Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #24: This "Red Prince Blues" storyline is moving awful slowly, but at least it's always moving. It creeps along but never stands still, and never lets go out the reader's attention, either. Most of it I liked, some of it I didn't care about, and there was one scene I feel sort of conflicted over, which I will now proceed to discuss at length in a probably pointless effort to make up my mind. It's four pages of Augustus Medici and an unnamed prostitute talking in his hotel room. They're both nude, so it's clearly post-coital, and...I'm not sure where I land on the treatment of the woman. Not by Augustus, because he treats her exactly as expected, like a prop he has no attachment to but still enjoys engaging with. And that's the point of the scene, that Augustus uses people, that he sees everyone as inferior to him and as his property, but still maintains a certain joy and zest for life. It's in everything he says, most of all his final line, "I am the power company." What troubles me is how Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso handle her, because I can't make up my mind on whether her presence is pornographic/disrespectful/sexist or tasteful/respectful/realistic. It might be all of those things. She's naked, and you see a lot of her ass and breasts, but you see Augustus' ass, too, probably more than hers, while both of their genitals stay hidden. And her nudity isn't the focus, nor is his, it's just a fact of the moment. Then again, she does have a borderline unbelievable hourglass figure, and her nipples stick way out, and there's a panel of her licking her lips with her tongue way out, so...maybe her nudity kind of is the focus, or at least her sexuality. But she's a prostitute, so having her be aggressive and attention-grabbing with her sexuality also makes sense. But also, couldn't Azzarello and Risso have shown us what kind of man Augustus is in some other way than having him pay for sex? Isn't that kind of an easy, almost gross narrative move? I could go on and on like this, ping-ponging around in my head, finding details to support every shade of both sides of the argument. I guess if it's this hard to decide how badly a character was treated, then it's safe to assume she wasn't treated as well as she could/should have been. Maybe it's not an overtly misogynistic scene, but its gender politics are questionable or worse. On a fully positive note, the issue's last panel is a knock-out punch from Risso. The size of the gun in Hank's hand, the terrified but determined look on his face, the moody shadows, the scary grin of the pawn shop owner...everything about it is just top notch work. Does it make up for the problems of the Augustus scene? Probably not, but it is a seriously superb closing beat for what was otherwise a solid issue.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #6: This was a fantastic conclusion, followed by less-than-fantastic conclusion. Let me explain. The first 2/3 of this issue were all about Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps fighting against the giant, amorphous, expanding blob of silvery goo that used to be Legion. They struggle against it futilely, try a few different strategies unsuccessfully, and find themselves seconds away from being totally overrun. The Guardians then order the Corps to retreat, deciding that sacrificing Oa is ok so long as they and their army of Lanterns can live on. Hal refuses to accept that, though, and instead of falling back with the rest of the group, he challenges the Guardians' decision. They try to convince him that he cannot defeat Legion alone, saying that while, yes, the Green Lanterns have access to immense power, it all comes from the central power battery, so each Lantern wields only a fraction of it. Hal hears this information and figures fine, if he needs more power, he can just go to the source. So he flies straight into the central battery, and emerges (in what is probably the best page of the whole series) bathed in green light he can barely contain, before unleashing it all on the Legion blob and winning the day singlehandedly. The Guardians are impressed but also nervous, disapproving of Hal's loose cannon attitude and afraid he'll influence the rest of the Corps, and that's pretty much where that part of the story ends. It's an awesome finish, filled with detailed action from M.D. Bright, who captures the fear and confusion of all the combatants as well as all the spectacle of the fight itself. Had Emerald Dawn stopped there, I think it might've made for a stronger finale, even though, admittedly, Hal's life on Earth still had some unfinished business. So Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones dutifully include a wrap-up for Hal's problems at home, and while it's not a bad ending in terms of what actually happens, it's considerably less exciting or interesting than the rest of this issue. Hal turns himself in, pleads guilty, and serves his time, only to be offered his old job back at Ferris Air when he gets out and, ultimately, getting to be a pilot again. It's nice to see, and facing up to his mistakes makes Hal into the fully heroic character he's never quite been up to now, which is important. Yet it still feels like the comic is petering out, the last few pages especially, which circle back and reference the beginning of the series where Hal's dad died while flying a plane. Hal goes through something similar but, this time, there's a better result. There's nothing wrong with the end of the issue per se, but compared to what precedes it, I'd call it dull at best. Even so, it's a satisfying last chapter, and it definitely accomplishes its primary goal of making me want more Green Lantern, since this mini led directly into what was at the time the new Green Lantern ongoing series. It took Emerald Dawn some time to find its footing, including a few shake-ups in the creative time and a generally slow-moving start, but in the back half of the series, and most of all in the final battle between Legion and the Corps that spanned last issue and this one, it grew into itself and became an excellent comicbook.
X-Force (vo1. 1) #24: Two weeks ago, if you'd asked me who Rusty and Skids were in the context of the Marvel Universe, I would've had absolutely nothing for you. Have I maybe ever seen them before? Sure, it's possible—I've met a lot of mutants in my time. But I definitely have zero recollection of any previous exposure to either character, and didn't know they existed until I read twelve issues of X-Factor for my CSBG column earlier this month. Both Skids and Rusty originated in that title (though not in the issues I read) and were major players in it, so I got to see a lot of them, and I liked them quite a bit. Skids especially has a weird and interesting mutant power. It made me wonder several times why I'd never hear of them, and why they weren't more popular characters. Fast forward to yesterday when I was doing my reading for this column, and the opening scene of this issue of X-Force involves a group of humans capturing two mutants I didn't recognize, named Russell Collins and Sally Blevins. I wondered if I was supposed to know those names, and then just two pages later, Cannonball identified them as Rusty and Skids. And I was like, "That's crazy," to myself. There they were, the same month I happened to have learned about them because I randomly decided now was the time to go ahead and review the X-Factor issues I've had on hand for like a year but kept not using because I did another Louise-Simonson-written series, Power Pack, for an earlier "1987 And All That" piece at the Chemical Box. It was a pretty convenient coincidence, because if I hadn't read those X-Factor issues, I would've had to Wikipedia Skids and Rusty just to know who they were when they showed up in X-Force. Why am I carrying on for SO LONG about this minor connection between two things I read around the same time? Because I loved it when it happened, and it's kind of the most notable thing I can say about X-Force #24. Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo are in such a groove now, and this felt like just one more in a string of very similar issues. The whole thing is a rescue mission, X-Force freeing Skids and Rusty from their captors with little difficulty or tension. It's an intensely simple story stretched almost awkwardly over the length of the issue, punctuated by minimal progress being made in the Domino subplot (per usual) plus a few gorgeous, cryptic pages of someone (Cable? Magento?) doing something in space with the wreckage of Graymalkin. None of it sucks, none of it rules, and none of it leaves a very powerful impression. I had forgotten all about the Graymalkin thing until I flipped back through the issue just now, for example. So yeah, Rusty and Skids were the focus of the issue's main storyline, and their inclusion was easily the detail that stuck out most for me, so that's why I mostly just wrote about them.
