by some kind of magical/hallucinatory/who-knows-what caterpillar that turns into a gorgeous bright butterfly and offers to save Kafka from yet another "story arc." So things get crazy meta as we prepare to head into the final issue. The butterfly is probably my favorite single visual from Ash Wood in this series so far. It stands out starkly and fits in perfectly at once, a tough trick to pull off, but Wood does it no sweat.<br />
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<i><u>The Maximortal</u></i><u> #2</u>: While less directly tied to Superman's history than the debut issue, this is still a pretty spot-on imagining of how a superpowered child might act and influence the world. After finally killed his adoptive father, little Wesley Winston sets to work on his "farming," meaning pulling people's heads clean off their bodies and dumping them into a silo. While there's no specific reason given for why he chooses human heads as the thing to farm, it works quite well in the context of this gleefully morbid book. Rick Veitch seems to have a lot of fun in making the decapitated bodies as cartoonishly gruesome as he can. They're not excessively gory but they are effectively unnerving. As for Wesley, he's innocently and amusingly content with his labors, even proud of himself for how efficiently he's getting his farming done. Ultimately, his activities lead the citizens of Simpltown to try and attack him, blowing up his silo full of heads while Wesley is inside. The child, of course, survives the blast, and then proceeds to throw a tantrum, as children are wont to do when you ruin their games. Only Wesley's tantrums are intensely destructive and fatal. All of this death and devastation leads to the U.S. military showing up at the very end of the issue to claim Wesley as their own, a terrifying proposition than can't lead anywhere good. Meanwhile, at the beginning and in the background of this issue, we meet El Guano, a mysterious figure who seems to have some magical insight into the world. The narration refers to him as a warrior and also as a man-of-knowledge, and we see him have a startling premonition of Wesley as a full-grown superhero, cape, spandex, and all. Exactly what El Guano's role will be in the narrative is still unclear, but he does show up at the end to fight with the "angel" who we saw give birth to Wesley last time, so it's clear El Guano plays a significant part in these proceedings. Similarly, we're introduced to Sidney Wallace, a young, brash, self-important jerk with dreams of making it big in the movies. These dreams appear to be purely financially motivated, though, as Wallace tries to steal Wesley himself once he realizes the money-making potential such a powerful creature might possess. Everyone wants a piece of Wesley, is the point, from his mother to Wallace to the government to El Guano. Their interests in Wesley and approaches to dealing with him vary, but everybody's invested. What will all of this attention mean for Wesley in the long run? That's the central question, but based on what we've seen so far, there will no doubt be more terrible things in Wesley's future.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-51862055654829454242015-06-21T12:36:00.004-04:002015-06-21T12:36:44.563-04:00ElsewhereTwo weeks ago, I <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/194332-the-many-faces-of-love-in-the-names/">wrapped up my three-part series on <i>The Names</i></a> over at PopMatters. This week, my newest 1987 And All That column went up on Comics Should Be Good, covering <a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/06/18/1987-and-all-that-fantastic-four-304-307/"><i>Fantastic Four </i>#304-307</a>. I liked those comics quite a bit, but evidently they and the rest of Englehart's run on the book don't have the best reputation, as you can see in the comments. I totally understand the criticisms, but for me, those issues touched on my favorite part of the Fantastic Four, examining the drama and dysfunction that comes with them being a family as well as a superhero team.<br />
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<u>Something I Failed to Mention</u><br />
In my <i>Names</i> pieces, I was focusing on the stuff I liked about that series, what it did best and why it left an impression on me. And I touched on, in at least one of the posts, the fact that the whole series centers on Katya Walker trying to find her husband's killer, and that she does not accomplish that goal by the time the book comes to a close. I don't really have a problem with that ending, because I think the entire creative team handled it quite well, but I will say that it's a bit frustrating to have nine issues worth of a mystery that never gets solved, that was never going to be solved. It's not a bad ending, but it's a drag of an ending, because the reader wants to know who murdered Kevin Walker and why just as much as Katya does. Like her, we have to learn to live with not knowing, and there's value in that to be sure. All the same, I'm still curious, and as much as I enjoyed <i>The Names</i> from start to finish, it's hard not to wonder if I might've enjoyed it even more had the central question been answered.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-7265370619872536982015-06-17T19:04:00.001-04:002015-06-17T19:04:34.023-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #625<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">.
It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to
review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks.
This is the twenty-fifth of those reviews.</i> <br />
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Spoiler alert: Deadman does not wrap it all up.<br />
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A very weak ending to what was already a not-so-strong Green Lantern story arc. We suddenly cut to a peace talk between the two warring alien races who Hal Jordan is supposed to help out, even though, to the best of my memory, there was no mention of any peace talk before this issue. Predictably, thing devolve into violence pretty fast, so Hal powers up his ring and joins the fray, only to get his ass pretty well handed to him. As chaos ensues around him, he decides to put an end to the madness all at once by letting loose a huge blast from his ring that all but demolishes the building he and the aliens are in. He then strong-arms them into making peace, which is about as obnoxious and ineffective a tactic as I can imagine. Want proof? The story ends with the two alien races agreeing to combine their technology to build a super-advanced weapon, which they will then use to kill Green Lantern. So he united them only their hatred for him, which is a shallow victory at best. I did love Mark Bright's art, which began with a Kirby-esque, New Gods kind of feel while Hal was disguising himself (see above) and then the moment when he flies into the fight in full GL glory is maybe the best panel Bright has drawn in this title so far. It's a drag this narrative is so boring and gets wrapped so quickly, because Bright did a great job with the designs of the aliens, and he seems to just get better and better at drawing Hal with each new issue. So I would've liked to see more from him before this concluded. I'm guessing I will eventually, though, since it seems like the strategy is to always have Green Lantern be part of <i>Action Comics Weekly</i>, but with James Owsley and Bright only doing every other arc. I suppose I'll get a confirmation or denial of that assumption next week.<br />
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Still loving this Shazam story all over. It's fairly simple but with just enough complexity to remain compelling, like the unexpected arrival this time of the real Duane McCullers who shows up to out Billy Batson as an impostor. This ends with Billy bound and gagged in a burning gas station, a solid cliffhanger but, again, a straightforward one. And that's true of every detail here. Captain Nazi could not be a more easily understandable villain; it's all right there in his name. But it's precisely because he is played so straight that he works as a bad guy. He's scarier because of his simplicity and single-mindedness, basically just a walking, talking tool for the rest of the baddies to use. If he had a detailed backstory and a full mind of his own, who knows where the story might lead, but when he's just a weapon in the shape of a man, it's easy to imagine the damage he'll cause. I will say that I didn't love the exposition dump that happens in the middle of everything, where one of the white supremacist group's leaders reveals to Billy (as Duane) all the organization's secret plans, past and future. It was a little hard to believe they'd tell all that to one of their kids, especially the one whose father died because of the lies they told, but it was important info for the reader to have and I'm not sure where else it could've been included. At any rate, that wasn't enough to ruin all the good material that surrounded it. There's nothing brain-melting about what's going on in this Shazam tale, on either a story or art level, but it is all very clear, fun, classic superhero fare that I can really sink my teeth into. It's just hitting all the right notes from my perspective, and I look forward to seeing how it ends next week.<br />
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This Secret Six section was middle-of-the-line, but that's still better than a lot of what you get from this series. The Secret Six are probably the most reliably good of all the characters featured in the comic, but they rarely ever wow me, either. It's just solid, enjoyable, good-looking espionage action and suspense, and I appreciate that tremendously. This week, there are a lot of moving pieces as the Secret Six and their enemies both prepare to engage with one another. It all feels like it's building to something pretty explosive, and I'm eager to see that, but I'm also enjoying the slow burn as we get there. Martin Pasko does a good job of reminding us of the previously established facts and introducing new ones at the same time and in a very natural way, so that every line of dialogue is believable even if it's just recapping old info. He also juggles the large cast skillfully, as do artists Frank Springer and Frank McLaughlin. Everybody has something to do this week, and they all look good doing it, and even with all the location changes and the numerous characters involved, it's all easy to follow. Again, there's nothing here that's truly amazing, but it's all better than average for <i>Action Comics Weekly</i>, and that fact is kind of amazing in its own right. I always enjoy the Secret Six, and this is no exception.<br />
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Sometimes this Superman story gets too mundane, too hung up on showing us every tiny bit of narrative progress. This is definitely one of those times, with Superman and Bob Galt still traveling, having left point A last time and not even making it to point B this time. They do land their plane and rent a car for the rest of their journey, and that is significant because the car rental company employees are members of the villains' group so they plant a tracking device on the vehicle Supes and Galt rent, meaning all of this is still clearly leading to some kind of significant confrontation between Superman and the baddies. But for an entire chapter to just be that they rent a car from their enemies seems weak at best, and pointlessly wasteful at worst. Also, it is so much like last week's chapter, where we saw them get onto a plane and take off while one of the bad guy henchman reported it back to base. The last two weeks worth of Superman have had their final panels be a low-level villain calling into the higher-ups to give them an update on Superman and Galt's location, and I can't help but feel like all of this could've been condensed into one two-page section rather than two. But hey, at least things are moving forward and not just standing still, meaning that, as exceedingly dull and uneventful as this was, we are technically that much closer to seeing something truly exciting happen when Superman and the villains finally collide. <br />
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At long last, Kelley Jones gets to actually draw a whole lot of Deadman is his natural form, and boy was it (just barely) worth the wait. Jones nails it, stretching out Deadman's body so it is eerily long and gaunt, and there's a nice fluidity to his movements that really captures the undead spirit walking through the living world aspect of it all. Plus there are a few panels where Deadman is legitimately terrifying, which fits in with this horror narrative perfectly. I still find it difficult to give one single damn about what's actually happening in this story, although I did enjoy watching two zombies get snippy and violent with each other over their egos. I always prefer a zombie with a personality over the mindless, shambling monsters you usually see, so that got a smile out of me. But the Brogden twins and their slow-moving plan to take over New Orleans with an undead army are extra super boring, especially since the twins themselves don't seem all that invested in it. They're just, like, having fun being semi-annoying ghosts inhabiting the bodies of two young sisters, and the rest of their scheme seems secondary to the fun they're having being alive again. Still, if Kelley Jones is going to draw Deadman like this, the rest of what happens barely matters. I would read eight pages of Deadman learning how to dance if he looked this amazing. That might actually be better than what's on the page. With the Brogden's moving into new host bodies at the end, and nobody else around for Deadman to possess, I am really crossing my fingers that he spends the entire next chapter in his true form, looking awesome in Jones' hands and, with any luck, being a badass horror hero to boot. Even without caring about the plot, I am excited to see more Deadman in this book for the first time in a long time, all thanks to Jones' fucking perfect depiction.<br />
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While I still have almost no sense of what the Black Canary narrative is about, I could at least follow each individual scene this time around, and it all looked fantastic. Randy DuBurke has been a great fit for this character and her world all along, but he added a dash of a certain dreamlike quality to his visuals this time that really struck a chord for me. It added a lot of atmosphere, be it the quiet calm of Black Canary resting after falling through a wooden floor, or the creeping dread as the reader realizes that the unnamed woman in the hotel bar is going to murder the unnamed man from the same bar she's been flirting with the whole time. We still don't understand the reasons for this killing, or how it relates to the guy sitting alone getting drunk and reading a letter composed of cut up magazines that promises he will soon be dead. Nor do we know how any of this ties into Black Canary. But unlike the character's first arc in this title, or even the first chapter of this arc from last issue, here I find I don't mind the mystery and, in fact, that it adds to my enjoyment. I think, again, this is mostly do to DuBurke's drawing. He makes everything so beautiful, detailed, and moody that I can get pulled into each moment even without seeing how they're tied together. We'll need answers and context eventually, of course, but for now it's more than enough to simply steep in these dark, heavy, isolated moments and let them be just what they are and no more. <br />
<br />
In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Superman/"Out of the Frying Pan..."<br />
5. Green Lantern/"The Law"<br />
4. Secret Six/"For Whom the Toll Builds"<br />
3. Deadman/"Tickle, Tickle"<br />
2. Black Canary/"Knock 'em Dead Part 2"<br />
1. Shazam/UntitledMatthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-30343812514608972822015-06-09T21:20:00.003-04:002015-06-09T21:20:37.403-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #624<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">.
