Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #12: This issue is a tough one for me to summarize, as far as my feelings about it. I like a lot of what's there, but it also feels like there's too much padding in between all the good and important bits. Dizzy comes back, and that's awesome, because she's an incredible character whose initial arc was too short. But her entrance is drawn out, despite it being spoiled by Dave Johnson's great cover, and not really being nearly as dramatic as it's played. There are some other slow moments, long silences that get the job done in their first panels and then keep going anyway. And there's a lot of French dialogue, which is ok because the gist of what's being said always comes through clearly in Eduardo Risso's art, but I don't speak French so I lose the words. I do think it's cool of Brian Azzarello to use actual French instead of English bookended by < >, but it takes up a big enough percentage of this issue's dialogue to be kind of obnoxious for someone who can't understand it. And none of the French dialogue is connected to the good parts of the story anyway. The real purpose of this issue is to introduce Mr. Branch, the first character to ask out loud who the hell Agent Graves is and how he can do what he does. That's been the looming question, and it was high time the book addressed it directly. When Branch says it, there's a shift in the narrative wind. It's a clear beat of, "Now we're getting somewhere!" So I quite like that, in concept and execution both, but I'm less fond of the fluff the surrounds it. To end on a high note: Dizzy is about to walk out on Branch before he tells her that he didn't kill anyone with his attaché full of untraceable bullets, which stops her in her tracks. Earlier in the issue, we see her upset over the memory of her own killings. All of that is nice, subtle development of this book's best character, from Risso and Azzarello both. Risso makes her shame clear, and the fear that lies beneath it. Azzarello uses her conflicted feelings about everything to put a smart ending on a mediocre issue. He also makes Branch smart enough to pick up on her turmoil and use it to keep her from leaving, so he's a likable new character that I'm glad we get to see more of immediately.
The Intimates #12: It's over! After starting this Monthly Dose thing last November, I've finally reached the end of a series, as The Intimates #12 is the last issue ever. And it knows it, and it talks about it openly. There's some honest and amusing discussion of it in Joe Casey's info scrolls, of course. He talks briefly about how the idea was born, how he wanted a mini-series but they gave him an ongoing anyway, and the struggles a book like this naturally faces in a market most interested in long-established superhero characters doing big action stuff. The Intimates is a bunch of brand new superheroes-in-training participating in typical teenage shenanigans, and therefore wasn't an easy sell, understandably enough. So Casey touches on all of that with his usual snark, but he also has Punchy discover that his favorite spy comicbook is being canceled and react with passionate vehemence throughout the issue. That's a much funnier, more fitting, more visceral, and more relatable way to discuss the cancellation of The Intimates itself. Because where the info scrolls provide an insider's take on things, Punchy's rage and disappointment are the reader's own, assuming said reader is a fan of this comicbook. He's losing something he loves, and so are we the audience, but it's a bit easier to have him go through it with us. The rest of this issue is, sadly, a mess. The art is split between Alé Garza and Carlos D'anda, who seem to trade off on random pages, and whose styles are just shy of working together. They're both pretty loose with their lines, but their designs for the characters aren't quite the same. Destra's glasses change shape, as do Punchy's hair and Kefong's face. It's frustrating to watch, but I could see the argument that the book is losing its firmness as it races toward its ultimate end. In other words, the artistic inconsistencies add to the intentional urgency of the story, and that's fine, but not as good as if the artists had found a way to do the same thing with a more cohesive look. And the story is jumpy, or maybe twitchy. A character from a different Wildstorm book that Casey used to write shows up all of a sudden and becomes a major player here in the final chapter. And the whole Devonshire food mystery is left only half-solved, as the kids decide that rather than keep trying to deal with it, they'll just teleport themselves out of the school and...I don't know what. The ending is as open-ended as it gets, and on purpose, which is actually an aspect of the issue that works for me. Because the series was cut short, Casey decided to do something dramatic and final with his cast so The Intimates could stay forever its own thing, untouched by outside hands. So the characters activate the teleportation device, and either get away or incinerate themselves, but in either case we don't get any confirmation. We just see them disappear, and then the final page is straight out of one of Punchy's now-also-canceled Boss Tempo comics. That's a cool way to wrap things up, so as a farewell to the title I've always immensely enjoyed The Intimates #12, but taken as a single issue, it is admittedly sloppy.
X-Force (vol.1) #12: Mark Pacella is back on art, stilling doing a bit of a Liefeld mime, but this issue, everyone's even bigger than usual. Their proportions are the same as always, but Pacella uses an abnormal number of one-to-three-panel pages here so that he can draw everybody even larger. It makes the pacing very weird. For example, Grizzly is introduced in two full-page splashes, one that shows the rest of the Weapon Prime team talking to him in a weirdly-laid-out group shot, and then the official reveal of his identity is just an enormous image of his face, packed so tightly within the frame of the page that you can hardly see any of his hair. Grizzly's whole thing is that he's a HUGE muscular dude, so if you want to devote an entire page to him, you damn well ought to show his body, at least from the waist up. The preceding page even mentions how big he is, only to be disappointingly followed his face alone. This is not the only instance of these large panels being mismanged by Pacella. Leapfrogging from one "big" moment to another makes them all feel less effective, and makes the whole issue seem like a lot of bluster that leads nowhere. Because once again, all we really see here are forces amassing against Cable but not yet attacking him. Meanwhile, Cable and his team chatter amongst themselves about how to deal with Domino's recent betrayal before he makes an executive decision about leaving their current HQ without consulting or even warning anybody. Two things about this: 1. When did everyone find out Domino was a traitor? I think we skipped a beat between the audience learning it and the cast doing the same. 2. Cable does this kind of sudden, bossy, aggressive decision-making a lot, and almost never wants to hear anyone complain about or question it. Which, like...doesn't that make him a shitty leader? I'm not on his side, and all the people who hate him are jerks, too, so basically I'm left rooting for the rest of X-Force to break out from Cable's control. That'd be kind of a cool idea if it was the intention, but Cable seems to be presented in this book as an awesome badass meant to inspire awe with his gruff confidence. Instead he's a stubborn, thick, annoying, overbearing punk who doesn't seem at all the right guy to be telling a bunch of impressionable young superhumans how to live.
Showing posts with label The Intimates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Intimates. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
Monthly Dose: September 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #11: A trite story with a predictable ending, this is an issue that I never remember when I think about 100 Bullets, but anytime I start rereading it, I know everything that happens after I finish the first two or three pages. Graves gives his classic attaché full of evidence and bullets to a woman whose husband sexually abused their daughter, causing the young girl to run away from home and end up a prostitute and drug addict who ultimately overdosed. It's the world's dullest Law and Order: SVU plot, with way too much of the issue being Graves relating the daughter's (Tina) tragic story to her mother (Lily) at a diner while eating a piece of pie. He lays out the details coldly and plainly, so there's no real voice to the story, just the facts. He does leave the reveal that Lily's husband is at fault until the very end of the conversation, but it's not a surprise by any means. We've already seen how distant from one another Lily and her husband are, and since he's one of three other characters we even meet in this issue (the other two of whom are Lily's co-workers) he's kind of the only viable option. She goes home and kills him, which he deserves I guess, but there's no sense of relief or satisfaction for me when it happens. It's more of a "Yup...that's what I figured," reaction. This issue is just Brian Azzarello biding his time, really. After setting up Cole Burns and the whole idea of the Minute Men, the series goes back to its format of Graves and the briefcase interacting with different, disconnected people. I'm not sure it needed to do that, and it definitely didn't have any specific reason to tell this particular story full of overused details and bland characters. Eduardo Risso has some good bits, like Tina's bedroom being preserved as an everything-in-its-place shrine to her childhood, or young fry cook Tomas having an intense and intimate conversation with his pregnant girlfriend in the background of the Graves-Lily conversation. But Risso also doesn't have a whole lot to do here, since it's all just chatter in one of two sparse locations from cover to cover. I want to see the larger narrative advance now that it's been introduced, and if that's not going to happen, I want to read something that is at least fresh or has a few good twists or in any way gets me going.
The Intimates #11: I'm not wild about the ways in which this issue mirrors the debut, because it's not the right place to do that. I know Joe Casey may not have known for sure that this issue would be the second-to-last in the series when he wrote it (although there's some stuff in the info scrolls that indicates otherwise) but either way, that ended up being the case, and having the book do a second take of its first issue so close to the end of its life is awkward. Also, the script drags its feet in some scenes, advancing the plot of Punchy and Destra looking into the Devonshire Company only incrementally even though that storyline is theoretically the focus of the issue. The narrative is jumpy, and though in the past this has helped keep the energy up, here it comes across as more of a stalling tactic. The trick of shifting the time and/or place of the action from panel to panel is used to distract from the lack of proper storytelling. Or that's the closest thing to a real purpose I can find for structuring things this way. What happens is good, and builds on things from past issues: Punchy's friendliness with the janitors, his map of the school, the room with no doors, etc. Just seems like more could've gone down on the pages that were used for throwaway character introductions of new teachers that will never matter or even be seen again. I guess the idea is sort of...every year after summer vacation is over, you have to go back to school, and it's different in small ways but the same in every way that matters. You can see that point being made if you hold this issue up next to The Intimates #1, and it's true and a theme that fits with what this series has always been about, but it doesn't make for the best single issue. Alé Garza comes aboard as artist here, and though he brings with him clarity that Scott Iwahashi never had, he's still got a fairly loose style that I don't love for this book. It makes everyone seem wilder, kids and adults alike, like they're caricatures of themselves. The varying thickness of Garza's lines have the same effect. So it's a bit of a muddled comic all over, not what you want to see this late in the game.
X-Force (vol. 1) #11: Mark Pacella is the guest artist, and I'm not sure if I've seen his work before, but this issue he seems to be aiming for as Liefeld a look as he can. It makes sense, because at the time this title was probably sold mostly on the basis of Liefeld, but since I'm not a big admirer of Liefeld's work and this is a less-confident version of it, I didn't love the art here. Bridge's body is ten times too large for his head, Warpath's face is all flat and featureless, and there are other physical malformations that just look uncomfortable. Then again, there were a couple pretty spectacular images, most of all the two-page vertical spread of Weapon P.R.I.M.E. So just like Liefeld will once in a while find something to draw that plays to his strengths, Pacella's got a few choice spots as well. And all the fighting Deadpool does (which is most of the issue) works for me. It's never over-the-top or impossible to believe, though it did bother me a lot when Deadpool said he'd decided to kill Shatterstar and then changed his mind like a page or two later for no discernible reason. Why have him make the death threat at all? Just give him any other line there. Per usual, Liefeld gets plot credit with Fabian Nicieza scripting the actual dialogue, and per usual that means this is a slow-moving slog that has a bunch of forced quips and shitty banter during any fight scenes. The development of Domino as a double agent is something I am eager to see paid off, and it does seem like the whole Brotherhood/Morlocks problem has been fully laid to rest now, so maybe the point of this issue was to get everything in place so the next chapter can move more quickly. But other than the opening scene of X-Force telling off the Morlocks (by which I mean Cable screams some threats and also recaps the last few issues while the rest of the team stand stoically behind him) this issue was made up of Deadpool punching Shatterstar and "Domino" for pages and pages before very rushed reveals of Weapon P.R.I.M.E. and the real Domino as a mysterious villain's prisoner. So the title does appear to be getting somewhere, it just doesn't take the time to arrive there yet, choosing instead to pad out the issue with extended action sequences.
100 Bullets #11: A trite story with a predictable ending, this is an issue that I never remember when I think about 100 Bullets, but anytime I start rereading it, I know everything that happens after I finish the first two or three pages. Graves gives his classic attaché full of evidence and bullets to a woman whose husband sexually abused their daughter, causing the young girl to run away from home and end up a prostitute and drug addict who ultimately overdosed. It's the world's dullest Law and Order: SVU plot, with way too much of the issue being Graves relating the daughter's (Tina) tragic story to her mother (Lily) at a diner while eating a piece of pie. He lays out the details coldly and plainly, so there's no real voice to the story, just the facts. He does leave the reveal that Lily's husband is at fault until the very end of the conversation, but it's not a surprise by any means. We've already seen how distant from one another Lily and her husband are, and since he's one of three other characters we even meet in this issue (the other two of whom are Lily's co-workers) he's kind of the only viable option. She goes home and kills him, which he deserves I guess, but there's no sense of relief or satisfaction for me when it happens. It's more of a "Yup...that's what I figured," reaction. This issue is just Brian Azzarello biding his time, really. After setting up Cole Burns and the whole idea of the Minute Men, the series goes back to its format of Graves and the briefcase interacting with different, disconnected people. I'm not sure it needed to do that, and it definitely didn't have any specific reason to tell this particular story full of overused details and bland characters. Eduardo Risso has some good bits, like Tina's bedroom being preserved as an everything-in-its-place shrine to her childhood, or young fry cook Tomas having an intense and intimate conversation with his pregnant girlfriend in the background of the Graves-Lily conversation. But Risso also doesn't have a whole lot to do here, since it's all just chatter in one of two sparse locations from cover to cover. I want to see the larger narrative advance now that it's been introduced, and if that's not going to happen, I want to read something that is at least fresh or has a few good twists or in any way gets me going.
The Intimates #11: I'm not wild about the ways in which this issue mirrors the debut, because it's not the right place to do that. I know Joe Casey may not have known for sure that this issue would be the second-to-last in the series when he wrote it (although there's some stuff in the info scrolls that indicates otherwise) but either way, that ended up being the case, and having the book do a second take of its first issue so close to the end of its life is awkward. Also, the script drags its feet in some scenes, advancing the plot of Punchy and Destra looking into the Devonshire Company only incrementally even though that storyline is theoretically the focus of the issue. The narrative is jumpy, and though in the past this has helped keep the energy up, here it comes across as more of a stalling tactic. The trick of shifting the time and/or place of the action from panel to panel is used to distract from the lack of proper storytelling. Or that's the closest thing to a real purpose I can find for structuring things this way. What happens is good, and builds on things from past issues: Punchy's friendliness with the janitors, his map of the school, the room with no doors, etc. Just seems like more could've gone down on the pages that were used for throwaway character introductions of new teachers that will never matter or even be seen again. I guess the idea is sort of...every year after summer vacation is over, you have to go back to school, and it's different in small ways but the same in every way that matters. You can see that point being made if you hold this issue up next to The Intimates #1, and it's true and a theme that fits with what this series has always been about, but it doesn't make for the best single issue. Alé Garza comes aboard as artist here, and though he brings with him clarity that Scott Iwahashi never had, he's still got a fairly loose style that I don't love for this book. It makes everyone seem wilder, kids and adults alike, like they're caricatures of themselves. The varying thickness of Garza's lines have the same effect. So it's a bit of a muddled comic all over, not what you want to see this late in the game.