Showing posts with label Emerald Dawn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emerald Dawn. Show all posts
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: September 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #23: A slower issue, but not boring. Brian Azzarello intentionally has the narrative creep along, partly to create an air of suspense and also, I'd imagine, so the reader can fully absorb all the cryptic dialogue. There's a lot of very vague stuff said between Benito, Megan, and Daniel about the Trust and each of their roles in it, and since we don't know exactly who/what the Trust is, it's helpful to have time to completely digest what little info we're offered here. Megan, it seems, had to replace her father in the Trust at a young age when he died, whereas Benito's dad is still around and still in charge. This creates tension between Benito and Megan, since she sees him as immature, inexperienced, and lazy while he sees her as stuck up and too serious. The significance of their less-than-stellar relationship isn't clear yet, but it's a nuanced dynamic that Azzarello introduces and explores well in this issue. The far more active and interesting part of the story is, of course, Hank being beaten at poker by Benito and deciding to get some form of revenge. Hank's semi-impotent rage in the face of an ultra-rich opponent is relatable, and helps make him sympathetic even with his rough edges. His dying wife also soften his image, but it's the futile anger that really sells him as a likable if misguided character. When Cole Burns makes his surprise return at the end of the issue to give Hank a hand, it's an exciting and somewhat scary moment. We know what a cold-blooded killer Cole can be, and for him to influence Hank in even the smallest way creates the potential for some serious shit to go down. So Azzarello has his dominoes all lined up, and though he took his time to get them there (and may not even be done yet) the pattern that's emerging is exciting enough that it's worth the wait. This was not Eduardo Risso's best effort, unfortunately. There was anything awful in it but nothing great, either. And it's a little hard to tell how much of Megan's brazen sexuality is necessary for her character and how much of it is just cheesecake. I think Risso mostly does a good job with her in that regard, but there are a few moments that feel oversexualized for no specific reason, and that's always a drag to see. Still, the opening poker game scene was deliciously shadowing and intimate and uncomfortable, and Cole's ultra-coolness shined through in the end, so while it was a mid-level issue visually, it did get bookended by nice, sharp art.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #5: Far and away the most exciting and best-looking issue of this series yet. The whole thing is one long, intense, knock down drag out fight between Legion and the Green Lantern Corps, and M.D. Bright makes it a legit thrill ride. All the constructs Hal Jordan creates to try and keep Legion down are awesome, there's an amazing full-page splash of Salaak and Tomar-Re being punched through a wall, and when Legion spills out of his armor and becomes a giant shiny amorphous blob of death it is spectacular. Bright has been a strong penciler on this book all along, but the art hasn't ever demanded my attention like it does here with the non-stop, highly imaginative action. Legion comes across as a truly serious villain for the first time, and the awesomeness of the Green Lantern Corps is brightly highlighted, most of all Kilowog. The story side of things doesn't suffer any, either. We get Legion's backstory, meet the Guardians for the first time, and watch Hal come into his own as a Green Lantern, exploring his powers creatively and pushing back against the rigid rules of the Corps. Even in the context of the sprawling battle, Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones (plot and script, respectively) manage to get a lot of story progress done and fill in some missing details about what's been going on. Emerald Dawn has seemed a little unfocused up to now, not sure how quickly to move or what its main character was all about, but everything snaps into place here at last. A shame it had to happen in the penultimate chapter, I suppose, but better late than never, and the results are fantastic. This is some top-notch superhero comics, and it ends on one hell of a cliffhanger, so I'm stoked to see what the conclusion has in store.
X-Force (vol. 1) #23: The Externals get dealt with once and for all (I hope) as Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo continue to burn through all the crap Rob Liefeld left behind when he departed this series. I appreciate the patience with which they've been doing this, but it also makes me a little anxious for them to finish so I can find out what comes next, what this creative team can do in their own space. Luckily, this issue made a ton of progress, because on top of the Externals finally being bested—not beaten, exactly, but told to fuck off in a convincing way—the two B-plots that have been running for a while suddenly become one and the same. I didn't even know that's where they were headed, mostly because I didn't recognize that the person Deadpool's been hunting, Vanessa, is also the woman who impersonated Domino in the earliest issues of the series. I probably should have figured that out, and it's even possible I was explicitly told it at some point and just forgot, because that thread has never for one second held my interest. It feels so distant from the stuff X-Force is doing, in terms of geography, story, and tone. Similarly, the story about Domino, Grizzly, and Hammer trying to dig up info on Cable has been hard for me to pay serious attention to in the past. I don't want Cable back in this title, so I can't get very enthusiastic about people trying to find and/or research him. But in this issue, Domnio's group goes after Vanessa, so what has up to this point been two storylines I generally ignore will only be one moving forward, and that's progress. Also, Vanessa promises to tell Domino where to find X-Force, indicating that this may all become part of the main plot soon. The sooner that happens, the sooner the series can move past all these characters and concepts I don't care about, so I'm all for seeing Domino and crew catch up with X-Force as soon as next month. I guess we'll see if I get my wish then.
100 Bullets #23: A slower issue, but not boring. Brian Azzarello intentionally has the narrative creep along, partly to create an air of suspense and also, I'd imagine, so the reader can fully absorb all the cryptic dialogue. There's a lot of very vague stuff said between Benito, Megan, and Daniel about the Trust and each of their roles in it, and since we don't know exactly who/what the Trust is, it's helpful to have time to completely digest what little info we're offered here. Megan, it seems, had to replace her father in the Trust at a young age when he died, whereas Benito's dad is still around and still in charge. This creates tension between Benito and Megan, since she sees him as immature, inexperienced, and lazy while he sees her as stuck up and too serious. The significance of their less-than-stellar relationship isn't clear yet, but it's a nuanced dynamic that Azzarello introduces and explores well in this issue. The far more active and interesting part of the story is, of course, Hank being beaten at poker by Benito and deciding to get some form of revenge. Hank's semi-impotent rage in the face of an ultra-rich opponent is relatable, and helps make him sympathetic even with his rough edges. His dying wife also soften his image, but it's the futile anger that really sells him as a likable if misguided character. When Cole Burns makes his surprise return at the end of the issue to give Hank a hand, it's an exciting and somewhat scary moment. We know what a cold-blooded killer Cole can be, and for him to influence Hank in even the smallest way creates the potential for some serious shit to go down. So Azzarello has his dominoes all lined up, and though he took his time to get them there (and may not even be done yet) the pattern that's emerging is exciting enough that it's worth the wait. This was not Eduardo Risso's best effort, unfortunately. There was anything awful in it but nothing great, either. And it's a little hard to tell how much of Megan's brazen sexuality is necessary for her character and how much of it is just cheesecake. I think Risso mostly does a good job with her in that regard, but there are a few moments that feel oversexualized for no specific reason, and that's always a drag to see. Still, the opening poker game scene was deliciously shadowing and intimate and uncomfortable, and Cole's ultra-coolness shined through in the end, so while it was a mid-level issue visually, it did get bookended by nice, sharp art.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #5: Far and away the most exciting and best-looking issue of this series yet. The whole thing is one long, intense, knock down drag out fight between Legion and the Green Lantern Corps, and M.D. Bright makes it a legit thrill ride. All the constructs Hal Jordan creates to try and keep Legion down are awesome, there's an amazing full-page splash of Salaak and Tomar-Re being punched through a wall, and when Legion spills out of his armor and becomes a giant shiny amorphous blob of death it is spectacular. Bright has been a strong penciler on this book all along, but the art hasn't ever demanded my attention like it does here with the non-stop, highly imaginative action. Legion comes across as a truly serious villain for the first time, and the awesomeness of the Green Lantern Corps is brightly highlighted, most of all Kilowog. The story side of things doesn't suffer any, either. We get Legion's backstory, meet the Guardians for the first time, and watch Hal come into his own as a Green Lantern, exploring his powers creatively and pushing back against the rigid rules of the Corps. Even in the context of the sprawling battle, Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones (plot and script, respectively) manage to get a lot of story progress done and fill in some missing details about what's been going on. Emerald Dawn has seemed a little unfocused up to now, not sure how quickly to move or what its main character was all about, but everything snaps into place here at last. A shame it had to happen in the penultimate chapter, I suppose, but better late than never, and the results are fantastic. This is some top-notch superhero comics, and it ends on one hell of a cliffhanger, so I'm stoked to see what the conclusion has in store.