It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to
review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks.
This is the twenty-fourth of those reviews.</i><br />
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And we're back! Took me a little while to get myself resettled after we returned from Florida, but hopefully now I can do this on a regular weekly basis again, at least for a while.<br />
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I read this comic last night, and when I looked at the above title page for this Green Lantern story just now, it took me a second to even remember any of what happened. Mostly, Priest lies to Hal Jordan in an attempt to prove a point about Hal not needing a power battery to charge his ring, but Hal, in his childish, stubborn anger, refuses to learn the lesson. It makes them both seem like jerks, with the most sympathetic characters this issue being the "dreadnaughts," the forces against whom Priest is fighting and whom Hal is training to fight as well. They try to stop Hal from messing with their property, something he only does because of Priest's manipulations, and then he blasts them about with his ring anyway. It does seem like Hal himself is starting to wonder about the morality and honesty of his new ally/coach/captor (Priest), but he doesn't do very much about it yet, so most of this story has them both behaving frustratingly. At least Mark Bright's pencils are extra sharp, with Hal looking particularly strong and bold and consistent, as well as subtly expressive in a few key moments. The page where Hal thinks he's lost his power and is on the brink of suffocating in space is very nicely laid out, Bright including a total of 15 panels (though two of them are all-black and extra skinny) to really hammer out each beat of Hal's struggle.<br />
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I am loving this Shazam story, and more specifically Billy Batson's personal brand of heroism. He really goes for it, he uses the full range of his skills as both Billy and Shazam, and he's super wry and funny and sharply observant about the whole thing. Roy and Dann Thomas have made me a huge fan in only two chapters. This week, Batson infiltrates the Aryan Acres camp, pretending to be Duane McCullers, the son of the guy Shazam accidentally killed last time. We get to see how intense this racist organization really is, and just when it seems like they couldn't be any more despicable or brainwashy, at the end we get our first glimpse of Captain Nazi, their homegrown supervillain. I could not be more excited to see Captain Nazi and Shazam go toe-to-toe, because it's bound to be a pretty gloves-off kind of fight, both men truly, deeply hating what the other stands for. I don't know what else to say, really...I'm totally hooked, I can't wait to see what happens next, and I love this protagonist. For a character I've always fairly actively ignored in the past, Shazam is turning out to be exceptionally entertaining in this comic.<br />
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This installment of the Secret Six is all built around its final reveal, so there's not a ton of forward progress, but what's here is handled very well. We see Tony reject Shelley's advances for all the right reasons, and then he tells her the story of how he became deaf. As a reporter, he was investigating possible corruption within a Pennsylvania coal miners' union, and he went into one of the mines along with photographer Tom Pearson. Tony says that he and Pearson had "certain tensions" that distracted him, so when they came across a live explosive device, Tony missed it. Tom saw it just in time to push Tony out of the way and save his life, but not his hearing. As for Tom, he died, sacrificing himself to keep Tony alive. That's a rough enough story to hear when Tony tells it, but then at the end, Tony stops by a graveyard to leave flowers on Tom's grave, and the groundskeeper tells a passerby that he comes and does so every month because Tom was his lover. It's a nice little surprise at the end, because the assumption earlier (or at least the one I made) was that Tom and Tony didn't get along, and that this was the source of their tension. To have them be a couple makes their tale all the more tragic, and that detail is delivered in a smart and heartbreaking way. This is the most I've cared personally for a member of the Secret Six so far, and I'd like to see more of their backgrounds down the line if there's room for it.<br />
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Because we only get two pages at a time, these Superman section are occasionally boring in the name of getting from point A to point B. This is one of those times, where all that happens is Clark Kent and Bob Galt get on a plane together, and the still-mysterious bad guys see them do it. It's not all that exciting, we don't get any new information about what's happening, and Superman never appears as himself, just as Clark. (Ok, we do get a glimpse of the S-symbol as Clark gets dressed, but I'm not counting that for what I think are obvious reasons). Honestly, my favorite part of this was that in one panel, Clark and Bob pass by a Fresh Juice stand in the airport that seems like a random background detail, but then in the last panel it is the Fresh Juice vendor who is reporting their flight back to the villains, so it turns out he was an enemy agent all along. It's subtle and funny, and I kind of hope it comes back later, though I doubt if it will. Anyway, even when they're dull, these Superman installments are pretty solid, Stern and Swan both very comfortable and on point when working with this character. It's unremarkable, but not at all bad.<br />
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A confusing and mostly pointless Deadman chapter, fitting in perfectly with the general aimlessness of this narrative and my subsequent lack of interest. Suddenly, after several issues of zombies, this time the problem is ghosts, but weird ghosts that don't make sense, or do anything, or matter to the larger plot. I feel like Mike Baron is writing this stream-of-consciousness style, just throwing out whatever idea tickles his fancy from moment to moment without worrying about everything having a purpose. The main point here seems to be that Madame Waxahachie figures out how to convince the Brogden Twins' dad that he's dead, but that doesn't do anything to the Twins' power or plans as far as I can tell, nor does it held Deadman and Waxahachie in any obvious way, so who cares? Why include it? That's where I stand on most of the Deadman material this week. It all smacks of randomness and meaninglessness and it pretty much amounts to nothing. At the end, we're back to an army of zombies, so all this ghost stuff is a total waste, filler thrown in inexplicably and frustratingly.<br />
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Black Canary is back and as hard to follow as ever. Just like last time, Sharon Wright does this thing where she shows us glimpses of characters we don't know doing things we don't understand, yet still tries to give those moments weight. Maybe there will be more payoff this time around; it's only the first chapter so it's too soon to tell. But I'm admittedly nervous based on how baffling the initial <i>Action Comics Weekly</i> Black Canary narrative ended up being. Plus this opening chapter doesn't even try to explain itself. No matter how much I want to, I could not possible tell you what this story is about yet. The only thing that happened that I fully understood was that at the very end, Black Canary is in some big empty building to do some practice/training, and she accidentally falls through a wooden floor. That's alright as far as cliffhangers go, because our hero is suddenly in unexpected danger, but it's not as good a hook as, say, a proper introduction to an interesting plot would've been. It's not that I hated this, it's that it made me feel nothing, not even boredom. It was basically just a collection of ok-looking comic pages that didn't even connect to each other in any obvious way, a few of which featured a character I like getting herself into trouble, and the rest of which I can't judge yet because I just haven't seen enough. Hopefully some insight will be offered next issue.<br />
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In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Deadman/"Wildwood"<br />
5. Black Canary/"Knock 'em Dead Part 1"<br />
4. Green Lantern/"Faith!"<br />
3. Superman/"Pin the Tail..."<br />
2. Secret Six/"The Sound of a Silent Heart"<br />
1. Shazam/"Chapter 2"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-69536378782964151202015-06-07T17:19:00.004-04:002015-06-07T17:19:54.746-04:00ElsewhereThis past Thursday my latest 1987 And All That column came out, looking at <i><a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/06/04/1987-and-all-that-wild-dog-1-4/">Wild Dog</a></i>. I just keep writing about that character even though he drives me crazy. I am thinking I may do one final, glorious reread of everything Wild Dog-related, once I am done reviewing all of <i>Action Comics Weekly</i>, and put up one last thing about it somewhere. Anyway, I have also had two out of three planned pieces on <i>The Names</i> published over on PopMatters, one <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/193887-loyalty-and-tribalism-in-the-names/">looking at the various tribes</a> that form throughout the series, and another focusing on <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/194110-the-heightened-reality-art-in-the-names/">the artwork</a>. I expect the final installment of that group of posts to be up in the next week or two.<br />
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<u>Something I Failed to Mention</u><br />
I've mentioned on this blog before about how I sometimes get extra wrapped up in D&D and it makes me neglect my comics, and vice versa. Right now is a big-time D&D period for me, which is part of why the blog has been so slow to update lately, and also why I'm going to continue to fail to produce new material for it right now, by not putting anything other than this explanation here. I'm in the middle of working hard on some D&D stuff and writing this post was basically just a quick break from that, but it's been long enough that I am itching to get back to it (meaning all of 10 minutes), so that's all for now.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-13542927092465821772015-05-31T19:04:00.001-04:002015-05-31T19:04:12.787-04:00Monthly Dose: May 2015<u><i>100 Bullets</i> #31</u>: Now we're talking. Kicking off a new arc, "The Counterfifth Detective," this issue is pure hard-boiled pulp noir gold. Main character Milo Garrett sounds like every classic P.I. rolled into one, and he looks tough as nails, too, with his crumpled suit, bandage-covered face, and the cigarette that's pretty much always hanging out of his mouth. Both Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso do a good job of keeping this story right in the sweet spot, not over-the-top with the clichés but still very much utilizing the tropes of the genre. Milo is both likable and a schmuck; there's drinking, murder, intrigue, and plenty of stylized, metaphor-and-similie-filled narration. It's all quite familiar, but fresh enough to pull the reader in, and the added detail of Agent Graves giving Milo one of the attaché cases that he's been handing out since this series began makes things that much more interesting. There's not a ton of narrative meat on the bones so far, because this first chapter is more about introducing Milo and getting us in his corner. In that, it's a major success, and there's enough of a story hook at the very end to bring people back for more. This is the sort of finely crafted issue that <i>100 Bullets</i> was full of at first, but that's been missing for a while, so it ended up being a fabulous return to form that reignited my enthusiasm for this title.<br />
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<u><i>Automatic Kafka</i> #7</u>: Automatic Kafka goes out to lunch with one of his old supervillain foes, Galaxia, a scientist who replaced his head with a tiny spiral galaxy. Kafka has a good deal of leftover animosity toward Galaxia, but the former bad guy is ever the gentleman, politely and intelligently talking Kafka into letting go of their shared past. They even manage to reminisce a little together, and though they don't exactly become friends, they pretty much bury the hatchet before their meal is over. It's impressive how Joe Casey manages to write their conversation so that the reader can be genuinely invested in them working things out, even though we haven't ever seen any of their previous conflicts, since they all took place in an off-panel time period. The hero-villain dynamic is so universally accessible, Casey can do something like this even in a brand new continuity and it still works. It helps that both Kafka and Galaxia have such strong voices, of course, and that they each have such fascinating looks. Even their speech bubbles are different colors, not just from one another but from everybody else, so their exchange offers something on every level, from script to art to letters. This was not the most exciting issue of <i>Automatic Kafka</i>, but it was one of the most thoughtful examinations of what life might be like for a retired superhero like Kafka, and it had a lot of heart and humor along the way. Also, in the end, the Warning uses Galaxia to power up a bunch of the baby bombs that have been an ongoing thread in this book, which was a nice way to conclude this, tying an otherwise isolated chapter into what's come before.<br />
