The Drop List

In my various comicbook bloggings, I tend to skew positive. I've written before about why that is, but it boils down to generally feeling more energized by comics I like than those I don't. Negativity is an essential part of any criticism though, because not everything is going to be good, and when it's bad someone ought to say so. In that spirit, then, below are the comics I've decided to drop from my current pull list as of whenever I get around to sending an e-mail to Kelly at the store. (It'll probably be right after this). Oh, and of course, the reason(s) I'm dropping them.

Archer & Armstrong: I'm not totally sure when Archer & Armstrong went sour for me. It's still got a lot of fun and humor in it, but it feels like it's fallen into a narrative rut. The title characters keep fighting ancient evils and protecting ancient artifacts from being misused, but there isn't much actual progress made. This was probably always true, but it becomes more grating and noticeable the longer it lasts. Also, Archer and Armstrong haven't managed to remain as endearing as they once were, as individuals or a pair. Some of the playfulness has been sapped out of their relationship, and they both feel like empty echoes or their former awesomeness. I guess the whole series just got watered down somehow, not devoid of the elements that made it such solid entertainment in the past, but offering weaker, less interesting versions of those elements at every turn. Maybe this is more my fault as a reader than its fault as a comicbook; perhaps I've become less enamored of things that are exactly the same as they used to be, and I just can't say why. Whether I'm to blame or the books is or we both are or even neither of us are, though, is largely irrelevant. Bottom line is I'm over this title and ready to move on.

Hawkeye: As a rule, I've been less impressed with Hawkeye than other critics, or anyway the ones I read. I think there's been some smart stuff, but I wasn't as wowed by things like the dog issue or the most recent sign language issue. Cool ideas, carried through respectably and skillfully, but not mind-blowing or even necessarily stuff I'd never seen before. Not in that context, certainly, or in Aja's excellent style, so there's new good material, no doubt. It just doesn't excite me all that much. In between, there are Kate Bishop issues, which pretty much all suck. I don't have much experience with the character outside of this book, except for Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's Young Avengers where she was considerably sharper, calmer, and more interesting. Fraction writes her as a little manic, and that makes her issues manic all over. There's a cartoonish energy about her and her stories that grates on me, doesn't fit with the Clint issues at all, and makes me dislike Kate as a character. I'm only talking about her recent move to L.A. In the early issues of Hawkeye, I loved Kate, and she was very much like her Young Avengers self. Maybe it's Fraction saying something about L.A., maybe it's the artists who should be blamed and I am pointing the finger at the wrong person...whatever the case, I have yet to like a Kate-Bishop-does-L.A. installment of this series. And I've always hated the bro villains. Cannot, will not, shall not accept them as a serious threat, no matter how many clown-themed hitmen they have in their ranks. The patriarch figure wheres what appears to be a Kangol hat and the world's douchiest sunglasses, so...not happening. With all the downsides and the longer and longer waits between issues, Hawkeye just ain't worth the wait any longer. Or the money.

Nailbiter: My normal probationary period for any new ongoing series is the first three issues. It's an arbitrary number, but three issues feels like the right amount to prove that you're worth following as a series. It gives the comic a chance to fully introduce its concepts, characters, and style, plus (ideally) move the story forward a significant beat or two. With Nailbiter, three issues wasn't quiiiiiite enough for me to make up my mind. There were some obvious negatives right away that never got better, but there was also the kernel of decent story in there, and I remained curious and invested despite the flaws. However, it only took issue #4 five pages for me to know I would not be following this series any longer (even though I still read the whole issue, because, you know, gotta finish what you start). There were two lines of dialogue in Nailbiter #4 that sealed the deal. First, a little background to explain why they were so awful. The story of Nailbiter takes place in a town that was the hometown of sixteen different serial killers. Nicholas Finch gets called out to that town by a friend of his, Detective Carroll, who believes he has finally uncovered the secret of why so many murderers come from the same place. By the time Finch arrives, Carroll is missing, so Finch teams up with local sheriff Shannon Crane to find him. This all leads to Finch and Crane digging up the grave of the first serial killer, which is what they're doing when issue #4 begins. BACKGROUND OVER. So, on page four, Crane says something about the guy they're digging up, and Finch says, "He was the first, huh? The first of the sixteen killers?" Ugh. I get it, they're trying to make this accessible to readers for whom this is the first issue of the series...but come on. That's not even trying. There is no way in the world Finch would feel the need to say that to Crane. It's a long-established fact that this is the first killer, and even if I accepted that Finch might want to confirm that, the notion that he'd qualify the statement by saying, "The first of the sixteen killers?" is just insane. She knows what he means by "the first" and he knows she knows it. The line isn't just forced and awkward, it's distractingly lazy writing. Then, at the bottom of page four and spilling onto page five, Crane gives a speech about how it wasn't until killer number sixteen, the titular "Nailbiter," that anyone paid any attention to the small town and its messed up history. According to Crane, "The victims showing up with their fingernails missing was big business." NOPE. Not buying it. The first three pages of this issue are devoted to describing another of the killers, called "The WTF Killer," who mutilated and messed with people's corpses like art projects. Two pages later you want to convince me missing fingernails is what got the headlines? Bullshit. It wouldn't take more than four or five serial killers coming from the same rural town for somebody to connect the dots, some cop or fan or reporter, and make it into something. Crane does say a few small-time books were written, but that's just not good enough. Fifteen killers went under the radar, but a guy chews on one not-that-intimate part of his victims' bodies, and that's news. I'm never going to be getting over that detail, so might as well call it.