X-Force (vol. 1) #11: Mark Pacella is the guest artist, and I'm not sure if I've seen his work before, but this issue he seems to be aiming for as Liefeld a look as he can. It makes sense, because at the time this title was probably sold mostly on the basis of Liefeld, but since I'm not a big admirer of Liefeld's work and this is a less-confident version of it, I didn't love the art here. Bridge's body is ten times too large for his head, Warpath's face is all flat and featureless, and there are other physical malformations that just look uncomfortable. Then again, there were a couple pretty spectacular images, most of all the two-page vertical spread of Weapon P.R.I.M.E. So just like Liefeld will once in a while find something to draw that plays to his strengths, Pacella's got a few choice spots as well. And all the fighting Deadpool does (which is most of the issue) works for me. It's never over-the-top or impossible to believe, though it did bother me a lot when Deadpool said he'd decided to kill Shatterstar and then changed his mind like a page or two later for no discernible reason. Why have him make the death threat at all? Just give him any other line there. Per usual, Liefeld gets plot credit with Fabian Nicieza scripting the actual dialogue, and per usual that means this is a slow-moving slog that has a bunch of forced quips and shitty banter during any fight scenes. The development of Domino as a double agent is something I am eager to see paid off, and it does seem like the whole Brotherhood/Morlocks problem has been fully laid to rest now, so maybe the point of this issue was to get everything in place so the next chapter can move more quickly. But other than the opening scene of X-Force telling off the Morlocks (by which I mean Cable screams some threats and also recaps the last few issues while the rest of the team stand stoically behind him) this issue was made up of Deadpool punching Shatterstar and "Domino" for pages and pages before very rushed reveals of Weapon P.R.I.M.E. and the real Domino as a mysterious villain's prisoner. So the title does appear to be getting somewhere, it just doesn't take the time to arrive there yet, choosing instead to pad out the issue with extended action sequences.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Monthly Dose: August 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #10: Eduardo Risso demolishes the opening page. It's just three panels, starting very close on Cole Burn's face and then pulling out to reveal the rest of him, but there's a ton of detailed and evocative work within them. At the end of last issue, Cole was surrounded by men sticking guns in his face. When the story picks up here, all those men are dead by his hand, and he's not entirely sure how he was able to kill them. The intensity of his expression, a mix of fear and rage and relief, is heavy in all three panels. Even though it's not yet clear what is going on, Cole's distraught state of mind is immediately obvious. From that excellent opening, Risso and Brian Azzarello do a great job of slowly but steadily changing Cole's personality as his memories of the man he used to be return. He becomes more comfortable and calm, replacing his shock with amusement and, eventually, smugness. The entire issue is about the fake Cole slipping away while the real Cole resurfaces, so it's not especially full of action or thrills. But moments like the silent two-page flashback or Cole blowing up his ice cream truck are excitement enough, and the dialogue between Cole, Shepherd, and Graves is superbly fascinating. Azzarello is able to explain an awful lot of what's going on without revealing his entire plan yet, which has not always been the case in this book. Often, things feel too vague, but here they are just specific enough to be informative without spoiling anything important. My favorite character is introduced in full, the important concept of the Minutemen having their buried memories brought back by a special code word is established, and both Risso and Azzarello operate at their best. This is a fabulous issue, quiet in tone but meaty on every page and full of significant set-up for the series' future.
The Intimates #10: I'm torn by this issue. On the one hand, the story reaches a narrative peak and a few of the young superheroes we've been following all this time finally get to prove their mettle, which is great. On the other hand, the scene where that happens is drawn so poorly as to make it partially inscrutable. Third hand: best info scrolls in the entire series. They're a bit too self-referential here and there, and maybe somewhat obvious in their content, but I adore them anyway. Since this is the last issue of the summer vacation period of the series, Joe Casey uses the info scrolls to reflect on how summer vacations used to feel as a kid, and how that changes over time and has no real equivalent as an adult. He gets it just right, making me powerfully nostalgic. And he has a respect and admiration for childhood attitudes, pairing perfectly with the growing-up-too-fast action they accompany in the main story. Scott Iwahashi returns as the penciler of the A-plot, about Punchy and Destra breaking into a Devonshire Foods facility to figure out what is wrong with the food they're served at school. There they run into Sparky, now apparently working for the man, seeing as he attacks them so recklessly it gets him killed. It also destroys the building he was supposed to protect, but I'm not sure exactly how that happens. The fight scene between Sparky, Punchy, and Destra is something I have studied several time, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out what the hell happens. They definitely fight. Sparky gets knocked into something, I think, presumably some piece of machinery, but it's extremely unclear. Then he overloads and, I think, blows up. Or maybe whatever he was knocked into blows up because of his powers? There's an explosion. To be fair, the parts I am talking about only account for three pages of material, and everything else Iwahashi does is serviceable but...it's rough. Blurry and sparse and just weird to look at. Luckily, Carlos D'anda is also on hand to draw one scene of Empty Vee and two of Duke. His work is more sure of itself, and he does a good job of making the Vee pages look different than the Duke pages. Vee is having fun, Duke is miserable, and that difference is reflected in all the details that surround them. Also, the Duke scenes have no info scroll, a rarity for this title, but done well here. Duke's scenes are the most emotionally fraught, grown-up material, so they get to stand on their own. It's a mixed bag of an issue, with some of the best and worst material this title has to offer.
X-Force (vol. 1) #10: In the aftermath of the big, bad fight that took up the last few issues, Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza take time this month to actually develop some plot. Cable gives Cannonball the full explanation as to how he could come back from death—he's a High-Lord, also known as an External, a special kind of immortal mutant that Cable knows all about. Elsewhere, we meet the other Externals, one of whom is apparently Gideon, and they lay out their plans to recruit Cannonball for their little immortal gang. And in the most action-packed sections of the issue, Weapon X goes toe-to-toe with Stryfe who, as we learned not long ago and Weapon X is seeing for the first time here, is actually Cable. Exactly how it's possible that Cable could be his own nemesis is left mysterious for now, with Stryfe offering only the most obnoxiously cryptic clues. There are a lot of moving pieces, but Nicieza does a good job of keeping all the new information clear, at times even bordering on being overly expository. Liefeld, too, balances things well, giving the appropriate number of pages to each of the story threads. Cannonball gets to discuss his understandably conflicted feelings about his newly discovered immortality at length, the Externals have more than enough room to bicker and scheme, and Weapon X has time to fight off all of Stryfe's lackeys before the two men battle one another directly. There are a few weird moments, like a full-page splash of Cable looking uncomfortably muscular while he makes a not-very-exciting speech about how nobody should mess with his team. And man...X-Force is a pretty callous group when it comes to their dead enemies (Sauron and Phantazia died last issue, I guess, though I don't remember that being obvious at the time). Despite these bumps in the road, this is a smoother issue than usual, able to get a lot done and seed several things for the book's future. I find myself eager for next month's issue for the first time in a decent while, not edge-of-my-seat anxious or anything, but at least looking forward to it.
100 Bullets #10: Eduardo Risso demolishes the opening page. It's just three panels, starting very close on Cole Burn's face and then pulling out to reveal the rest of him, but there's a ton of detailed and evocative work within them. At the end of last issue, Cole was surrounded by men sticking guns in his face. When the story picks up here, all those men are dead by his hand, and he's not entirely sure how he was able to kill them. The intensity of his expression, a mix of fear and rage and relief, is heavy in all three panels. Even though it's not yet clear what is going on, Cole's distraught state of mind is immediately obvious. From that excellent opening, Risso and Brian Azzarello do a great job of slowly but steadily changing Cole's personality as his memories of the man he used to be return. He becomes more comfortable and calm, replacing his shock with amusement and, eventually, smugness. The entire issue is about the fake Cole slipping away while the real Cole resurfaces, so it's not especially full of action or thrills. But moments like the silent two-page flashback or Cole blowing up his ice cream truck are excitement enough, and the dialogue between Cole, Shepherd, and Graves is superbly fascinating. Azzarello is able to explain an awful lot of what's going on without revealing his entire plan yet, which has not always been the case in this book. Often, things feel too vague, but here they are just specific enough to be informative without spoiling anything important. My favorite character is introduced in full, the important concept of the Minutemen having their buried memories brought back by a special code word is established, and both Risso and Azzarello operate at their best. This is a fabulous issue, quiet in tone but meaty on every page and full of significant set-up for the series' future.
The Intimates #10: I'm torn by this issue. On the one hand, the story reaches a narrative peak and a few of the young superheroes we've been following all this time finally get to prove their mettle, which is great. On the other hand, the scene where that happens is drawn so poorly as to make it partially inscrutable. Third hand: best info scrolls in the entire series. They're a bit too self-referential here and there, and maybe somewhat obvious in their content, but I adore them anyway. Since this is the last issue of the summer vacation period of the series, Joe Casey uses the info scrolls to reflect on how summer vacations used to feel as a kid, and how that changes over time and has no real equivalent as an adult. He gets it just right, making me powerfully nostalgic. And he has a respect and admiration for childhood attitudes, pairing perfectly with the growing-up-too-fast action they accompany in the main story. Scott Iwahashi returns as the penciler of the A-plot, about Punchy and Destra breaking into a Devonshire Foods facility to figure out what is wrong with the food they're served at school. There they run into Sparky, now apparently working for the man, seeing as he attacks them so recklessly it gets him killed. It also destroys the building he was supposed to protect, but I'm not sure exactly how that happens. The fight scene between Sparky, Punchy, and Destra is something I have studied several time, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out what the hell happens. They definitely fight. Sparky gets knocked into something, I think, presumably some piece of machinery, but it's extremely unclear. Then he overloads and, I think, blows up. Or maybe whatever he was knocked into blows up because of his powers? There's an explosion. To be fair, the parts I am talking about only account for three pages of material, and everything else Iwahashi does is serviceable but...it's rough. Blurry and sparse and just weird to look at. Luckily, Carlos D'anda is also on hand to draw one scene of Empty Vee and two of Duke. His work is more sure of itself, and he does a good job of making the Vee pages look different than the Duke pages. Vee is having fun, Duke is miserable, and that difference is reflected in all the details that surround them. Also, the Duke scenes have no info scroll, a rarity for this title, but done well here. Duke's scenes are the most emotionally fraught, grown-up material, so they get to stand on their own. It's a mixed bag of an issue, with some of the best and worst material this title has to offer.
X-Force (vol. 1) #10: In the aftermath of the big, bad fight that took up the last few issues, Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza take time this month to actually develop some plot. Cable gives Cannonball the full explanation as to how he could come back from death—he's a High-Lord, also known as an External, a special kind of immortal mutant that Cable knows all about. Elsewhere, we meet the other Externals, one of whom is apparently Gideon, and they lay out their plans to recruit Cannonball for their little immortal gang. And in the most action-packed sections of the issue, Weapon X goes toe-to-toe with Stryfe who, as we learned not long ago and Weapon X is seeing for the first time here, is actually Cable. Exactly how it's possible that Cable could be his own nemesis is left mysterious for now, with Stryfe offering only the most obnoxiously cryptic clues. There are a lot of moving pieces, but Nicieza does a good job of keeping all the new information clear, at times even bordering on being overly expository. Liefeld, too, balances things well, giving the appropriate number of pages to each of the story threads. Cannonball gets to discuss his understandably conflicted feelings about his newly discovered immortality at length, the Externals have more than enough room to bicker and scheme, and Weapon X has time to fight off all of Stryfe's lackeys before the two men battle one another directly. There are a few weird moments, like a full-page splash of Cable looking uncomfortably muscular while he makes a not-very-exciting speech about how nobody should mess with his team. And man...X-Force is a pretty callous group when it comes to their dead enemies (Sauron and Phantazia died last issue, I guess, though I don't remember that being obvious at the time). Despite these bumps in the road, this is a smoother issue than usual, able to get a lot done and seed several things for the book's future. I find myself eager for next month's issue for the first time in a decent while, not edge-of-my-seat anxious or anything, but at least looking forward to it.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Monthly Dose: July 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #9: Cole Burns may be my favorite character in all of 100 Bullets, so whenever I revisit the series I look forward to this storyline introducing him. Sadly, this first issue in the arc is sort of a dud. Brian Azzarello's script plods along, working its way through all the necessary narrative beats without doing much to liven them up. We get a glimpse of Cole's day-to-day life, and then Agent Graves arrives on the scene pretty immediately to hand Cole the usual attaché case of untraceable bullets and evidence. This time, it's proof that Cole's current criminal boss, Goldy, was responsible for the nursing home fire that killed Cole's grandmother. That's a fairly strong motive, but not an all-together original story, especially when Goldy says he burned the place down because he owned it, and wanted to clear the property so he could build condos. That's just not a very exciting story, and neither is Cole's current business of selling stolen cigarettes. I'm not saying that arson is dull or shouldn't be taken seriously, but in terms of crime fiction, ill-gained condos and illicit tobacco is low-level stuff. And Cole, though he seems a decent and intelligent dude, doesn't make for a particularly compelling protagonist as of yet. He's a bit too passive, and even though he's on literally every page, we don't gain much insight into how his mind works. Of course, then at the very end, when he hears the word "Croatoa," something goes off in Cole's brain that we don't yet understand, but looks fascinating. It is certainly the strongest panel from Eduardo Risso in this entire issue. Not that his art isn't good throughout, but it's definitely less stunning than it has been in the past. Like the script, the visuals seem satisfied to be straightforward, and Risso skips the kind of background details that usually make his work so rich. Most of the pages have just what they need to have in order to understand the story, and while that is more than many artists provide, it's far less than I've come to expect from this book by now. In general, this issue seems fluffier than usual, but it's just the first part of a new storyline, and it ends on a strong enough cliffhanger (three guns in Cole's face) that I'm still eager to see the next chapter, even if this one didn't grab me.
The Intimates #9: So issue #8 was Giuseppe Camuncoli's last, and this issue is drawn instead by Scott Iwahashi. He's not a bad artist, but he's a much worse choice for this particular book. Iwahashi's style is more exaggerated than Camuncoli's, and it translates to the characters feeling like broader, sketchier versions of themselves. Because they're teenagers, removing some of their visual subtlety and complexity makes them far more obnoxious, Punchy in particular. I do think Joe Casey is partly to blame, because it felt like Punchy's dialogue was watered down to a degree as well, but the artwork really made him seem like a clown. So many panels had Punchy with his mouth agape, whether he was dumbfounded or yelling at Destra or whatever, and it made him look sort of stupid. Not that he's ever been a genius, but he used to have a sort of wry wisdom behind his immature swagger that is entirely absent here. But it's not as if Iwahashi did a terrible job, there just wasn't that same delicious blend of the big and small, the teenaged and the superhero, as Camuncoli always brought to the page. Honestly, though, the story of this issue was lacking, too. Destra and Punchy try to find out what, exactly, is wrong with the Devonshire food products served to them by the Seminary, so they go to Arthur, a friend of Destra's father who is obsessed with self-modification, to the point that he's as much machine as man now. He tries a bit of the food, and his stomach produces a printout of its chemical makeup, but the math is too complicated to be understood by anyone there. Meaning that, essentially, the entire mission is a bust, and Punchy and Destra decide their next move is to go straight to Devonshire for answers. So this becomes a filler issue, biding its time with a pointless adventure that gets no results and makes no real progress. Meanwhile, we check in on Vee and Duke for a few pages each, and they continue to do the same things we saw them do last issue with their summer breaks. Vee's story advances slightly when she sets her sights on a bigger rockstar than her current opening-act boyfriend, but that's only a marginal step forward. Oh, and there's a brief scene of Sykes being studied by scientists, which looks cool but provides very little information. The best part of this issue, narratively, is the story of Kefong's summer break in Las Vegas as told through the info scrolls. He accidentally has sex with a ghost, for crying out loud. It's funny and weird and perfect for the character. And I think it was a good call to tell it in the info scrolls, because it probably would have felt out-of-place if it actually happened in-panel. It's too bad that was my favorite part, though, because I would've preferred to enjoy the contents of the main story more than I did.