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<u><i>The Maximortal</i> #1</u>: I just wrote about this issue a couple weeks ago as part of <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/193485-three-fully-formed-concepts-in-first-issues-the-maximortal-deep-slee/">a PopMatters column</a> on three of my favorite debut issues. And in the early days of this blog, a did a <a href="http://comicsmatter.blogspot.com/2012/05/superb-heroes-maximortal.html">short post</a> on the whole of this series. But I wanted to do it for Monthly Dose because its a dense book, and every issue sort of touches on a different aspect of the Superman mythology and/or history, deconstructing that character, superheroes as an idea, and the comicbook industry as a whole. It's an ambitious, weird, well-done passion project from Rick Veitch. This first issue doesn't actually set up that much of what's to come, focusing instead of doing Veitch's version of the Superman (or True-Man, as he's called in this comic) origin story. A couple named the Winstons finds a baby boy inside a bizarre fallen meteorite, and they try to raise him as their own, but his superpowers make him well more than they can handle. The child destroys their house with his strength and heat vision, bites of his adopted father's finger, and in the end he uses the threat of further violence to get his dad to carry him away from the farm and into an unknown future. It's a much more brutal, darkly comedic take on this well-known superhero story, casting Superman as something of a menace, but only because he's too young to know or even want to use his abilities responsibly. He's just a kid throwing superpowered tantrums that his simpleton parents have no way of controlling, so he ruins their lives and takes over. The events of the story are pretty tragic, but Veitch's art and the exaggerated, caricature-like personalities of the Winstons make it work as parody, too, so we get both a funnier and a much bleaker version of Superman at once. That's the mission statement of <i>The Maximortal</i>, and it couldn't be clearer here.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-27894443717638044722015-05-24T22:57:00.003-04:002015-05-24T22:57:42.749-04:00ElsewhereIt's been like a month since I did one of these posts but I always like to wait until I have ore than one thing to link to and it just took that long this time around. So 2 weeks ago I published a 1987 And All That post about <a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/05/07/1987-and-all-that-iron-man-219-221/"><i>Iron Man </i>#219-221</a>, a.k.a. the first story arc to feature classic villain the Ghost. He's a character I fell in love with only recently during Jeff Parker's <i>Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers</i> run, and even though the initial appearance of the Ghost is very different, there's a lot about him that has lasted over time, and his first storyline was an exceptional one. This week, another 1987 column went up, looking at <a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/05/21/1987-and-all-that-peter-parker-the-spectacular-spider-man-122-130/"><i>Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man </i>#122-130</a>. I was not wild about them, but as you'll see in the comments, part of that may have been that I was simply starting too late in the series' history and/or stopping too soon. Finally, this past Monday I wrote about three awesome debut issues on PopMatters: <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/193485-three-fully-formed-concepts-in-first-issues-the-maximortal-deep-slee/"><i>The Maximortal</i> #1, <i>Deep Sleeper</i> #1, and <i>Rebel Blood</i> #1</a>. Super-attentive readers will note that I've written about the <a href="http://comicsmatter.blogspot.com/2012/05/superb-heroes-maximortal.html">each</a> of <a href="http://comicsmatter.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-is-it-about-deep-sleeper.html">those</a> <a href="http://comicsmatter.blogspot.com/2012/11/dearly-departed-rebel-blood.html">series</a> on their own at some point in the past on this blog.<br />
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<u>Something I Failed to Mention</u><br />
I literally got back to my house 2 hours ago from the wedding I mentioned in my last post, so you'll have to forgive me if I can't think of anything to put here right now. I guess I could've held off on this until I had something prepared, but I like to do the Elsewheres on Sundays, and I've got enough other stuff to do this week, comics-blog-related and not, that I figured I should just bang this out while I could.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-88282030502485688802015-05-19T19:39:00.001-04:002015-05-19T19:39:34.969-04:00Please HoldI am exhausted today. I got two poor nights of sleep in a row, mostly because of my dogs deciding to wake me up in the middle of the night several times for various reasons, like needing to go out or wanting to snuggle me in strange, uncomfortable positions. I love them to death, but they can be <i>super</i> obnoxious when they want, and the past couple nights have been prime examples of that. My dogs are not the point of this, they're just part of why I'm so tired right now. Other factors include my wife being in the early days of her second trimester of pregnancy, and the on-again-off-again insomnia I've had for years.<br />
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Why am I talking about my tiredness? Because it's my main excuse for not having anything new on the blog this week. Between being wiped out and needing to get myself ready to go to a wedding in Florida over the weekend (we leave in the wee hours of Thursday morning) I've had neither time nor energy recently to do much in terms of comics writing lately. Also, I've got to get started ASAP on my next 1987 And All That column, because that's scheduled to go up on Thursday and, as I mentioned, I'll be on a plane to Florida then. So tonight I've got to get my notes in order, then tomorrow I'll write the actual review.<br />
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As such, there's not going to be anything on Comics Matter (other than this flimsy nonsense) until next week when I'm back from the wedding. I should be able to jump back into the Weekly Action Comics Weekly routine at that point, plus I've got a couple other pieces I've been meaning to write for ages that I need to get off my plate. Little things like a post about a particular issue of <i>Harbinger</i> and a review of a weird, old, sexist-in-ways-you-might-not-expect romance comic from the 70's I bought on a lark a while back. So there's stuff in the pipeline, and after this little mini vacation I'm hoping to finally put it all out in the world.<br />
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Anyhow, I'll be back in a week with real material. Until then, go read <i>Injection</i> #1. It's hard to tell how good the series is going to be yet, but the first issue has such tremendous potential it's almost frightening.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-22498465162667329082015-05-11T17:53:00.000-04:002015-05-18T16:18:34.842-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #623<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">. It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks. This is the twenty-third of those reviews.</i><br />
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The cover image of this issue actually comes directly from a panel within it, which is a rare event for this book, if indeed it has ever happened before at all. Not the most exciting moment to pick, but I appreciated it nonetheless, especially after last issue's wholly disconnected cover.<br />
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I feel very blah about Green Lantern in this book right now. I know this is primarily because I was just barely starting to get invested in Peter David's narrative when he rather suddenly got replaced by James Owsley, the writer who David replaced initially. Owsley is a great talent, and he does this character well, but even several weeks later, I'm still more curious about the Freak Show characters David left behind than the new alien war we are introduced to here. I'm also not wild about stories where the hero is pulled into someone else's conflict unexpectedly, forced to participate because they are needed rather than choosing to because they want to help or feel some kind of obligation. If the protagonist isn't especially committed to the central struggle of the narrative, why the hell should I be? On top of that, the thing where Green Lantern needs to get to his battery before the recharge clock runs out feels tired. I realize this is an old comic so maybe that wasn't as trite at the time, but reading it with modern eyes, it just seems like yet another one of those stories for this character, with nothing new added to it. Maybe this will pick up now that Lantern knows what's going on, but at this point, I'm not sure it matters. Unless we go back and get some resolution on the Freak Show, I may be perpetually uninterested in Green Lantern's adventures in this series.<br />
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Though it moved somewhat jerkily, I enjoyed the Shazam story a whole lot. The idea of a superhero not just feeling guilty about causing the death of a criminal but actively working to make up for it is right up my alley, and it was a good way for me to get into a character with whom I've had minimal experience in the past. To be honest, when I saw that Shazam was going to be included in <i>Action Comics Weekly</i>, it seemed like a drag, not to mention redundant since Superman is involved every week. But right away, Roy and Dann Thomas found a hook that worked, and sold me on it in only seven pages. I also appreciated how Shazam actually spends most of his time as Billy Batson. I love a good secret identity, someone who can have a whole life of their own and can have stories center on them without the reader merely waiting for them to switch to the super-persona so the real fun can start. This story is just as meaty when Batson is on-page as when Shazam is, and it seems as though both will be key to what's to come, so that's a good sign. Are white supremacists the most fascinating foes? No, but they are at least easy to hate, and I do look forward to Shazam trying to pull someone out of their clutches. I'm this will involve some amount of deprogramming, and I'm curious to see how Batson/Shazam handles that.<br />
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This Deadman story, which I didn't miss for one second last issue, returns with the dullest installment yet. It's almost pure exposition, Madame Waxahachie just explaining to Deadman the history of the Peckshaw twins. It seems like this information could've been provided while there was, say, some action taking place, but instead we just get and infodump via dialogue as Waxahachie and Deadman drive around looking for someone he can inhabit other than Clara. When they finally do find that someone, there's a scene of Clara understandably freaking out over being used more than once as the vessel of a dead guy. This ties into the one aspect of this story I cared about at all, which is the idea that Deadman may cause permanent psychological damage to the people he possesses. I hope that thread isn't abandoned as we dive deeper into the voodoo zombie junk, because it's a compelling conflict for Deadman to grapple, and I'd like to see it explored more completely and maybe even in some other contexts. I'm not holding my breath based on how unfocused Mike Baron's Deadman has been in <i>Action Comics Weekly</i> from the very beginning, but time will tell.<br />
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I was not expecting the bad guys to be motivated by crazy faith-based beliefs in the same way Galt and his group are. I assumed the villains would be anti-Superman because of his morality, that they feared he'd get in the way of whatever corrupt capitalist schemes they were cooking up. But no, it turns out they think Superman is the legit anti-Christ, which was an interesting wrinkle to add. One side sees Superman as a savior, the other as a harbinger and bringer of doom, and all the meanwhile Superman himself only recently learned these two factions exist, and wants nothing to do with either of their beliefs. I'm eager to watch this all play out, to see how Superman handles not only the folks who view him as a messiah but also those on the other side. My guess is that he'll want to show both groups the error of their ways and the danger of their extremism, but whatever he does, it's bound to be interesting.<br />
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Secret Six is a blast right now. It seems to have, at least for the time being, fully embraced the action side of its spy-action mix, and this week had some of the best material yet in that regard. Acrobatic gunfights and daring last-minute rescues involving multiple vehicles are perhaps cliché, but Frank Springer and Frank McLaughlin make it all hum and maintain the mood of high-octane excitement. The plot is still a bit muddy, and it isn't progressing all that quickly, but I don't mind one bit. I'm loving the adventure, and Martin Pasko is careful to add at least a tiny bit of relevant info every time. It's not always new for the reader, but at the very least we will see one or more characters discover something they didn't know before, so it's all forward movement, even when it's minor. Also, "Standard Allowable Abductions" is very much my kind of title, appropriate and descriptive while also silly and fun just like the story that follows.<br />
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I like the done-in-one Phantom Stranger tales that pop up in <i>Action Comics Weekly</i> every so often, and I absolutely love José Luis García-López as an artist, but this particular story underwhelmed me. For one thing, it tried to have a stick-tight-to-your-faith-and-all-will-be-well message, which isn't necessarily something I support. If you have faith, great, but faith should be flexible and reasonable and something that adapts to circumstance. Whatever...even if I agreed with the story philosophically, it fails to deliver its message convincingly anyway. The devil shows up at a church in the form of a baby, he and the Stranger struggle for a while, then the priest of the church smashes the baby to death with a giant cross. A cross may be a symbol of faith, but it is not faith itself, so the real takeaway here is that violence can solve problems better than simple, passive belief. Also, it makes me wonder why the Stranger had such a hard time in the fight if all it took to win was anything big and heavy enough to crush an infant. The imagery of the terrifying, sadistic baby was effectively creepy, and that was where García-López shined as he always does, but it wasn't nearly enough to make up for the other weaknesses and botched landing of the narrative.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Deadman/"Seventeen"<br />