Saga: I might actually decide to keep reading Saga for another month or two. It's so fucking good-looking and visually inventive, I resist walking away. But looking at my pull list (without the other five titles in this post) Saga is the only thing I'm not actively enjoying right now, the only one where I feel no attachment to any characters or plotlines. It's a dullard, as narratively dry as it is visually...wet, I guess. Rich. Whatever the proper opposite-ish adjective is. It drags and drags and drags, filling time and space with dialogue that thinks it's clever and/or risqué and/or funny but is usually none of those things. Lots of gratuitous sex and violence, too, which I'm sure the creators would say has meaning but the meaning has yet to reveal itself to me. It's spectacle more often than not, and that has its place, but I can't afford to stick with it indefinitely if nothing meatier is ever going to be provided. Sometimes I love an individual issue, but that hasn't happened since before the most recent little hiatus the title took, so it feels like forever ago. Is the hope of it ever happening again worth the risk of being super-duper bored for another month's worth of this comic? No, but I may avoid giving up just yet nevertheless, due to weakness. Be strong, Matt.

Unity: Of all the comics on this drop list, Unity is the one I should've left longest ago. The opening arc was pretty fantastic, for several reasons, but it got fairly crappy as soon as that ended and has yet to step its game back up. I think the problem is that Harada had to become a villain, since in his "main" book of Harbinger that guy is way evil, but he was a big part of the brilliant combat strategies that made Unity stand out at first. His tactical mind and immense powers contributed a lot to the team's overall agility and capability. Also his personality helped stir things up. Now it's just people who agree with each other working toward common goals. Wah wah. The other huge change, and easily the biggest reason to stop reading this series, is that Doug Braithwaite left. He was most of why I picked it up in the first place, having been none-too-impressed with Matt Kindt's writing, historically. I should have departed when Braithwaite did, but I've now read more issues without him than with, and enough it enough already.

The Wicked + the Divine: So far, everyone who's said anything in this comic has been incredibly, insufferably full of themselves. They think they're so smart and funny and fantastic, but mostly what they are is boring passive supermodels who do nothing but talk about themselves and each other. Yes, ok, some heads blew up and some people were set on fire, but even then it happens so casually, and with a literal snap of the fingers, so as to make it seem insignificant. The idea of this comic, with the group of gods who show up every ninety years as hip young weirdos, is sexy and cool in all the right ways, but so far all the book has really accomplished is to idly roll around in the brilliance of its own concept. The most recent issue (#3) was mostly wasted space used not for story advancement but just to introduce two crazy annoying and clever-in-a-not-at-all-cute-way characters, who ended up not even mattering to the plot yet and walked off stage as suddenly as they entered. Boo, hiss, etc. I'm sure there's a plan, and that what seemed to me like wasted space was in fact a super-important piece of a puzzle too enormous for me to grasp yet, but I already don't care to ever grasp it. If this is the pace at which this comics plans to move, and these are the types of people who populate its world, then no thank you. Parting shot: the plus sign in the title is just obnoxious. Unless, I suppose, it's pronounced, "The wicked plus the divine," in which case it just has a dumb name.

Catching Up With February (2 of 2)

Continued from yesterday, my thoughts on every new comic I bought in February, which I got all at once at the end of the month after neglecting to visit my local shop before then.

