Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #30: This story was quite the dud. Nothing changes except that a relatively minor new character dies, and other new characters of varying importance kinda-sorta become better people for it, at least for a minute. Wylie is a drag and an immovable asshole, Shepherd's cryptic nonsense has gone on so long even Dizzy is openly complaining about it, and this time around we get Angelina, and offensive caricature of sexuality who's mostly there as a prop for Dizzy and Wylie to talk about. Also, the reveal where the contraband wasn't drugs or guns or anything like that but exotic animals was weak, unoriginal, and pointless. It didn't work as a joke, it didn't teach us anything new about this story except for the simple fact of what Wylie had in the truck, and the only real purpose it served was so Hopper could scare the birds with gunshots when he freaks out about Doctor Dan dying. He could just as easily have destroyed more run-of-the-mill illegal goods, so the birds felt like a fake-out for the sake of it, like the real point was just to make it hard for the reader to guess what was in the truck. I didn't even care about what was in the truck, to be honest, and like Wylie, I would've been fine never knowing. It might even have been preferable. This arc seemed most interested in introducing Wylie, but it did that pretty well in like the first couple scenes three issues ago, so much of what follows is water-treading, a series of random and often dull interactions between Wylie and Dizzy, Dizzy and Shperherd, and Wylie and various criminals, strung together into a narrative just to fill the space or pass the time. One of the nice things about 100 Bullets is that whole new locations, situations, and groups of characters can show up at any time, so I'm still excited for whatever comes next, but this last storyline was, in the end, a waste.
Automatic Kafka #6: Why does the only female superhero in the $tranger$ have to get her powers from sex? It just seems too easy, and it's a tendency of Joe Casey's writing I don't like. Not that all his characters have sex-based powers, but that when he writes women there's frequently something aggressively sexual about them, their personalities or their histories or the way other characters see/treat them or any combination of those things. I guess there's aggressive sexuality from both genders in Casey's writing, and I'm just as unenthusiastic about it either way, as evidenced by how little I enjoyed Sex. There were other huge problems in that book, too, and there's nothing wrong with graphic sex in a comicbook in and of itself. On the contrary, there is most certainly value is this kind of head-on, intense, comically in-your-face sex, but it's not as compelling for me as the main themes of Automatic Kafka, the discussions of celebrity and washed up superheroes trying to find their place in the world. That's all here, but it gets overshadowed by the sex, and the fact that this sudden erotic supercharge arrives at the same time the first major female character is introduced is gross and sexist and lame. Come to think of it, all the women in this book so far have been hyper-sexualized, from Death to the NSA agent who tries to seduce Kafka to the Bill of Rights to Helen of Troy here. Maybe I take back when I said about both genders before; I've read other comics by Casey where men and women are on more equal sexual footing, but this is not one of them, and this issue is such a loud, long reminder of it that it's more frustrating than anything else. I dug the flashback sequence because it had more to do with superheroing than fucking, and it hinted at the origins of the baby bombs that seem mysteriously central to this series. But beyond that and the awesome look and soothing blue speech bubbles of the character who shows up at the end, this was mostly superhero porn, which is all well and good, but I've seen lots of porn and I'd much rather read comics that give me something I can't get other places.
X-Force (vol. 1) #30: The first caption on the first page of this issue says, "This is all either of these two young men have ever wanted." Then there are 5 captions worth of explaining who the men are (Shatterstar and Adam-X) and that they've been forced to fight each other by Arcade. Then you turn the page, and the first caption of the second page says, "It is not what either of them want." Ummmmm...what? You literally just told me it was all they've ever wanted. One page ago. So yeah, I think I'm done with X-Force. As I'm sure everyone remembers, back in my first ever Monthly Dose, I mentioned that I wasn't necessarily going to read every issue of this comic. At the time I owned the first 24, and then several months ago I bought #25-30 just to keep this project going. No more. I know that, years from now, if I keep at it, I'm going to get to some really good stuff in this book. Someday, I'd still like to read that. But I'm not interested at all in the comic in the state it's in right here, at issue #30. The art, no matter who's drawing it, is way too bulky and 90's and cramped, and the story is so all over the place with such uninteresting characters that I can't hang on long enough to get into anything. Enough is enough of that. I understand the action-packed, in-your-face-jam appeal of this title, but it's not targeted at me, and I can't possibly justify spending any more money on it just to keep bashing it on my blog.
Showing posts with label X-Force. Show all posts
Showing posts with label X-Force. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Monthly Dose: March 2015
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #29: While presumably still focused on Wylie, this issue felt like it was dominated by Mr. Shepherd more than anyone else. It is Shepherd who introduces us (by introducing Dizzy) to Juárez, where much of the action takes place. Shepherd also gives Wylie's name to Mik, a detail that comes into play in a big way at the end, and is most likely some kind of deliberate wrench-in-the-works move from Shepherd. It seems far more likely Shepherd knew that Wylie, pretending to be Hopper, was going to do business with Mik, and thus intended to have Mik spook Wylie by saying his real name aloud. Why Shepherd would want to rattle Wylie like this is impossible to tell, but that's true of almost everything what Shepherd ever does. He's at least as mysterious as Graves, and as manipulative, which is why I assume that the consequences of any action he makes must be exactly what he wanted. The tension in this issue comes from Wylie, and more pages are centered on him than not, but even so, Shepherd's presence is the one you feel more powerfully. He's the only character who knows what's going on and is in control of his fate from start to finish, so he comes out looking stronger and more significant. None of this is a complaint; I love Shepherd and find him considerably more interesting to follow than Wylie or anyone else in this arc. And the trouble Wylie gets into at the end of this issue is scary and exciting and, if not unexpected, at least hard to predict. Who are the gun-wielding figures in the shadows? How is Wylie possibly going to get out of this? Why did poor, simple Dan have to die? We're left with some decent hooks to pull us back for the story's final act, even though Wylie isn't a standout star here, and generally hasn't convinced me I should care about him yet. It speaks to both Brian Azzarello's story-crafting skills and Eduardo Risso's exceptional suspense-building that the conclusion of this issue draws me in so effectively even though I'm not fully invested in Wylie, and his journey is not what gets the spotlight this time around. I'm still all-in on 100 Bullets, despite the current storyline being only so-so, because the overall quality of the series maintains even during its lower points.