5. Green Lantern/"Priest"<br />
4. Phantom Stranger/"The Devil was a Baby"<br />
3. Superman/"Revelations"<br />
2. Shazam/"My Week in Valhalla: Chapter One"<br />
1. Secret Six/"Standard Allowable Abductions"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-72160838607411724782015-05-04T20:03:00.000-04:002015-05-04T20:03:15.490-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #622<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">. It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks. This is the twenty-second of those reviews.</i><br />
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I don't have a ton of time tonight, but I really want to get this post up because it's "due" today, so I'm only going to give myself five sentences for each section of the issue. Probably good for me to practice some brevity anyway. The cover image above is a lie—nothing even remotely like that happens in this issue. I'm fairly certain this cover was originally supposed to be used during the time when Green Lantern was in Chicago, and for some reason they held onto it until now. Whatever the explanation, the cover is ridiculously far removed from the interior.<br />
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This was a weird one, with much of the story devoted to Hal Jordan musing on his relationship with Superman. Hal first tries to track the energy beam that broke his power battery last time, but the trail leads him to the edge of his space sector, i.e. the border of his jurisdiction as a Lantern. So he considers asking Supes for help following the beam deeper into space, but then thinks about a not-so-friendly encounter they had in the recent past, as well as Superman's general holier-than-thouness, and decides against it. Hal compares himself to Superman, saying they are both essentially boy scouts, but that Superman is an exemplary one while Hal is is a more of a screw-up. It's an apt enough observation, but I fail to see what purpose it serves at this point in this narrative, a story that barely started to get rolling at the end of last week, and then this week derails itself to hold two superheroes up next to each other and then go nowhere with it.<br />
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Despite myself, I ended up liking the conclusion of this arc. Wild Dog I still hate, even though he admits here that he may be doing the wrong thing, because I've always assumed he understands that he's as bad or worse than his enemies, so him stating so aloud did nothing for me. However, twisted as terrible as it was, I enjoyed what the story's resolution did for both the Night Slasher and Wild Pup. They were each able to give the other something healing and comforting, if perhaps a bit warped, and it was satisfying that the main villain of this narrative didn't have to be killed by Wild Dog, since up to now that's been his solution to every problem. As flawed and crappy as it was all the way through, the final chapter of this tale hit the mark, ending unexpectedly and in a way that was heartwarming and dark at the same time.<br />
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Why is this Starman and not Deadman? I have no idea, but I also have no complaints. This was a nice, tight, well-structured story, one half a televised anti-superhero tirade, the other half a smart, simple example of the value of superheroes in their own worlds and ours. It's a discussion of both the best and worst of what superheroes offer, and a generally fun, funny, fast-moving tale that looks good and is easy to follow. At the very end it reveals itself to be primarily an ad for the <i>Starman</i> ongoing series, but it earns it by being so solid and complete in so few pages.<br />
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I was right about Superman's reasoning behind switching back to his Clark Kent identity before reveling himself to Bob Galt, so it felt nice to have called that correctly. Superman is dealing with the whole situation rather impressively, working hard to help Galt while still doing everything he can not to feed Galt's unhealthy hero worship. The best part of this week's chapter, though, was at the end when it promised to tell us the bad guys' motives next week. I've been anxiously awaiting some insight into just what the hell is going on for a couple months now, so it's legitimately exciting to know that I'm finally so close to answers. I have one more sentence, so...Curt Swan still rules all!<br />
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I walked away from this chapter with two main thoughts in my head. First, I like how the Secret Six title pages come way late in the chapter, because they're always used as a way to amp up the drama in a key moment. And second, LaDonna is a damn badass. There's been a lot of the Secret Six sort of half-assing and faking their way through missions, but this time LaDonna gets to pull some full-on, secret agent awesomeness in a way I don't think anyone has before. Of course, in the end, she still stumbles right into enemy hands, but even that isn't enough to detract from how freaking cool she looks and acts right up until that last moment.<br />
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I found myself barely paying attention to this story as it raced toward its conclusion, which may be part of why the ending so confused me. Margaret, the woman who Blackhawk and crew were supposed to save, the entire reason for them being there in the first place, dies somehow, and it's not clear to me if it's an accidental death, if the bad guys get her while they are shooting at Blackhawk's plane, or if it is her co-agent/brother who kills her as part of his efforts to get Blackhawk's team to join the newly-formed CIA. Also, I mostly don't care how she died, because however it happened, it's a lame way to end things. She's the catalyst, she seems to be the most informed and competent of all the good guys, and she therefore provides the only truthful exposition; so basically, she's the most important character, and then her death happens off-panel and is given almost no weight or space after the fact. Weak.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Blackhawk/"The Big Blowoff"<br />
5. Green Lantern/"The Edge of Forever"<br />
4. Wild Dog/"Fatal Distraction Chapter Eight: To Help a Child"<br />
3. Superman/"Seeds of Doubt"<br />
2. Secret Six/"<strike>Big</strike> Dead Man on Campus"<br />
1. Starman/"Starman"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-10611411514635920602015-04-30T21:27:00.002-04:002015-04-30T21:27:37.397-04:00Monthly Dose: April 2015<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">one issue each month of </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">long-completed series.</span></i></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> </span><br />
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<u><i>100 Bullets</i> #30</u>: This story was quite the dud. Nothing changes except that a relatively minor new character dies, and other new characters of varying importance kinda-sorta become better people for it, at least for a minute. Wylie is a drag and an immovable asshole, Shepherd's cryptic nonsense has gone on so long even Dizzy is openly complaining about it, and this time around we get Angelina, and offensive caricature of sexuality who's mostly there as a prop for Dizzy and Wylie to talk about. Also, the reveal where the contraband wasn't drugs or guns or anything like that but exotic animals was weak, unoriginal, and pointless. It didn't work as a joke, it didn't teach us anything new about this story except for the simple fact of what Wylie had in the truck, and the only real purpose it served was so Hopper could scare the birds with gunshots when he freaks out about Doctor Dan dying. He could just as easily have destroyed more run-of-the-mill illegal goods, so the birds felt like a fake-out for the sake of it, like the real point was just to make it hard for the reader to guess what was in the truck. I didn't even care about what was in the truck, to be honest, and like Wylie, I would've been fine never knowing. It might even have been preferable. This arc seemed most interested in introducing Wylie, but it did that pretty well in like the first couple scenes three issues ago, so much of what follows is water-treading, a series of random and often dull interactions between Wylie and Dizzy, Dizzy and Shperherd, and Wylie and various criminals, strung together into a narrative just to fill the space or pass the time. One of the nice things about <i>100 Bullets</i> is that whole new locations, situations, and groups of characters can show up at any time, so I'm still excited for whatever comes next, but this last storyline was, in the end, a waste.<br />
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<u><i>Automatic Kafka </i>#6</u>: Why does the only female superhero in the $tranger$ have to get her powers from sex? It just seems too easy, and it's a tendency of Joe Casey's writing I don't like. Not that all his characters have sex-based powers, but that when he writes women there's frequently something aggressively sexual about them, their personalities or their histories or the way other characters see/treat them or any combination of those things. I guess there's aggressive sexuality from both genders in Casey's writing, and I'm just as unenthusiastic about it either way, as evidenced by how little I enjoyed <i>Sex</i>. There were other huge problems in that book, too, and there's nothing wrong with graphic sex in a comicbook in and of itself. On the contrary, there is most certainly value is this kind of head-on, intense, comically in-your-face sex, but it's not as compelling for me as the main themes of <i>Automatic Kafka</i>, the discussions of celebrity and washed up superheroes trying to find their place in the world. That's all here, but it gets overshadowed by the sex, and the fact that this sudden erotic supercharge arrives at the same time the first major female character is introduced is gross and sexist and lame. Come to think of it, all the women in this book so far have been hyper-sexualized, from Death to the NSA agent who tries to seduce Kafka to the Bill of Rights to Helen of Troy here. Maybe I take back when I said about both genders before; I've read other comics by Casey where men and women are on more equal sexual footing, but this is not one of them, and this issue is such a loud, long reminder of it that it's more frustrating than anything else. I dug the flashback sequence because it had more to do with superheroing than fucking, and it hinted at the origins of the baby bombs that seem mysteriously central to this series. But beyond that and the awesome look and soothing blue speech bubbles of the character who shows up at the end, this was mostly superhero porn, which is all well and good, but I've seen lots of porn and I'd much rather read comics that give me something I can't get other places.<br />
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<u><i>X-Force </i>(vol. 1) #30</u>: The first caption on the first page of this issue says, "This is <b>all</b> either of these two young men have <b>ever</b> wanted." Then there are 5 captions worth of explaining who the men are (Shatterstar and Adam-X) and that they've been forced to fight each other by Arcade. Then you turn the page, and the first caption of the second page says, "It is not what <b>either</b> of them want." Ummmmm...what? You literally just told me it was all they've ever wanted. One page ago. So yeah, I think I'm done with <i>X-Force</i>. As I'm sure everyone remembers, back in <a href="http://comicsmatter.blogspot.com/2012/11/monthly-dose-november-2012.html">my first ever Monthly Dose</a>, I mentioned that I wasn't necessarily going to read every issue of this comic. At the time I owned the first 24, and then several months ago I bought #25-30 just to keep this project going. No more. I know that, years from now, if I keep at it, I'm going to get to some really good stuff in this book. Someday, I'd still like to read that. But I'm not interested <i>at all</i> in the comic in the state it's in right here, at issue #30. The art, no matter who's drawing it, is way too bulky and 90's and cramped, and the story is so all over the place with such uninteresting characters that I can't hang on long enough to get into anything. Enough is enough of that. I understand the action-packed, in-your-face-jam appeal of this title, but it's not targeted at me, and I can't possibly justify spending any more money on it just to keep bashing it on my blog.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-45879926322275335222015-04-27T15:55:00.000-04:002015-04-27T15:55:00.095-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #621<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">. It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks. This is the twenty-first of those reviews.</i><br />
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You guys! My copy of this issue has <i>two covers</i>! Not two different ones, two of the same cover, front and back. They just put the cover on it twice. Or two covers got stuck together when they did the stapling or something. I love it. It's really fun to open the cover and have it still be there. Is this something that happens? Why have I not seen this before?<br />
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Also—I'm halfway through these issues now! And this one is coming in on time! Exclamation points! Don't worry, my enthusiasm is about to go way, way down when I start reviewing the stories.<br />