Batman Black and White #6: First of all, I did not know this was a mini-series. It makes perfect sense, of course, that they wouldn't put this out indefinitely, but it's still a bummer to learn only now that this is the last issue. There were a few truly godawful stories here and there, but mostly this was an excellent book, and one of my last connections to DC outside of their Vertigo stuff. Ah, well, at least it went out with a strong issue. Cliff Chiang's opening story was particularly good, about Dick Grayson trying to earn the respect of Batman and the Gotham police as Robin. Chiang writes Dick as confident and smart but still young, new to the game and not 100% sure of himself, until the end when it really matters. Chiang's artwork also may have been my favorite in the issue, though Dave Johnson's was a close second, as was his script. Chiang's work was a little inkier/heavier, which I ultimately preferred to Johnson's grayer style, but they were both excellent, especially in their interpretations of Batman. Slim but strong, realistically fit and scary without seeming larger than life. All the artists in this issue had a good-looking Batman, actually. The Olly Moss/Becky Cloonan story that came second was excellent, because I'm always a fan of stories that examine how horrible and fake Bruce Wayne is as Batman's public persona. Also, Becky Cloonan rules always. And the second-to-last story by Adam Hughes impressed me by first bothering me with its Batman-comes-to-the-rescue-of-a-helpless-Catwoman plot but then turning things around by revealing that Catwoman was the one running the show all along. Her reasons for manipulating Batman didn't wow me, but at least she was played as smart and strong rather than a damsel in distress. Dave Taylor's middle story was my least favorite, though his artwork was great, able to capture the chaos of a mad scientist's lab in a very confined space without cluttering things up too much. But I cringed at his interpretation of Alfred as an outspoken, sarcastic skeptic, totally unsupportive of Batman at every turn. Also, having the villain explain his plan in a long self-congratulatory speech was uninspired and unnecessary, since Batman had pretty much figured things out already anyway. I'm grateful that the weakest narrative came right in the middle, though, because it made this issue open and close with things I liked, as good a way to finish Batman Black and White as I could ask for.

Harbinger #21: This issue is exemplary of what I love most about Harbinger—Joshua Dysart's spot on characterization of teenagers. Here, the Renegades have been hiding underground, literally, for too long, and the close quarters are starting to take their toll. Charlene and Torque are drinking a lot, Monica Jim keeps sneaking out when she thinks no one is looking, and tons of pressure have just been piled on thanks to hacktivist @X leaking all of Project Rising Spirit's information last issue. Now @X is hiding with the Renegades, meaning Harada is searching for them harder than ever, so they decide it's time to act. After all this time planning their next move, Peter and Kris figure if they want to carry out their plans, it's now or never, so things are coming to a head. Meanwhile, Faith and Torque lose their virginities to one another, in a very sweet, touching, funny, awkward, utterly teenaged scene. I've been rooting for Faith and Peter to become a couple all this time, but now that she and Torque have connected, I must say, they make much more sense to me. She's the most put-together member of the team, the most emotionally mature, but also the least self-confident. He's basically the opposite, emotionally still a little boy but with all the bluster and swagger that comes with it. If Faith could calm Torque down and Torque could amp Faith up, they'd be even better versions of themselves, so I'm eager to see how their relationship develops from here. Along the same lines, Monica Jim is revealing herself to be something of a malcontent, so I'm curious about her future role in the series as well. She may end up a villain or, at the very least, a major liability, and that's exciting and a little frightening to consider. Harbinger is really in its groove these days. Dysart has assembled this wonderfully dysfunctional team of young rebels, and as their struggles get crazier and more dangerous, the book becomes more and more arresting. And @X is a perfect addition to the cast, another teen with an ax to grind (get it?) but also an outsider and non-psiot, yet with enough hacker skills to make him an interesting and useful expansion to their collective skill set. With Clayton Henry's smooth, clear, expressive artwork also on board, Harbinger #21 was one of the most rock solid issues of one of the most reliably strong series coming out today. An origin for @X, a new romance, and major steps forward in the series' larger plot. That's a lot to get done, but it doesn't feel wedged in. It moves calmly but with determined purpose, a well-oiled machine firing on all cylinders.