Automatic Kafka #5: After a few pages of Kafka being interviewed, the bulk of this issue stars his former teammate from the $tranger$, the Constitution of the United States of America. I love that as a superhero name, but the character himself seems a lazy, easy, nuance-free take on America's fetishistic adoration of violence and machismo. His opening speech where he's trying to rally the troops is more than enough to understand him and what he represents, yet that only takes up two pages, after which we get another nine pages of him and his crew annihilating a drug lab and all the people in it. Of course big, needless action sequences are part and parcel for superhero comics, but in this specific case it felt like one note played for too long, an utterly simple character introduction stretched over way too large a space. Near the end we see the Warning's baby bombs again, so there are hints of a larger, connected story here, but only of the vaguest kind. The real purpose of the babies in this issue is to piss off the Constitution, who prefers his violence and destruction to be hands-on, and dislikes the distance with which the babies' controllers commit their acts of murder and destruction. Which is almost interesting, but by the time that point gets made, I'm so tired of the Constitution (and his dialogue is so clipped and indirect) that it's hard to even muster up the energy to comprehend what he's saying. Ash Wood does chaotic, over-the-top action well, and he nails all the other elements of the Constitution's overall theatricality, too. So the art is as good as always, but it, too, sells the character concept quickly and then goes nowhere new with it, making this a good-looking but visually repetitive comic. Every issue of Automatic Kafka is a new, wild adventure, and this was no different, but somehow shifting the book's attention to a superhero other than the title character produced something blunter and lighter than usual, like a watered-down version of what the series has been prior to this issue.
X-Force (vol. 1) #29: I've seen a lot of this before. Cable walks around, surveying the team, thinking about how bad things have been lately. Old news; very boring. The rest of the issue, on the other hand, has a plot that's new, or new to this title, anyway: Arcade kidnaps Shatterstar and pits him again opponents from his homeworld. It's fine, though not considerably less boring than the other part of the issue. Arcade is lame, a spoiled child of a villain even at his best, and this is far from his best. His insane bright pink sunglasses and head-sized polkadot bow tie look terrible, and he's not even really the main baddie here, just a gun for hire working at the command of a mysterious employer. Who cares? Is the point of this just to spotlight Shatterstar? I'm going to go with yes, especially since Arcade makes Shatterstar put on his original, Liefeld-all-over costume for absolutely no reason at all. But why give that character this kind of focus now? There's way more urgent stuff going on, like Feral quitting and Tempo possibly joining up, but that all gets the most meager lip service in the Cable pages while all the action and meat in this issue is Shatterstar-centric. It seems a wholly random detour, and a frustrating one, and it ends with X-Treme showing up, who is just so overwhelmingly 90's I can hardly look at him. Bottom line is that I did not care for one bit of this issue. Matt Broome's pencils are clear and consistent, but his style is not to my taste at all, too bulky and heavy and cramped. As for the script, Fabian Nicieza writes these scenes well enough, but they weren't the scenes I wanted to have to sit through. Follow the threads already established, don't shunt them aside for new, arbitrary, pointless action pieces that only involve one of the series' stars.
100 Bullets #29: While presumably still focused on Wylie, this issue felt like it was dominated by Mr. Shepherd more than anyone else. It is Shepherd who introduces us (by introducing Dizzy) to Juárez, where much of the action takes place. Shepherd also gives Wylie's name to Mik, a detail that comes into play in a big way at the end, and is most likely some kind of deliberate wrench-in-the-works move from Shepherd. It seems far more likely Shepherd knew that Wylie, pretending to be Hopper, was going to do business with Mik, and thus intended to have Mik spook Wylie by saying his real name aloud. Why Shepherd would want to rattle Wylie like this is impossible to tell, but that's true of almost everything what Shepherd ever does. He's at least as mysterious as Graves, and as manipulative, which is why I assume that the consequences of any action he makes must be exactly what he wanted. The tension in this issue comes from Wylie, and more pages are centered on him than not, but even so, Shepherd's presence is the one you feel more powerfully. He's the only character who knows what's going on and is in control of his fate from start to finish, so he comes out looking stronger and more significant. None of this is a complaint; I love Shepherd and find him considerably more interesting to follow than Wylie or anyone else in this arc. And the trouble Wylie gets into at the end of this issue is scary and exciting and, if not unexpected, at least hard to predict. Who are the gun-wielding figures in the shadows? How is Wylie possibly going to get out of this? Why did poor, simple Dan have to die? We're left with some decent hooks to pull us back for the story's final act, even though Wylie isn't a standout star here, and generally hasn't convinced me I should care about him yet. It speaks to both Brian Azzarello's story-crafting skills and Eduardo Risso's exceptional suspense-building that the conclusion of this issue draws me in so effectively even though I'm not fully invested in Wylie, and his journey is not what gets the spotlight this time around. I'm still all-in on 100 Bullets, despite the current storyline being only so-so, because the overall quality of the series maintains even during its lower points.