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So I went back and looked at the end of last issue's Green Lantern story, and it does promise that this week would have "a new beginning," but I didn't expect that to mean a whole new creative team telling a brand new story from zero. The Freak Show/Hawkes Sisters shit just got interesting after being so-so for a long time, and now it's been replaced, even though it was far from resolved. The only conclusion we got last time was Hal and Arisia finally breaking up, but the A-plot had only just barely hit what felt like the end of Act II. I was bummed to see a whole new direction here, and even more bummed once I read it, since so much of it was just Hal explaining the various steps taken to test new planes. It's crazy dry, even though a lot of the information is delivered while Hal is moments away from crashing, because it's just such intensely uninteresting information. I don't care about the finer points of your day job, Hal, except insofar as they affect your life as Green Lantern. Is it possible that the malfunctioning plane is going to connect to some superhero stuff down the line? I suppose, but there's no indication of that, and on its own, the plane-related material is a snooze. Before that, we see Hal save an alien ship from the sun, responding to a distress signal he says he got but that we didn't see. We also don't see the results of this rescue; Hal saves and releases the ship, and then that thread is dropped so the plane nonsense can happen. At the very end, Hal' power battery explodes and something mysterious and yellow comes out of it, which is probably where this story should've begun. It's the first thing that happens which does anything to draw me in, and it's on the final page, a cliffhanger unrelated to anything that precedes it, one alright beat after a whole bunch of junk.<br />
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Wild Dog and the Night Slasher have their final confrontation, and as expected, Wild Pup shows up to ruin everything and gets himself stabbed. What is with this kid? He has one move, which is to jump of the back of the bad guy like he's getting a piggyback ride. How would that be helpful? He is, at best, a distraction, and at worst a target, which is exactly what happens here when the Night Slasher gets him with her knife. I'm not going to say I wanted the child to get hurt, because obviously the ideal outcome would be if he learned his lesson without getting injured, but it was a pretty sure thing that this would happen eventually, and I am glad it's over with now. Next week this story will be concluded and we can all move on with our lives for a while, Wild Dog-free. Wild Pup getting stabbed is, of course, the last panel, and before that scene there are a few extremely tired scenes of Wild Dog talking to his cop and reporter friends, having the same arguments as always, acting just as much the stubborn, arrogant ass as ever. I've really grown to hate Wild Dog over the course of this <i>Action Comics Weekly </i>project, and since he never changes or does anything new, that hate just festers and flares back up every time I read another story. I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming hiatus, because I'm sure we can all agree that my incessant complaining about Wild Dog is as worn out and obnoxious as anything the character does.<br />
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I liked this installment of the Secret Six in large part because it reminded me of some of the long-forgotten names of the characters, most of all Tony, the guy who's running for his life. He has the most exciting plotline right now, and the most compelling, since he basically kidnapped a woman so he could use her car to flee his pursuers. Now her life is derailed and in danger, and he's trying to keep her safe, but at the same time his min priority is saving his own skin and rejoining his team. It's a situation that positions Tony right on the line between hero and villain: he's fighting the good fight tooth and nail, but in the process he's risking the life of an innocent passerby. This is the kind of thing you see a lot in this story. Mockingbird has righteous goals but uses questionable (at best) methods to reach them, so the entire Secret Six organization sits somewhere in between being good guys and bad guys. Tony's current circumstances are a small-scale version of that larger conflict, getting to the core of what makes the Secret Six interesting characters to being with. Indeed, Ladonna's situation at the end, where she is posing as a real student and has to pretend to be dating that student's boyfriend in order to get information, is another strong example. Stealing one person's identity to betray another's trust is kind of gross behavior, yet it's in the name of completing the mission and stopping several evil corporations from continuing to go unchecked. This chapter was a strong reminder of what works about the Secret Six as a concept, and it pulled me back into a narrative I'd felt a little distanced from since it came back after its initial hiatus. Hopefully the momentum continues in this direction from here.<br />
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This was sort of disappointing in that all that happens is Superman handily defeats the muggers from last week, then switches back into his Clark Kent look to actually revive Galt. All of that was to be expected, and having it go down in such predictable fashion isn't ideal, but there are is at least some effective comedy during the fight, particularly the guy who knows that Superman can't be hurt by bullets but goes after him with a knife, hoping that'll do the trick. I just love the insane logic of believing Superman might be immune to bullets specifically, as opposed to merely being invulnerable enough to withstand them. So that's good for a laugh, and Curt Swan really sells the slapstick hilarity of that knife-wielding mugger being thrown into his friends. So it was a fun first two-thirds of the story, but then the final moment where we see that it's Clark Kent, rather than Superman, who comes to Galt's aid is needlessly drawn out and not all that exciting. I guess we're meant to wonder why Superman would feel the need to become Kent again instead of telling Galt the truth, but actually that makes a lot of sense to me without any explanation. Galt believes Superman is his personal savior and protector, and that's a delusion he's suffering from, so giving evidence in support of it is probably not for the best. Superman wants to keep Galt safe, but also to help him get over his hopeless hero worship, so helping him directly as Kent and in secret as Superman adds up. So while the reveal of Kent is overly dramatic, at least it fits with what's come before, and everything else is good, solid Superman action-comedy, even if he does drastically outmatch his foes.<br />
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As with the original Deadman story in <i>Action Comics Weekly</i>, this one is starting to lose focus and become too unruly. Really important stuff happens off-panel this time, and is then explained way too quickly and confusingly, leaving me unsure of exactly how the major events of the story went down. The little girls do...something to Deadman while he is in Legros' body, and it allows them to escape somehow, even though Madame Waxahachie was outside so you're think she would have seen if the girls left. Also, what happened to all the other zombies in the building? At the end we see the girls raising a new army of undead at a graveyard, but what of the army already assembled at Legros' house? Even the fact that Legros went from being the main villain to getting replaced by these twins is an example of this narrative's meandering nature. The biggest problem I had with the first Deadman story was that the threat Deadman was facing kept changing. While the main problem is still a zombie invasion, changing the source of that invasion from one person to two others seems like a pointless shift and a waste of time, especially when we don't even get to see all of the important parts play out on the page. Kelley Jones is still my #1 pick for best Deadman artist ever, but as has been a problem all along, Deadman doesn't have much to do in this tale, mostly a passive observer who has the context of what's going on explained to him by Waxahachie. And even when he's active, it's almost always in another person's body, which I know is his whole deal, but that doesn't mean we can't see more of him. This chapter might actually have had the most Deadman so far, but it still felt like too little, even though every time we did see him, he looked freaking amazing. In some ways, this story seems to have finally gotten its bearings, so it could improve from here, but I'm not hopeful based on the disjointed narrative Mike Baron constructed with this character in this title before.<br />
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I really the title of this Blackhawk section, and it was probably the best part of this narrative so far. Now that Blackhawk and the main female character have had sex, the story can move on, and it does so pretty quickly. The strongest sequence centers on three of his crew finding a pretty clever yet simple way to escape their captors. There's a lot of good, quick dialogue between them, and some nice visuals, too, once the escape plan actually gets put into action. Most of the story cuts between that and scenes of Blackhawk and the two CIG agents (Central Intelligence Group, get it?) making their way back own the mountain to try and get out alive before the volcano erupts. Meanwhile, the villains make their own preparations to depart before the lava starts flowing, so what you end up with is a race-against-the-clock atmosphere, several small groups all working toward the same goal but also working against each other. It should make for a fun, fast-paced final confrontation, which gets set up in the end when the baddies find the same truck Blackhawk plans to use as a means of escape. Shit is about to hit fans in several different spots, and for the first time I'm actually eager to see where things go. It's a hesitant eagerness, because this was just one enjoyable chapter in a story that's never had me fully invested, but if it can keep ramping up the stakes and action like it did here until it crosses the finish line, I might up really really liking this story in the end.<br />
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In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Wild Dog/"Fatal Distraction Chapter Seven: Stab in the Dark"<br />
5. Deadman/"Part 4"<br />
4. Green Lantern/"Gremlins!"<br />
3. Blackhawk/"It's Not the Heat, it's the Futility"<br />
2. Superman/"Let the Punishment Fit the Crime"<br />
1. Secret Six/"Guess What we Learning in School Today?"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-79112665625652025732015-04-26T10:55:00.002-04:002015-04-26T10:55:19.708-04:00ElsewhereI wrote about Jason Little's <i><a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/192432-the-steady-increase-of-awfulness-in-borb/">Borb</a></i> on PopMatters a couple weeks ago, which was a challenging, engaging, significant book. It's never easy to discuss real-world problems in a funny, charming way that still gets at the heart of the matter, but <i>Borb</i> makes it seem effortless, almost natural. This week, my new 1987 And All That went up on Comics Should Be Good, reviewing <a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/04/23/1987-and-all-that-booster-gold-13-22/">issues #13-22 of <i>Booster Gold</i></a>. I'd never spent nearly that much time with Booster Gold before, and never spent any time with him as the star of his own book, so it was interesting to discover just how full of himself and pigheaded he can be. I'm not a major Booster Gold fan or anything now, but I did seriously appreciate Dan Jurgens' ability to make such a pain-in-the-ass character work as the protagonist of his own superhero comic.<br />
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<u>Something I Failed to Mention</u><br />
I didn't touch on Booster Gold's sister Michelle at all in the CSBG column, even though I took the time to break down the supporting cast. I actually failed to include Rip Hunter, too, come to think of it, but in both cases I excluded them because they were more like temporary additions to the cast than full-time members of it. Michelle, though, ends up dying, and her death marks the only time in the ten issues I read that Booster completely, 100% owns up to his mistakes. He maybe even overcompensates, blaming himself entirely for Michelle dying when, at worst, he is only partly at fault. He makes a few bad decisions while trying to rescue her from other-dimensional kidnappers, and it could be argued that if he'd been smarter about that situation, his sister would've survived. But I also think it could be argued that if she had lived, he'd have died, or at least been stuck in enemy territory, so while I understand his guilt, I don't agree that he's wholly responsible. Anyway, Michelle's funeral is like the last thing that happens in the last issue I reviewed, so it served as a nice little cap, Booster facing his own flaws and inexperience head-on in a way he'd steadfastly refused to do before. As such, I probably should've brought it up, and only didn't because I write those columns in the order the ideas come to me, and sometimes that leads to stuff getting left out because it doesn't pop into my head until after the piece feels complete.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-73689695786444486092015-04-20T18:42:00.000-04:002015-04-20T18:42:15.542-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #620<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">. It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks. This is the twentieth of those reviews.</i><br />