Catalyst Comix #8: In its second-to-last issue, Catalyst Comix naturally brings all three of its stories to a head. The Agents of Change finally learn the truth about how Bert has been manipulating and lying to them, and they get appropriately pissed off about it. Bert tries to shut them up by separating them in the simulated environment in which their psyches are currently housed, but the pushback is stronger than anticipated, and it looks like next time they may be busting out and rejoining the real world as a unified group of furious super-people. Frank Wells discovers that it was Grace, not himself, who truly saved the world in December 2012, and coming to grips with his own unimportance in that event is a difficult but necessary step in his path to enlightenment. Now fully in touch with himself, Frank is ready for the final phase of his process of becoming the best superhero he can be. Finally, in her own story, Grace reaches the Reaver Swarm, her true enemy, the real threat to life on Earth. And she finds herself unprepared for its size and power. It destroys her ship and captures her, starting to consume her, so she sends out some kind of psychic distress call to the folks back home. Her survival seems unlikely, but maybe the citizens of her city will save her or, at the very least, succeed where she failed. Hers has always been my favorite narrative, and here in the penultimate chapter, it ends with the most compelling cliffhanger. Joe Casey has done a great job building to these climactic points in all three tales, and hopefully he'll nail the final chapters as well. All of his artistic collaborators continue to produce incredible work, giving the book a single voice while also keeping the different storylines distinct from one another. Catalyst Comix has been a weird, fantastic look at what superheroes can be, and it'll be missed.

Unity #4: The finale to Unity's first arc, and possibly its least interesting issue to date, primarily because all of its major developments were easy to see coming. Aric wasn't going to be separate from his armor for long, because X-O Manowar is still a series. And Harada had to be officially kicked off the team before they could do anything else together, since we'd already seen the rest of them agree he was an enemy. So that's what happens: Ninjak, Gilad, and Livewire steal back Aric's armor, stomp Harada with it, and return it to its original owner while freeing him and his followers from a secret prison. It's inevitable, and though Matt Kindt writes it logically and efficiently, there aren't any real surprises in there. All the characters are used well, the story does what it should, and the ending is tidy but still leaves the road open for the book's future. Also, Doug Braithwaite is still on art duties, and still crushing it. The one new character in this issue, Anchor, was one of my favorites in the whole series so far. He was very simple, like a big ugly thumb with a body, but there's a tenderness to him the undercuts his size and sturdiness nicely. In only a few pages on a single issue, Anchor is given a sad little background, a likable if pathetic personality, and an important but ultimately failed role to play in a key fight. That fight is where Braithwaite really brings in the noise, most of all when Ninjak and Harada face each other. Some intense, expertly-executed violence in those panels. Even the most predictable issue of this series is good comics, but it's too bad Braithwaite is leaving (at least for now) on a somewhat dull note. CAFU's a fine enough artist, but with a less rich style than Braithwaite's, and also, I find, less interesting.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #6: This was a very consumable issue, and I'm starting to think that's the main appeal of this book. It's such simple, almost retro superheroics. All the heroes are devoted, hard-working, good. They're not all nice, but they are honest and earnest, they try to do the right thing, they look out for one another, they believe in the cause. The villains, on the other hand, are all mad scientists and cultists and others hellbent on mad levels of power. There have been giant ancient monsters, dinosaur robots, and, this issue, a twelve-year-old evil genius. Even the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents' abilities—speed, strength, invisibility—tend to lean toward the classic, the easy-to-understand. And all of that is refreshing. This is a book that exists outside any continuity or shared universe, where secret agents and superheroes are one-and-the-same, and everything is straightforward and black-and-white. EXCEPT...there's some kind of crazy-old, crazy-secret thing with glyphs on it that holds the secret to deep, mystic power and/or knowledge and/or who the hell knows what else. This one cosmic puzzle that sits at the heart of the series helps it stand out, and is the throughline that keeps the narrative wheels turning. But Phil Hester slow-plays that mystery and uses most of his time to tell awesome, to-the-point superhero adventure tales. That's what this issue is, and what they've all been, and, with any luck, what they'll continue to be in perpetuity. The artist is Roger Robinson, not a name I think I've seen before, but more than earning his keep here. The huge, multi-eyed flying octopus robot emerging from the water was incredible, as was all of the action surrounding its appearance. I also loved the crazy mind-control helmet that got made on the fly out of spare parts assembled by a magnetized robot spider. Rogers managed to show what was happening clearly and quickly, giving the awesome final image of the helmet tuning on enough space for it to come with a great light show. That panel is also a highlight of colorist Rom Fajardo's work on the issue. It's good all over, from both Rogers and Fajardo, smoother in the foregrounds and on the characters, but with subtler details and textures in the backgrounds to give things a bit of depth. This is a blast of a book, always, and this issue is no exception.