X-Force (vol. 1) #9: A fairly anti-climactic resolution to the threat introduced a few issues back. X-Force defeat the members of the Brotherhood and Morlocks who invaded their headquarters, and they do it with straight-up fighting, which has grown dull by now. We've seen these characters in combat with each other already, so to have the final beat of this arc just be more of the same isn't all that thrilling. There are no new layers added, nobody pulls out any new moves or anything. The only difference here is that the heroes win, and win too easily for my taste. Other than Cannonball being dead, none of the good guys are ever even at risk. There's no sense of stakes because X-Force always have the upper hand. The villains get in a few good hits, but they lose each battle and, therefore, the war. There's also a lack of logic in terms of how the events play out. Domino and Boom Boom handily defeat Thornn early in the issue, but then at the end she shows back up and rips up Cable's face. Ok, yeah, it allows Rob Liefeld to draw a pretty cool two-page splash revealing that half of Cable's face is robotic, but...how did Thornn get away, and what the hell were Domino and Boom Boom doing instead of, say, securing her? Similarly, we see Cable fighting Sauron, and then check in on other characters for a few pages, and when Sauron is seen again he is instead battling Feral. Where did she come from? That particular gap is easier to fill in, and I don't necessarily need to see everything that every character does, but it's still a little jarring as presented in this issue. The biggest dramatic flop, though, is Cannonball's return to life. Fabian Nicieza has Cable give a long speech to Cannonball's corpse about how, since he is supposed to be a High-Lord, his death shouldn't be permanent. Apparently High-Lords always die and then come back, or, as Cable puts it, "your life doesn't begin until it ends!" Fair enough, and not a bad concept, but to have Cable so plainly explain it at the top of the issue makes Sam coming back to life at the end fall flat. It's not a surprise, because it is exactly what Cable said should happen. It may shock the rest of X-Force, but for the reader, it could not be a more expected turn of events. This issue wasn't horrible, just lackluster, a dry and uninspired warp-up to what was clearly supposed to be a major conflict.
100 Bullets #9: Cole Burns may be my favorite character in all of 100 Bullets, so whenever I revisit the series I look forward to this storyline introducing him. Sadly, this first issue in the arc is sort of a dud. Brian Azzarello's script plods along, working its way through all the necessary narrative beats without doing much to liven them up. We get a glimpse of Cole's day-to-day life, and then Agent Graves arrives on the scene pretty immediately to hand Cole the usual attaché case of untraceable bullets and evidence. This time, it's proof that Cole's current criminal boss, Goldy, was responsible for the nursing home fire that killed Cole's grandmother. That's a fairly strong motive, but not an all-together original story, especially when Goldy says he burned the place down because he owned it, and wanted to clear the property so he could build condos. That's just not a very exciting story, and neither is Cole's current business of selling stolen cigarettes. I'm not saying that arson is dull or shouldn't be taken seriously, but in terms of crime fiction, ill-gained condos and illicit tobacco is low-level stuff. And Cole, though he seems a decent and intelligent dude, doesn't make for a particularly compelling protagonist as of yet. He's a bit too passive, and even though he's on literally every page, we don't gain much insight into how his mind works. Of course, then at the very end, when he hears the word "Croatoa," something goes off in Cole's brain that we don't yet understand, but looks fascinating. It is certainly the strongest panel from Eduardo Risso in this entire issue. Not that his art isn't good throughout, but it's definitely less stunning than it has been in the past. Like the script, the visuals seem satisfied to be straightforward, and Risso skips the kind of background details that usually make his work so rich. Most of the pages have just what they need to have in order to understand the story, and while that is more than many artists provide, it's far less than I've come to expect from this book by now. In general, this issue seems fluffier than usual, but it's just the first part of a new storyline, and it ends on a strong enough cliffhanger (three guns in Cole's face) that I'm still eager to see the next chapter, even if this one didn't grab me.
The Intimates #9: So issue #8 was Giuseppe Camuncoli's last, and this issue is drawn instead by Scott Iwahashi. He's not a bad artist, but he's a much worse choice for this particular book. Iwahashi's style is more exaggerated than Camuncoli's, and it translates to the characters feeling like broader, sketchier versions of themselves. Because they're teenagers, removing some of their visual subtlety and complexity makes them far more obnoxious, Punchy in particular. I do think Joe Casey is partly to blame, because it felt like Punchy's dialogue was watered down to a degree as well, but the artwork really made him seem like a clown. So many panels had Punchy with his mouth agape, whether he was dumbfounded or yelling at Destra or whatever, and it made him look sort of stupid. Not that he's ever been a genius, but he used to have a sort of wry wisdom behind his immature swagger that is entirely absent here. But it's not as if Iwahashi did a terrible job, there just wasn't that same delicious blend of the big and small, the teenaged and the superhero, as Camuncoli always brought to the page. Honestly, though, the story of this issue was lacking, too. Destra and Punchy try to find out what, exactly, is wrong with the Devonshire food products served to them by the Seminary, so they go to Arthur, a friend of Destra's father who is obsessed with self-modification, to the point that he's as much machine as man now. He tries a bit of the food, and his stomach produces a printout of its chemical makeup, but the math is too complicated to be understood by anyone there. Meaning that, essentially, the entire mission is a bust, and Punchy and Destra decide their next move is to go straight to Devonshire for answers. So this becomes a filler issue, biding its time with a pointless adventure that gets no results and makes no real progress. Meanwhile, we check in on Vee and Duke for a few pages each, and they continue to do the same things we saw them do last issue with their summer breaks. Vee's story advances slightly when she sets her sights on a bigger rockstar than her current opening-act boyfriend, but that's only a marginal step forward. Oh, and there's a brief scene of Sykes being studied by scientists, which looks cool but provides very little information. The best part of this issue, narratively, is the story of Kefong's summer break in Las Vegas as told through the info scrolls. He accidentally has sex with a ghost, for crying out loud. It's funny and weird and perfect for the character. And I think it was a good call to tell it in the info scrolls, because it probably would have felt out-of-place if it actually happened in-panel. It's too bad that was my favorite part, though, because I would've preferred to enjoy the contents of the main story more than I did.
X-Force (vol. 1) #9: A fairly anti-climactic resolution to the threat introduced a few issues back. X-Force defeat the members of the Brotherhood and Morlocks who invaded their headquarters, and they do it with straight-up fighting, which has grown dull by now. We've seen these characters in combat with each other already, so to have the final beat of this arc just be more of the same isn't all that thrilling. There are no new layers added, nobody pulls out any new moves or anything. The only difference here is that the heroes win, and win too easily for my taste. Other than Cannonball being dead, none of the good guys are ever even at risk. There's no sense of stakes because X-Force always have the upper hand. The villains get in a few good hits, but they lose each battle and, therefore, the war. There's also a lack of logic in terms of how the events play out. Domino and Boom Boom handily defeat Thornn early in the issue, but then at the end she shows back up and rips up Cable's face. Ok, yeah, it allows Rob Liefeld to draw a pretty cool two-page splash revealing that half of Cable's face is robotic, but...how did Thornn get away, and what the hell were Domino and Boom Boom doing instead of, say, securing her? Similarly, we see Cable fighting Sauron, and then check in on other characters for a few pages, and when Sauron is seen again he is instead battling Feral. Where did she come from? That particular gap is easier to fill in, and I don't necessarily need to see everything that every character does, but it's still a little jarring as presented in this issue. The biggest dramatic flop, though, is Cannonball's return to life. Fabian Nicieza has Cable give a long speech to Cannonball's corpse about how, since he is supposed to be a High-Lord, his death shouldn't be permanent. Apparently High-Lords always die and then come back, or, as Cable puts it, "your life doesn't begin until it ends!" Fair enough, and not a bad concept, but to have Cable so plainly explain it at the top of the issue makes Sam coming back to life at the end fall flat. It's not a surprise, because it is exactly what Cable said should happen. It may shock the rest of X-Force, but for the reader, it could not be a more expected turn of events. This issue wasn't horrible, just lackluster, a dry and uninspired warp-up to what was clearly supposed to be a major conflict.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Monthly Dose: June 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #8: This is the issue that really kicks off what will become the larger overarching narrative of this book, and as such it's a little difficult to analyze on its own. Not inherently, but simply because I have already read the entire series several times, so I have an understanding of Graves and Lono's conversation that's fuller than it would be if I was reading this cold. But I do think Brian Azzarello does a pretty good job of walking the line between the mysterious and the obvious in their dialogue anyway, so even taken on its own, this is a strong issue with a mighty sharp hook. Right away it demands attention with drug dealer Topper's strange, phonetically accurate dialogue contrasting heavily with Graves'. And that opening scene has some of the best art of the issue, too, particularly the panel where Topper's chair's floral pattern is done as empty space. I don't know how else to describe it: the fabric of the chair is deep black, but the pattern, rather than simply being drawn in white on top, is displayed by removing the black from the chair in the right places and shapes. It's small, but it catches the eye immediately and asks the reader to look at all of the panels this closely. And the whole scene is so shadowy, and the conversation between Topper and Graves is so cryptic, you're forced to pay focused attention anyway. Then, for just a moment, we get a break from that, as Graves sends a group of cops in to take Topper out, and Eduardo Risso draws a brutal two-page spread of the ensuing shootout. It's silent, but no less gripping for it, nor does it lose anything just because all of the characters involved are new and nameless (save Topper, who's just new). Risso knocks it out of the park, and it's a welcome burst of action between two tense conversations. Graves' subsequent meeting with Lono, as I said, is mostly set-up, introducing Lono and phrases like "The Trust" and "The Minutemen" and "Atlantic City" that will matter more down the line. The characters' dynamic is natural and fascinating, both of them constantly trying to prove to the other how much braver and smarter they are than one another. In the end, Graves wins on both counts, only to be instantly outdone by the up-to-now-unseen (this issue) Mr. Shepherd. Azzarello pulls off the final couple of twists quite skillfully, enticing the reader to come back for more. This whole issue, really, is an invitation to keep reading, a promise that there is a grand plan, that more is happening behind the curtain than we've been allowed to see so far. It ties in Dizzy and Lee from the first two stories, brings some new and fascinating faces into the fold, and references history and organizations it's hard to not be curious about. A definite step up from the last few issues and, in some ways, the true first issue of what will ultimately become this series' epic saga.
The Intimates #8: Every time I reread The Intimates, I eagerly look forward to this issue. I don't know if it's necessarily my favorite, but it's sure in the running, and it definitely features my favorite character, Flora. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the truncated lifespan of this series is that Flora only ever gets one issue, never able to realize her full potential. She could have been a great recurring character, as a romance for Punchy, a new student at the Seminary, or even as a villain down the line, since she's so angry and unstable. As is, her sex scene with Punchy is tasteful and weird and funny and honest, one of the highlights of the series' ongoing mash-up of superhero and teenage drama. And the whole idea of a summer break issue is perfect. Joe Casey manages to check in on pretty much everyone, and by using Destra as the cliffhanger he avoids needing to give her too much space. Vee and Duke get similarly efficient scenes, a few pages each, but in both cases it's just enough to fill us in and tie into Punchy's story, too, at least thematically. Vee is in the midst of celebrating her own sexual rebellion, just as Punchy embarks on his. And while Duke is living a real-life, action hero nightmare, Punchy hides in his basement reading comicbooks and engaging in unrealistic action her fantasies. The two of them probably think they want each other's lives. Only Duke is right about that. I can't really say much more about Giuseppe Camuncoli's art than I have when discussing the previous issues. The dude is perfect for this series, nailing the broadest comedy, most brutal pain, biggest action, and subtlest emotion in equal turn. The best panel is probably the close-up of Punchy's face when he's talking Flora out of further torturing the redneck boys. It's such an impeccable blend of admiration, love, amusement, and concern. And Flora's flowers are gorgeous in their simplicity. Plus I love the info scroll confirming that they are brand new species of plants. Best info scroll yet, I'd say. You could see it in the art, but it's a comicbook, right, so who knows? Maybe Camuncoli just doesn't use references when he draws flowers. But Casey follows up with a quick acknowledgement that, yes, these are intentionally unique flowers. Collaboration! Anyway, Jim Lee does the spy comics stuff well, too, more understated than his art tends to be (by a slim margin), not stealing focus but still being fun and bombastic. You can see why Punchy reads this stuff. So the art continues to be on point, with Camuncoli's immediate comfort in this world only growing all the more comfortable all the time. Casey's best moment, for me, is when the redneck guys, Jeb and Dew, reveal that they were going into the woods to make out. It feels inevitable when it happens, and maybe it is, maybe it's even predictable. But Casey still times it right, words it naturally enough and in such a straightforward manner that it still gets the laugh, even if you suspected it. Even when I know its coming. It makes them a little vulnerable, a bit sweeter and significantly more intimate with each other than they were before. I like the characters anyway, they are only slightly exaggerated versions of tons of guys I went to high school with in central Pennsylvania. So making them endearing at the end can always make me smile, and usually even laugh.
X-Force (vol. 1) #8: Mike Mignola draws all but the first and last pages of the issue, and though he doesn't blow me away here, the art is much crisper and clearer than anything Liefeld's done for this title so far. And the effect seems to be that Fabian Nicieza's writing improves as well. The jokes actually land, a complete story is told, we gain real insight into Cable and his relationship to the team...it's a level of narrative progress this series has regularly failed to reach up to now. Even though, yes, the events of this issue are all flashback, the details that they fill in actually contribute to the present-tense of the ongoing story and deepen the significance of Cannonball's death at the end of last issue. It turns out that Cannonball is the whole reason Cable formed X-Force in the first place, believing that the boy will someday grow up to become a "High-Lord." We don't yet know what the hell that means, but it apparently has to do with possessing immense power and, possibly, immortality, or at any rate extreme longevity. That's all information from the very end of the issue, though. The bulk of the story here is Cable's old team, the Wild Pack, infiltrating a Hydra base under the employ of A.I.M. to retrieve a specific piece of technology. It's heavy on action, which Mignola does well, capturing the scale and power of the fight in a few pages. And the look of the team is great; Mignola plays up Grizzly's massive size, Cable's hard edge, Domino's cockiness, etc. making every member of the Wild Pack stand out while still coming together as a cohesive and well-oiled unit. The best part of the issue, though, is the humor. Nicieza has taken some cracks at jokes in his dialogue before, but for whatever reason they never got much of a reaction out of me. This issue, it all works, and I even laughed out loud when Cable said, "What century aren't I from?" Maybe it's the clarity of Mignola's art that allows the humor to succeed here, maybe Nicieza was just particularly on point, maybe it's a combination of the two. Whatever the case, this is the most genuinely funny installment of X-Force yet, and one of the best-looking as well, so even though it's a breather, taking a detour from the main narrative to delve into Cabe's history, it may be the best issue so far.