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I know nobody is keeping track as closely as I am, but I'm starting to get sincerely pissed at myself for not sticking to my one-a-week schedule for these reviews. So help me, I am determined to get back into that flow starting with this issue. And I <i>will, </i>goddamn it! I do swear it!<br />
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Huh...this Green Lantern story went ahead and got interesting out of nowhere. What has up to now been a pretty blah story about GL wrestling with the Freak Show and their mysterious benefactor Veronica Hawkes suddenly became much more complicated. It turns out Veronica's mousy sister Lillian isn't nearly as frail or oblivious as she seems. It is Lillian who may really be controlling the Freak Show, and though her motives are unknown right now, her ruthless methods are made very clear when she guns down Castle with great relish in order to cover her tracks. Having a character who seems weak and frightened secretly be a scheming, wicked villain is nothing new, but I was genuinely surprised when Lillian was revealed to fit into that mold. Because Veronica, Lillian, and the Freak Show are all new characters, I took their introductions at face value, so this twist caught me off-guard, something I always like from my fiction. And the fact that even Veronica doesn't seem to know what her sister's really like adds new wrinkles that make me really eager to see where this story goes. So that development would've been enough, but on top of it, Veronica gives Green Lantern a pointed, concise speech about how macho and ultimately sexist he is, automatically playing a protector to the sheepish Lillian and an opponent to the more assertive Veronica. Her points make sense, and Hal Jordan seems to agree, as in the end he finalizes his impending break-up with Arisia, believing he may be with her for the wrong reasons, more attracted to her helplessness than her actual person. It's fun to see Hal so shook up, and I hope we'll see it carry over into his future interaction with either or both of the Hawkes sister. Peter David and Richard Howell took a stock superhero story and added more than one effective new wrinkle in only eight pages, and after a while of feeling lukewarm about this narrative, I'm totally reinvested now.<br />
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I've complained about how much I dislike Wild Dog as a character and a hero lots before, but something occurred to me reading this chapter that I'd never really articulated before: I pretty much hate all of these characters. Lt. Flint bitches and bitches about Wild Dog's activities but refuses to do anything about it out of a weird combination of misplaced loyalty, cowardice, and laziness. Susan King is the stereotypical reporter character who only cares about getting the story, which is equal parts obnoxious and cliché. And then there's Wild Pup, the kid who's so into Wild Dog that he insists on putting his own life (and the lives of many other people) at risk so he can be the sidekick his hero doesn't want. Watching this child stubbornly ignore Wild Dog's orders to stay out of the way gets less tense and more frustrating with every page. At first I worried about the kid, but now I just want something bad to happen to him as it is inevitably going to do so we can just get it over with already. He can learn his lesson, Wild Dog can hopefully learn one, too, and this damn narrative can end. The Wild Dog universe is populated top-to-bottom with character I can't stand, and orbiting around a central figure whose moral code and entire reason for being I disagree with. I'm not going to harp on it any longer, because I feel like the most broken of broken records by now, but the it seemed a noteworthy realization that it isn't just the title character that drives me so crazy but also almost every member of his supporting cast.<br />
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Half of this was a tight, suspenseful action-adventure comic that I loved. The other half was talky, info-dumpy, and full of old information, so I liked it considerably less. To be honest, even during the good parts, I was pretty lost. The break Secret Six took from <i>Action Comics Weekly</i> was long enough, and the narrative complex enough, that it's been a little hard to get back into the swing of things since these characters returned to the title. Still, Frank Springer and Frank McLaughlin make the opening sequence thrilling enough that it clicked for me in spite of the fact that I wasn't totally sure who I was watching or why they were fighting each other. I'm like 98% sure it was one member of the Secret Six escaping from enemy forces, and some of the opening conversation was clearly trying to put things into context for me, but there are so many moving pieces in this tale, I'm not always following them all with equal focus. I like it a lot that the Secret Six fights corporations and the like, that they combine espionage, violence, and research to accomplish their goals, and that they can do multiple things at once because of the size of their team and the range of their expertise. So conceptually, all the disjointed bits and pieces are key, and they're something I support. In practice, though, it means sometimes we're following the more obscure and/or less fascinating threads, and that it's easier to lose track of stuff than it would be in a simpler or more straightforward narrative. The ambition is a good thing, and it produces lots of good results, like the title page above and the two action-packed pages which preceded it. But I'm not as locked into the Secret Six as I am with other characters in this comic, and all told this was an uneven segment of their story.<br />
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I don't know if this gets credited to penciller Curt Swan or letterer Bill Oakley, but the "SMEK" sound effect when Bob Galt punches one of his would-be muggers was my favorite part of this Superman chapter. It's a well-done panel all over, with priceless looks on the faces of all the muggers, but that noise really sold it for me. I also enjoy that the way Superman finds Galt is to save him from a crime. It's a good way to reunite them, maybe even an obvious one, but earned through Galt's bravery and unshaken faith in the face of danger. If he wasn't so admirable in that moment, then having Superman come to his rescue might've seemed too easy, but Galt stays courageous and loyal to his idol even with his well-being on the line, so he fully deserves the protection from Superman that he already assumes he'll receive. That's all the happens in these two pages, starting with the muggers' initial taunts and ending with Superman's arrival, and as much as I liked it, I'm itching for a slightly faster progression of this story. Hopefully Galt and Superman being together again, now that Superman has slightly more info, will help them get to the heart of the mystery more quickly. It's been a long, slow ride to try and figure out who it is that wants to destroy Galt and his fellow Superman worshippers, and I know that two pages isn't a ton of space, but I'd like to see the villains more fully revealed sooner than later or my interest is bound to start waning. All the same, for this week, I was on board with everything that went down, and it should be fun to see how Galt's assailant react to Superman next time.<br />
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I feel like there's something wrong with the stakes of this Deadman story. I just cannot muster up any concern for what's happening. Deadman's not really personally connected to it at all; he's an outsider who got semi-randomly involved, and therefore he's annoyingly passive. Madame Waxahacie explains everything to Deadman and tells him what he should do, then he does it. That's boring, and slow, and it gives me as the reader no good way in. The only character I can latch onto at all is a protagonist who doesn't entirely understand what's going on, has no plan of action, and barely seems interested himself. He seems to be participating mostly because he has nothing better to do, and because he's obligated as Deadman to try and fight against evil. Those are weak reasons for the main character to be involved in the narrative, which in turn weakens my own commitment to it. So whatever, Legros continues to try and build his zombie army, and Deadman and Waxahachie feebly try to stop him. Then in the final moments, the Brogden twins who appeared to be victims of Legros expose themselves as villains/forces of evil in their own right. I'm not sure how that works yet, but it's a final beat that almost makes me want to come back for more. It is, at least, something unexpected, and having children as the antagonists in any story always makes for a nice moral dilemma to torture the hero. Still, it's too little too late, a small glimmer of something I might care about reading that shows up only in the last panel of the third chapter.<br />
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Ohhhh...he was taking his belt off so he could whip a snake with it. That excuses the implied rape from the end of last issue...NOT! I know it's a little silly to review this chapter based on the conclusion of the last, but it just still really bothers me, two weeks later, that the previous Blackhawk installment ended that way. And that this week ends with the same two characters having consensual sex doesn't help, and in fact makes it worse somehow. With all the impending danger, it seems like a pretty inappropriate time for them to do that, especially since they just met. I don't mean to sound like a prude, and there's nothing inherently wrong with sleeping with a stranger, but doing it under an active volcano while an ally is wounded and unconscious nearby and you're in the midst of trying to escape the people who kidnapped you...it's ridiculous, and Martin Pasko wedges it into the last two pages not because it makes sense there but because this is Blackhawk and he's got to be a ladies' man all the time no matter how illogical it may be. In between the rescue and the sex scene was a TON of exposition that I had a hard time paying attention to and an even harder time understanding. The whole reason for this mission and this narrative gets explained, and I couldn't tell you what it is, because it's written dryly and hurriedly, like even the creators don't give a shit. Which they probably don't—this could all well be an excuse to write some gunfights and love scenes hung on the frailest of frames. That's definitely how it reads, and I'm sick of it.<br />
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In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Wild Dog/"Fatal Distraction Chapter Six: Tailed!"<br />
5. Blackhawk/"Most Guys Just Leave Her Hanging There"<br />
4. Deadman/"Part 3"<br />
3. Secret Six/"Just a Little Bug That's Going Around"<br />
2. Superman/"Too Late, the Hero?"<br />
1. Green Lantern/"Last Gasp!"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-64416723591622575442015-04-12T20:47:00.000-04:002015-04-12T20:47:01.930-04:00ElsewhereThis week, my newest 1987 And All That went up on CSBG covering <a href="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/category/1987-and-all-that/">issues #4-10 of <i>Star Brand</i></a>. It was the first time that, rather than talking about the defining attributes of the series, I found its lack of consistency the most interesting aspect, and wrote the whole column about that. Not the best reading experience, but a pretty fun critical one. Meanwhile, on PopMatters, I wrote about <i><a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/192259-copperhead-is-greater-than-the-sum-and-then-some/">Copperhead</a></i>. That series really caught me off-guard, and I'm super glad I gave it a chance.<br />
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<u>Something I Failed to Mention</u><br />
There's a scene in <i>Copperhead</i> #4 that's so funny and well-written, I could probably get a whole column out of it alone. The local self-important tycoon, Benjamin Hickory, very quickly finds himself at odds with new sheriff Clara Bronson so, as egomaniacs are wont to do, he tries to find a way to get rid of his problem. He calls up another cop who used to work with Bronson to try and get some dirt, and then we get the following exchange between them:<br />
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It's simple, but the wry delivery from Bronson's old boss, and the final silent panel of Hickory realizing he's being insulted in numerous ways, totally sells it for me. Plus it only takes up one page, so it's the perfect amount of space for a gag like this. It's a nice bit of development for a slow-moving subplot, it helps cement Bronson's personality without her even needing to be in the scene, and it's just solid comedy, classic in its sensibility and gorgeous in its delivery. I read and enjoyed this page four times in a row my first time through the issue.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-59892638387404857952015-04-05T12:39:00.001-04:002015-04-20T17:05:20.907-04:00Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review: Issue #619<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In 1988-89, DC changed </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> from a monthly Superman-focused series to a weekly anthology, also changing its name to </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Action Comics Weekly</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">. It lasted 42 issues before reverting to a monthly format. I am going to review all 42 of those issues, one per week (sort of) for 42 weeks. This is the nineteenth of those reviews.</i><br />
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Whoops! Missed a week! That will most likely continue to happen here and there. As formulaic as these posts are, they can be time-consuming since I gotta write six separate reviews for each one. Anyway...<br />