Thor: God of Thunder #19.NOW: What is .NOW? There does not seem to be a separate issue #19 of this series coming out, which is what they used to to with .1 issues, right? It'd go 19, 19.1, 20, or at least that's my memory of it. Not sure what the last .1 issue I read was. Probably an X-Factor. Anyway, I guess all the .NOW is supposed to indicate is that this is the start of something fresh for this series, a new arc for the All-New Marvel NOW currently being rolled out across the line. If so...dumb. There's already the biggest, most obnoxious white "#1" imaginable in the right corner of the cover to say exactly the same thing, so the tiny "NOW" sitting underneath the "19." at the bottom is hardly going to draw anyone in. Ok, that's all I had to say about that idiotic thing. As for this actual comic, it was pretty lame as far as Thor stories go. The real star was an environmentally-focused S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Rosalind Solomon, who is funny and brash and cool, but the main reason she's here is because Thor has a crush on her and is trying to impress her by kinda-sorta helping to save the environment. The result is that there's a lot of Solomon arguing with her boss and then with one of the bigwigs at the evil Roxxon Corporation, while Thor operates more in the background, showing up to save Solomon and ask her out awkwardly. It makes both characters look weaker—Solomon because Thor keeps fighting her battles for her, and Thor because he's diverting all of his energy to getting the attention of a woman, which is not a look Jason Aaron manages to make look good on Thor. There's not enough humor, charm, or self-confidence in Thor's approach. I get that he's trying to be respectful, but it comes across as just acting out-of-character, oddly timid. As evidence of how much less exciting this story is than usual, and how stifled Thor is as a hero within it, I submit the incredibly gorgeous splash page of Thor smashing a frost giant in the face. This moment, while visually beautiful, is forced into the middle of the comic as a full-page punchline to a very weak joke Thor makes in the preceding panel about how he got his hands on a large amount of ice. It is also the only classically Thor-like moment in the comic, and one of only two times Esad Ribic truly gets to shine as an artist, the other being the final splash of Galactus showing up on a desolate, far-future Earth. The rest of the issue is too confined, trapped in environmental debate, Roxxon posturing, and Old Man Thor moping in the future. There are no thrills, no big action, nothing worthy of the might of this character, and nothing fit to display how amazingly majestic Ribic's work can be. This series has been all about doing Thor as an epic warrior, so seeing him brought back down to earth feels like deflation. It's not that human, grounded Thor stories can't work, but they are not what Aaron does well in this title, and I was less than enthused by this first chapter. Hopefully things will become a little more intense now that Galactus is involved, and the Roxxon guy is, I think, secretly a minotaur, based on his nickname and the cover image. So things may be amping up soon as far as power levels, but this issue was underwhelming in that regard.

Kings Watch #4: First things first: Marc Laming is dominating with this book. His invading hordes of monsters and beastmen are especially delicious, but even just the establishing shot of Skull Cave or Lothar firing Zarkov's giant sonic weapon are enough to give me chills. There's a lot of fantastical and/or sci-fi stuff going down, and Laming makes it all look real and, when appropriate, terrifying. And there's a lot of personality in every character, even the expendable grunts in Ming's forces. Laming makes them all detailed, unique, fully-realized animal-people. Shout out to colorist Jordan Boyd, too, who makes all the explosions and magic look lifelike in their lighting, matching Laming's realism. As far as hard-hitting action-adventure comics go, I can't imagine there's much coming out right now that looks any better than this. And because this issue had the most chaotic, widespread combat, it was perhaps the best-looking yet. Jeff Parker's script is excellent, too, smartly paced to keep things lively. The shit officially hits the fan, and the heroes step up immediately to deal with it. Kings Watch is not dissimilar to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, in that much of its appeal is how simple things are from a morality standpoint for all the main characters. Ming calls himself merciless, he calmly and plainly explains to the people of Earth that he's there to invade them and turn their way of life upside down. He's so comfortable as a villain, and so unconcerned with being perceived as such, that he lays his cards out on the table right away. The heroes, meanwhile, are free from any of the bickering or strategic debate of many teams, trusting one another already and respecting all the voices of the group equally. It makes them extremely efficient, able to believably assess the threat Ming represents and cook up a response in only 24 hours. They haven't won the war, of course, and I'd argue they lost the first round last issue, but round two goes to the good guys for sure.