X-Force (vol. 1) #23: The Externals get dealt with once and for all (I hope) as Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo continue to burn through all the crap Rob Liefeld left behind when he departed this series. I appreciate the patience with which they've been doing this, but it also makes me a little anxious for them to finish so I can find out what comes next, what this creative team can do in their own space. Luckily, this issue made a ton of progress, because on top of the Externals finally being bested—not beaten, exactly, but told to fuck off in a convincing way—the two B-plots that have been running for a while suddenly become one and the same. I didn't even know that's where they were headed, mostly because I didn't recognize that the person Deadpool's been hunting, Vanessa, is also the woman who impersonated Domino in the earliest issues of the series. I probably should have figured that out, and it's even possible I was explicitly told it at some point and just forgot, because that thread has never for one second held my interest. It feels so distant from the stuff X-Force is doing, in terms of geography, story, and tone. Similarly, the story about Domino, Grizzly, and Hammer trying to dig up info on Cable has been hard for me to pay serious attention to in the past. I don't want Cable back in this title, so I can't get very enthusiastic about people trying to find and/or research him. But in this issue, Domnio's group goes after Vanessa, so what has up to this point been two storylines I generally ignore will only be one moving forward, and that's progress. Also, Vanessa promises to tell Domino where to find X-Force, indicating that this may all become part of the main plot soon. The sooner that happens, the sooner the series can move past all these characters and concepts I don't care about, so I'm all for seeing Domino and crew catch up with X-Force as soon as next month. I guess we'll see if I get my wish then.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: August 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #22: I'm not wild about this story, and I definitely don't think it needed to be a two-parter. As Jack's friend—who gets named Mikey in this issue—points out, the story is just Jack complaining about all the strained relationships in his life, wandering from one ruined love to another, but not getting anywhere. The entire last issue was devoted to that, so we pretty much got what a sad and self-destructive person Jack was already, yet for some reason there's an entire second issue that does it all over again. This time, it's mostly about Jack's estranged family, as opposed to his estranged ex-girlfriend, a distinction that does little to make the story any more interesting. There is a nice twist at the end when we learn Jack has been killing random other drug addicts, slowly going through the first ninety-nine of his hundred bullets before he uses the last one on himself. That's the plan, anyway, and as soon as we discover it, so does Mikey, who then, it's safe to assume, becomes Jack's next victim. That's effectively sad, and Mikey was our POV character, so there's something a little unsettling about having the protagonist of this arc kill the only character with whom the reader relates. But it's not enough to make up for how boring the rest of this narrative is, and it comes so late anyway; even if the ending was twice as shocking and five times as good, it would have been a helluva a long trip to get there. I don't know if Brian Azzarello just thought Jack's depression was more interesting than it was (even though, that then raises the questions of why Mikey brings up explicitly how dull it all is) or if this arc was just meant as an exercise in tense mundanity, but whatever inspired it, the whole thing falls flat. Eduardo Risso's art is dark and expressive, and he gets some really strong, nuanced acting out of Jack and Jack's mother during their interaction, but again...anything likable in this second half of the story has a too-little-too-lateness about it because the whole thing is just a retread of the themes and character details of the first half, which was itself slow and unfilling. Luckily, it's over now, and two months isn't an unreasonable amount of time to spend getting to know a character, even if he's immediately understandable but the creators choose to stretch out his introduction anyway.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #4: A very weird pacing to this issue, in which Hal Jordan finally meets the Green Lantern Corps, goes to Oa, and begins proper training with his ring. Several new characters are brought in, but none of them are especially fleshed out. These each have one key characteristic, and that's it: Tomar-Re is dutiful, Salakk is gruff, Kilowog is a ballbuster. I don't expect them all to be deep, fully-developed people in this one issue, but I would rather have felt like I truly got to know one of them than to meet all three but have only a weak sense of what they're like. Meanwhile, everything happens so quickly that neither Jordan nor the reader ever have time to properly react. It only takes nine pages for Jordan to wake up on Earth, get whisked to a planet in Tomar-Re's sector by his ring, then go with Tomar-Re to Oa. That includes two splash pages, and one page worth of Legion ranting villainously. So the time between Tomar-Re's appearance and that of Oa is almost none, and then on page ten Salakk shows up already. It's a bit of a blur, is what I'm saying, though it's not at all difficult to follow. After his arrival on Oa, Jordan learns about the existence of the Corps and a little bit of Legion's origin, sends a projection down to Earth to tell his brother what's going on, and then meets Kilowog and has his first week of training (which occurs in a one-page montage). Then Legion shows up and attacks Oa, which is how the issue ends. Keith Giffen is credited with the plot and Gerard Jones with the script, so I'm not sure how much of the overly hurried tempo should be blamed on each of them. It's not terrible, but it's not great either, a bunch of neat ideas and new cast members that all come and go too quickly to enjoy. M.D. Bright and Romeo Tanghal's art is as good as ever, though, and the splash pages are especially nice. The two I mentioned above are the first and ninth pages, Jordan waking up after last issue's nuclear explosion and Jordan arriving on Oa with Tomar-Re, respectively. Both show large spaces backed by ominous pink clouds, but the first page is desolate, with the tiny, frail figure of Jordan the only sign of life. Oa, meanwhile, has a giant green power battery with a whole civilization behind it, extending farther than the eye can see. They're a strong contrast, and I suppose their proximity heightens that effect, so there's some benefit to the briskness of the narrative. At the end, there's another full-page splash of Legion on Oa, several already-defeated Green Lanterns strewn about him, his giant fists raised in smug victory. It's a great closing image, because it makes Legion intimidating all over again, even though his might has been well established in earlier issues. There was nothing I hated about this issue, but beyond a few huge, memorable images, there wasn't much to love about it, either.
X-Force (vol. 1) #22: Graymalkin is all blown up, the Professor computer system that ran it has shut itself down, and S.H.I.E.L.D. are finally done chasing X-Force. It feels like, after all this time, the looming shadow of Cable (and therefore of Rob Liefeld) might be withdrawing. There's still the weird side plot about Deadpool trying to kill one of a pair of twins and the other weird side plot about Domino, Grizzly, and Hammer trying to access files on Cable, neither of which I fully understand the importance of yet. They're both annoying, the Deadpool one most of all, but they never take up much space so I just roll with 'em for now. The other half of the A-plot of this issue is Gideon and his External friends capturing Boom-Boom, Warpath, and Siryn. In the end, they tell Cannonball to either surrender himself or lose his teammates, which is all stuff that's SUPER tied to the Liefeld era, and therefore sort of obnoxious, but...so far Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo have thrown a Liefeld character out of a plane and literally blown up Graymalkin, so I'm rooting for them to do something equally definitive to cauterize this Externals business once and for all. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but by now I've entered into issues of X-Force I've never read before, so it's exciting to see what the plans are, to find out where this goes. There's a lot of potential in the Nicieza-Capullo team, and they've already done a lot to break free from what came before, but they also refuse to outright ignore it, which I respect. They appear to be working their way through everything little by little, which makes me hopeful for the long term. I did notice Capullo's art being a bit...boobier than before, most notably when Boom-Boom and Siryn were shown in tattered tops with their arms bound in such a way as to make their chests stick out. Then again, in those panels Warpath is also there, totally shirtless, and covered in a ridiculous number of bulging muscles, so...I'm not sure any gender is more or less sexualized than any other in those scenes. But there were also some pretty pronounced breasts in the introduction of the new Weapon: P.R.I.M.E., and Feral's chest seemed to me like it had grown. It's too bad, because Capullo had been up to now a nice middle ground between Liefeld's ridiculous body shapes and, say, normal human anatomy. As he gets more bananas with the builds of people, and as his focus in those changes gets more sexual, I naturally like him less. To be fair, though, not every woman is depicted this way. Domino and Lila may not be exactly realistic, but no attention is ever overtly directed toward their chests, and the twins Deadpool is after, Tina and Vanessa, are actually dressed modestly and built almost like actual people, as much more than any male character here. There's hope, is what I'm saying, that this is a one-time fluke case of extra objectification rather than the start of a trend. There's a lot of hope in general for the future of the series, even though this issue itself is only setting up that potential, rather than cashing in on any of it.