100 Bullets #8: This is the issue that really kicks off what will become the larger overarching narrative of this book, and as such it's a little difficult to analyze on its own. Not inherently, but simply because I have already read the entire series several times, so I have an understanding of Graves and Lono's conversation that's fuller than it would be if I was reading this cold. But I do think Brian Azzarello does a pretty good job of walking the line between the mysterious and the obvious in their dialogue anyway, so even taken on its own, this is a strong issue with a mighty sharp hook. Right away it demands attention with drug dealer Topper's strange, phonetically accurate dialogue contrasting heavily with Graves'. And that opening scene has some of the best art of the issue, too, particularly the panel where Topper's chair's floral pattern is done as empty space. I don't know how else to describe it: the fabric of the chair is deep black, but the pattern, rather than simply being drawn in white on top, is displayed by removing the black from the chair in the right places and shapes. It's small, but it catches the eye immediately and asks the reader to look at all of the panels this closely. And the whole scene is so shadowy, and the conversation between Topper and Graves is so cryptic, you're forced to pay focused attention anyway. Then, for just a moment, we get a break from that, as Graves sends a group of cops in to take Topper out, and Eduardo Risso draws a brutal two-page spread of the ensuing shootout. It's silent, but no less gripping for it, nor does it lose anything just because all of the characters involved are new and nameless (save Topper, who's just new). Risso knocks it out of the park, and it's a welcome burst of action between two tense conversations. Graves' subsequent meeting with Lono, as I said, is mostly set-up, introducing Lono and phrases like "The Trust" and "The Minutemen" and "Atlantic City" that will matter more down the line. The characters' dynamic is natural and fascinating, both of them constantly trying to prove to the other how much braver and smarter they are than one another. In the end, Graves wins on both counts, only to be instantly outdone by the up-to-now-unseen (this issue) Mr. Shepherd. Azzarello pulls off the final couple of twists quite skillfully, enticing the reader to come back for more. This whole issue, really, is an invitation to keep reading, a promise that there is a grand plan, that more is happening behind the curtain than we've been allowed to see so far. It ties in Dizzy and Lee from the first two stories, brings some new and fascinating faces into the fold, and references history and organizations it's hard to not be curious about. A definite step up from the last few issues and, in some ways, the true first issue of what will ultimately become this series' epic saga.
The Intimates #8: Every time I reread The Intimates, I eagerly look forward to this issue. I don't know if it's necessarily my favorite, but it's sure in the running, and it definitely features my favorite character, Flora. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the truncated lifespan of this series is that Flora only ever gets one issue, never able to realize her full potential. She could have been a great recurring character, as a romance for Punchy, a new student at the Seminary, or even as a villain down the line, since she's so angry and unstable. As is, her sex scene with Punchy is tasteful and weird and funny and honest, one of the highlights of the series' ongoing mash-up of superhero and teenage drama. And the whole idea of a summer break issue is perfect. Joe Casey manages to check in on pretty much everyone, and by using Destra as the cliffhanger he avoids needing to give her too much space. Vee and Duke get similarly efficient scenes, a few pages each, but in both cases it's just enough to fill us in and tie into Punchy's story, too, at least thematically. Vee is in the midst of celebrating her own sexual rebellion, just as Punchy embarks on his. And while Duke is living a real-life, action hero nightmare, Punchy hides in his basement reading comicbooks and engaging in unrealistic action her fantasies. The two of them probably think they want each other's lives. Only Duke is right about that. I can't really say much more about Giuseppe Camuncoli's art than I have when discussing the previous issues. The dude is perfect for this series, nailing the broadest comedy, most brutal pain, biggest action, and subtlest emotion in equal turn. The best panel is probably the close-up of Punchy's face when he's talking Flora out of further torturing the redneck boys. It's such an impeccable blend of admiration, love, amusement, and concern. And Flora's flowers are gorgeous in their simplicity. Plus I love the info scroll confirming that they are brand new species of plants. Best info scroll yet, I'd say. You could see it in the art, but it's a comicbook, right, so who knows? Maybe Camuncoli just doesn't use references when he draws flowers. But Casey follows up with a quick acknowledgement that, yes, these are intentionally unique flowers. Collaboration! Anyway, Jim Lee does the spy comics stuff well, too, more understated than his art tends to be (by a slim margin), not stealing focus but still being fun and bombastic. You can see why Punchy reads this stuff. So the art continues to be on point, with Camuncoli's immediate comfort in this world only growing all the more comfortable all the time. Casey's best moment, for me, is when the redneck guys, Jeb and Dew, reveal that they were going into the woods to make out. It feels inevitable when it happens, and maybe it is, maybe it's even predictable. But Casey still times it right, words it naturally enough and in such a straightforward manner that it still gets the laugh, even if you suspected it. Even when I know its coming. It makes them a little vulnerable, a bit sweeter and significantly more intimate with each other than they were before. I like the characters anyway, they are only slightly exaggerated versions of tons of guys I went to high school with in central Pennsylvania. So making them endearing at the end can always make me smile, and usually even laugh.
X-Force (vol. 1) #8: Mike Mignola draws all but the first and last pages of the issue, and though he doesn't blow me away here, the art is much crisper and clearer than anything Liefeld's done for this title so far. And the effect seems to be that Fabian Nicieza's writing improves as well. The jokes actually land, a complete story is told, we gain real insight into Cable and his relationship to the team...it's a level of narrative progress this series has regularly failed to reach up to now. Even though, yes, the events of this issue are all flashback, the details that they fill in actually contribute to the present-tense of the ongoing story and deepen the significance of Cannonball's death at the end of last issue. It turns out that Cannonball is the whole reason Cable formed X-Force in the first place, believing that the boy will someday grow up to become a "High-Lord." We don't yet know what the hell that means, but it apparently has to do with possessing immense power and, possibly, immortality, or at any rate extreme longevity. That's all information from the very end of the issue, though. The bulk of the story here is Cable's old team, the Wild Pack, infiltrating a Hydra base under the employ of A.I.M. to retrieve a specific piece of technology. It's heavy on action, which Mignola does well, capturing the scale and power of the fight in a few pages. And the look of the team is great; Mignola plays up Grizzly's massive size, Cable's hard edge, Domino's cockiness, etc. making every member of the Wild Pack stand out while still coming together as a cohesive and well-oiled unit. The best part of the issue, though, is the humor. Nicieza has taken some cracks at jokes in his dialogue before, but for whatever reason they never got much of a reaction out of me. This issue, it all works, and I even laughed out loud when Cable said, "What century aren't I from?" Maybe it's the clarity of Mignola's art that allows the humor to succeed here, maybe Nicieza was just particularly on point, maybe it's a combination of the two. Whatever the case, this is the most genuinely funny installment of X-Force yet, and one of the best-looking as well, so even though it's a breather, taking a detour from the main narrative to delve into Cabe's history, it may be the best issue so far.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Monthly Dose: May 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #7: Basically this is just the latter half of one man's very rapid spiral toward rock bottom, and since last issue didn't grab me, this conclusion to the same story doesn't, either. Chucky and Pony kill each other at the end, which sounds about right to me. Not that they deserved to die, just that it's no great shocker that they take one another out in the end, the inevitable conclusion for two men who have been playing at friendship while truly being arch-rivals since childhood. And that inevitability is why this story doesn't do much for me. Both of these characters are such absolute scumbags that I don't give a shit if they live or die, and I'm not the least bit surprised when the answer is, "they both die." I will give Brian Azzarello credit insofar as I think it was his intention to have both Chucky and Pony be wholly unlikable asses, and he pulls it off with pages to spare. It's just that, personally, I was bothered by these characters to the point of being entirely disinterested in their story, which is a shame. Anyway, I won't harp on this any longer, because it is essentially the same as what I said last month, but more. Eduardo Risso and colorist Grant Goleash are still steadily killing it, but all told this issue did the least in terms of visual showmanship. It told the story well, building tension and helping to underline how completely lost Chucky has become by the end. There just aren't a lot of specific panels or pages I'd point to here as examples of how incredibly talented Risso and Goleash truly are. The job gets done, and it's better than average by a lot, but compared to the previous issues, it's the least artistically enchanting. Definitely my least favorite 100 Bullets read so far, but still not a failure, just not for me.
The Intimates #7: So I did what I said I'd do this month and read the entire issue first, then when back to the beginning and read through all the info scrolls. And I must say, it's better that way. I thought reading the scrolls one after the other would become tedious, but it actually moves more quickly when you're not inserting them into the middle of a largely-unrelated story. The real bonus was that the reading of the issue itself wasn't interrupted, so the narrative flow never broke, which was especially nice this month when the story was told out of order, jumping in time from page to page or even panel to panel. Also, the info scrolls became self-referential and even a bit self-deprecating a few times toward the end, which I appreciated more when I was reading them all at once than I think I would have if I'd taken them in one at a time. Anyway, there's the result of that experiment. The issue itself was not astoundingly good or bad, basically a straightforward end-of-the-school-year story, pushing all the pieces forward a half-step so they're ready for their next big moves. The best part was Vee hanging out with cool hunter Della, particularly the ending when Della tries to get Vee to try out and/or support Vibe cola only to discover that it's already considered disgusting and undrinkable by pretty much everyone. Just a nice, simple, new way of saying something The Intimates has been saying all along: adults don't get teenagers (and vice versa). I'm also a big fan of Duke being hired by the government for secret work over the summer, because it's the perfect kind of inescapable responsibility for his character. Duke is the one kid who wouldn't push back against an offer like that, and it's likely why he was selected as the ideal candidate. Finally, we see Destra acting more like Punchy than ever before, determined to uncover The Seminary's secrets even if it means alienating everyone else. The Punchy-Destra dynamic, where they basically want the same things out of life but she won't give him the time of day, has always been key to this book, and gets a boost here when he sees her trying to recruit Duke (by all accounts his best friend) for a mission Punchy himself would die to be part of. Joe Casey has done such a solid job of establishing and developing these kids, he can take an issue like this to just expand on who they each are and set them up for a summer vacation without it ever feeling boring or slow. Not a lot actually happens this month, but it's still a funny and entertaining issue front to back. Giuseppe Camuncoli (whose name I can finally spell without looking it up!) continues to deliver solid art, just as comfortable in this world as Casey is by now. It's a strong, right-down-the-middle issue overall, and certainly leaves me excited to see what a summer away from The Seminary will look like for this cast.
X-Force (vol. 1) #7: Despite the ending being spoiled by the cover, this was possibly the best issue to date. Having X-Force actually fight against villains instead of each other allowed the action to open up a bit, which in turn gave Rob Liefeld license to draw the kinds of things his style's actually suited for. Shatterstar battling Sauron in the sky, Cable unloading two guns at Phantazia, Feral and Thornn trying to tear each other to shreds, Shatterstar reappearing covered in armor and big ass weapons, half the team posing intimidatingly when they discover intruders....Liefeld really brings his A game to all of these moments and more, and instead of the issue feeling like it's too full of shoulder pads and muscle to fit any story, the story this month is the shoulder pads and muscle. That means Fabian Nicieza has a bit less to do here, but he handles it well, writing pretty decent battle banter for everyone. Feral and Thornn's conversation isn't always the most natural-sounding, but it works more often than not. Shatterstar, Siryn, and Warpath I thought worked well together and each sounded distinct. The best character in terms of the writing, though (and maybe the weakest visually) was Toad. I've always been a Toad fan; I like how he has all the making of a dismissible, low-level villain but has managed to stick around and do some high-level wickedness anyway. Here, he addresses that very thing, showing up Siryn with some new tricks and his same old ruthlessness. As a leader, he is sinister and smart, but not hyper-intelligent or evil on too wide a scale. It's a nice balance for the character, and Nicieza displays it well in his dialogue. But the strongest aspect of X-Force #7, when you get right down to it, is the scenes of fighting in the dark. Not only is Liefeld better than usual in those moments, but colorist Steve Buccellato brings a great deal to the table, too, blacking out the characters' skin so their other features can be highlighted. It's a very stylized approach, and heightens the drama and excitement of the action in those scenes tremendously. In the end, the only thing that really bothered me this issue was that Warpath says Blob tumbled down a ravine, but we never get to see it. Damn Marvel Method means Nicieza can think of something as obvious yet hilarious as that and be forced to lose the idea to a throwaway line. Not a huge detraction, though, just a wee bummer.
100 Bullets #7: Basically this is just the latter half of one man's very rapid spiral toward rock bottom, and since last issue didn't grab me, this conclusion to the same story doesn't, either. Chucky and Pony kill each other at the end, which sounds about right to me. Not that they deserved to die, just that it's no great shocker that they take one another out in the end, the inevitable conclusion for two men who have been playing at friendship while truly being arch-rivals since childhood. And that inevitability is why this story doesn't do much for me. Both of these characters are such absolute scumbags that I don't give a shit if they live or die, and I'm not the least bit surprised when the answer is, "they both die." I will give Brian Azzarello credit insofar as I think it was his intention to have both Chucky and Pony be wholly unlikable asses, and he pulls it off with pages to spare. It's just that, personally, I was bothered by these characters to the point of being entirely disinterested in their story, which is a shame. Anyway, I won't harp on this any longer, because it is essentially the same as what I said last month, but more. Eduardo Risso and colorist Grant Goleash are still steadily killing it, but all told this issue did the least in terms of visual showmanship. It told the story well, building tension and helping to underline how completely lost Chucky has become by the end. There just aren't a lot of specific panels or pages I'd point to here as examples of how incredibly talented Risso and Goleash truly are. The job gets done, and it's better than average by a lot, but compared to the previous issues, it's the least artistically enchanting. Definitely my least favorite 100 Bullets read so far, but still not a failure, just not for me.
The Intimates #7: So I did what I said I'd do this month and read the entire issue first, then when back to the beginning and read through all the info scrolls. And I must say, it's better that way. I thought reading the scrolls one after the other would become tedious, but it actually moves more quickly when you're not inserting them into the middle of a largely-unrelated story. The real bonus was that the reading of the issue itself wasn't interrupted, so the narrative flow never broke, which was especially nice this month when the story was told out of order, jumping in time from page to page or even panel to panel. Also, the info scrolls became self-referential and even a bit self-deprecating a few times toward the end, which I appreciated more when I was reading them all at once than I think I would have if I'd taken them in one at a time. Anyway, there's the result of that experiment. The issue itself was not astoundingly good or bad, basically a straightforward end-of-the-school-year story, pushing all the pieces forward a half-step so they're ready for their next big moves. The best part was Vee hanging out with cool hunter Della, particularly the ending when Della tries to get Vee to try out and/or support Vibe cola only to discover that it's already considered disgusting and undrinkable by pretty much everyone. Just a nice, simple, new way of saying something The Intimates has been saying all along: adults don't get teenagers (and vice versa). I'm also a big fan of Duke being hired by the government for secret work over the summer, because it's the perfect kind of inescapable responsibility for his character. Duke is the one kid who wouldn't push back against an offer like that, and it's likely why he was selected as the ideal candidate. Finally, we see Destra acting more like Punchy than ever before, determined to uncover The Seminary's secrets even if it means alienating everyone else. The Punchy-Destra dynamic, where they basically want the same things out of life but she won't give him the time of day, has always been key to this book, and gets a boost here when he sees her trying to recruit Duke (by all accounts his best friend) for a mission Punchy himself would die to be part of. Joe Casey has done such a solid job of establishing and developing these kids, he can take an issue like this to just expand on who they each are and set them up for a summer vacation without it ever feeling boring or slow. Not a lot actually happens this month, but it's still a funny and entertaining issue front to back. Giuseppe Camuncoli (whose name I can finally spell without looking it up!) continues to deliver solid art, just as comfortable in this world as Casey is by now. It's a strong, right-down-the-middle issue overall, and certainly leaves me excited to see what a summer away from The Seminary will look like for this cast.