Automatic Kafka #5: After a few pages of Kafka being interviewed, the bulk of this issue stars his former teammate from the $tranger$, the Constitution of the United States of America. I love that as a superhero name, but the character himself seems a lazy, easy, nuance-free take on America's fetishistic adoration of violence and machismo. His opening speech where he's trying to rally the troops is more than enough to understand him and what he represents, yet that only takes up two pages, after which we get another nine pages of him and his crew annihilating a drug lab and all the people in it. Of course big, needless action sequences are part and parcel for superhero comics, but in this specific case it felt like one note played for too long, an utterly simple character introduction stretched over way too large a space. Near the end we see the Warning's baby bombs again, so there are hints of a larger, connected story here, but only of the vaguest kind. The real purpose of the babies in this issue is to piss off the Constitution, who prefers his violence and destruction to be hands-on, and dislikes the distance with which the babies' controllers commit their acts of murder and destruction. Which is almost interesting, but by the time that point gets made, I'm so tired of the Constitution (and his dialogue is so clipped and indirect) that it's hard to even muster up the energy to comprehend what he's saying. Ash Wood does chaotic, over-the-top action well, and he nails all the other elements of the Constitution's overall theatricality, too. So the art is as good as always, but it, too, sells the character concept quickly and then goes nowhere new with it, making this a good-looking but visually repetitive comic. Every issue of Automatic Kafka is a new, wild adventure, and this was no different, but somehow shifting the book's attention to a superhero other than the title character produced something blunter and lighter than usual, like a watered-down version of what the series has been prior to this issue.
X-Force (vol. 1) #29: I've seen a lot of this before. Cable walks around, surveying the team, thinking about how bad things have been lately. Old news; very boring. The rest of the issue, on the other hand, has a plot that's new, or new to this title, anyway: Arcade kidnaps Shatterstar and pits him again opponents from his homeworld. It's fine, though not considerably less boring than the other part of the issue. Arcade is lame, a spoiled child of a villain even at his best, and this is far from his best. His insane bright pink sunglasses and head-sized polkadot bow tie look terrible, and he's not even really the main baddie here, just a gun for hire working at the command of a mysterious employer. Who cares? Is the point of this just to spotlight Shatterstar? I'm going to go with yes, especially since Arcade makes Shatterstar put on his original, Liefeld-all-over costume for absolutely no reason at all. But why give that character this kind of focus now? There's way more urgent stuff going on, like Feral quitting and Tempo possibly joining up, but that all gets the most meager lip service in the Cable pages while all the action and meat in this issue is Shatterstar-centric. It seems a wholly random detour, and a frustrating one, and it ends with X-Treme showing up, who is just so overwhelmingly 90's I can hardly look at him. Bottom line is that I did not care for one bit of this issue. Matt Broome's pencils are clear and consistent, but his style is not to my taste at all, too bulky and heavy and cramped. As for the script, Fabian Nicieza writes these scenes well enough, but they weren't the scenes I wanted to have to sit through. Follow the threads already established, don't shunt them aside for new, arbitrary, pointless action pieces that only involve one of the series' stars.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Monthly Dose: February 2015 (Super Belated)
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #28: A fairly dull, slow-moving change in setting and introduction to a new character, Wylie, and his world. Wylie is presented as a pretty uninteresting slacker, not happy but not necessarily upset about having a dead-end job in a tiny town where nothing ever happens. He's realistic about it and seems determined to make his peace with that life. He's not a bad character, likable and intelligent and mostly honest, but there's nothing that grabs me about him. Meanwhile, Dizzy and Shepherd arrive in town, and at the end we're told unsurprisingly that they're there for Wylie, though we don't know why yet. It's a safe (and correct) assumption that he's a Minuteman at this point, because if he reminds me of any other character from when we first met them, it's Cole Burns. This means things are bound to get more exciting, and the fact that Wylie gets pulled into some kind of mysterious criminal enterprise promises the same, but this issue I was mostly bored. Also, Dizzy's outfit seemed needlessly skimpy. Though the setting was definitely hot, nobody else was falling out of their tops, and it didn't seem as though seducing Wylie was her endgame, nor does that feel like her style. Megan toyed with Benito on purpose, so at least her oversexualization served some narrative purpose, but in this issue Dizzy is dressed in almost nothing for no obvious reason. Eduardo Risso didn't focus on her body for more than a few of the panels she was in, but there were those few, and none of it added up. A subpar issue in the midst of a weaker streak for this title, but as I said, Wylie's life is bound to get more complicated and compelling very soon.
Automtic Kafka #4: I actually wrote a whole Cheese Stands Alone piece about this issue way back when. I stand by what I said there, except for getting Charles and Lucy's marriage status wrong, which was corrected for me in the comments. Anyway, that post is more words than these paragraphs ever are, so go ahead and check that out for my thoughts. For the record, though, I did reread this when I read the other two comic for this Monthly Dose.
X-Force (vol. 1) #28: This was one of those big fight comics where everybody talks their mouths off even though they are supposed to be in the middle of combat. Some of the lines are simply too long to have been spoken in the same time as the action seen in their corresponding panels. It's frustrating, both because of the lack of believability and the lack of necessity. Plus it gets in the way of the action. I liked Antonio Daniel's art, his blocky Cable especially, but Fabian Nicieza's words didn't fit it, and broke the rhythm of it more than once. So that was all disappointing. The cast gets a shake-up in the end, though, which is interesting, and there is something conceptually appealing about X-Force only barely pulling off a mission nobody else wanted them to complete, including the guy they rescued, and then having all their efforts be for naught in the end. There's been a consistent level of bleakness in this book, and that fits right in, as did Feral leaving the team. I doubt if her departure will stick for long, but it's a significant loss for the team, and Nicieza makes it natural enough to feel in-character but still be a surprise. Daniel handled the issue-long battle well, and made everyone on both sides look cool at some point (except maybe Reaper, but he was on his way out already when the issue began). The broad strokes of the issue were good, I guess, but the ultimate execution fell short. It wasn't just the number of words, either, it was that characters were largely repeating points that have been made before, sometimes even having the same conversation multiple times in this very issue. Feral and Gyrich go back and forth about three times too many over whether or not she's going to kill him or free him. It's maddening. It's been sort of a long time now since this book really impressed me. I feel like when Capullo showed up it looked good, like it was headed for change, but lately it's just Cable and his kids fighting bad mutants again, and that's not as enjoyable a read.