100 Bullets #22: I'm not wild about this story, and I definitely don't think it needed to be a two-parter. As Jack's friend—who gets named Mikey in this issue—points out, the story is just Jack complaining about all the strained relationships in his life, wandering from one ruined love to another, but not getting anywhere. The entire last issue was devoted to that, so we pretty much got what a sad and self-destructive person Jack was already, yet for some reason there's an entire second issue that does it all over again. This time, it's mostly about Jack's estranged family, as opposed to his estranged ex-girlfriend, a distinction that does little to make the story any more interesting. There is a nice twist at the end when we learn Jack has been killing random other drug addicts, slowly going through the first ninety-nine of his hundred bullets before he uses the last one on himself. That's the plan, anyway, and as soon as we discover it, so does Mikey, who then, it's safe to assume, becomes Jack's next victim. That's effectively sad, and Mikey was our POV character, so there's something a little unsettling about having the protagonist of this arc kill the only character with whom the reader relates. But it's not enough to make up for how boring the rest of this narrative is, and it comes so late anyway; even if the ending was twice as shocking and five times as good, it would have been a helluva a long trip to get there. I don't know if Brian Azzarello just thought Jack's depression was more interesting than it was (even though, that then raises the questions of why Mikey brings up explicitly how dull it all is) or if this arc was just meant as an exercise in tense mundanity, but whatever inspired it, the whole thing falls flat. Eduardo Risso's art is dark and expressive, and he gets some really strong, nuanced acting out of Jack and Jack's mother during their interaction, but again...anything likable in this second half of the story has a too-little-too-lateness about it because the whole thing is just a retread of the themes and character details of the first half, which was itself slow and unfilling. Luckily, it's over now, and two months isn't an unreasonable amount of time to spend getting to know a character, even if he's immediately understandable but the creators choose to stretch out his introduction anyway.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #4: A very weird pacing to this issue, in which Hal Jordan finally meets the Green Lantern Corps, goes to Oa, and begins proper training with his ring. Several new characters are brought in, but none of them are especially fleshed out. These each have one key characteristic, and that's it: Tomar-Re is dutiful, Salakk is gruff, Kilowog is a ballbuster. I don't expect them all to be deep, fully-developed people in this one issue, but I would rather have felt like I truly got to know one of them than to meet all three but have only a weak sense of what they're like. Meanwhile, everything happens so quickly that neither Jordan nor the reader ever have time to properly react. It only takes nine pages for Jordan to wake up on Earth, get whisked to a planet in Tomar-Re's sector by his ring, then go with Tomar-Re to Oa. That includes two splash pages, and one page worth of Legion ranting villainously. So the time between Tomar-Re's appearance and that of Oa is almost none, and then on page ten Salakk shows up already. It's a bit of a blur, is what I'm saying, though it's not at all difficult to follow. After his arrival on Oa, Jordan learns about the existence of the Corps and a little bit of Legion's origin, sends a projection down to Earth to tell his brother what's going on, and then meets Kilowog and has his first week of training (which occurs in a one-page montage). Then Legion shows up and attacks Oa, which is how the issue ends. Keith Giffen is credited with the plot and Gerard Jones with the script, so I'm not sure how much of the overly hurried tempo should be blamed on each of them. It's not terrible, but it's not great either, a bunch of neat ideas and new cast members that all come and go too quickly to enjoy. M.D. Bright and Romeo Tanghal's art is as good as ever, though, and the splash pages are especially nice. The two I mentioned above are the first and ninth pages, Jordan waking up after last issue's nuclear explosion and Jordan arriving on Oa with Tomar-Re, respectively. Both show large spaces backed by ominous pink clouds, but the first page is desolate, with the tiny, frail figure of Jordan the only sign of life. Oa, meanwhile, has a giant green power battery with a whole civilization behind it, extending farther than the eye can see. They're a strong contrast, and I suppose their proximity heightens that effect, so there's some benefit to the briskness of the narrative. At the end, there's another full-page splash of Legion on Oa, several already-defeated Green Lanterns strewn about him, his giant fists raised in smug victory. It's a great closing image, because it makes Legion intimidating all over again, even though his might has been well established in earlier issues. There was nothing I hated about this issue, but beyond a few huge, memorable images, there wasn't much to love about it, either.
X-Force (vol. 1) #22: Graymalkin is all blown up, the Professor computer system that ran it has shut itself down, and S.H.I.E.L.D. are finally done chasing X-Force. It feels like, after all this time, the looming shadow of Cable (and therefore of Rob Liefeld) might be withdrawing. There's still the weird side plot about Deadpool trying to kill one of a pair of twins and the other weird side plot about Domino, Grizzly, and Hammer trying to access files on Cable, neither of which I fully understand the importance of yet. They're both annoying, the Deadpool one most of all, but they never take up much space so I just roll with 'em for now. The other half of the A-plot of this issue is Gideon and his External friends capturing Boom-Boom, Warpath, and Siryn. In the end, they tell Cannonball to either surrender himself or lose his teammates, which is all stuff that's SUPER tied to the Liefeld era, and therefore sort of obnoxious, but...so far Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo have thrown a Liefeld character out of a plane and literally blown up Graymalkin, so I'm rooting for them to do something equally definitive to cauterize this Externals business once and for all. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but by now I've entered into issues of X-Force I've never read before, so it's exciting to see what the plans are, to find out where this goes. There's a lot of potential in the Nicieza-Capullo team, and they've already done a lot to break free from what came before, but they also refuse to outright ignore it, which I respect. They appear to be working their way through everything little by little, which makes me hopeful for the long term. I did notice Capullo's art being a bit...boobier than before, most notably when Boom-Boom and Siryn were shown in tattered tops with their arms bound in such a way as to make their chests stick out. Then again, in those panels Warpath is also there, totally shirtless, and covered in a ridiculous number of bulging muscles, so...I'm not sure any gender is more or less sexualized than any other in those scenes. But there were also some pretty pronounced breasts in the introduction of the new Weapon: P.R.I.M.E., and Feral's chest seemed to me like it had grown. It's too bad, because Capullo had been up to now a nice middle ground between Liefeld's ridiculous body shapes and, say, normal human anatomy. As he gets more bananas with the builds of people, and as his focus in those changes gets more sexual, I naturally like him less. To be fair, though, not every woman is depicted this way. Domino and Lila may not be exactly realistic, but no attention is ever overtly directed toward their chests, and the twins Deadpool is after, Tina and Vanessa, are actually dressed modestly and built almost like actual people, as much more than any male character here. There's hope, is what I'm saying, that this is a one-time fluke case of extra objectification rather than the start of a trend. There's a lot of hope in general for the future of the series, even though this issue itself is only setting up that potential, rather than cashing in on any of it.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: July 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #21: What I like most about this issue is that Jack's past as a deadbeat, coked-out security guard looks appealing when compared to his present state as a homeless heroin junkie. By starting in the present and then moving backward, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso manage to make his former life seem like the good old days. As a character, Jack's a nice study in contrasts. He's enormous but insignificant, and has a sort of soft, naive simpleness about him, but also an aura of danger and rage. He's like a sleeping lion, except when he's like a pouncing lion. Jack's story is not especially interesting, which is too bad since he's such a strong lead. His problems are all too familiar, and his apathy toward them doesn't help. He's a fun, strange guy to watch, but the things he does and the people who populate his world don't do much to get my attention. The most captivating detail was that we never saw Graves on-panel, just heard Jack reference an old man who gave him a gun and bullets, then saw the attaché in flashback, but only after Jack had taken it and Graves had presumably departed. It's smart of Azzarello not to waste time having Graves actually explain himself again. The constant reintroductions begin to wear over time. Besides, at this point, with the larger story starting to poke through and a full twenty issues in, it seems reasonable to expect the audience to know who the "old man" is, and if they don't, well...that's just one more thing that makes Jack's nameless junkie friend such a good point-of-view character. He wants to know what happened to Jack, what he did with his gun and how he ended up where he is now, just as much as we do. The mysterious old man is what Jack uses to draw his friend in to the story initially, and it does the same for the reader, whether they know who Graves is or not. So there's some stuff that really clicks, and Jack is a great addition to the ever-expanding world of this series, but the narrative in which he stars is, thus far, nothing special.