X-Force (vol. 1) #7: Despite the ending being spoiled by the cover, this was possibly the best issue to date. Having X-Force actually fight against villains instead of each other allowed the action to open up a bit, which in turn gave Rob Liefeld license to draw the kinds of things his style's actually suited for. Shatterstar battling Sauron in the sky, Cable unloading two guns at Phantazia, Feral and Thornn trying to tear each other to shreds, Shatterstar reappearing covered in armor and big ass weapons, half the team posing intimidatingly when they discover intruders....Liefeld really brings his A game to all of these moments and more, and instead of the issue feeling like it's too full of shoulder pads and muscle to fit any story, the story this month is the shoulder pads and muscle. That means Fabian Nicieza has a bit less to do here, but he handles it well, writing pretty decent battle banter for everyone. Feral and Thornn's conversation isn't always the most natural-sounding, but it works more often than not. Shatterstar, Siryn, and Warpath I thought worked well together and each sounded distinct. The best character in terms of the writing, though (and maybe the weakest visually) was Toad. I've always been a Toad fan; I like how he has all the making of a dismissible, low-level villain but has managed to stick around and do some high-level wickedness anyway. Here, he addresses that very thing, showing up Siryn with some new tricks and his same old ruthlessness. As a leader, he is sinister and smart, but not hyper-intelligent or evil on too wide a scale. It's a nice balance for the character, and Nicieza displays it well in his dialogue. But the strongest aspect of X-Force #7, when you get right down to it, is the scenes of fighting in the dark. Not only is Liefeld better than usual in those moments, but colorist Steve Buccellato brings a great deal to the table, too, blacking out the characters' skin so their other features can be highlighted. It's a very stylized approach, and heightens the drama and excitement of the action in those scenes tremendously. In the end, the only thing that really bothered me this issue was that Warpath says Blob tumbled down a ravine, but we never get to see it. Damn Marvel Method means Nicieza can think of something as obvious yet hilarious as that and be forced to lose the idea to a throwaway line. Not a huge detraction, though, just a wee bummer.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monthly Dose: April 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #6: As much as Lee was a less compelling protagonist than Dizzy, Chucky is exponentially worse. I just don't care if he wins or loses, lives or dies, or really to see another minute of his miserable life. Obviously he did not deserve to have his best friend betray him or to get sent to jail over something that wasn't his fault, but that's also not really an excuse to be a bottomless well of scumbaggery and selfishness. He mistreats Shantay, refuses helpful advice and prudent warnings from her and all of his friends (or whatever they are...associates), actively looks for trouble and danger, and cheats and lies as compulsively as he gambles. There's no redemption in there that I can see, and I'm not even sure if Brian Azzarello is aiming for that. I think he knows full well that he has written a blackhearted son of a bitch in Chucky, and if so it's a total success. And he's a believable character, to be sure, but being believably insufferable doesn't make someone interesting to me. I don't think, technically or structurally, there's anything wrong with the story here, but I personally find it hard to stick with because no matter what happens from here, I won't care. I'm not attached to anyone or anything. Eduardo Risso is till doing his incredible thing, but this issue what really pops about the artwork is Grant Goleash's colors. The textured hues of the desert sky make up the background and/or lighting of most of these pages, and they're always spot on. I also dig the deep purples and deeper black of Pony's back room, establishing in color the undertones of wickedness and deception that are key to that character. It's very strong and understated work all over, which has always been true of this book's coloring, but for whatever reason this issue it impresses me more than usual. Perhaps it's my lack of connection to the story, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Goleash captures the feel of these locations more firmly and completely than before, and it definitely helps what is my least favorite narrative so far.
The Intimates #6: Sykes definitely deserved to have an issue devoted to him, if only because he's been a silent enigma since the very beginning, and that can become distracting if it lasts too long. This issue doesn't necessarily explain all the ins and outs of who Sykes is or what he can do, but it provides some definite insight into his past and at least reveals enough of his world that he can now be set aside as a passive figure once again without fucking with the reader's curiosity. Joe Casey attempts to tell a story set inside Sykes' broken and powerful mind, with every scene seeming to take place in a memory from his past. The narrative moves the way that memories do, with pieces missing and focus jumping around and no real resolution to any of the action. There is a definite, solid conclusion to the larger story of the rest of the students journeying into Sykes' mind, but each of them has experiences while there that get abruptly cut off when Kefong rescues them. As the only member of the cast with the mental powers and training to do so, Kefong avoids getting sucked into the madness, and stays firmly in the "real" world (quotes added by Casey) so he can reactivate the null field that, evidently, keeps Sykes from trapping everyone around him in his bizarre and jumbled thoughts. It's a simple but logical solution, and Gisueppe Camuncoli's rendering of Kefong marching slowly through the "real" world under Sykes' influence is some of the best imagery this series has seen yet. The same is true of the page after Empty Vee turns Sykes' null field off and the world becomes a rainbow-colored spiral as his powers are unleashed, even shattering the info scrolls into tiny fragments, not to be reassembled until the end of the issue when Kefong saves the day. It's not the first time the info scrolls have gone away, but it is the first time they've been absent for most of a whole issue, and it cements for me that they are an ambitious failure. Casey doesn't really try to work them rhythmically into the scripts---they are very much their own, separate thing, even when their content relates to what's happening on the rest of the page. The consequence is that if you read them as you hit the bottom of every page, it breaks up the narrative flow, something that becomes obvious in this issue, which feels much more fluid than any of the previous ones. And I suppose one could read all the actual panels first and then go back through the info scrolls, but that sounds pretty arduous, and not at all worth the knowledge you'd gain after the fact. I think I'll try that approach for next month, because I never have, and see if it helps things. Conceptually I want the info scrolls to work, but having so many pages without them this month makes me thinks that they just never quite will. That was quite a digression, I guess. Anyway, Casey and Camuncoli both get to have a bit more fun and be a little more freeform in this issue. There are times where the dialogue gets too cryptic and pretentious in its language for me, but it's made up for by Camuncoli's excellent designs for all of the characters as tiny children, still in costume. An extra bizarre and daring chapter of a book that's reliably bizarre and daring.
X-Force (vol. 1) #6: As is becoming standard for this book, not much happens. Stryfe talks to Zero about some mustache-twirling business, Toad's Brotherhood manages to bang out an alliance with the Morlocks essentially on the basis that they're both angry, Cable has a redundant chat with Domino about how he needs to be honest with his team, and Boom Boom and Feral get into a spat that leads nowhere. By now we're like 2/3 of the way through, leaving just enough time for yet another scene of members of X-Force doing some training, this time a sparring match between Warpath and Shatterstar. In the end, the Brotherhood interrupts and Siryn gets involved (not in that order) but the fight doesn't really get cooking in this issue. Got to save the good stuff for yet another month, I guess. Rob Liefled's plots are just lazy and messy, and I don't envy Fabian Nicieza having to be the one who tried to turn them into a forward-moving narrative. Because they just aren't that. This is a pretty static book, most of the time, ostensibly trying to introduce its team in these opening issues but never pulling that off all the way, either. Liefeld's art is Liefled's art: muscles, tits, and teeth. I have very little new to say about this particular issue that I haven't said about preceding ones, but I do find it pretty amusing that there's a bit on the cover that boasts about the "Cable Guides" in the back of the issue. These are tersely-written summaries of Cable's relationship with other members of the cast, and they are some of the least interesting backmatter of all time. Not terribly written or anything, but not well-written either, and providing only the most superficial information, much of which can be learned or at least gleaned from reading the actual series. Was this really a selling point back in the day? Probably for someone, but now it just seems like an especially fluffy bit of material to advertise right on the cover. This whole issue is a marshmallow, no calories and only the faintest flavor.
100 Bullets #6: As much as Lee was a less compelling protagonist than Dizzy, Chucky is exponentially worse. I just don't care if he wins or loses, lives or dies, or really to see another minute of his miserable life. Obviously he did not deserve to have his best friend betray him or to get sent to jail over something that wasn't his fault, but that's also not really an excuse to be a bottomless well of scumbaggery and selfishness. He mistreats Shantay, refuses helpful advice and prudent warnings from her and all of his friends (or whatever they are...associates), actively looks for trouble and danger, and cheats and lies as compulsively as he gambles. There's no redemption in there that I can see, and I'm not even sure if Brian Azzarello is aiming for that. I think he knows full well that he has written a blackhearted son of a bitch in Chucky, and if so it's a total success. And he's a believable character, to be sure, but being believably insufferable doesn't make someone interesting to me. I don't think, technically or structurally, there's anything wrong with the story here, but I personally find it hard to stick with because no matter what happens from here, I won't care. I'm not attached to anyone or anything. Eduardo Risso is till doing his incredible thing, but this issue what really pops about the artwork is Grant Goleash's colors. The textured hues of the desert sky make up the background and/or lighting of most of these pages, and they're always spot on. I also dig the deep purples and deeper black of Pony's back room, establishing in color the undertones of wickedness and deception that are key to that character. It's very strong and understated work all over, which has always been true of this book's coloring, but for whatever reason this issue it impresses me more than usual. Perhaps it's my lack of connection to the story, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Goleash captures the feel of these locations more firmly and completely than before, and it definitely helps what is my least favorite narrative so far.
The Intimates #6: Sykes definitely deserved to have an issue devoted to him, if only because he's been a silent enigma since the very beginning, and that can become distracting if it lasts too long. This issue doesn't necessarily explain all the ins and outs of who Sykes is or what he can do, but it provides some definite insight into his past and at least reveals enough of his world that he can now be set aside as a passive figure once again without fucking with the reader's curiosity. Joe Casey attempts to tell a story set inside Sykes' broken and powerful mind, with every scene seeming to take place in a memory from his past. The narrative moves the way that memories do, with pieces missing and focus jumping around and no real resolution to any of the action. There is a definite, solid conclusion to the larger story of the rest of the students journeying into Sykes' mind, but each of them has experiences while there that get abruptly cut off when Kefong rescues them. As the only member of the cast with the mental powers and training to do so, Kefong avoids getting sucked into the madness, and stays firmly in the "real" world (quotes added by Casey) so he can reactivate the null field that, evidently, keeps Sykes from trapping everyone around him in his bizarre and jumbled thoughts. It's a simple but logical solution, and Gisueppe Camuncoli's rendering of Kefong marching slowly through the "real" world under Sykes' influence is some of the best imagery this series has seen yet. The same is true of the page after Empty Vee turns Sykes' null field off and the world becomes a rainbow-colored spiral as his powers are unleashed, even shattering the info scrolls into tiny fragments, not to be reassembled until the end of the issue when Kefong saves the day. It's not the first time the info scrolls have gone away, but it is the first time they've been absent for most of a whole issue, and it cements for me that they are an ambitious failure. Casey doesn't really try to work them rhythmically into the scripts---they are very much their own, separate thing, even when their content relates to what's happening on the rest of the page. The consequence is that if you read them as you hit the bottom of every page, it breaks up the narrative flow, something that becomes obvious in this issue, which feels much more fluid than any of the previous ones. And I suppose one could read all the actual panels first and then go back through the info scrolls, but that sounds pretty arduous, and not at all worth the knowledge you'd gain after the fact. I think I'll try that approach for next month, because I never have, and see if it helps things. Conceptually I want the info scrolls to work, but having so many pages without them this month makes me thinks that they just never quite will. That was quite a digression, I guess. Anyway, Casey and Camuncoli both get to have a bit more fun and be a little more freeform in this issue. There are times where the dialogue gets too cryptic and pretentious in its language for me, but it's made up for by Camuncoli's excellent designs for all of the characters as tiny children, still in costume. An extra bizarre and daring chapter of a book that's reliably bizarre and daring.
X-Force (vol. 1) #6: As is becoming standard for this book, not much happens. Stryfe talks to Zero about some mustache-twirling business, Toad's Brotherhood manages to bang out an alliance with the Morlocks essentially on the basis that they're both angry, Cable has a redundant chat with Domino about how he needs to be honest with his team, and Boom Boom and Feral get into a spat that leads nowhere. By now we're like 2/3 of the way through, leaving just enough time for yet another scene of members of X-Force doing some training, this time a sparring match between Warpath and Shatterstar. In the end, the Brotherhood interrupts and Siryn gets involved (not in that order) but the fight doesn't really get cooking in this issue. Got to save the good stuff for yet another month, I guess. Rob Liefled's plots are just lazy and messy, and I don't envy Fabian Nicieza having to be the one who tried to turn them into a forward-moving narrative. Because they just aren't that. This is a pretty static book, most of the time, ostensibly trying to introduce its team in these opening issues but never pulling that off all the way, either. Liefeld's art is Liefled's art: muscles, tits, and teeth. I have very little new to say about this particular issue that I haven't said about preceding ones, but I do find it pretty amusing that there's a bit on the cover that boasts about the "Cable Guides" in the back of the issue. These are tersely-written summaries of Cable's relationship with other members of the cast, and they are some of the least interesting backmatter of all time. Not terribly written or anything, but not well-written either, and providing only the most superficial information, much of which can be learned or at least gleaned from reading the actual series. Was this really a selling point back in the day? Probably for someone, but now it just seems like an especially fluffy bit of material to advertise right on the cover. This whole issue is a marshmallow, no calories and only the faintest flavor.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Monthly Dose: March 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #5: Much stronger than the first half of this two-parter, "Shot, Water Back" centers on protagonist Lee confronting Megan Dietrich for ruining his life many years ago. Their interaction is refreshingly honest and direct. Neither of them has any reason to lie to one another, since Lee is there for vengeance while Megan knows herself to be untouchable. She readily admits that she sent the damning pictures to Lee's computer, claiming it was a prank she and some of her girlfriends perpetrated just for laughs, choosing their targets at random. This does little to comfort Lee or quell his rage, but it is the first of several delicate steps Megan takes to manipulate Lee into surrendering his weapon and, ultimately, his very existence. She offers him money, offers to secure his kids' future, forces him to question Agent Graves' motives in delivering the gun and its untraceable bullets in the first place. And she never lets herself seem scared or even the tiniest bit phased by Lee's threats. Though out loud she claims that he is in control, it's obvious for the entirety of their conversation that, in fact, she is running things. Right up to and including the final, murderous moment. Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso really operate as a unified team here. There is a lot of tense silence, close-ups on faces or just eyes that tell as much story as any of the dialogue. And, of course, there is the totally disconnected drug deal gone wrong helicopter gun fight scene that takes place in the building across the street from Megan's office. I've never been clear as to why it was included, but it is fun and very strong work from Risso, who always makes it obvious what we're looking at. There is also the matter of the conclusion, which is in a lot of ways the first time this series has officially announced a larger, overarching narrative. Dizzy's opening arc hinted at things to come, and of course we know Agent Graves is up to something with all the free guns, ammo, and information he's distributing. But it is not until Megan calls some mysterious other party and tells him Graves is back that we know for sure there's something bigger and unseen going on in the background of this title. It begins when we see genuine fear on Megan's face, for the first and only time, when Lee reveals how he found out what she'd done to him. And it ends when she delivers the news of Graves' return and the person she tells it to reacts with sudden violence. A tasty appetizer at the end of an issue that was already a marked improvement over the one it followed.