100 Bullets #28: A fairly dull, slow-moving change in setting and introduction to a new character, Wylie, and his world. Wylie is presented as a pretty uninteresting slacker, not happy but not necessarily upset about having a dead-end job in a tiny town where nothing ever happens. He's realistic about it and seems determined to make his peace with that life. He's not a bad character, likable and intelligent and mostly honest, but there's nothing that grabs me about him. Meanwhile, Dizzy and Shepherd arrive in town, and at the end we're told unsurprisingly that they're there for Wylie, though we don't know why yet. It's a safe (and correct) assumption that he's a Minuteman at this point, because if he reminds me of any other character from when we first met them, it's Cole Burns. This means things are bound to get more exciting, and the fact that Wylie gets pulled into some kind of mysterious criminal enterprise promises the same, but this issue I was mostly bored. Also, Dizzy's outfit seemed needlessly skimpy. Though the setting was definitely hot, nobody else was falling out of their tops, and it didn't seem as though seducing Wylie was her endgame, nor does that feel like her style. Megan toyed with Benito on purpose, so at least her oversexualization served some narrative purpose, but in this issue Dizzy is dressed in almost nothing for no obvious reason. Eduardo Risso didn't focus on her body for more than a few of the panels she was in, but there were those few, and none of it added up. A subpar issue in the midst of a weaker streak for this title, but as I said, Wylie's life is bound to get more complicated and compelling very soon.
Automtic Kafka #4: I actually wrote a whole Cheese Stands Alone piece about this issue way back when. I stand by what I said there, except for getting Charles and Lucy's marriage status wrong, which was corrected for me in the comments. Anyway, that post is more words than these paragraphs ever are, so go ahead and check that out for my thoughts. For the record, though, I did reread this when I read the other two comic for this Monthly Dose.
X-Force (vol. 1) #28: This was one of those big fight comics where everybody talks their mouths off even though they are supposed to be in the middle of combat. Some of the lines are simply too long to have been spoken in the same time as the action seen in their corresponding panels. It's frustrating, both because of the lack of believability and the lack of necessity. Plus it gets in the way of the action. I liked Antonio Daniel's art, his blocky Cable especially, but Fabian Nicieza's words didn't fit it, and broke the rhythm of it more than once. So that was all disappointing. The cast gets a shake-up in the end, though, which is interesting, and there is something conceptually appealing about X-Force only barely pulling off a mission nobody else wanted them to complete, including the guy they rescued, and then having all their efforts be for naught in the end. There's been a consistent level of bleakness in this book, and that fits right in, as did Feral leaving the team. I doubt if her departure will stick for long, but it's a significant loss for the team, and Nicieza makes it natural enough to feel in-character but still be a surprise. Daniel handled the issue-long battle well, and made everyone on both sides look cool at some point (except maybe Reaper, but he was on his way out already when the issue began). The broad strokes of the issue were good, I guess, but the ultimate execution fell short. It wasn't just the number of words, either, it was that characters were largely repeating points that have been made before, sometimes even having the same conversation multiple times in this very issue. Feral and Gyrich go back and forth about three times too many over whether or not she's going to kill him or free him. It's maddening. It's been sort of a long time now since this book really impressed me. I feel like when Capullo showed up it looked good, like it was headed for change, but lately it's just Cable and his kids fighting bad mutants again, and that's not as enjoyable a read.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Monthly Dose: January 2015
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #27: This issue presents what is, essentially, a piece of historical fiction, wherein JFK's assassination might have been carried out by Joe DiMaggio as retribution for Marilyn Monroe's clandestine murder. None of those names I just mentioned ever get said aloud, but they're not exactly kept secret, either. There's a record-breaking baseball player whose celebrity wife also has a relationship with the President, and is then murdered for it, so Graves gives the player the attaché with the hundred untraceable bullets, and on "November twenty-second. Nineteen Sixty-Three," the player takes a shot at the President in Dallas. You don't really need to hear anyone's name to know who this story is about, or who it's inspired by anyway. We're even told that there were other shooters, and no one knows whose bullet actually did the job, so this version of events fits with both the official story of what happened and many of the more popular conspiracy theories. None of which matters all that much, anyway. The real point of this narrative in the context of the larger series is to establish just how long Graves has been doing the thing where he gives people the attaché, and how much influence he has or at least used to have back in the day. Though the narrative of the baseball player is the focus, the takeaway has to do entirely with Graves, which speaks to how well Brian Azzarello writes the issue. He gives us background on one of the most important characters (and perhaps the most inscrutable) without needing to remove any of Graves' mystery or natural intimidation. If anything, he's more intriguing and scary than ever. The strongest aspect of this issue, though, has nothing to do with Graves or the baseball player, at least not directly, and may not even be something Azzarello wrote. It's the entirely silent background story about the two nurses (or maybe she's a nurse and he's an orderly/resident?) who sneak off for some romance and it angers a patient so much that she dies. Eduardo Risso weaves it in quite easily without it stealing the spotlight or taking up too much space, and he makes it light and funny somehow despite the darkness of the resolution. The old woman always makes me laugh with her classic, almost cartoonish curmudgeonliness. I'm not totally sold on the JFK/Monroe/DiMaggio thing, if only because JFK conspiracy talk feels trite, but I like the expansion of Graves and I love the B-plot, so I enjoyed more of this than I didn't.