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #3: Somehow, M.D. Bright is back on pencils, even though Keith Giffen still gets credit for the breakdowns and Romeo Tanghal is still on inks. The creative team continues to grow, but instead of making Emerald Dawn choppy like you might expect, it gets stronger with every issue and maintains a steady narrative momentum. What puts this issue above the first two is that Hal Jordan finally became fully likable and even a tad heroic. After Legion—the giant metal space robot who hunts Green Lanterns—destroys the hospital where Hal's friend Andy was staying and also destroys all of Ferris Air, Hal realizes how in over his head he is, and seeks some help/knowledge, at the source of his power. This leads him to find his power battery, which in turn helps him discover that his ring can talk to and educate him. He sees, via a transmission from his ring's memory banks, Abin Sur's death at Legion's hands, right before Legion shows up to try and kill Hal. There's a chase throughout Abin's crashed ship, because the Green Lantern powers don't work against the color yellow, so Hal can't fight Legion directly. Eventually, his ring leads him to the engines when he wishes half-jokingly for a nuclear option, and when Legion catches up, Hal sets off the nuke, the issue closing on a full-page splash of a mushroom cloud. Colorist Anthony Tollin does an especially nice job on that last page, the cloud done in soft pink hues that aren't nearly as predominant in the rest of the issue. It adds to the suddenness of Hal's decision and the shock of how effective it is. It's also a wonderful halfway mark for the series, the hero and villain trapped together in an enormous explosion after the villain has already caused massive destruction, motivating the hero to more fully step into his role. The conflict between them escalated quite a bit in this issue, but there was still room for Hal to grow as a character and superhero. It's possible Emerald Dawn has fully found its footing now, and certainly this chapter was an excellent action-packed comicbook adventure.
X-Force (vol. 1) #21: Greg Capullo continues to do a great job drawing a whole bunch of characters in panels of various sizes, each of them doing all sorts of jumping and running and fighting and other physical activities. He's in his sweet spot in this issue, with the hulking War Machine and Nick Fury fighting almost the entire X-Force team on a space station. Wide open spaces, cool backgrounds, things to blow up, lots of large-bodied combatants—it's Capullo's bread and butter, so his quality work comes as no surprise. To be fair, there's a sprinkling of scenes with no action, as Fabian Nicieza continues to build on and add new subplots, and Capullo does a good job with those, too. He and Nicieza both seem very comfortable in this issue, jumping from the main story of X-Force vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. to the various side stories intelligently, and getting the B- and C-plot portions knocked out quickly so the A-plot is never out of sight for long. Just like Emerald Dawn #3 above, X-Force #21 involves its stars getting better at their heroism, and then concludes in a devastating explosion. Cannonball and Sunspot learn how to make the most of Professor, the computer system Cable built to run Graymalkin (the space station on which the story takes place). Cannonball and Sunspot have Professor send the weapons and other important cargo from Graymalkin back to their base of operations on Earth, planning for their future rather than rashly reacting to their present like they usually do (and do at the beginning of this issue, even as Cannonball verbally acknowledges that, "X-Force only seems to know ONE WAY ta do things!") It's nice to see Cannonball being a good, thoughtful, strategic leader, rather than being leader just because he has the most forceful personality and Cable liked him best. Too bad for him, though, his growth may come too late, because Graymalkin can't handle all the destructive violence and ejecting of cargo for long, and Professor spazzes out and sounds an urgent alert before the whole place suddenly blows up. It's not quite as thrilling a blow-up as the one in Emerald Dawn, but it's a solid cliffhanger at the end of a tight, well-done, all-systems-go issue.
100 Bullets #21: What I like most about this issue is that Jack's past as a deadbeat, coked-out security guard looks appealing when compared to his present state as a homeless heroin junkie. By starting in the present and then moving backward, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso manage to make his former life seem like the good old days. As a character, Jack's a nice study in contrasts. He's enormous but insignificant, and has a sort of soft, naive simpleness about him, but also an aura of danger and rage. He's like a sleeping lion, except when he's like a pouncing lion. Jack's story is not especially interesting, which is too bad since he's such a strong lead. His problems are all too familiar, and his apathy toward them doesn't help. He's a fun, strange guy to watch, but the things he does and the people who populate his world don't do much to get my attention. The most captivating detail was that we never saw Graves on-panel, just heard Jack reference an old man who gave him a gun and bullets, then saw the attaché in flashback, but only after Jack had taken it and Graves had presumably departed. It's smart of Azzarello not to waste time having Graves actually explain himself again. The constant reintroductions begin to wear over time. Besides, at this point, with the larger story starting to poke through and a full twenty issues in, it seems reasonable to expect the audience to know who the "old man" is, and if they don't, well...that's just one more thing that makes Jack's nameless junkie friend such a good point-of-view character. He wants to know what happened to Jack, what he did with his gun and how he ended up where he is now, just as much as we do. The mysterious old man is what Jack uses to draw his friend in to the story initially, and it does the same for the reader, whether they know who Graves is or not. So there's some stuff that really clicks, and Jack is a great addition to the ever-expanding world of this series, but the narrative in which he stars is, thus far, nothing special.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #3: Somehow, M.D. Bright is back on pencils, even though Keith Giffen still gets credit for the breakdowns and Romeo Tanghal is still on inks. The creative team continues to grow, but instead of making Emerald Dawn choppy like you might expect, it gets stronger with every issue and maintains a steady narrative momentum. What puts this issue above the first two is that Hal Jordan finally became fully likable and even a tad heroic. After Legion—the giant metal space robot who hunts Green Lanterns—destroys the hospital where Hal's friend Andy was staying and also destroys all of Ferris Air, Hal realizes how in over his head he is, and seeks some help/knowledge, at the source of his power. This leads him to find his power battery, which in turn helps him discover that his ring can talk to and educate him. He sees, via a transmission from his ring's memory banks, Abin Sur's death at Legion's hands, right before Legion shows up to try and kill Hal. There's a chase throughout Abin's crashed ship, because the Green Lantern powers don't work against the color yellow, so Hal can't fight Legion directly. Eventually, his ring leads him to the engines when he wishes half-jokingly for a nuclear option, and when Legion catches up, Hal sets off the nuke, the issue closing on a full-page splash of a mushroom cloud. Colorist Anthony Tollin does an especially nice job on that last page, the cloud done in soft pink hues that aren't nearly as predominant in the rest of the issue. It adds to the suddenness of Hal's decision and the shock of how effective it is. It's also a wonderful halfway mark for the series, the hero and villain trapped together in an enormous explosion after the villain has already caused massive destruction, motivating the hero to more fully step into his role. The conflict between them escalated quite a bit in this issue, but there was still room for Hal to grow as a character and superhero. It's possible Emerald Dawn has fully found its footing now, and certainly this chapter was an excellent action-packed comicbook adventure.