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So we finally see Veronica's face, and it signifies nothing. Also, it's kind of hard to pay attention to her face when her body is so bizarrely shaped. Could a person with a waist that small even hold their torso up straight? It's crazy. Veronica offers Green Lantern a tour of her facilities in order to convince him she's not the power behind the Freak Show, but of course, since she really is that power, the whole thing is actually a trap. Lantern gets ambushed by the Freak Show and this time they are a bit more coordinated in their attack, so they seem to very quickly get a strong upper hand. That's where the story ends this week, with Lantern being burned alive and held in place by the Freak Show, our hero seemingly stuck in a deadly situation with no obvious way out. It's a good cliffhanger, but the trip there isn't all that interesting, with half of these pages being spent on Lantern's dull argument with Victoria and/or his even duller tour of Hawkes Industries. And even once the fight with the Freak Show begins, it's not particularly thrilling, a few quick shots from either side before Lantern gets his ass handed to him. I did love that the closing line was just Castle saying, "Bitchin'." Other than that, though, this neither impressed nor frustrated me all that powerfully. It was a logical next beat in terms of plot, but the Victoria reveal was anti-climatic, her character design was laughable, and the action sequence at the end was less than exciting.<br />
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I'm tired of making the same complaints as always about Wild Dog. Assume they all still stand. Instead of repeating them again, this week I wanted to talk about how all the Wild Dog stories have been only seven pages long rather than eight, at least since the character showed up for this second storyline. I think the same is true of Blackhawk, but I have other things to say about Blackhawk in this issue (see below). I'm sure the decision to shorten these sections was editorial as opposed to creative, but whatever the reason, it seems a very bad call. Eight pages is already a challenge when it comes to telling a complete, satisfying story, even if it's just one part of a larger narrative. And Wild Dog in particular suffers frequently from endings that are too abrupt and boring, almost never offering a real hook to make the reader want to know more. For me, having a little less Wild Dog in my life is kind of nice, but I also have to wonder if the additional page every issue might not help beef up these stories, even just a little. Space is such a valuable commodity in comics, so it's a shame that some of it had to be usurped by...I don't even know what. Additional ads? Probably, since the total page count of each <i>Action Comics Weekly</i> hasn't changed. It was 48 in the beginning and it's 48 now, but the stories themselves have gotten shorter, so I suppose it has to be the commercials that get to occupy those pages. Yuck.<br />
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After Kelley Jones showing up and blowing up as the ideal Deadman artist last week, this week the title character appears in only two panels, including the credits page above. The rest of the time, he's either in the body of the resurrected cop he got trapped in last time or the schoolteacher he moves into once the cop is re-killed this time. It's a tremendous drag to get so little of Deadman, even though Jones' other contributions are pretty fantastic. Madame Waxahachie is a fittingly bold, terrifying force of humanity, and there are a handful of really interesting perspectives in these panels. Lots of dramatic close-ups and moody shading, and best of all is the panel where Deadman, in the cop's body, looks down at the knife in his belly with an unphased stare. It's a nice, darkly quirky moment, and it comes right before the second (and last) appearance of Deadman in his natural form, so it's for sure the best sequence in the story. I did like the narrative itself more this issue than last, if only because Deadman was more active, and also a little bit because the ending genuinely surprised me. After Deadman and Waxahachie seemingly thwart Legros' plan to steal the Brogden twins, having the twins get immediately kidnapped worked as a final twist. There was an assumption of temporary safety for the kids, because Legros had only so recently failed to get them, and whether or not he is their kidnapper now, having somebody nab them so soon after they avoided that same fate was genuinely unexpected. All the Voodoo stuff still seems offensively clichéd, but there's a bit less of it here, and it's a bit more reserved, so overall this is a step up. Not amazing, and disappointing because of little we get to see Jones draw Deadman, but there's hope.<br />
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Even though Superman is effectively not in this, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's so rare, in fiction or reality, that someone in an argument listens to reason and then admits they were wrong, and I especially wouldn't have expected it from somebody as passionate as Bob Galt. It was a pleasant, quiet resolution to the problem introduced at the end of last week's Superman story, and I liked the shot at California that the cop took as Galt left the store, most of all because it's accurate. Admittedly, the events of this chapter are pretty fluffy, and it's not even clear if they matter at all to the larger story yet. It's sort of hard to imagine how they even would. Maybe Galt wearing a Superman t-shirt is going to lead to extra trouble for him in some way, but if not, then the whole altercation in the store was essentially pointless, a quick, meaningless diversion just to get Galt out of Clark Kent's apartment. Even so, I had a good time reading this, and at the very least it reestablished Galt as a guy who's as honest and decent as the hero he worships, even if he's not quite as thoughtful or controlled. Also, big credit to Curt Swan, because while Superman is only in one of these nine panels, his S symbol is at least partially visible in eight. That's a smart way to keep his presence in the foreground without needing to insert the man himself into a part of the story where he doesn't belong.<br />
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The Secret Six are back, and it's as if they never missed a beat. A lot goes on here, with different members of the team working on different missions, advancing several plots at once. While most of them make a move against Sunnydale Farms and their infected pigs, there are others out there trying to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. One goes undercover at Jefferson University, and another dons a disguise and interviews one of the cops who initially investigated the crash that killed the original Secret Six. It's all an effort to figure out Mockingbird's identity and/or motives, and as the Secret Six themselves mention, it seems strange that they'd be able to do so much of their own investigating without Mockingbird interfering or outright shutting them down. In the past, he has seemingly been able to monitor them all the time, but recently they've been operating fairly independently, and everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's possible that it does here, with one of the Secret Six getting jumped, knocked out, and shoved into a van on the closing page. It's a bit of mysterious excitement for the finale, a solid, near-silent conclusion that brings back all the intrigue and anything-can-happen awesomeness of the Secret Six's original run in this title. The exposition gets wrapped up efficiently, the danger ramps right back up to its previous level, and the Secret Six are buzzing along as a well-oiled machine just like they were before. It's a perfect return, delivering all the goods and meeting all the expectations.<br />
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I kind of barely remember what even happens for the first five pages of this story, because the last two stand out so strongly as such a shitty, stupid, infuriating ending. Blackhawk and the man who claims to be Leslie Richardson get trapped in a cave after a rockslide, and Leslie is knocked unconscious, so Blackhawk heads off to find a way out. What he finds instead is the pilot he cam here looking for, Alice Richardson, chained to a wall in stereotypically tattered clothing. The way Alice is presented alone feels sexist and gross, but then in the final three panels, we see her notice Blackhawk with a relieved smile, which then immediately turns into a look of sheer horror, and then, finally, we see the reason for her terror: Blackhawk is removing his belt. Look...I understand that he's not going to rape her. Next issue, there'll be some kind of explanation as to why he needed to take his belt off to get her down, and the whole thing will be played as a sort of semi-amusing fake out for the reader. But the thing is, it's so not funny, and it's such an idiotic way to end this chapter. Why have her think even for one second that Blackhawk is about to assault her? Is there a compelling reason to put her through that, especially after all the trauma and torture we already know she's suffered recently? And as cliffhanger endings go, making the protagonist—who's already a well-known womanizer—look like he's about to do something so despicable is a very poor choice indeed. I don't really understand the thought behind it, and what's really troubling is that Rick Burchett draws Alice's terrified face so damn convincingly, and in such a tight, detailed panel, the reader can't help but feel her fear with her. So we are left in Alice's position, with no reason to believe anything other than what she believes, save for the fact that we understand, deep down, that the hero of the story isn't suddenly going to become a rapist. Martin Pasko continues to be the wrong writer for this character, a fact that this awful, incredibly misguided ending really cements.<br />
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In conclusion, here are all the stories from this issue, listed from worst to best:<br />
6. Blackhawk/"What's a Nice Girl Like You...?"<br />
5. Wild Dog/"Fatal Distraction: One Mass Murderer to Go"<br />
4. Green Lantern/"Veronica"<br />
3. Deadman/"Part 2"<br />
2. Secret Six/"Once More Unto the Breach"<br />
1. Superman/"Protective Shield?"Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-50614199428093457572015-04-04T19:57:00.001-04:002015-04-04T19:57:25.943-04:00Dearly Departed: She-Hulk<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Dearly Departed is a semi-regular column where I look back on recently completed or canceled series.</span></i><br />
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<i>She-Hulk</i> is just a joy to read. That's because it's a celebratory comic, a big, bright, fun-loving look at everything great about comics, superheroes, and the titular character in particular. Oh, and also lawyers, though the series does a pretty good job of talking about what's terrible about them, too. The book only had 12 issues before being canceled, but in that time it told several awesome, amusing, off-kilter stories, including one about the mysterious Blue File that ran all throughout the title from the debut to the finale. And though this isn't the normal format for a Dearly Departed column (which I haven't written a new one of in almost a year-and-a-half) I think that maybe the best way to dissect <i>She-Hulk</i> is to take it arc by arc, and then wrap up with some more macro thoughts at the end.<br />
The first two issues are sort of each their own thing, but also very clearly work together as a two-part story, the tale of how Jennifer Walters goes from losing her corporate law job to starting and staffing her own practice. It's an awesome introduction to the character and the comic. Jen's resourcefulness and self-assuredness are heavily highlighted right up top, and the core cast is rounded out with the always amusing Hellcat Patsy Walker, and the brand-new, almost entirely inscrutable Angie Huang. The trio works very well together, balancing each other out with different levels of seriousness, areas of expertise, and kinds of intelligence. Plus Javier Pulido's poppy, laid-back, standout style, filled in with Muntsa Vicente's equally poppy and confident colors, gives the series a refreshingly fun look that brightens and bolsters the narratives. This is a hopeful, believe-in-yourself type comic all the way through, from She-Hulk's optimistic self-starterism to Angie's mysterious hyper-competence to Pulido & Vicente's dynamic artwork.<br />
The next two issues are about Jen taking on Dr. Doom's son Kristoff as a client. Kristoff is seeking asylum so he won't be forced to rule Latveria in his father's shadow, and Jen battles tooth-and-nail to make it happen. She even wins in court, but of course Dr. Doom doesn't give a shit about that and immediately kidnaps his son right back. So Jen goes to Latveria to save Kristoff, and ends up using her sharp negotiation skills to make Doom see why it's actually in his best interests to give Kristoff the freedom to be his own man. What I love about this arc is that Jen gets to be an awesome lawyer, then an awesome superhero, and then just an all-around awesome person. We see her at her best in several different kinds of situations, all related to a single case, displaying how capable and impressive she really is.<br />