Automatic Kafka #3: To escape the clutches of the shadowy National Parks Service, Automatic Kafka decides to become a celebrity (at the Waring's suggestion). It's a clever move, one that makes sense considering both Kafka's history and goals. He was always partially just meant to be a star, a member of a manufactured superhero team that had merchandise and marketing from day zero, so cashing in on his name now is a pretty easy thing to do. And with the whole world paying attention to him once again, it becomes considerably harder for the NPS to make good on their threat to make his life miserable, since the NPS would rather the public not know what kinds of secret, evil government shit they're really up to. It does take the issue kind of a long time to get there, but in between the scenes of Kafka talking to the NPS and then the Warning, we see him as the host of a gameshow called The Milling Dollar Detail, where the contestants are literally killed at the end if they can't guess one random, secret detail they have no good way of knowing. It's a bleak but not unbelievable vision of the evolution of popular entertainment, in the same way Kafka is a severe yet logical reimagining of both classic android and classic superhero characters. Between a fresh appearance from the Warning, the two pages with four panels each of Kafka in ads for various parody products, and all of the scenes of Detail, this was the funniest issue by far, though a dark comedy to be sure. It was also the least story advancement in an issue yet, but the progress that did get made was very interesting and unexpected, and it resulted in a lot of solid material. I was also really impressed with the visual changes that accompanied the Detail stuff; Ashley Wood does those pages in a wash of blue, a much softer and more inviting color than we've seen used so dominantly in this series before. Along with that, only the middle third of those pages have actual panels of them, and the top and bottom tiers are filled with the overlapping logos of a bunch of imagined, mostly satirical companies, all presumably sponsors of Detail. It was a great way to fit a bunch of jokes in a small space, and along with the coloring, it helped those parts of the narrative pop on every level. Predicting the direction of this comic is a futile exercise, and that's what I like most about it. This issue was a perfect demonstration of the kinds of sudden turns Automatic Kafka likes to take, and of how effective they can be.
X-Force (vol. 1) #27: This was a pretty classic X-story, dressed up in the hyper-90s aesthetic and attitude this book has always had. There's a human who hates mutants, so the bad mutants want to kill him, and the good mutants want to stop the bad mutants because that's what good mutants do and who needs more reason than that? And that's fine; I like a good action comic just fine, and this is definitely that, but it doesn't particularly stand out because there's nothing special going on. It's 100% the one-sentence synopsis I provided above, nothing deeper or more complex to it, or at least not that we're shown within this issue. Are twists coming, are there narrative wrinkles yet to be discovered? Probably, but this opening beat is all surface, characters stating their feelings aloud and X-Force fighting the MLF primarily because no other heroes are available, as opposed to some more compelling connection between the two teams. They've faced off before, but that was when Stryfe was running the MLF so Cable was personally invested. Now, it's a more generic mutant-related problem, and it's only through spying on the Commission for Super Human Activities that X-Force even know about it and decide to get involved. Before that happens, we see the MLF kidnap their target, Henry Peter Gyrich, and learn that not every member of that team gets along or agrees on what level or mercilessness is appropriate in the field. I imagine this dissension amongst the villains' ranks will come into play later, but for now it's merely something we discover exists. Afterwards, X-Force splits into three teams and invades the MLF's base, and they win some fights and lose others, which was to be expected. That's where things resolve this month, with some of X-Force doing well and other doing horribly in the midst of this somewhat misguided rescue mission. All fine, but none of it grabs me or makes me especially excited for next time.
100 Bullets #27: This issue presents what is, essentially, a piece of historical fiction, wherein JFK's assassination might have been carried out by Joe DiMaggio as retribution for Marilyn Monroe's clandestine murder. None of those names I just mentioned ever get said aloud, but they're not exactly kept secret, either. There's a record-breaking baseball player whose celebrity wife also has a relationship with the President, and is then murdered for it, so Graves gives the player the attaché with the hundred untraceable bullets, and on "November twenty-second. Nineteen Sixty-Three," the player takes a shot at the President in Dallas. You don't really need to hear anyone's name to know who this story is about, or who it's inspired by anyway. We're even told that there were other shooters, and no one knows whose bullet actually did the job, so this version of events fits with both the official story of what happened and many of the more popular conspiracy theories. None of which matters all that much, anyway. The real point of this narrative in the context of the larger series is to establish just how long Graves has been doing the thing where he gives people the attaché, and how much influence he has or at least used to have back in the day. Though the narrative of the baseball player is the focus, the takeaway has to do entirely with Graves, which speaks to how well Brian Azzarello writes the issue. He gives us background on one of the most important characters (and perhaps the most inscrutable) without needing to remove any of Graves' mystery or natural intimidation. If anything, he's more intriguing and scary than ever. The strongest aspect of this issue, though, has nothing to do with Graves or the baseball player, at least not directly, and may not even be something Azzarello wrote. It's the entirely silent background story about the two nurses (or maybe she's a nurse and he's an orderly/resident?) who sneak off for some romance and it angers a patient so much that she dies. Eduardo Risso weaves it in quite easily without it stealing the spotlight or taking up too much space, and he makes it light and funny somehow despite the darkness of the resolution. The old woman always makes me laugh with her classic, almost cartoonish curmudgeonliness. I'm not totally sold on the JFK/Monroe/DiMaggio thing, if only because JFK conspiracy talk feels trite, but I like the expansion of Graves and I love the B-plot, so I enjoyed more of this than I didn't.
Automatic Kafka #3: To escape the clutches of the shadowy National Parks Service, Automatic Kafka decides to become a celebrity (at the Waring's suggestion). It's a clever move, one that makes sense considering both Kafka's history and goals. He was always partially just meant to be a star, a member of a manufactured superhero team that had merchandise and marketing from day zero, so cashing in on his name now is a pretty easy thing to do. And with the whole world paying attention to him once again, it becomes considerably harder for the NPS to make good on their threat to make his life miserable, since the NPS would rather the public not know what kinds of secret, evil government shit they're really up to. It does take the issue kind of a long time to get there, but in between the scenes of Kafka talking to the NPS and then the Warning, we see him as the host of a gameshow called The Milling Dollar Detail, where the contestants are literally killed at the end if they can't guess one random, secret detail they have no good way of knowing. It's a bleak but not unbelievable vision of the evolution of popular entertainment, in the same way Kafka is a severe yet logical reimagining of both classic android and classic superhero characters. Between a fresh appearance from the Warning, the two pages with four panels each of Kafka in ads for various parody products, and all of the scenes of Detail, this was the funniest issue by far, though a dark comedy to be sure. It was also the least story advancement in an issue yet, but the progress that did get made was very interesting and unexpected, and it resulted in a lot of solid material. I was also really impressed with the visual changes that accompanied the Detail stuff; Ashley Wood does those pages in a wash of blue, a much softer and more inviting color than we've seen used so dominantly in this series before. Along with that, only the middle third of those pages have actual panels of them, and the top and bottom tiers are filled with the overlapping logos of a bunch of imagined, mostly satirical companies, all presumably sponsors of Detail. It was a great way to fit a bunch of jokes in a small space, and along with the coloring, it helped those parts of the narrative pop on every level. Predicting the direction of this comic is a futile exercise, and that's what I like most about it. This issue was a perfect demonstration of the kinds of sudden turns Automatic Kafka likes to take, and of how effective they can be.