X-Force (vol. 1) #21: Greg Capullo continues to do a great job drawing a whole bunch of characters in panels of various sizes, each of them doing all sorts of jumping and running and fighting and other physical activities. He's in his sweet spot in this issue, with the hulking War Machine and Nick Fury fighting almost the entire X-Force team on a space station. Wide open spaces, cool backgrounds, things to blow up, lots of large-bodied combatants—it's Capullo's bread and butter, so his quality work comes as no surprise. To be fair, there's a sprinkling of scenes with no action, as Fabian Nicieza continues to build on and add new subplots, and Capullo does a good job with those, too. He and Nicieza both seem very comfortable in this issue, jumping from the main story of X-Force vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. to the various side stories intelligently, and getting the B- and C-plot portions knocked out quickly so the A-plot is never out of sight for long. Just like Emerald Dawn #3 above, X-Force #21 involves its stars getting better at their heroism, and then concludes in a devastating explosion. Cannonball and Sunspot learn how to make the most of Professor, the computer system Cable built to run Graymalkin (the space station on which the story takes place). Cannonball and Sunspot have Professor send the weapons and other important cargo from Graymalkin back to their base of operations on Earth, planning for their future rather than rashly reacting to their present like they usually do (and do at the beginning of this issue, even as Cannonball verbally acknowledges that, "X-Force only seems to know ONE WAY ta do things!") It's nice to see Cannonball being a good, thoughtful, strategic leader, rather than being leader just because he has the most forceful personality and Cable liked him best. Too bad for him, though, his growth may come too late, because Graymalkin can't handle all the destructive violence and ejecting of cargo for long, and Professor spazzes out and sounds an urgent alert before the whole place suddenly blows up. It's not quite as thrilling a blow-up as the one in Emerald Dawn, but it's a solid cliffhanger at the end of a tight, well-done, all-systems-go issue.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: June 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #20: After all the slow setup and constant misdirection up to now, 100 Bullets takes a minute to more openly and officially than ever declare that there is a larger narrative behind everything we're seeing. That had become fairly obvious, but it's nice to see this kind of acknowledgement and enhancement of it, even though there are probably more questions at the end of this issue than the beginning about what the hell is going on. Shepherd and a new character named Benito have a cryptic conversation about Agent Graves, beginning with the fact that he was supposed to be dead, moving onto speculation about his agenda, and ending on Shepherd steadfastly sticking to a wait-and-see strategy for now. Benito seems like he'd prefer to be more active about it, but he also is apparently there only as a representative of his father, whoever that may be (this is where the questions start to pile up). The details of Benito's life don't matter so much as the fact that he and Shepherd mention Chicago (where Dizzy's story took place back in the first arc), Cole Burns, Lono, and the Trust, all of which are things the audience has seen before. It's the biggest number of callbacks in the shortest space for this series so far by a long shot, which is what makes this issue such a clear announcement of the series' long-term plans. By which I guess i mean Brian Azzarello's long-term plans, since he is the architect behind this monstrous narrative. Eduardo Risso is the star of this issue, though, because he does such a great job balancing the Shepherd-Benito visuals with the activities in the rest of the park, especially local drug dealer Boppa and his friends as they get involved in a turf war with another group. Azzarello balances the two stories well himself, but Risso's work is more important and impressive in that regard. He brings the whole environment and everyone in it to life, and follows the movements of character major and minor with carefully so there is a cohesion to the timeline. He also does a lot of cutting away from Benito and Shepherd to show us something more exciting than two men sitting on a park bench barely looking at each other, because their dialogue takes up most of the issue, and needs to, but it's easy to follow without having to stare at them the whole time. So Risso uses that to his advantage and fills in their surroundings. It's maybe the fullest this book has ever felt, in the art and, now that things are coming together, the script as well.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #2: The creative team changes as Keith Giffen comes in for plotting and breakdowns, Gerard Jones handles the script, and Romeo Tanghal does the finished inks. It's a pretty seamless transition from the first issue, picking up exactly where the story left off last time, with Hal Jordan face down on the ground after flying through a billboard. After a freaky dream, he wakes up distraught but also excited about his new abilities, hoping they will be able to make up for his past mistakes. He pretty quickly comes to terms with the fact that the ring, while amazing, is not all-powerful, and so, in maybe his first moment of true likability, Hal turns himself in for driving drunk and causing an accident that severely injured his friends. He resolves to serve his time and only then figure out how the ring works, but on his first day in jail, a giant yellow space robot who seems a little unstable and is definitely extremely violent breaks through the wall. We see this villain earlier in the issue, hunting Abin Sur, the dead alien who gave the ring to Hal in the first place. Discovering Abin's corpse pisses off the space robot, and it is determined to kill the new Green Lantern ASAP, hence it breaking into the jail. As far as first supervillains go, I can't imagine very many things that sound more fun than a short-fused psychopathic space bot, so I'm definitely on board with that and eager to see how the fight unfolds next time (if there even is a fight, since Hal seems pretty much already beat when the issue closes). And I was glad to see Hal own up to his screw-ups, not matter how hard it was to do and how tempting it must have been to just fly away from his problems in a glorious green blur. It makes me root for him as a hero more than I was before, and so does the pure, indulgent evil of the bad guy, so all told I'm much more committed to Hal's corner than last month. The good guy is getting better, the stakes are getting higher, and the superpowers are really kicking in now, so it's safe to say I'm feeling pretty stoked for the rest of this series.
X-Force (vol. 1) #20: I've got to say, I found this issue a tad disappointing. On its own, it is a pretty solid, standard piece of '90s Marvel superhero radness. But after last month's declaration of independence from the titular team, it seemed a shame for their next adventure to be all about them fighting for control over Cable's old space fortress, Graymalkin. He's dead (or so they believe) and they've officially struck out on their own, yet they insist on continuing to live in his shadow anyway. At first, we see them building their own home, so things are still headed in the right direction, but what with Bridge, Gideon, Domino, and Grizzly all making comeback appearances, this felt like a weird kind of throwback issue. It was more Liefeldian than anything the Nicieza-Capullo team has produced thus far, I guess is what I'm driving at, and it was some HIGH quality Liefeldian material, much better than the man himself would produce, just still not quite what I was hoping for. Capullo does great crowded action sequences, though, and both he and Nicieza manage to do several very quick, tight scenes of catching up on side characters so that the main story could have lots of room to develop. Sadly, it does not resolve as of yet, ending with X-Force staring down a pissed off Iron Man (James Rhodes variety). It is a banging final panel, though, just a full-page landscape shot of the War Machine suit in full ready-to-kick-ass mode, so I admit, it got me excited for the fight coming next issue, even if it's likely going to be pretty much more of the same thing I saw this time out. That's basically fine by me, because even though it feels like there's some wasted potential for more interesting or original stories, Nicieza and Capullo doing a fun spandex action piece is a more entertaining and better looking than loads of stuff in that genre from any era. So bring it on for now, until it can blossom into something more complicated.