Rachel Rising #23: I've praised this series a lot, and so have many others, and it's all well-deserved. This issue didn't stand out to me as especially great, but a lot of important things happened, as they pretty much always do. Rachel and Jet met up with Zoe again and, finally, figured out that she's not the little girl she appears to be. All of the masks are falling off, and this was an important one to finally do away with. Rachel also got ahold of her box of witch stuff at last, and the process to return Aunt Johnny's soul to her body came a few steps closer to being complete. All gripping, significant stuff, but also all relatively mundane. The creepiest part of the issue is when Dr. Siemen considers having sex with Johnny's soulless body, which lasts for a few tiny panels before the power goes out and he has to deal with that instead. Other than that, the events of this issue run fairly smoothly, until the final, haunting panel that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I'm not going to waste time trying to describe it because I could never do it justice, but it's probably the most beautiful, unsettling, horrific thing Terry Moore has done in this series up to now. I don't even really know what it means yet, but it has already left its mark. One unforgettable panel is more than most comics have to offer, so this is still a great comic, but it wasn't as bonkers as Rachel Rising can be. Then again, there's been a pattern of calms before storms, so chances are a major storm is a-comin'. My impression of Moore's plan is that the storyline that's been running through this series from the start is about to wrap up, and certainly it feels that way in-story, with Rachel, Jet, and Zoe all headed for Lilith together for what they hope will be the final confrontation. So this was a quick pause before all the scores get settled, which is a structurally sound way to go, and fits with the general pace of this title.

Daredevil #36: The "last" issue of this series before the same creators relaunch it next month as a new volume with a new, higher price (ugh). Mark Waid, true to form, comes up with a very clever way for Matt Murdock to defeat the Sons of the Serpent, by revealing that he's Daredevil and confessing to all the lies he told and laws he broke over the years to keep that a secret. It gives the Sons no moves, nothing they can use to threaten him, so they make a desperate final attack, and Daredevil beats them gleefully. He gets disbarred, and so does Foggy, but that was always part of the plan, a necessary evil to defeat a far greater evil. In the end, at Kirsten's suggestion (because she, too, is now out of a job) the plan is to relocate to San Francisco, since the only chance they have of practicing law again is in a state where they've done so before. A new setting is a good enough reason to reboot a book's numbering, I guess, but really this is just the end of an arc. Still, Waid does a pretty good job of making it feel like a bigger, more final ending than this book has had in the past. Murdock burning his career to the ground, exposing his true identity, and deciding to move across the country are a lot of big, life-changing things to do in one issue, so there is a special flavor to this, a feeling of added importance. It may be manufactured, but it's effective. I'm glad Waid is sticking around, and extra glad Chris Samnee will still be the artist, because he does the best Daredevil ever at this point. Fun-loving, fit and trim enough for me to buy all of his superhuman acrobatics, and solid as a rock. That's a Daredevil I'll never tire of, and everything and everyone else looks just as good when Samnee's drawing them. The Waid-Samnee-Daredevil mix seems to be evergreen, so do whatever the hell you want with the numbering, I guess, Marvel. As long as the quality keeps up, I'll be reading. I'm more than invested now.

Drumhellar #4: I had actually already read a digital version of this in preparation for my recent PopMatters piece on this title. But I always like a hard copy, and I prefer to read things in that format, so I went ahead and gave this another read. It was still great. This series isn't for everyone, but I love the hell out of Riley Rossmo, and his previous series with Alex Link, Rebel Blood, is an all-time favorite of mine. Drumhellar's not quite as amazing, but it's completely its own thing, bold and bananas in ways I respect a lot. It's also very funny and it always looks so goddamn good, because Rossmo is really cutting loose on this title, playing around with every style he's ever used before and mixing them freely and perfectly. This issue has an ideal example of what I mean in the side-by-side full-page splash panels of Drum's vision of using Doc's dead body to house DJ's spirit so DJ will stop aging backwards. Rossmo brings totally different coloring, linework, and inking styles to the two pages, but then uses repeated imagery in them to show how they connect and to make their message clear. It's trippy and a little hard to decipher, but everything you need is there, which is, actually, a good description of this whole series. It moves weirdly, jumps in time and location happening without warning or transition. Rossmo and writer Alex Link trust their audience to keep up, or, as I usually do, go back and figure everything out once we know more. The opening page of this issue, for instance, actually takes place in the middle of it, chronologically speaking, but there's no way to know that until later on. So at first, you just have to soak up the washed-in-blue panels of a rat sneaking in the dark and chewing on wires. Who he is, where he is, and what he's up to will be explained eventually, as all things always are in Drumhellar if you pay attention and let yourself get swept up in the ride. A lot got resolved this time, but then at the end Drum became a werewolf, so...we'll see where this all ends up. Supposedly the first arc ends next issue, but what does that even mean in a series that moves like this? The plot about DJ only came up in issue #2 or maybe even #3, and it's already been taken care of, so I'm not sure what an "arc" really is for Drumhellar. I also don't really care, because Rossmo is my hero and this is a fabulous and impossible-to-predict comicbook I love to read.