X-Force (vol. 1) #27: This was a pretty classic X-story, dressed up in the hyper-90s aesthetic and attitude this book has always had. There's a human who hates mutants, so the bad mutants want to kill him, and the good mutants want to stop the bad mutants because that's what good mutants do and who needs more reason than that? And that's fine; I like a good action comic just fine, and this is definitely that, but it doesn't particularly stand out because there's nothing special going on. It's 100% the one-sentence synopsis I provided above, nothing deeper or more complex to it, or at least not that we're shown within this issue. Are twists coming, are there narrative wrinkles yet to be discovered? Probably, but this opening beat is all surface, characters stating their feelings aloud and X-Force fighting the MLF primarily because no other heroes are available, as opposed to some more compelling connection between the two teams. They've faced off before, but that was when Stryfe was running the MLF so Cable was personally invested. Now, it's a more generic mutant-related problem, and it's only through spying on the Commission for Super Human Activities that X-Force even know about it and decide to get involved. Before that happens, we see the MLF kidnap their target, Henry Peter Gyrich, and learn that not every member of that team gets along or agrees on what level or mercilessness is appropriate in the field. I imagine this dissension amongst the villains' ranks will come into play later, but for now it's merely something we discover exists. Afterwards, X-Force splits into three teams and invades the MLF's base, and they win some fights and lose others, which was to be expected. That's where things resolve this month, with some of X-Force doing well and other doing horribly in the midst of this somewhat misguided rescue mission. All fine, but none of it grabs me or makes me especially excited for next time.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: December 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #26: Mr. Branch tells a woman he's sleeping with, possibly a prostitute, some very vague things about the Trust and the Minutemen that have pretty much all already been hinted at if not fully revealed before. There are two reasons for all of this recapping: 1. It's a useful if unneeded way to get the audience all brought up to speed on this fairly complicated story before whatever comes next, and 2. There are a bunch of splash pages done by various guest artists to go along with different parts of Branch's narration. It's kind of a cool gimmick, but it does make the issue feel crazy light, since not much goes on and little-to-no progress gets made. Some of the splashes are cool, particularly Mark Chiarello's drawing of Cole Burns and J.G. Jones' take on Dizzy's Parisian street fight from an earlier issue. The best guest artist contribution was actually the first one, Paul Pope's awesomely depressing Benito Medici, a cigarette barely hanging from his mouth as he stares at himself with hate and disgust in the mirrored wall of a crowded nightclub. It's a perfect encapsulation of that character and, really, of the spirit of this whole book. On the other hand, Frank Miller's portrait of Agent Graves' floating head was a complete waste of space, and even Eduardo Risso's pages of Branch and the unnamed woman have less going on than usual. It's a sex scene played straight, and Risso does it well for what it is, but there's just nothing important or unexpected happening, even at the end when she robs him and exposes to the reader that she can in fact speak English, not just French like she's been pretending. So there were some strong images, but a few weaker ones, too, and nothing significant took place in terms of plot. All told, a boring but visually varied and therefore occasionally rewarding read.
Automatic Kafka #2: Lots of exposition this issue, but delivered through an amusing interrogation between the National Park Service's Agent Stahl and the Warning, smug genius and super-rich guy. Turns out the Warning was the corporate sponsor and founder of Automatic Kafka's old superhero team, the $tranger$, and now that the NPS is looking for Kafka (we don't know why) they come to the Warning for help. In the course of asking for that help, Stahl and the Warning rehash the past, not only of the $trangers$ but much of the Warning's backstory from before they were formed, the events in his life that led up to him creating his own superhero team. He's an awesome character, cocky in a way he can always back up, and effortlessly funny, almost incidentally so, because he sees the big joke(s) in life that everyone else fails to get or refuses to even acknowledge. We spend more time with the Warning than the title character this issue, but when we do catch up with Kafka, things go nuts, and Ashley Wood's art gets to really blast off. Kafka, still loving the hell out of his new nanotecheroin, makes his supplier come with him to a closed/abandoned amusement park. He then connects the park to his own internal computer systems, and turns everything on remotely while he comes up on his high, experiencing the sights, sounds, and other wonders of the park on many levels, both real and imagined. Eventually he comes down hard, the park collapsing around him, just in time for some huge, terrifying-looking, heavily armored people to show up and take him in. We ultimately learn that these are NPS troops of some kind, as Kafka wakes up in the agency's custody, bringing the issue to a close. Well, actually, first he (and the reader) meets Agent Travers, who is one of his captors but also a self-proclaimed fan of his from his $tranger$ days, an interesting combo to say the least. Her introduction is also the issue's conclusion, a creepy and effective cliffhanger. Joe Casey jumped in with both feet for the debut of Automatic Kafka, so here in issue #2, he provides more background info more clearly, but still leaves room for Kafka to get into some crazy, drug-fueled trouble. It's a strong second beat all over.
X-Force (vol. 1) #26: After the super-sized clusterfuck of excitement and confusion last month, X-Force takes a deep breath and collects itself. Most of this issue is Cable walking around X-Force's home base and thinking about each member of the team one by one, mostly focusing on their emotional damage. Cable is starting to feel guilty and foolish for having assembled such a messed up group of kids, and wondering if maybe he's not equipped to lead and/or teach them the way they need. His fears seem legitimate, based on what we see here. There's a lot of unrequited love, Siryn's heavy drinking, Shatterstar's lack of emotion, and plenty of arguments and insults big and small among the ranks. The dysfunction and unrest are widespread, which helps make this issue compelling despite the relative lack of action. There is some token violence at the end when Reignfire frees the members of the former Mutant Liberation Front from prison so they can form a new Mutant Liberation Front. The art this time is by Mat Broome instead of usual artist Greg Capullo. Broome is a good replacement, his characters just as large and looming as Capullo's, though somewhat more angular in their features. He did make several hilarious clothing choices, most notably a shirtless Rictor in tattered jean shorts. It was extra 90's. I liked this issue, even if it dragged a little, because it was a lot clearer and more carefully put together than the last few, and more thoughtful, too. These little pauses in the action are good for a book that goes so hard at the action so often, letting the cast and readers reset before things get crazy again or, hopefully, crazier than ever before.