100 Bullets #20: After all the slow setup and constant misdirection up to now, 100 Bullets takes a minute to more openly and officially than ever declare that there is a larger narrative behind everything we're seeing. That had become fairly obvious, but it's nice to see this kind of acknowledgement and enhancement of it, even though there are probably more questions at the end of this issue than the beginning about what the hell is going on. Shepherd and a new character named Benito have a cryptic conversation about Agent Graves, beginning with the fact that he was supposed to be dead, moving onto speculation about his agenda, and ending on Shepherd steadfastly sticking to a wait-and-see strategy for now. Benito seems like he'd prefer to be more active about it, but he also is apparently there only as a representative of his father, whoever that may be (this is where the questions start to pile up). The details of Benito's life don't matter so much as the fact that he and Shepherd mention Chicago (where Dizzy's story took place back in the first arc), Cole Burns, Lono, and the Trust, all of which are things the audience has seen before. It's the biggest number of callbacks in the shortest space for this series so far by a long shot, which is what makes this issue such a clear announcement of the series' long-term plans. By which I guess i mean Brian Azzarello's long-term plans, since he is the architect behind this monstrous narrative. Eduardo Risso is the star of this issue, though, because he does such a great job balancing the Shepherd-Benito visuals with the activities in the rest of the park, especially local drug dealer Boppa and his friends as they get involved in a turf war with another group. Azzarello balances the two stories well himself, but Risso's work is more important and impressive in that regard. He brings the whole environment and everyone in it to life, and follows the movements of character major and minor with carefully so there is a cohesion to the timeline. He also does a lot of cutting away from Benito and Shepherd to show us something more exciting than two men sitting on a park bench barely looking at each other, because their dialogue takes up most of the issue, and needs to, but it's easy to follow without having to stare at them the whole time. So Risso uses that to his advantage and fills in their surroundings. It's maybe the fullest this book has ever felt, in the art and, now that things are coming together, the script as well.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #2: The creative team changes as Keith Giffen comes in for plotting and breakdowns, Gerard Jones handles the script, and Romeo Tanghal does the finished inks. It's a pretty seamless transition from the first issue, picking up exactly where the story left off last time, with Hal Jordan face down on the ground after flying through a billboard. After a freaky dream, he wakes up distraught but also excited about his new abilities, hoping they will be able to make up for his past mistakes. He pretty quickly comes to terms with the fact that the ring, while amazing, is not all-powerful, and so, in maybe his first moment of true likability, Hal turns himself in for driving drunk and causing an accident that severely injured his friends. He resolves to serve his time and only then figure out how the ring works, but on his first day in jail, a giant yellow space robot who seems a little unstable and is definitely extremely violent breaks through the wall. We see this villain earlier in the issue, hunting Abin Sur, the dead alien who gave the ring to Hal in the first place. Discovering Abin's corpse pisses off the space robot, and it is determined to kill the new Green Lantern ASAP, hence it breaking into the jail. As far as first supervillains go, I can't imagine very many things that sound more fun than a short-fused psychopathic space bot, so I'm definitely on board with that and eager to see how the fight unfolds next time (if there even is a fight, since Hal seems pretty much already beat when the issue closes). And I was glad to see Hal own up to his screw-ups, not matter how hard it was to do and how tempting it must have been to just fly away from his problems in a glorious green blur. It makes me root for him as a hero more than I was before, and so does the pure, indulgent evil of the bad guy, so all told I'm much more committed to Hal's corner than last month. The good guy is getting better, the stakes are getting higher, and the superpowers are really kicking in now, so it's safe to say I'm feeling pretty stoked for the rest of this series.
X-Force (vol. 1) #20: I've got to say, I found this issue a tad disappointing. On its own, it is a pretty solid, standard piece of '90s Marvel superhero radness. But after last month's declaration of independence from the titular team, it seemed a shame for their next adventure to be all about them fighting for control over Cable's old space fortress, Graymalkin. He's dead (or so they believe) and they've officially struck out on their own, yet they insist on continuing to live in his shadow anyway. At first, we see them building their own home, so things are still headed in the right direction, but what with Bridge, Gideon, Domino, and Grizzly all making comeback appearances, this felt like a weird kind of throwback issue. It was more Liefeldian than anything the Nicieza-Capullo team has produced thus far, I guess is what I'm driving at, and it was some HIGH quality Liefeldian material, much better than the man himself would produce, just still not quite what I was hoping for. Capullo does great crowded action sequences, though, and both he and Nicieza manage to do several very quick, tight scenes of catching up on side characters so that the main story could have lots of room to develop. Sadly, it does not resolve as of yet, ending with X-Force staring down a pissed off Iron Man (James Rhodes variety). It is a banging final panel, though, just a full-page landscape shot of the War Machine suit in full ready-to-kick-ass mode, so I admit, it got me excited for the fight coming next issue, even if it's likely going to be pretty much more of the same thing I saw this time out. That's basically fine by me, because even though it feels like there's some wasted potential for more interesting or original stories, Nicieza and Capullo doing a fun spandex action piece is a more entertaining and better looking than loads of stuff in that genre from any era. So bring it on for now, until it can blossom into something more complicated.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Monthly Dose: May 2014 (SUPER Belated)
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
I actually read these comics back in May like I was supposed to, but have not had the opportunity and/or energy to review them up until now. Luckily, they were all pretty good and memorable.
100 Bullets #19: After telling several disconnected stories with the only apparent throughline being Agent Graves, 100 Bullets begins here to hint more heavily than ever at a larger overarching narrative/plan. Lono catches up with the young couple who stole his money several issues back, who also happen to be Loop's cousin and his girlfriend. So Loop and Lono collide, which leads to Lono figuring out that Loop is Mr. Hughes' son, an apparently significant piece of information, at least as far as Lono is concerned. We know already that Hughes and Graves had some kind of history, so it's not a huge surprise that Lono would know Hughes, too, but seeing his reaction to the name is still a surprising and important moment in the issue. It quite possibly saves Loop's life, which also implies that we may see more of Loop in the future. Why include this epilogue-style chapter in Loop's story where he butts heads with a character we saw a while back unless both Loop and Lono will appear again? And more importantly than that, what if Graves' plan from the very beginning was to bring Loop and Lono together? It was Graves who arranged for Lono to get robbed by Loop's cousin, so it's more than likely that the Loop-Lono meeting was his goal, which broadens the scope of Graves' influence, intelligence, and ambition. Brian Azzarello has done a great job up to this point of telling self-contained tales, but after 18 issues of that, it's very nice to see something bigger begin to develop. Even if it is a slow build, at least it's getting there now. The only thing that bugs me about this issue is the skin-crawling heartlessness Lono displays while sexually abusing Loop's cousin's girlfriend (I can't recall the names of her or Loop's cousin right now and don't have the issue handy, sorry). Obviously the idea is to paint Lono as the downright bastard he is, and it works, but it's still a little hard to read. Eduardo Risso, at least, is incredibly tasteful about what he chooses to show us, and even Azzarello is good enough not to have the actual rape ever happen on-panel. All the same, Lono does and says some deeply despicable shit that turns my stomach whether I have to look directly at it or not. Beyond that discomfort, though, this is a solid issue, and an important brick in the foundation of what will eventually be the massive structure of 100 Bullets as a series.
I actually read these comics back in May like I was supposed to, but have not had the opportunity and/or energy to review them up until now. Luckily, they were all pretty good and memorable.