The Intimates #5: This issue is a favorite of mine, and it hits me just as hard every time I reread it. The slow and steady build-up of Punchy figuring out that Dead Kid Fred is serious about suicide is handled expertly by Joe Casey and Giuseppe Camuncoli both. On the art side, it's primarily just the subtle, silent panels of Punchy looking at Fred from the corners of his eyes or from a distance, always slyly and with a bit of a scowl but also with a clear underlying concern. In his mind, Punchy doesn't want to be the caring, sensitive guy who takes the scared new kid under his wing. But he can't help himself, can't stop his inner decency from making him try, in his own misguided way, to save this strange new student. And of course, eventually, Casey has Punchy verbalize all of this to Duke. "What kinda superheroes are we if we just sit here?!" he asks, unwilling to be just another cynical teen ignoring the cries of his peers. Duke describes Fred's online ramblings as, "Dumb teenage whining," and Punchy responds, "Maybe it is. But that doesn't mean he won't do it." He sees the signs and knows they are to be taken seriously, and is apparently the only person in the entire school to do so. It makes him more of a superhero in my book than anyone else has been in this series so far. And god, that moment when he punches down the door and we see Fred, naked and terrified, standing in a pool of lighter fluid that's dripping off of his sad zombie body...it seriously gets me every damn time. I get flush with anticipation during the pages that lead up to it. It is the rawest, most heartbreaking moment of the series up to this point, and arguably the most teenaged AND the most superheroic. For a book that's generally quite good and all about teen superheroes, that's saying something. I think The Intimates #5 is an example of what this title always wanted to be, an ideal issue that hits all the right notes. It says something about school, about teenagerhood, about what it means to be a superhero and what is wrong with them, and at the same time it deepens our understanding of the main character (let's face it, Punchy is the star of this comicbook). It also introduces a new character, makes him funny and sad and clear and awesome right away, and then brings his personal journey to a close. That's a lot to accomplish in the space of a single issue, and it's not even everything that happens. There's a pointless but very funny sex ed lecture, a scene with Punchy and The Seminary's janitors striking a backroom deal, and of course the info scrolls, which are solid and interesting here if a bit disconnected from one another. Basically, The Intimates #5 does everything the four preceding issues have set out to do, but better and more succinctly. Also, this is the first time that the ending has really clicked for me, rhythmically. I admire that this book doesn't always close on a cliffhanger, breaking the mold of the usual superhero monthly. And it's no cliffhanger here, either, but it is a logical and sound closing line that brings the main narrative of the issue home. Like I said, this issue is a favorite, and probably the one I would be most likely to point to as a summary of the strengths and immense potential of The Intimates as a whole.
X-Force (vol. 1) #5: Rob Liefeld draws some gross-ass, unnaturally wide, extremely toothy grins in this issue. It's distracting, particularly the splash page introducing Toad and The Blob to the book, where they look like some kind of intensely disturbing toothpaste ad. Nobody ever smiles like that, and even though it basically fits with Liefeld's larger-than-life style, it's still weird and disgusting and needless. Beyond the teeth (or should I say TEETH?) the issue is sort of a mess. The pacing of the series seems very strange to me, because this issue felt like a sort of breather, a quick calm-down kind of chapter in between the big action. Which is fine on its own, but it is the second such issue in only five, and neither of the breathers have been used to do much character development or plot advancement or anything at all, really. This month, Bridge gets upset that he has to hunt X-Force, but still agrees to do so, so nothing changes. Cable and his crew butt heads a little over his decisions and secrets, but only for a few fleeting moments before they hurriedly and inexplicably decide to stay on the team, so nothing changes. And in the middle there is a pseudo-sexist scene wherein Feral sluttily throws herself at a confused and extremely unattractive Shatterstar. Oh, right, but first we get a pseudo-racist scene of Warpath running around shirtless and mentally listing a bunch of famous Native Americans and describing himself as the wind and other such insensitive nonsense. It feels like X-Force under Liefeld is just an excuse for the man to draw whatever he wants, to explore the physicality of these characters (many of whom he created) without any regards to story. Then Fabian Nicieza has to come in and try to put words on top of everything in such a way as to propel a story forward, and there's only so much he can do. So this issue treads water, adding Siryn to the team even though we barely know any of the cast yet, and doing so in just as rushed and flat a manner as everything else that goes on. And there are some moments of sloppiness where I can't tell if they are mistakes or just poor writing, like when Cable responds to something Boom Boom says, but addresses his answer to Cannonball. Was this a lettering slip-up? A scripting one? Or is Nicieza just bad at writing three-way conversations? Very hard to tell, and not the only example. What can I say? X-Force is feeling pretty aimless right now, and I'm still not even clear on why I am supposed to be invested in these people or anything they do.
100 Bullets #5: Much stronger than the first half of this two-parter, "Shot, Water Back" centers on protagonist Lee confronting Megan Dietrich for ruining his life many years ago. Their interaction is refreshingly honest and direct. Neither of them has any reason to lie to one another, since Lee is there for vengeance while Megan knows herself to be untouchable. She readily admits that she sent the damning pictures to Lee's computer, claiming it was a prank she and some of her girlfriends perpetrated just for laughs, choosing their targets at random. This does little to comfort Lee or quell his rage, but it is the first of several delicate steps Megan takes to manipulate Lee into surrendering his weapon and, ultimately, his very existence. She offers him money, offers to secure his kids' future, forces him to question Agent Graves' motives in delivering the gun and its untraceable bullets in the first place. And she never lets herself seem scared or even the tiniest bit phased by Lee's threats. Though out loud she claims that he is in control, it's obvious for the entirety of their conversation that, in fact, she is running things. Right up to and including the final, murderous moment. Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso really operate as a unified team here. There is a lot of tense silence, close-ups on faces or just eyes that tell as much story as any of the dialogue. And, of course, there is the totally disconnected drug deal gone wrong helicopter gun fight scene that takes place in the building across the street from Megan's office. I've never been clear as to why it was included, but it is fun and very strong work from Risso, who always makes it obvious what we're looking at. There is also the matter of the conclusion, which is in a lot of ways the first time this series has officially announced a larger, overarching narrative. Dizzy's opening arc hinted at things to come, and of course we know Agent Graves is up to something with all the free guns, ammo, and information he's distributing. But it is not until Megan calls some mysterious other party and tells him Graves is back that we know for sure there's something bigger and unseen going on in the background of this title. It begins when we see genuine fear on Megan's face, for the first and only time, when Lee reveals how he found out what she'd done to him. And it ends when she delivers the news of Graves' return and the person she tells it to reacts with sudden violence. A tasty appetizer at the end of an issue that was already a marked improvement over the one it followed.
The Intimates #5: This issue is a favorite of mine, and it hits me just as hard every time I reread it. The slow and steady build-up of Punchy figuring out that Dead Kid Fred is serious about suicide is handled expertly by Joe Casey and Giuseppe Camuncoli both. On the art side, it's primarily just the subtle, silent panels of Punchy looking at Fred from the corners of his eyes or from a distance, always slyly and with a bit of a scowl but also with a clear underlying concern. In his mind, Punchy doesn't want to be the caring, sensitive guy who takes the scared new kid under his wing. But he can't help himself, can't stop his inner decency from making him try, in his own misguided way, to save this strange new student. And of course, eventually, Casey has Punchy verbalize all of this to Duke. "What kinda superheroes are we if we just sit here?!" he asks, unwilling to be just another cynical teen ignoring the cries of his peers. Duke describes Fred's online ramblings as, "Dumb teenage whining," and Punchy responds, "Maybe it is. But that doesn't mean he won't do it." He sees the signs and knows they are to be taken seriously, and is apparently the only person in the entire school to do so. It makes him more of a superhero in my book than anyone else has been in this series so far. And god, that moment when he punches down the door and we see Fred, naked and terrified, standing in a pool of lighter fluid that's dripping off of his sad zombie body...it seriously gets me every damn time. I get flush with anticipation during the pages that lead up to it. It is the rawest, most heartbreaking moment of the series up to this point, and arguably the most teenaged AND the most superheroic. For a book that's generally quite good and all about teen superheroes, that's saying something. I think The Intimates #5 is an example of what this title always wanted to be, an ideal issue that hits all the right notes. It says something about school, about teenagerhood, about what it means to be a superhero and what is wrong with them, and at the same time it deepens our understanding of the main character (let's face it, Punchy is the star of this comicbook). It also introduces a new character, makes him funny and sad and clear and awesome right away, and then brings his personal journey to a close. That's a lot to accomplish in the space of a single issue, and it's not even everything that happens. There's a pointless but very funny sex ed lecture, a scene with Punchy and The Seminary's janitors striking a backroom deal, and of course the info scrolls, which are solid and interesting here if a bit disconnected from one another. Basically, The Intimates #5 does everything the four preceding issues have set out to do, but better and more succinctly. Also, this is the first time that the ending has really clicked for me, rhythmically. I admire that this book doesn't always close on a cliffhanger, breaking the mold of the usual superhero monthly. And it's no cliffhanger here, either, but it is a logical and sound closing line that brings the main narrative of the issue home. Like I said, this issue is a favorite, and probably the one I would be most likely to point to as a summary of the strengths and immense potential of The Intimates as a whole.
X-Force (vol. 1) #5: Rob Liefeld draws some gross-ass, unnaturally wide, extremely toothy grins in this issue. It's distracting, particularly the splash page introducing Toad and The Blob to the book, where they look like some kind of intensely disturbing toothpaste ad. Nobody ever smiles like that, and even though it basically fits with Liefeld's larger-than-life style, it's still weird and disgusting and needless. Beyond the teeth (or should I say TEETH?) the issue is sort of a mess. The pacing of the series seems very strange to me, because this issue felt like a sort of breather, a quick calm-down kind of chapter in between the big action. Which is fine on its own, but it is the second such issue in only five, and neither of the breathers have been used to do much character development or plot advancement or anything at all, really. This month, Bridge gets upset that he has to hunt X-Force, but still agrees to do so, so nothing changes. Cable and his crew butt heads a little over his decisions and secrets, but only for a few fleeting moments before they hurriedly and inexplicably decide to stay on the team, so nothing changes. And in the middle there is a pseudo-sexist scene wherein Feral sluttily throws herself at a confused and extremely unattractive Shatterstar. Oh, right, but first we get a pseudo-racist scene of Warpath running around shirtless and mentally listing a bunch of famous Native Americans and describing himself as the wind and other such insensitive nonsense. It feels like X-Force under Liefeld is just an excuse for the man to draw whatever he wants, to explore the physicality of these characters (many of whom he created) without any regards to story. Then Fabian Nicieza has to come in and try to put words on top of everything in such a way as to propel a story forward, and there's only so much he can do. So this issue treads water, adding Siryn to the team even though we barely know any of the cast yet, and doing so in just as rushed and flat a manner as everything else that goes on. And there are some moments of sloppiness where I can't tell if they are mistakes or just poor writing, like when Cable responds to something Boom Boom says, but addresses his answer to Cannonball. Was this a lettering slip-up? A scripting one? Or is Nicieza just bad at writing three-way conversations? Very hard to tell, and not the only example. What can I say? X-Force is feeling pretty aimless right now, and I'm still not even clear on why I am supposed to be invested in these people or anything they do.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Monthly Dose: February 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #4: Following a remarkable opening arc is not easy, and unfortunately this doesn't quite live up to the task. Lee is a far less sympathetic hero than Dizzy was before him, and less interesting. Yes, he is an innocent man whose life was ruined, but his response to that disaster was to become a self-hating, self-pitying schmuck. I can't get behind that, and it makes the story drag when I'm not invested in the protagonist's struggle. Still, the idea that some random, rich, much younger stranger would frame Lee for child pornography is intriguing enough that I want to hear the whole story. So I am eager for the final confrontation between Lee and Megan, it's just not for the reasons I feel like it's supposed to be. I don't care if he shoots her or not, or really what happens to either of them at all. I just want the details as to why she ruined him. Eduardo Risso's art is still on fire, even if Brian Azzarello's script is somewhat less so. Lee's anger and sadness are evident on every page, though the best example is when his son rejects him and we see a very literal visual representation of how small and alone it makes Lee feel. And of course the dark, careful lighting in the scene with Lee's favorite stripper was pitch perfect. The strongest scene, or the most powerful, I guess, would have to be when Lee fantasizes about blowing out the back of Megan's head as soon as she walks into the bar. Even as it's happening, we know it can't be real, but Risso makes it so sudden and brutal that it still carries some hefty weight. It's an emotional peak for the issue, though, and after Lee abandons the idea, things settle into a duller rhythm again straight through to the end. I'm excited for part two of this tale, but also relieved it'll be the conclusion, because very much more of this character as the leading man and I might lose interest.
The Intimates #4: I'm really into what Joe Casey does with the structure of this issue. After a few introductory pages, we get a scene implying that there may be something sinister about Devonshire Foods, the company that supplies the Seminary with all of its cafeteria meals. It's a fun new thread, and a very clever place to stick a big bad guy for a this book. In real life, the cafeteria and its food are sworn enemies of high schoolers all over the country, so at a school for superhero teens, it's an obvious and hilarious choice of villain. But then as soon as this threat is introduced (and even then only cryptically), the issue drops it in favor of focusing on The Seminary's first student dance. Which, again, is a brilliant and very funny choice on Casey's part. School dances are a key aspect of the typical adolescent experience, given more importance than they deserve by the kids who go to them. By mapping that onto The Seminary and its students, we get an amplified version of such an event. Pranks, secret hook-ups, and even regular dancing all warp slightly but significantly when superpowers are involved. And Giuseppe Camuncoli continues to give an artistic boost to Casey's ideas, capturing the awkward discomfort of teens at a school dance exactly at first, and then doing an excellent job of transitioning that into the kids enjoying themselves. His strongest single panel has got to be when Venus De Mighty gets electrocuted by her fruit punch, but that might be mostly because she was asking for a good jolt with her self-importance and lies. Anyway, the events of the dance are a lot of fun, for characters and readers alike, and though a few bits of drama go down, all in all it's a success. It may sound dry and a bit too normal to be the plot of a comicbook, but Casey and Camuncoli make it work by keeping things lively, utilizing their entire cast, and doing such a damn accurate job of putting teeanged dances on display. Also, having the narrative be a bit more focused and cohesive made the interruptions of the info scrolls much easier to handle, so I found myself enjoying those again. Which is especially nice because this is the issue that straight up asks, "Who is curious enough to read these info scrolls?" I am, and I do so every time I revisit the series.
X-Force (vol. 1) #4: So this is the sideways issue, where all of the pages are designed to be read vertically instead of horizontally, adding nothing save for the frustration of having to hold the comicbook differently than normal. Rob Liefeld doesn't do anything cool with it, or use the opportunity to draw things he couldn't have drawn in traditional comicbook format. It is a gimmick for its own sake, which I despise. Don't put me through the hassle of reading something uncomfortably if there's no point to it. Technically, this is also part 2 of a crossover story, but since it's just the conclusion of a fight started in X-Force last month, I didn't feel like I had missed much by skipping the issue of Spider-Man that takes place in between. Which is a nicer way of saying that there is practically no story here. It is the boring, slow end to a boring, slow conflict, and Fabian Nicieza's script makes very little effort to spruce things up. But I blame the overall sloppiness of this particular issue far more on Liefeld than Nicieza. Characters appear out of nowhere (happens with Domino, Siryn, and Cannonball at various points), the action is too large for the space it's given, and a confusing thread involving Deadpool is wedged in at the end. Oh, and the whole fucking thing is needlessly sideways. So that's on Liefeld, through and through, and I feel like any weakness on Nicieza's part can be overlooked in light of the inconsistent, ridiculously-laid-out artwork he had to work with. It's weird...my memories of reading this book in the past are much more positive than the feeling I am left with after four issues of this month-by-month reread. Perhaps it's just a matter of the title working some kinks out early on, or maybe it's that I was more into this stuff when I was younger and now I can't recapture that enthusiasm. Or maybe next month things will get back on track. Who knows? I'm not expecting much right now, but I'm still hopeful that whatever made me an X-Force fan in the first place can rekindle that fire soon.