100 Bullets #26: Mr. Branch tells a woman he's sleeping with, possibly a prostitute, some very vague things about the Trust and the Minutemen that have pretty much all already been hinted at if not fully revealed before. There are two reasons for all of this recapping: 1. It's a useful if unneeded way to get the audience all brought up to speed on this fairly complicated story before whatever comes next, and 2. There are a bunch of splash pages done by various guest artists to go along with different parts of Branch's narration. It's kind of a cool gimmick, but it does make the issue feel crazy light, since not much goes on and little-to-no progress gets made. Some of the splashes are cool, particularly Mark Chiarello's drawing of Cole Burns and J.G. Jones' take on Dizzy's Parisian street fight from an earlier issue. The best guest artist contribution was actually the first one, Paul Pope's awesomely depressing Benito Medici, a cigarette barely hanging from his mouth as he stares at himself with hate and disgust in the mirrored wall of a crowded nightclub. It's a perfect encapsulation of that character and, really, of the spirit of this whole book. On the other hand, Frank Miller's portrait of Agent Graves' floating head was a complete waste of space, and even Eduardo Risso's pages of Branch and the unnamed woman have less going on than usual. It's a sex scene played straight, and Risso does it well for what it is, but there's just nothing important or unexpected happening, even at the end when she robs him and exposes to the reader that she can in fact speak English, not just French like she's been pretending. So there were some strong images, but a few weaker ones, too, and nothing significant took place in terms of plot. All told, a boring but visually varied and therefore occasionally rewarding read.
Automatic Kafka #2: Lots of exposition this issue, but delivered through an amusing interrogation between the National Park Service's Agent Stahl and the Warning, smug genius and super-rich guy. Turns out the Warning was the corporate sponsor and founder of Automatic Kafka's old superhero team, the $tranger$, and now that the NPS is looking for Kafka (we don't know why) they come to the Warning for help. In the course of asking for that help, Stahl and the Warning rehash the past, not only of the $trangers$ but much of the Warning's backstory from before they were formed, the events in his life that led up to him creating his own superhero team. He's an awesome character, cocky in a way he can always back up, and effortlessly funny, almost incidentally so, because he sees the big joke(s) in life that everyone else fails to get or refuses to even acknowledge. We spend more time with the Warning than the title character this issue, but when we do catch up with Kafka, things go nuts, and Ashley Wood's art gets to really blast off. Kafka, still loving the hell out of his new nanotecheroin, makes his supplier come with him to a closed/abandoned amusement park. He then connects the park to his own internal computer systems, and turns everything on remotely while he comes up on his high, experiencing the sights, sounds, and other wonders of the park on many levels, both real and imagined. Eventually he comes down hard, the park collapsing around him, just in time for some huge, terrifying-looking, heavily armored people to show up and take him in. We ultimately learn that these are NPS troops of some kind, as Kafka wakes up in the agency's custody, bringing the issue to a close. Well, actually, first he (and the reader) meets Agent Travers, who is one of his captors but also a self-proclaimed fan of his from his $tranger$ days, an interesting combo to say the least. Her introduction is also the issue's conclusion, a creepy and effective cliffhanger. Joe Casey jumped in with both feet for the debut of Automatic Kafka, so here in issue #2, he provides more background info more clearly, but still leaves room for Kafka to get into some crazy, drug-fueled trouble. It's a strong second beat all over.
X-Force (vol. 1) #26: After the super-sized clusterfuck of excitement and confusion last month, X-Force takes a deep breath and collects itself. Most of this issue is Cable walking around X-Force's home base and thinking about each member of the team one by one, mostly focusing on their emotional damage. Cable is starting to feel guilty and foolish for having assembled such a messed up group of kids, and wondering if maybe he's not equipped to lead and/or teach them the way they need. His fears seem legitimate, based on what we see here. There's a lot of unrequited love, Siryn's heavy drinking, Shatterstar's lack of emotion, and plenty of arguments and insults big and small among the ranks. The dysfunction and unrest are widespread, which helps make this issue compelling despite the relative lack of action. There is some token violence at the end when Reignfire frees the members of the former Mutant Liberation Front from prison so they can form a new Mutant Liberation Front. The art this time is by Mat Broome instead of usual artist Greg Capullo. Broome is a good replacement, his characters just as large and looming as Capullo's, though somewhat more angular in their features. He did make several hilarious clothing choices, most notably a shirtless Rictor in tattered jean shorts. It was extra 90's. I liked this issue, even if it dragged a little, because it was a lot clearer and more carefully put together than the last few, and more thoughtful, too. These little pauses in the action are good for a book that goes so hard at the action so often, letting the cast and readers reset before things get crazy again or, hopefully, crazier than ever before.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Monthly Dose: November 2014 [Belated]
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #25: There is an awful lot of talk about the Trust and the Minutemen in this issue, way more conversation on those topics (and somewhat less cryptic), than we've seen in this series thus far. Brian Azzarello isn't providing many concrete answers, but we get a considerable amount of insight into how the Trust operates, and what their relationship was and is to the Minutemen. Exactly why and how those two groups parted ways remains unclear, and what either side wants now is hard to suss out, too, mostly because it doesn't seem like the Trust even knows what Graves wants, and Graves is the Minutemen, for all intents and purposes. The air of mystery surrounding these characters is enticing, but at the same time, a good chunk of the dialogue in this issue felt empty because of its ambiguity. The members of the Trust took various shots at one another and at Graves, but it didn't amount to much, and most of it was too vague to carry any real weight. The most enjoyable part of seeing the Trust all together was the variety Eduardo Risso brought to their designs. Physically, they're quite the unusual bunch, but they all share the smugness and self-importance that comes with being insanely wealthy and powerful, and all of their body language speaks to that, even if they all have different body dialects. The Trust felt like the center of this issue, but the real thrust of the arc has always been Benito's plotline, and it concludes here in a fairly spectacular fashion. Benito offers his would-be killer a choice: either take the cash he thinks he's owed, or risk everything by taking a bet on a basketball game for significantly more money. It's an intelligent play by Benito, presenting him as much smarter, more aware, and more concerned for others than he's been up to this point, yet it still fits with what else we've seen of his character. He's a more layered figure than he appeared initially, and this arc did a lot to build him up, as well as adding depth and intrigue to the overarching Trust-Minutemen story that we'd gotten only glimpses of before.