<i>She-Hulk</i> #5-6 (I promise they are not all two-issue narratives, just the first half of the series, plus the last two issues, so...everything but #7-10) is a storyline titled "Blue" that's all about She-Hulk and company trying to figure out what's up with the mysterious Blue File that Jen found randomly in a box some time before this title even began. The file is connected to a case that names Jen and several other super-people as the targets of a lawsuit by a man named Georg Saywitz, but Jen has no memory of George or the case itself, so the existence of the Blue File is something of a nagging anomaly. The Blue File is ultimately the central problem of this entire 12-issue run, so it doesn't get fully resolved in these two issues, but Jen and her crew do interview several of the other people named in the suit, like Tigra, Shocker, and Nightwatch, and discover that discussing the details of the file acts as some kind of weird subconscious trigger that makes people go crazy and attack everyone and try to hurt themselves. Because of that danger, She-Hulk decides to drop the investigation, even when Angie shows up with what she claims is vital information. It's a weird moment, actually, when Jen shoots down Angie, because she's overly aggressive and then immediately seems to forget the whole thing. Clearly, there's more to this Blue File than meets the eye, and if you read this arc knowing how <i>She-Hulk</i> ends, it's pretty incredible how well Soule hints at who's behind the Blue File without giving it away. Ditto Ron Wimberly, the artist for "Blue." I know that, at the time, there were people who didn't like Wimberly's art on this book, but I think he was the perfect fill-in artist for Pulido. His work has the same kind of playful but abundant energy as Pulido's, so the voice of the comic maintains without wavering, even though stylistically the two artists are quite distinct.<br />
Issue #7 is an Ant-Man team-up, where he, She-Hulk, and Hellcat shrink down to locate and save another genius scientist who shrunk himself and then went missing. It's an amusing, freebie one-shot, a little diversion after the major development of the main plot in "Blue." Also Pulido and Vicente return, and do a marvelous job with the pint-sized adventure, particularly the ant swarm that She-Hulk and Hellcat have to tangle with.<br />
The best story in the series comes in issues #8-10, "The Good Old Days." It's She-Hulk vs. Daredevil in court, and the focus of the trial is Captain America. I wrote about one of the things I enjoyed in this story—the use of continuity—on <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/186135-exemplary-continuity-in-she-hulk/">PopMatters</a>, but there are other things to admire as well. It's a solid courtroom drama, and an exceptional study of what makes Captain America what he is. It also adds an interesting wrinkle to the story of <i>why</i> he is what he is, without in any way undoing or challenging the established facts of his history. Jen gets to be a hero for a hero, by using skills that most of her super-peers don't have. There's also a nice message in there about the flexibility of the truth and how even without lying, people can tell the same story in wildly different ways. It's about perspective, and context, and how hugely important both of those things are to consider whenever you hear anyone describe any experience. These are relevant points to make, especially these days, and they're made subtly and indirectly but are still impossible to miss.<br />
Finally, issues #11-12 bring things to a close by revealing the whole story behind the Blue File. <i>She-Hulk</i> #11 is actually just an issue-long fight between the threesome of She-Hulk, Hellcat, and Angie and the duo of Titania and Volcana. The latter pair was hired by Nightwatch to scare Jen and her team off of researching the Blue File, which Angie had secretly been doing all along, despite Jen's instructions to let it go. Turns out Angie uncovered the truth, so after Titania and Volcana's attack, Angie tells Jen that Nightwatch is the real enemy, forcing his hand. <i>She-Hulk</i> #12, then, is the explanation of how the Blue File came to be, and also the final defeat of Nightwatch. The story is that Nightwatch used to be a villain named Nighteater, who hired Shocker, Vibro, and Dr. Druid to help him cast an uber-powerful spell that would make him into a hero in the memories of everyone in the world. Effectively, every past heroic deed Nightwatch supposedly performed is in reality a false memory created by this spell. He erased his past as a bad guy and replaced it with a fake one where he was always a good guy. Also, he wiped an entire town out of existence, save for George Saywitz, hence the lawsuit. Then Nightwatch retired, able to live his days out in peace, relatively unknown compared to many heroes, but still respected and adored by the public enough to get by. He seems like the ideal character for this kind of retcon, in that he's never been that popular or major a figure in the Marvel canon. Not too many feathers get ruffled if you make Nightwatch into a villain, and it fits so perfectly with everything else we've seen around the Blue File, especially Nightwatch's earlier appearance, so it's a very strong conclusion.<br />
All through this book, She-Hulk is a badass, a hero in every sense, and a hilarious, captivating protagonist. It's everything you want out of the title character of a mainstream superhero book and more, because she's also a lawyer who's actually decent, honest, and admirable. I'd never had a strong opinion about her before reading this, nor even all that much experience with her, but I think of myself as a firmly devoted fan now. Her inclusion on any team is going to make me all the more likely to follow them, and the next time she gets a solo series, I'll be giving it a try pretty much no matter who the creative team is.<br />
I'm not sure how I feel about Angie. I loved her as the stoic, strange, brilliant super-paralegal, but I'm not wild about characters who have loosely defined powers and always seem to have exactly what they need to solve every new problem they encounter. Over the course of these 12 issues, Angie Jedi mind tricks a few people, comes back suddenly and inexplicably from being shot to death, mentally takes control of Volcana's powers, and figures out Nightwatch is the primary baddie without us seeing how she does it. Also her pet monkey Hei Hei, with whom she clearly has some kind of telepathic bond, grows to be larger than a man, sprouts wings, and seems to develop some kind of super-strength. I don't doubt that Charles Soule knows Angie and Hei Hei's backstory and the limitations of/explanations for their abilities, but within <i>She-Hulk</i> it's all one big question mark, and considering how important Angie's contributions were, I would've preferred some more insight into who she is and what she can (or can't) do.<br />
The best dialogue in the whole book is actually a monologue from Shocker, delivered to She-Hulk after she chases him down: "Lady, all I know about you is that you're tough as hell. Guys like me, we got a list of people like you. Like a rating system. You got your Daredevils, your Iron Fists---those guys, you fight. Maybe you get lucky, or maybe you're actually good enough to beat 'em. Now any Hulks---lady, dude, red, green, purple---you see a Hulk, you <i>run</i>. As you saw. Thors, too." This tickles me every time, as does She-Hulk's protest that there's just one Thor, and Shocker's reply that, no, everyone like Volstagg and Valkyrie and Beta Ray Bill are Thors, too. A wonderful conversation that can only take place in a superhero reality.<br />
I think that's all I have on this. It's a phenomenal comicbook, and not just for a Marvel superhero series. It's good all over, and it fits a whole lot of high-quality content into its 12 installments. She-Hulk was never a favorite of mine, Pulido I only knew from his subpar issues of <i>Hawkeye</i>, and the few things of Soule's I'd read before this I had pretty strongly disliked. On this project, though, all three of them were unexpectedly fantastic, as were Vicente and Wimberly, Hellcat and Nightwatch, and all the various guest stars.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6380970066143588302.post-52549441811011671072015-03-31T20:25:00.001-04:002015-03-31T20:25:01.052-04:00Monthly Dose: March 2015<i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">one issue each month of </span></i><i style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">long-completed series.</span></i></i> <br />
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<i><u>100 Bullets</u></i><u> #29</u>: While presumably still focused on Wylie, this issue felt like it was dominated by Mr. Shepherd more than anyone else. It is Shepherd who introduces us (by introducing Dizzy) to Juárez, where much of the action takes place. Shepherd also gives Wylie's name to Mik, a detail that comes into play in a big way at the end, and is most likely some kind of deliberate wrench-in-the-works move from Shepherd. It seems far more likely Shepherd knew that Wylie, pretending to be Hopper, was going to do business with Mik, and thus intended to have Mik spook Wylie by saying his real name aloud. Why Shepherd would want to rattle Wylie like this is impossible to tell, but that's true of almost everything what Shepherd ever does. He's at least as mysterious as Graves, and as manipulative, which is why I assume that the consequences of any action he makes must be exactly what he wanted. The tension in this issue comes from Wylie, and more pages are centered on him than not, but even so, Shepherd's presence is the one you feel more powerfully. He's the only character who knows what's going on and is in control of his fate from start to finish, so he comes out looking stronger and more significant. None of this is a complaint; I love Shepherd and find him considerably more interesting to follow than Wylie or anyone else in this arc. And the trouble Wylie gets into at the end of this issue is scary and exciting and, if not unexpected, at least hard to predict. Who are the gun-wielding figures in the shadows? How is Wylie possibly going to get out of this? Why did poor, simple Dan have to die? We're left with some decent hooks to pull us back for the story's final act, even though Wylie isn't a standout star here, and generally hasn't convinced me I should care about him yet. It speaks to both Brian Azzarello's story-crafting skills and Eduardo Risso's exceptional suspense-building that the conclusion of this issue draws me in so effectively even though I'm not fully invested in Wylie, and his journey is not what gets the spotlight this time around. I'm still all-in on <i>100 Bullets</i>, despite the current storyline being only so-so, because the overall quality of the series maintains even during its lower points.<br />
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<i><u>Automatic Kafka </u></i><u>#5</u>: After a few pages of Kafka being interviewed, the bulk of this issue stars his former teammate from the $tranger$, the Constitution of the United States of America. I <i>love</i> that as a superhero name, but the character himself seems a lazy, easy, nuance-free take on America's fetishistic adoration of violence and machismo. His opening speech where he's trying to rally the troops is more than enough to understand him and what he represents, yet that only takes up two pages, after which we get another nine pages of him and his crew annihilating a drug lab and all the people in it. Of course big, needless action sequences are part and parcel for superhero comics, but in this specific case it felt like one note played for too long, an utterly simple character introduction stretched over way too large a space. Near the end we see the Warning's baby bombs again, so there are hints of a larger, connected story here, but only of the vaguest kind. The real purpose of the babies in this issue is to piss off the Constitution, who prefers his violence and destruction to be hands-on, and dislikes the distance with which the babies' controllers commit their acts of murder and destruction. Which is almost interesting, but by the time that point gets made, I'm so tired of the Constitution (and his dialogue is so clipped and indirect) that it's hard to even muster up the energy to comprehend what he's saying. Ash Wood does chaotic, over-the-top action well, and he nails all the other elements of the Constitution's overall theatricality, too. So the art is as good as always, but it, too, sells the character concept quickly and then goes nowhere new with it, making this a good-looking but visually repetitive comic. Every issue of <i>Automatic Kafka</i> is a new, wild adventure, and this was no different, but somehow shifting the book's attention to a superhero other than the title character produced something blunter and lighter than usual, like a watered-down version of what the series has been prior to this issue.<br />
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<i><u>X-Force</u></i><u> (vol. 1) #29</u>: I've seen a lot of this before. Cable walks around, surveying the team, thinking about how bad things have been lately. Old news; very boring. The rest of the issue, on the other hand, has a plot that's new, or new to this title, anyway: Arcade kidnaps Shatterstar and pits him again opponents from his homeworld. It's fine, though not considerably less boring than the other part of the issue. Arcade is lame, a spoiled child of a villain even at his best, and this is far from his best. His insane bright pink sunglasses and head-sized polkadot bow tie look terrible, and he's not even really the main baddie here, just a gun for hire working at the command of a mysterious employer. Who cares? Is the point of this just to spotlight Shatterstar? I'm going to go with yes, especially since Arcade makes Shatterstar put on his original, Liefeld-all-over costume for absolutely no reason at all. But why give that character this kind of focus now? There's way more urgent stuff going on, like Feral quitting and Tempo possibly joining up, but that all gets the most meager lip service in the Cable pages while all the action and meat in this issue is Shatterstar-centric. It seems a wholly random detour, and a frustrating one, and it ends with X-Treme showing up, who is just so overwhelmingly 90's I can hardly look at him. Bottom line is that I did not care for one bit of this issue. Matt Broome's pencils are clear and consistent, but his style is not to my taste at all, too bulky and heavy and cramped. As for the script, Fabian Nicieza writes these scenes well enough, but they weren't the scenes I wanted to have to sit through. Follow the threads already established, don't shunt them aside for new, arbitrary, pointless action pieces that only involve one of the series' stars.Matthew Dermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12794461357664244206noreply@blogger.com0