100 Bullets #4: Following a remarkable opening arc is not easy, and unfortunately this doesn't quite live up to the task. Lee is a far less sympathetic hero than Dizzy was before him, and less interesting. Yes, he is an innocent man whose life was ruined, but his response to that disaster was to become a self-hating, self-pitying schmuck. I can't get behind that, and it makes the story drag when I'm not invested in the protagonist's struggle. Still, the idea that some random, rich, much younger stranger would frame Lee for child pornography is intriguing enough that I want to hear the whole story. So I am eager for the final confrontation between Lee and Megan, it's just not for the reasons I feel like it's supposed to be. I don't care if he shoots her or not, or really what happens to either of them at all. I just want the details as to why she ruined him. Eduardo Risso's art is still on fire, even if Brian Azzarello's script is somewhat less so. Lee's anger and sadness are evident on every page, though the best example is when his son rejects him and we see a very literal visual representation of how small and alone it makes Lee feel. And of course the dark, careful lighting in the scene with Lee's favorite stripper was pitch perfect. The strongest scene, or the most powerful, I guess, would have to be when Lee fantasizes about blowing out the back of Megan's head as soon as she walks into the bar. Even as it's happening, we know it can't be real, but Risso makes it so sudden and brutal that it still carries some hefty weight. It's an emotional peak for the issue, though, and after Lee abandons the idea, things settle into a duller rhythm again straight through to the end. I'm excited for part two of this tale, but also relieved it'll be the conclusion, because very much more of this character as the leading man and I might lose interest.
The Intimates #4: I'm really into what Joe Casey does with the structure of this issue. After a few introductory pages, we get a scene implying that there may be something sinister about Devonshire Foods, the company that supplies the Seminary with all of its cafeteria meals. It's a fun new thread, and a very clever place to stick a big bad guy for a this book. In real life, the cafeteria and its food are sworn enemies of high schoolers all over the country, so at a school for superhero teens, it's an obvious and hilarious choice of villain. But then as soon as this threat is introduced (and even then only cryptically), the issue drops it in favor of focusing on The Seminary's first student dance. Which, again, is a brilliant and very funny choice on Casey's part. School dances are a key aspect of the typical adolescent experience, given more importance than they deserve by the kids who go to them. By mapping that onto The Seminary and its students, we get an amplified version of such an event. Pranks, secret hook-ups, and even regular dancing all warp slightly but significantly when superpowers are involved. And Giuseppe Camuncoli continues to give an artistic boost to Casey's ideas, capturing the awkward discomfort of teens at a school dance exactly at first, and then doing an excellent job of transitioning that into the kids enjoying themselves. His strongest single panel has got to be when Venus De Mighty gets electrocuted by her fruit punch, but that might be mostly because she was asking for a good jolt with her self-importance and lies. Anyway, the events of the dance are a lot of fun, for characters and readers alike, and though a few bits of drama go down, all in all it's a success. It may sound dry and a bit too normal to be the plot of a comicbook, but Casey and Camuncoli make it work by keeping things lively, utilizing their entire cast, and doing such a damn accurate job of putting teeanged dances on display. Also, having the narrative be a bit more focused and cohesive made the interruptions of the info scrolls much easier to handle, so I found myself enjoying those again. Which is especially nice because this is the issue that straight up asks, "Who is curious enough to read these info scrolls?" I am, and I do so every time I revisit the series.
X-Force (vol. 1) #4: So this is the sideways issue, where all of the pages are designed to be read vertically instead of horizontally, adding nothing save for the frustration of having to hold the comicbook differently than normal. Rob Liefeld doesn't do anything cool with it, or use the opportunity to draw things he couldn't have drawn in traditional comicbook format. It is a gimmick for its own sake, which I despise. Don't put me through the hassle of reading something uncomfortably if there's no point to it. Technically, this is also part 2 of a crossover story, but since it's just the conclusion of a fight started in X-Force last month, I didn't feel like I had missed much by skipping the issue of Spider-Man that takes place in between. Which is a nicer way of saying that there is practically no story here. It is the boring, slow end to a boring, slow conflict, and Fabian Nicieza's script makes very little effort to spruce things up. But I blame the overall sloppiness of this particular issue far more on Liefeld than Nicieza. Characters appear out of nowhere (happens with Domino, Siryn, and Cannonball at various points), the action is too large for the space it's given, and a confusing thread involving Deadpool is wedged in at the end. Oh, and the whole fucking thing is needlessly sideways. So that's on Liefeld, through and through, and I feel like any weakness on Nicieza's part can be overlooked in light of the inconsistent, ridiculously-laid-out artwork he had to work with. It's weird...my memories of reading this book in the past are much more positive than the feeling I am left with after four issues of this month-by-month reread. Perhaps it's just a matter of the title working some kinks out early on, or maybe it's that I was more into this stuff when I was younger and now I can't recapture that enthusiasm. Or maybe next month things will get back on track. Who knows? I'm not expecting much right now, but I'm still hopeful that whatever made me an X-Force fan in the first place can rekindle that fire soon.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Monthly Dose: January 2013
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #3: Though perhaps a bit overly expository in places, the conclusion of this initial arc is a massive triumph overall. Everyone gets precisely what they deserve, which isn't really good news for anyone. Even Dizzy, who gets to avenge the deaths of her husband and baby and get out of the life she'd been trapped in up to now, doesn't walk away without some brand new emotional wounds to deal with. Her brother Emilio reveals himself to be the cause of her family's murder, so Dizzy loses the only person from to whom she still had any meaningful connection. It leaves her future wide open, because her past is about as dead and buried as it could ever be. Her love, her child, and her brother are lost to her, and the crooked cops who're responsible are dead by her hand. At the very end of the issue, she gets in a car with the mysterious Mr. Shepherd, and though we have no way of knowing yet who he really is or what plans he might have for her, it's clear that despite the finality of the events in this issue, Dizzy's real story is only beginning. Eduardo Risso does a lot with shadow in the artwork here, and (along with that) silhouette. This is as emotionally dark as the book has gotten so far, and the visuals match that. I also really love Emilio's whole look, the outward smugness that only tenuously contains the wild young man inside. That wild man spills out once the shit hits the fan and Emilio gets shot by his "partners," and he never really gets a hold of himself again. So the final impression we get of the character is that of an out-of-control, immature, pathetic failure, begging for some forgiveness from the sister he betrayed. She gives him not one inch of it, though, because difficult as it may be, Dizzy is too strong to let herself give in to his pleas. As she says, he's got a hard time ahead of him, but he's brought every minute of it on himself, and at least she lets him live. Brian Azzarello wraps up a very tidy package, providing full and satisfying explanations and conclusions to all the threads and characters of this arc. He does rely on exposition more than I'd prefer, but it's well-written and naturally-fitting exposition. And even as this all draws to a close, Mr. Shepherd shows up and provides the promise of bigger and better things from Dizzy to come. Exactly what I want from the finale of an opening arc.
The Intimates #3: Feels a little bit like the title is coasting through this one. It's got some good moments and it builds to a solid ending, but there's not as much new stuff and some of what we see feels a little tired already. The info scrolls, for example, aren't as focused or thematically tied together here as they were in the first two issues. They still provide valuable and often amusing information to the reader, but they don't seem as sure of themselves this time out. It makes them less enjoyable than before, more of a hassle/annoying interruption to the narrative flow. It's too early for the info scrolls to be wearing thin like this, so hopefully they can pick up some slack in a month. Also there is Destra using her explosive fingernail powers and getting scolded for it, which happened in the debut and isn't utilized for anything all that fresh here. It does set up the idea that Destra is genuinely trying to be kicked out of school, and we also find out via the info scrolls that her parents give a lot of money to The Seminary, so it makes sense that she wouldn't get expelled even after so drastically acting out. You can even see the disappointment in her face when the principal tells her she's sticking around. So there is a bit of detail added to her character, but it's not surprising or even all that helpful, because we already knew that Destra had a bad attitude about school and a rebellious side, now we just have some teensy insight as to why. Anyway, the main story of Punchy finally figuring out that Empty Vee is his secret admirer is much stronger than the stuff that surrounds it. It gives Vee some much-needed spotlight time, and tells a very real and raw tragic teenage romance story. This ain't no Romeo & Juliet bullshit where two kids are so devoted to one another it kills them. This is a lonely and misguided young girl setting herself up to get crushed by the selfish, horny boy for whom she fell. The closing scene where Punchy so brutally and callously turns her down is the highlight of this issue. Giuseppe Camuncoli lights it to heavily add to the drama, and captures Punchy's inner shmuck and Vee's desperate and depressing hopefulness perfectly. Also, like with Punchy and Duke's failed "mission" last issue, the info scrolls go away when this heartbreak scene begins, which is a smart move that deepens the emotion and allows the reader to give it more focused attention. So even if Joe Casey isn't being quite as adventurous or ambitious with his ideas on these pages as he was in the opening two issues, this is a fine read that adds small pieces to several characters and culminates in a powerful final scene.
X-Force (vol. 1) #3: Fabian Nicieza's writing takes a bit of a dive. The script feels more forced and rushed than it has before, like he had less time to put it together or wasn't as inspired by Rob Liefeld's art or something. It starts off right away with Siryn's weird thought balloons that overtly explained the actions we can already see taking place, and only gets stranger from there. Juggernaut makes a Shout brand stain remover joke, Cable says the enemies will be on them "like a lisp on Mike Tyson," and when Spider-Man shows up at the end he refers to Warpath as a "jamochie," "buckeroo," and "rutabaga" all in a single page. Maybe it's humor that worked at the time and has soured with age, but it reads more like weakly-conceived jokes that fall flat right away. And there's a general sense that Nicieza and Liefeld couldn't get on the same page, with lines that don't quite match the facial expressions or mid-battle dialogue that's a lot longer than the action around it would really allow. And this issue is pretty much all action. It's not even a whole fight, just the beginnings of X-Force trying to take the World Trace Center back from Black Tom and Juggernaut. It's tremendously decompressed, taking place over what probably amounts to like 30 minutes and resolving nothing, ending on a cheapish cliffhanger. There is, of course, a new significance today to seeing one of the Twin Towers blown up by villains who're described as terrorists. But within the context of this wham-bam 90's superhero romp, it's too sudden and too typical. Issues like this make it easy to see why Liefeld has adamant supporters and vehement naysayers both. His style craves this level of action, giving him ample chances to do big, bold, eye-catching panels in the midst of a sprawling fight. But there's a level on surrealism to his figures that sometimes distracts, and he can be sloppy at times. Siryn, for example, dominates the opening of this issue, then says she's going to team up with X-Force to stop the bad guys, only to promptly and completely disappear from the action, never to be seen or heard again. She might show back up next issue (or in the issue of Spider-Man where this story continues before returning to X-Force next month) but for now it comes across as a mistake, and a big one at that. So yeah, not a very strong showing from X-Force #3. Too messy.
100 Bullets #3: Though perhaps a bit overly expository in places, the conclusion of this initial arc is a massive triumph overall. Everyone gets precisely what they deserve, which isn't really good news for anyone. Even Dizzy, who gets to avenge the deaths of her husband and baby and get out of the life she'd been trapped in up to now, doesn't walk away without some brand new emotional wounds to deal with. Her brother Emilio reveals himself to be the cause of her family's murder, so Dizzy loses the only person from to whom she still had any meaningful connection. It leaves her future wide open, because her past is about as dead and buried as it could ever be. Her love, her child, and her brother are lost to her, and the crooked cops who're responsible are dead by her hand. At the very end of the issue, she gets in a car with the mysterious Mr. Shepherd, and though we have no way of knowing yet who he really is or what plans he might have for her, it's clear that despite the finality of the events in this issue, Dizzy's real story is only beginning. Eduardo Risso does a lot with shadow in the artwork here, and (along with that) silhouette. This is as emotionally dark as the book has gotten so far, and the visuals match that. I also really love Emilio's whole look, the outward smugness that only tenuously contains the wild young man inside. That wild man spills out once the shit hits the fan and Emilio gets shot by his "partners," and he never really gets a hold of himself again. So the final impression we get of the character is that of an out-of-control, immature, pathetic failure, begging for some forgiveness from the sister he betrayed. She gives him not one inch of it, though, because difficult as it may be, Dizzy is too strong to let herself give in to his pleas. As she says, he's got a hard time ahead of him, but he's brought every minute of it on himself, and at least she lets him live. Brian Azzarello wraps up a very tidy package, providing full and satisfying explanations and conclusions to all the threads and characters of this arc. He does rely on exposition more than I'd prefer, but it's well-written and naturally-fitting exposition. And even as this all draws to a close, Mr. Shepherd shows up and provides the promise of bigger and better things from Dizzy to come. Exactly what I want from the finale of an opening arc.
The Intimates #3: Feels a little bit like the title is coasting through this one. It's got some good moments and it builds to a solid ending, but there's not as much new stuff and some of what we see feels a little tired already. The info scrolls, for example, aren't as focused or thematically tied together here as they were in the first two issues. They still provide valuable and often amusing information to the reader, but they don't seem as sure of themselves this time out. It makes them less enjoyable than before, more of a hassle/annoying interruption to the narrative flow. It's too early for the info scrolls to be wearing thin like this, so hopefully they can pick up some slack in a month. Also there is Destra using her explosive fingernail powers and getting scolded for it, which happened in the debut and isn't utilized for anything all that fresh here. It does set up the idea that Destra is genuinely trying to be kicked out of school, and we also find out via the info scrolls that her parents give a lot of money to The Seminary, so it makes sense that she wouldn't get expelled even after so drastically acting out. You can even see the disappointment in her face when the principal tells her she's sticking around. So there is a bit of detail added to her character, but it's not surprising or even all that helpful, because we already knew that Destra had a bad attitude about school and a rebellious side, now we just have some teensy insight as to why. Anyway, the main story of Punchy finally figuring out that Empty Vee is his secret admirer is much stronger than the stuff that surrounds it. It gives Vee some much-needed spotlight time, and tells a very real and raw tragic teenage romance story. This ain't no Romeo & Juliet bullshit where two kids are so devoted to one another it kills them. This is a lonely and misguided young girl setting herself up to get crushed by the selfish, horny boy for whom she fell. The closing scene where Punchy so brutally and callously turns her down is the highlight of this issue. Giuseppe Camuncoli lights it to heavily add to the drama, and captures Punchy's inner shmuck and Vee's desperate and depressing hopefulness perfectly. Also, like with Punchy and Duke's failed "mission" last issue, the info scrolls go away when this heartbreak scene begins, which is a smart move that deepens the emotion and allows the reader to give it more focused attention. So even if Joe Casey isn't being quite as adventurous or ambitious with his ideas on these pages as he was in the opening two issues, this is a fine read that adds small pieces to several characters and culminates in a powerful final scene.