100 Bullets #19: After telling several disconnected stories with the only apparent throughline being Agent Graves, 100 Bullets begins here to hint more heavily than ever at a larger overarching narrative/plan. Lono catches up with the young couple who stole his money several issues back, who also happen to be Loop's cousin and his girlfriend. So Loop and Lono collide, which leads to Lono figuring out that Loop is Mr. Hughes' son, an apparently significant piece of information, at least as far as Lono is concerned. We know already that Hughes and Graves had some kind of history, so it's not a huge surprise that Lono would know Hughes, too, but seeing his reaction to the name is still a surprising and important moment in the issue. It quite possibly saves Loop's life, which also implies that we may see more of Loop in the future. Why include this epilogue-style chapter in Loop's story where he butts heads with a character we saw a while back unless both Loop and Lono will appear again? And more importantly than that, what if Graves' plan from the very beginning was to bring Loop and Lono together? It was Graves who arranged for Lono to get robbed by Loop's cousin, so it's more than likely that the Loop-Lono meeting was his goal, which broadens the scope of Graves' influence, intelligence, and ambition. Brian Azzarello has done a great job up to this point of telling self-contained tales, but after 18 issues of that, it's very nice to see something bigger begin to develop. Even if it is a slow build, at least it's getting there now. The only thing that bugs me about this issue is the skin-crawling heartlessness Lono displays while sexually abusing Loop's cousin's girlfriend (I can't recall the names of her or Loop's cousin right now and don't have the issue handy, sorry). Obviously the idea is to paint Lono as the downright bastard he is, and it works, but it's still a little hard to read. Eduardo Risso, at least, is incredibly tasteful about what he chooses to show us, and even Azzarello is good enough not to have the actual rape ever happen on-panel. All the same, Lono does and says some deeply despicable shit that turns my stomach whether I have to look directly at it or not. Beyond that discomfort, though, this is a solid issue, and an important brick in the foundation of what will eventually be the massive structure of 100 Bullets as a series.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #1: So what's the right way to credit Christopher Priest when discussing things he wrote back when he was still James Owsley? Like...Owsley is the name on the comic, but Priest is what he goes by now, so I'm not clear on what the protocol is. I guess I'll refer to him as Owsley since that's technically who he was when he wrote this. Agreed? As far as retelling an established origin story goes, Emerald Dawn is exemplary. There is absolutely no assumption on Owsley's part that the reader has any knowledge of Green Lantern/Hal Jordan coming in, so the story is told from the ground up. It begins with Hal watching his father die on a test flight, and ends with him in full Green Lantern gear but not committed to the role yet. In between, we get to see who Hal grew into in light of his dad's death, and truth be told, he's not all that likable a guy. He never does anything horrible or idiotic, but only because he doesn't really do anything of much note. He's sad about being a bad pilot, he's sad about Carol Ferris breaking up with him, and he's still apparently pretty torn up over his father's accident, too. He's mopey, childish, and depressed, which doesn't make him unsympathetic but also doesn't make him particularly endearing. He's no fun, and therefore no fun to follow as a reader, but the comic still keeps from ever being boring. A big part of that is M.D. Bright's artwork, which is so rich and realistic that the issue works quite well as a simple, straightforward human drama piece for the entire first two acts. It isn't until the very end that any superhero stuff goes down, and even that is just Hal being pulled to the crashed alien vessel and given his ring and power battery. There's no fighting, no villains, none of the typical trappings of a superhero story, but that's ok for this opening issue. Its goal is to build the cast first before bothering to throw a wrench in the works, and then when the time comes it's a pretty enormous wrench. Far from making Hal's life instantly better or even making him happier, becoming Green Lantern only worsens his situation. Carol gets pissed at him for disappearing and "stealing" the test plane he was in when he got forcefully transported to the site of the crashed spaceship, and he's saddled with a bunch of power he doesn't understand for reasons that were never explained to him. His powers are not viewed as a gift bestowed but a burden forced upon him, which makes sense considering his generally pessimistic outlook during the earlier parts of the issue. Hal may not have won me over yet, but he hasn't turned me off, either, and Owsley and Bright both do solid, well-structured work that makes Emerald Dawn #1 as a comic far more captivating than its main character. A very solid first beat that makes a lot of smart decisions from cover to cover.
X-Force (vol. 1) #19: Since the end of the Liefeld era, this comic has gotten extremely good at telling meta stories which act as both fictional narratives and real-world pronouncements of the series' intent. This issue is the most obvious and well-executed example of that so far, with the members of X-Force explicitly stating that they don't want to be like the traditional good guy mutants or obad guy mutants, but to carve their own path with their own sense of morality. Basically, it's Fabian Nicieza saying, "No more Liefeld plots, no more crossover bullshit, I am taking the wheel on this comicbook now," which is awesome. Since Greg Capullo came aboard as artist, he and Nicieza have made X-Force a title of progressively higher quality with each issue, even in the shadow of dangling Liefeld-spun threads and the "X-Cutioner's Song" event. Now that they've taken an issue to officially break away from all that and go somewhere brand new, there's a great sense of anything-can-happennes to this book that energizes it as a series and me as a reader. Also, the arguments made by Nicieza (through Cannonball) as to why this team should be allowed to journey off on their own are sound, reasonable, and delivered articulately. I was convinced, which makes it easier to believe it when Professor X also comes around. Yes, X-Force is a squad of relatively young, inexperienced mutants, but they've been through enough as a group now to make their own decisions and make their own way. They're bound to screw up sometimes, but so is everybody. Capullo also gives fresh costumes to everyone (through Boom-Boom), and with the possible exception of Feral, they are all major improvements. Gone are the bulky Liefeld clothes (Warpath even has a line about being able to move better without shoulder pads) and everything is made much more stylish and practical. Feral's costume I point out as the exception mostly just because it is so revealing that I question whether or not she even needs it. She's covered in fur, so clothing seems optional, and if she's going to wear something so barely there, what's the point? But Capullo doesn't overtly sexualize the character in her new duds. If anything, he underplays the sexiness in the one panel where we see the team in their new costumes, with Feral crouched down and off to the side, almost small enough compared to everyone else that you could miss her. So all told, X-Force is looking better than ever before, and all set to embark on a bold new independent direction, so the future's pretty bright for this title right now.
X-Force (vol. 1) #19: Since the end of the Liefeld era, this comic has gotten extremely good at telling meta stories which act as both fictional narratives and real-world pronouncements of the series' intent. This issue is the most obvious and well-executed example of that so far, with the members of X-Force explicitly stating that they don't want to be like the traditional good guy mutants or obad guy mutants, but to carve their own path with their own sense of morality. Basically, it's Fabian Nicieza saying, "No more Liefeld plots, no more crossover bullshit, I am taking the wheel on this comicbook now," which is awesome. Since Greg Capullo came aboard as artist, he and Nicieza have made X-Force a title of progressively higher quality with each issue, even in the shadow of dangling Liefeld-spun threads and the "X-Cutioner's Song" event. Now that they've taken an issue to officially break away from all that and go somewhere brand new, there's a great sense of anything-can-happennes to this book that energizes it as a series and me as a reader. Also, the arguments made by Nicieza (through Cannonball) as to why this team should be allowed to journey off on their own are sound, reasonable, and delivered articulately. I was convinced, which makes it easier to believe it when Professor X also comes around. Yes, X-Force is a squad of relatively young, inexperienced mutants, but they've been through enough as a group now to make their own decisions and make their own way. They're bound to screw up sometimes, but so is everybody. Capullo also gives fresh costumes to everyone (through Boom-Boom), and with the possible exception of Feral, they are all major improvements. Gone are the bulky Liefeld clothes (Warpath even has a line about being able to move better without shoulder pads) and everything is made much more stylish and practical. Feral's costume I point out as the exception mostly just because it is so revealing that I question whether or not she even needs it. She's covered in fur, so clothing seems optional, and if she's going to wear something so barely there, what's the point? But Capullo doesn't overtly sexualize the character in her new duds. If anything, he underplays the sexiness in the one panel where we see the team in their new costumes, with Feral crouched down and off to the side, almost small enough compared to everyone else that you could miss her. So all told, X-Force is looking better than ever before, and all set to embark on a bold new independent direction, so the future's pretty bright for this title right now.
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