Phew...all caught up. G'night!

Some Things That Stood Out in This Week's Comics

I got a whole bunch of new comicbooks this week, partly because nothing is being released on Christmas day so there's more earlier in the month, and partly just because it happened to be one of those weeks were a lot of stuff came out that I follow. I've written a couple of reviews of some of those issues already, but there were a handful of other more specific things that caught my eye or stuck in my mind from this week's reading, so below are the four that seemed most notable, in the order in which I read them. These aren't meant as full reviews, just some comments on the details that stood out to me.

Lazarus #5
We begin with the only negative case in the group. I'm not the world's biggest Lazarus fan, but it's a pretty solid series with a great central character, and this issue made her seem even greater through one or two key scenes. Overall, then, it was more good than bad, although there were a few pages that felt pretty wasted, most of all the whole first scene.

Whatever, the thing I really want to talk about is the inconsistency in the voice of the captions that identify the location and population of each new setting. Basically, in the world of Lazarus, there are three different classes: Family, meaning members of the five families who own all of America; Serf, meaning the middle class people who work for the families; and Waste, meaning the poor nobodys who make up most of the population but have the least power or importance in society. Every time a scene begins in a place we haven't seen before, the first panel includes a caption naming the location and breaking down how many members of each class live there. Kinda. Here's the first one from this issue:

So the "Population [Family]: 2 [1 permanent]" is there to express that while protagonist Forever lives at Compound Sequoia all the time, her father (the first speaker in the above panels) is only there for a temporary visit. Which is somewhat useful info for us to have, but it's also quickly reiterated by the dialogue. So the caption is extraneous, telling the reader something the story was already going to explain. On the other hand, there's nothing the least bit useful about "Population [Serf]: 32." That's a random number that gives only a vague sense of how big the mysterious compound might be, because only 2 of the 32 are seen in the issue. This would all be less irksome if every one of these captions had the exact same format, but they don't at all. Check these two non-consecutive examples:

The first one bothers me for several reasons. Number one, it begins with a summary of the entire population (or lack thereof) of the setting, not broken down by class, which I never remember seeing in this book before. Secondly, it fails to mention that, in addition to the 16 serfs currently deployed, Forever is there, too, meaning there's also 1 family member present. Lastly, the caption actually identifies who the 16 serfs are, which is more info than these captions pretty much ever provide. It doesn't give their names, but even calling them Dagger Team A is more than usual. And it's redundant anyway, since Forever asks for this team in the previous scene, so we already know who they are. I'm confused as to why this caption is so unlike the others, because it doesn't add anything to the scene it opens, and it totally distracted and confused me. When Forever was there without having been identified by the caption, I actually went back to the top of the page and read it again to see if I'd missed something. Why this didn't say, "Population [Family]: 1 (0 permanent)/Population [Serf]: 16 (0 permanent)" is beyond me. It would've told us everything it tells us anyway, but in a way that lined up with all the other captions of this type more logically.

The second of the two above examples bugs me pretty much because it has the opposite problem as the preceding one. It actually does point out that no family- or serf-level people are currently there, instead of just telling us the total waste-level population, which is all we actually need to know. If these captions were more reliable or uniform, then saying "Population [Waste]: 17" would've been enough. But because not mentioning one of the classes doesn't necessarily mean nobody from that class is present, and I guess Greg Rucka really wanted to drive home that it's all waste at Musselshell, we once again get too much data for no real reason.

I feel like these captions change arbitrarily based on...I don't even know what. Somebody's whims? I know it's a little silly to complain that these non-character captions don't have, like, a consistent personality, but I'd seriously prefer it if they did, dammit! I want them to be legitimately informative, helpful, what have you, rather than feeling like tacked-on stylistic flourishes that serve no practical storytelling purpose.