X-Force (vol. 1) #3: Fabian Nicieza's writing takes a bit of a dive. The script feels more forced and rushed than it has before, like he had less time to put it together or wasn't as inspired by Rob Liefeld's art or something. It starts off right away with Siryn's weird thought balloons that overtly explained the actions we can already see taking place, and only gets stranger from there. Juggernaut makes a Shout brand stain remover joke, Cable says the enemies will be on them "like a lisp on Mike Tyson," and when Spider-Man shows up at the end he refers to Warpath as a "jamochie," "buckeroo," and "rutabaga" all in a single page. Maybe it's humor that worked at the time and has soured with age, but it reads more like weakly-conceived jokes that fall flat right away. And there's a general sense that Nicieza and Liefeld couldn't get on the same page, with lines that don't quite match the facial expressions or mid-battle dialogue that's a lot longer than the action around it would really allow. And this issue is pretty much all action. It's not even a whole fight, just the beginnings of X-Force trying to take the World Trace Center back from Black Tom and Juggernaut. It's tremendously decompressed, taking place over what probably amounts to like 30 minutes and resolving nothing, ending on a cheapish cliffhanger. There is, of course, a new significance today to seeing one of the Twin Towers blown up by villains who're described as terrorists. But within the context of this wham-bam 90's superhero romp, it's too sudden and too typical. Issues like this make it easy to see why Liefeld has adamant supporters and vehement naysayers both. His style craves this level of action, giving him ample chances to do big, bold, eye-catching panels in the midst of a sprawling fight. But there's a level on surrealism to his figures that sometimes distracts, and he can be sloppy at times. Siryn, for example, dominates the opening of this issue, then says she's going to team up with X-Force to stop the bad guys, only to promptly and completely disappear from the action, never to be seen or heard again. She might show back up next issue (or in the issue of Spider-Man where this story continues before returning to X-Force next month) but for now it comes across as a mistake, and a big one at that. So yeah, not a very strong showing from X-Force #3. Too messy.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Monthly Dose: December 2012
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
The Intimates #2: I rather enjoyed the off-balance pacing of this. At first, it feels a little aimless. We see the superhero students at an assembly watching (or ignoring) guest speaker Desmond, a former professional sidekick, as he urges them to find their own way in the world and not immediately do what their parents and teachers want. It's a pretty on-the-nose speech, stating out loud and in very plain language some of the themes present in the rest of this issue, as well as what was established in the debut. But once it ends (which only takes three pages), we get a disjointed series of scenes between several members of the cast we met last time. Destra and Empty Vee talk boys in the bathroom. Duke and Punchy play a game of basketball, during which Punchy cooks up a plan to try and break into a supposedly secret area of the school later that night. Duke nervously tells the school nurse about his constipation and is given hyperlaxatives, told sternly to take only one, and promptly swallows a handful of them. These scenes, sometimes intercut with one another, take up a decent stretch of pages, and while all of them expand the characters and/or the school, and they're all a lot of fun and very sharply written, they don't seem to have anything to do with one another and, initially, don't appear to even be making an attempt at telling a traditional narrative. They come across as vignettes, and when you factor in the info scrolls, shooting out random and similarly unrelated details on every page, there is a strong atmosphere of disconnectedness. But it rather quickly morphs into something else, a strange, unexpected, kind of genius comment on teenagerhood. Duke's hyperlaxative overdose catches up with him and he has an explosive, draining bathroom experience. This rolls into Punchy attempting to wake Duke up so they can carry out Punchy's scheme of breaking into the Seminary's secret teleportation room. But between Duke's exhaustion and Punchy's general distractedness, the plan never goes off, and rather than have a daring superpowered adventure together, the two boys talk video games and pass out. That is teenaged superheroism in a nutshell, and it applies to real-world teenagers as well. Often the biggest, boldest plans end up only as amusing conversations, but are never seen through, because the realities of dealing with your body, school, and your stressful social life always get in the way. It's a curve ball, and a ballsy kind of move, to have the conclusion of the issue be two of the protagonists falling asleep, but it works because it is so perfectly in line with the spirit of The Intimates so far. This isn't a series about superheroes who happen to be young, it's children who happen to be superheroes, and the non-adventure that takes place here underlines that. I also think it's a great move to get rid of the info scrolls for this Punchy-Duke sleepover scene. It makes it seem like, at the start, we're about to see some real action go down. It sets a mood of seriousness, and the panels get a little more dramatic as well. But then, wah wah, nothing happens. It's hilarious and true-to-life, and it highlights exactly what this title is all about.
X-Force (vol. 1) #2: In a lot of ways, this issue had the exact opposite effect as the first. Where the debut was a fast-paced and packed tightly with content, X-Force #2 dragged and had very little meat on its bones. It opens on a fight between two new (to this title) characters, Weapon X and Deadpool, and even though it's a good-looking sequence overall, it is ultimately meaningless. The point of the scene is just to have Bridge show up and ask Weapon X to help him against X-Force, and then even that falls flat when Weapon X turns the offer down without even really considering it. I'm assuming that's not the last we've seen of him, but within the pages of this issue it's all he does, and so the entire opening scene comes across as wasted time. Unfortunately, the rest of the issue feels much the same, taken up by an X-Force training exercise that goes wrong because Feral can't control herself (who'da guessed?) and severely injures Cannonball. I guess the purpose of this scene is to show the reader that this is a new team, not yet comfortable or even familiar with each other, and that even Cable, the supposed leader, doesn't quite have a handle on them all yet. This is certainly worth establishing early on, but it definitely could've been done more quickly, leaving room for this issue to still have an actual plot. The real weakness, though, isn't in the emptiness of the events, but the flaccidity of their conclusions. Weapon X says no, leaves. Cannonball gets hurt, lives. Cable is upset at Feral, does nothing. All rather anticlimactic. The very, very end of the issue, where Juggernaut shows up in an awesome two-page vertical splash, is probably the strongest part. Definitely the best-looking, though Liefeld's art is as reliable as ever all the way through. And Juggernaut is certainly a draw for me, so even though his appearance is in the Gideon/Sunspot story (which, thus far, is still not connected to X-Force directly) I am excited to see what he has in store next month. So a successful cliffhanger, tacked onto the end of a dud of an issue. Or...not a dud. That's the wrong word, because it still has all the energy of the previous issue, just not as much heft. It's marshmallow fluff, with Juggernaut acting as a dollop of peanut butter added at the end.
X-Force (vol. 1) #2: In a lot of ways, this issue had the exact opposite effect as the first. Where the debut was a fast-paced and packed tightly with content, X-Force #2 dragged and had very little meat on its bones. It opens on a fight between two new (to this title) characters, Weapon X and Deadpool, and even though it's a good-looking sequence overall, it is ultimately meaningless. The point of the scene is just to have Bridge show up and ask Weapon X to help him against X-Force, and then even that falls flat when Weapon X turns the offer down without even really considering it. I'm assuming that's not the last we've seen of him, but within the pages of this issue it's all he does, and so the entire opening scene comes across as wasted time. Unfortunately, the rest of the issue feels much the same, taken up by an X-Force training exercise that goes wrong because Feral can't control herself (who'da guessed?) and severely injures Cannonball. I guess the purpose of this scene is to show the reader that this is a new team, not yet comfortable or even familiar with each other, and that even Cable, the supposed leader, doesn't quite have a handle on them all yet. This is certainly worth establishing early on, but it definitely could've been done more quickly, leaving room for this issue to still have an actual plot. The real weakness, though, isn't in the emptiness of the events, but the flaccidity of their conclusions. Weapon X says no, leaves. Cannonball gets hurt, lives. Cable is upset at Feral, does nothing. All rather anticlimactic. The very, very end of the issue, where Juggernaut shows up in an awesome two-page vertical splash, is probably the strongest part. Definitely the best-looking, though Liefeld's art is as reliable as ever all the way through. And Juggernaut is certainly a draw for me, so even though his appearance is in the Gideon/Sunspot story (which, thus far, is still not connected to X-Force directly) I am excited to see what he has in store next month. So a successful cliffhanger, tacked onto the end of a dud of an issue. Or...not a dud. That's the wrong word, because it still has all the energy of the previous issue, just not as much heft. It's marshmallow fluff, with Juggernaut acting as a dollop of peanut butter added at the end.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Monthly Dose: November 2012
Monthly Dose is a
semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
The Intimates #1: This isn't just a strong debut, it's 22 pages of constant introduction. Even the last panel introduces a new character. Not only do we get a detailed explanation of The Seminary (a high school for superheroes) from Miss Klanbaid, we get to see a map of the classrooms & bedrooms, small bits of numerous actual classes in-session, and background info on all the teachers we meet. Plus we get a very full, multi-faceted introduction to Punchy (the most main of the main characters so far) along with at least some info on each of his classmates, from their family histories to explanations of their powers to more subtle and personal details. Of course, plenty of this comes not from the actual story being told but the info scroll bar at the bottom of each page, but that suits me just fine. It adds to the sense that this issue wants to be nothing more than a loud, complex, powerful introduction to this world and the people living in it. I suspect that if I read this when it originally came out, I'd be wary of the info scrolls showing up in future issues, but in this initial chapter it does a lot of helpful fleshing things out and filling things in. It's an interesting tactic Joe Casey takes with the story of this issue, where there is no large central conflict, just a series of tiny conflicts that pop up and are either quickly resolved or never important enough to necessitate a resolution. Which is, of course, exactly what being a teenager is like, and that's the point. This is much more a teen book that a superhero book, in tone and focus and rhythm and feel. Giuseppe Camuncoli's art would absolutely fit in a more traditional superhero book, but it's a bit exaggerated at the same time, a bit wilder and larger-than-life. It's a superhero "house" style filtered through the lens of teenage experience and perspective. It couples perfectly with Casey's narrative approach, and gives the whole book a very consistent, fully-realized voice. Even without a single central problem or narrative hook, The Intimates #1 makes you want to see more, to learn more. It screams "INTRODUCTION!" from the first page to the last, but it's never overly expository or dry. On the contrary, it's all humor, honesty and heart from top to bottom.
X-Force (vol. 1) #1: Well, this certainly made me anxious to read issue #2 next month. With almost 40 pages of story, Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld are able to cram in an awful lot of action and information. We get the juicy opening fight scene, which may be more filler than meat but is still a heckuva lot of fun and gives several characters a chance to show us their individual styles and attitudes. And once it's resolved we still have plenty of room to get a bit of background on leader Cable, get snippets of personality from most of the rest of the sizable team, and meet some of the supporting cast as well. Gideon and Sunspot's connection to the rest of the book is unclear as of yet, but the set-up of superpowered businessmen is enough to hold my interest for the few pages they take up. It's probably the weakest part of the issue, because we don't really know the stakes yet, but it's not terrible. And then there's the morally middle-of-the-line Bridge, who right now aims to be an obstacle for the titular team yet never comes across at all as a villainous character. That's a lot of people to become familiar with, but Nicieza gives everyone a pretty distinct voice, and Liefeld makes them all visually unique while still drawing everything in the classic Liefeld style. It's a very full comicbook, in terms of both art and story. Lots of fast-paced scenes with quippy dialogue, small panels overlapping larger ones, and muscular characters in bulky outfits taking up large sections of the page. It's not mind-blowing, but it's non-stop, has tons of bombastic action, and is just an all-around super fun read. I mean, it's the first fucking X-Force book, ya know? It comes out the gate at top speed and never lets up.
100 Bullets #1: There's a very interesting and well-put-together structure at play here. We get only the briefest introduction to Dizzy as a character before she meets Graves and he offers her proof of who killed her family and 100 untraceable bullets with which to do something about it. It is only after this intriguing set-up that the issue truly dives into Dizzy herself, though Graves does give the reader a rundown of her history during their conversation. Still, I really dig the approach of first sucking us in with a mystery, and then winning us over completely with this excellent portrait of a thoughtful, brave, intelligent woman who's been dealt such a shitty hand that she's trying to play a different game entirely. Dizzy is an amazing character, very human but somehow also slightly above it all. She is the only real voice of reason, surrounded by low-level criminals and corrupt cops with narrow, selfish viewpoints and motives. Brian Azzarello writes everyone with equal care, though, and there is a lot of life in his dialogue. It's not just comfortable and natural, it's precise. Everybody has their own unique way of speaking, even characters who're similar to one another, like Emilio and his friends or the pair of jackass police officers. As unlikable as some of them are, there's still a powerful humanity in their words and, by extension, their actions. All of this is bolstered tremendously by Eduardo Risso's art, which has had praise dumped on it innumerable times, for this series and others. But it's more than deserved, because Risso is a spectacular talent, particularly when it comes to his cast's acting. When Dizzy asks Graves if he's "Five-Oh," his only response is a single, tightly-framed smirk, yet somehow Risso makes that one look speak volumes. Graves is the furthest thing from a cop, but still clearly a figure of power and authority, which is all succinctly expressed in that one panel. There are plenty of other examples contained in this issue, but let's just say that both Azzarello and Risso really bring it here, from cover to cover. A strong and enjoyable lead character, her shadowy benefactor, a complex supporting cast, and a rich world for them all to live in. What more could you really want?
The Intimates #1: This isn't just a strong debut, it's 22 pages of constant introduction. Even the last panel introduces a new character. Not only do we get a detailed explanation of The Seminary (a high school for superheroes) from Miss Klanbaid, we get to see a map of the classrooms & bedrooms, small bits of numerous actual classes in-session, and background info on all the teachers we meet. Plus we get a very full, multi-faceted introduction to Punchy (the most main of the main characters so far) along with at least some info on each of his classmates, from their family histories to explanations of their powers to more subtle and personal details. Of course, plenty of this comes not from the actual story being told but the info scroll bar at the bottom of each page, but that suits me just fine. It adds to the sense that this issue wants to be nothing more than a loud, complex, powerful introduction to this world and the people living in it. I suspect that if I read this when it originally came out, I'd be wary of the info scrolls showing up in future issues, but in this initial chapter it does a lot of helpful fleshing things out and filling things in. It's an interesting tactic Joe Casey takes with the story of this issue, where there is no large central conflict, just a series of tiny conflicts that pop up and are either quickly resolved or never important enough to necessitate a resolution. Which is, of course, exactly what being a teenager is like, and that's the point. This is much more a teen book that a superhero book, in tone and focus and rhythm and feel. Giuseppe Camuncoli's art would absolutely fit in a more traditional superhero book, but it's a bit exaggerated at the same time, a bit wilder and larger-than-life. It's a superhero "house" style filtered through the lens of teenage experience and perspective. It couples perfectly with Casey's narrative approach, and gives the whole book a very consistent, fully-realized voice. Even without a single central problem or narrative hook, The Intimates #1 makes you want to see more, to learn more. It screams "INTRODUCTION!" from the first page to the last, but it's never overly expository or dry. On the contrary, it's all humor, honesty and heart from top to bottom.
X-Force (vol. 1) #1: Well, this certainly made me anxious to read issue #2 next month. With almost 40 pages of story, Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld are able to cram in an awful lot of action and information. We get the juicy opening fight scene, which may be more filler than meat but is still a heckuva lot of fun and gives several characters a chance to show us their individual styles and attitudes. And once it's resolved we still have plenty of room to get a bit of background on leader Cable, get snippets of personality from most of the rest of the sizable team, and meet some of the supporting cast as well. Gideon and Sunspot's connection to the rest of the book is unclear as of yet, but the set-up of superpowered businessmen is enough to hold my interest for the few pages they take up. It's probably the weakest part of the issue, because we don't really know the stakes yet, but it's not terrible. And then there's the morally middle-of-the-line Bridge, who right now aims to be an obstacle for the titular team yet never comes across at all as a villainous character. That's a lot of people to become familiar with, but Nicieza gives everyone a pretty distinct voice, and Liefeld makes them all visually unique while still drawing everything in the classic Liefeld style. It's a very full comicbook, in terms of both art and story. Lots of fast-paced scenes with quippy dialogue, small panels overlapping larger ones, and muscular characters in bulky outfits taking up large sections of the page. It's not mind-blowing, but it's non-stop, has tons of bombastic action, and is just an all-around super fun read. I mean, it's the first fucking X-Force book, ya know? It comes out the gate at top speed and never lets up.
P.S. A quick disclaimer: I am not necessarily committing myself to reading all 129 issues of the first volume of X-Force. As of this writing, I own only the first 24, and though I may well expand my collection in the next two years (i.e. how long it'll take me to read what I have at the one-issue-per-month rate) I'm not devoted to getting ALL of it as of yet. There were various creative teams, lineups, story arcs, etc. over the course of this series' history, including, at the very end, the total retooling of the title by Milligan and Allred, so if I reach a solid, satisfying stopping point down the line I'll probably call it. But we'll see. Maybe in ten years I'll still be including X-Force in Monthly Dose and totally regretting this longer-than-planned disclaimer.
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