Unity #2
I rather enjoy Matt Kindt's approach to battle dialogue. In some ways, I guess that's a compliment for the entire issue, since pretty much all of Unity #2 is devoted to a single fight between Aric (X-O Manowar) and the rest of the cast. But I'm not going to get into all the ins and outs of what did and didn't work with that or any other scene in the comic. I just want to zero in on the way Kindt writes the in-fight smack talk as an intelligent tactical debate between the two sides of the battle. It's sort of a classic case of characters explaining what they are doing as they do it, but there's a certain aggressiveness and vocabulary Kindt gives to his characters that makes it better than usual.

It still hits a lot of the typical beats, like having Livewire explain out loud—well, technically it's telepathically, but whatever, it happens in the text is what matters—how her superpowers work and what she's using them for. But she has a real reason for it in this case because she's fighting Aric in his mind while the rest of her team battles him physically, so she needs to update her allies on her progress as a means of keeping them in the loop and encouraging them to keep up their end of the fight. Meanwhile, Aric is super cocky about the trap he's set, but the group he's fighting knows they're much smarter and more experienced than he is, so they explain with their own arrogance about how they're going to beat him. And I just love the way Kindt scripts all of that. Everyone is very logical even as they're crowing, and the very concept of barbed strategic arguments appeals to me unexpectedly. I guess because this isn't a bunch of people bragging about their powers or power levels, which is the more common thing to see in a superhero fight scene. This is slightly more elevated conversation, a heated discussion of technique and position and planning, with the ultimate point being that sheer power is never enough. Aric arguably has the most of that, even more than the others combined, but he isn't able to control it completely or use it in the best possible way, and his enemies can do that with their own abilities, so he loses definitively. It really worked for me, a minor adjustment to a genre trope that made a world of difference.

Batman Black and White #4

This is a quick one. The above panel, drawn by Kenneth Rocafort, is the best-looking Batman I've seen in a few years. And I tend to like Greg Capullo's tale on the character, not to mention Jock and Francavilla and Tomasi and so on. But Rocafort does an exceptional job all over, and that close-up image is the cream of the crop. From basic design elements like the length of the bat-ears to more subtle aspects like the blend of rigidity and mobility in the mask, it's a near-perfect rendition of the Dark Knight. Plus the look on Batman's face is a fantastic mix of curiosity, anger, and surprise. He's more expressive in this panel than many artists are able to make him in an entire issue. It's not all brooding, even when, like here, he is brooding. There's more nuance than that, because Batman is a smart and complicated dude with a lot going on in his over-active mind at any moment. You can see the mental wheels turning under the cowl in this panel. Finally, I like how Batman looks strong and intimidating without needing to do anything but look straight at me. There's no billowing cape or crouching in the shadows or any of the other theatrics the hero often employs. He's just so stern and confident and physically firm that I'm a little frightened of him when he's standing stone still in the middle of an open space.

Harbinger #19
Riley Rossmo returns for the second issue in a row to draw a few short dream sequences, and there are some stellar results. Between Rossmo's distinct style for the events in Peter's mind, and Barry Kitson's convincing made-up cartoon characters brought to life by newish character Monica, we end up with a few pages that are a bizarre mash-up of bright-and-shiny childlike visuals and grim-and-gritty horrors.

These images capture visually one of the major underlying themes of this book as a whole, the idea of superpowered kids trying to operate and fight at an adult level, but only half-succeeding at best because, like it or not, they're still children. So even though Monica's mental constructs prove quite helpful, they still stand out as ill-fitting in such a serious setting. Ditto Peter's mental world; he uses it to contact Monica so she can free him and the rest of his team, but its aesthetic is glaringly different than that of reality, displaying that Peter may not be all that down-to-Earth, despite his power level and budding leadership skills.

I also like how the total chaos of this issue's events are expressed so efficiently by having all these different art styles sharing page space. Often, having different artists on a single page, particularly when their work looks so different, is confusing or discomforting, if not downright ugly. Here, it's done sparingly and thoughtfully enough that it actively enhances the issue. And it only really happens at the beginning, and then Peter and Monica are both freed from captivity so the need for her cartoon friends and his dreamscape go away. They're well-used early on, but not held onto too tightly, intelligently abandoned once they've served their purpose.


So that's a summary of the bits and bobs that got me going this week. YAY comics!