Automatic Kafka #1: Right away, Automatic Kafka is a trip, yet Joe Casey and Ashley Wood take pains to make it comprehensible, too. You get a full hook: android and former professional superhero/celebrity Automatic Kafka has spent his whole life trying to find some kind of humanity for himself, and finally touches it when he tries nanotecheroin, a drug/nanobot hybrid designed specifically to get androids high. Most of the issue is us watching Kafka experience that high, revisiting parts of his past, both specific and symbolic, guided by a nude woman who claims to be death but is probably really just a powerful, perhaps even supernatural hallucination. It gives Wood ample opportunities to draw some crazy, near-abstract stuff, since it's all essentially Kafka's dream, so it doesn't need to abide by any rules. Casey can go a little nuts, too, and that's the whole spirit of this book from the cover to the backmatter—free-flowing creativity. It makes for an incredibly fun read, and a bit of a challenge in places, more a comment on or exploration of the comicbook medium than the superhero genre. Kafka being a hero is, for the debut at least, largely incidental. It helps explain his existence and gives him some rich material for his high, but his being a robot is more important, and so is the mere fact that he's on drugs. This issue does what a first issue ought to do, introducing the story's protagonist and inserting him into an interesting situation, and it does so with style. Casey's writing is verbose without being dense; Wood's art is chaotic without being unclear. It's a damn impressive opening move.
X-Force (vol. 1) #25: The big 25th-issue extravaganza sees Cable return to X-Force, and it's a pretty big disappointment from my point of view. I've been loving this series since it switched gears and became all about a group of young, angry mutants trying to forge their own path, but with poppa Cable back in the mix, I'm not super optimistic about where this comic is going anymore. It took such a long time for the old, Liefeld-era crap to be disposed of, and just when it seemed like we were done with that for good, here comes perhaps the most classically Liefeldian character of all time. The story's fairly weak, too, all about the team trying to reclaim Graymalkin (or at least its programming) from Magneto, which, again...it's just all Cable shit, the comic's past showing up and taking the reins again. I was also sort of confused by everyone's behavior...Exodus arrives suddenly with a weird offer to take a specific set of X-Force's members to someplace called Heaven (it's Graymalkin), and the reactions from the heroes seem off to me. Cannonball, rather than being all "Fuck you" like usual, agrees to go with Exodus, but only if certain extra people from X-Force can come along. Then that the whole thing turns out to be sort of a scam, because Cannonball gives Cable the means to track him when he leaves with Exodus, which feels like it defeats the purpose of his going in the first place. If Cannonball is legitimately interested in what Exodus has to say, then why have Cable and the rest of the team do a track and rescue thing? If Cannonball's not interested, why not tell Exodus to shove it? I have a hard time understanding the motivations, and it's all immaterial, anyway, since the real point of all that is just to get Cable to Graymalkin so he can be pissed off at Magneto for stealing it. Oh, and the reveal of Magento, as well as the much earlier reveal of Cable, are both about as unsurprising as possible. I'm sure there's more I could say, but I'm finding I don't have the energy to keep going, because this issue was more deflating than anything else. I disliked it passionlessly.
100 Bullets #25: There is an awful lot of talk about the Trust and the Minutemen in this issue, way more conversation on those topics (and somewhat less cryptic), than we've seen in this series thus far. Brian Azzarello isn't providing many concrete answers, but we get a considerable amount of insight into how the Trust operates, and what their relationship was and is to the Minutemen. Exactly why and how those two groups parted ways remains unclear, and what either side wants now is hard to suss out, too, mostly because it doesn't seem like the Trust even knows what Graves wants, and Graves is the Minutemen, for all intents and purposes. The air of mystery surrounding these characters is enticing, but at the same time, a good chunk of the dialogue in this issue felt empty because of its ambiguity. The members of the Trust took various shots at one another and at Graves, but it didn't amount to much, and most of it was too vague to carry any real weight. The most enjoyable part of seeing the Trust all together was the variety Eduardo Risso brought to their designs. Physically, they're quite the unusual bunch, but they all share the smugness and self-importance that comes with being insanely wealthy and powerful, and all of their body language speaks to that, even if they all have different body dialects. The Trust felt like the center of this issue, but the real thrust of the arc has always been Benito's plotline, and it concludes here in a fairly spectacular fashion. Benito offers his would-be killer a choice: either take the cash he thinks he's owed, or risk everything by taking a bet on a basketball game for significantly more money. It's an intelligent play by Benito, presenting him as much smarter, more aware, and more concerned for others than he's been up to this point, yet it still fits with what else we've seen of his character. He's a more layered figure than he appeared initially, and this arc did a lot to build him up, as well as adding depth and intrigue to the overarching Trust-Minutemen story that we'd gotten only glimpses of before.
Automatic Kafka #1: Right away, Automatic Kafka is a trip, yet Joe Casey and Ashley Wood take pains to make it comprehensible, too. You get a full hook: android and former professional superhero/celebrity Automatic Kafka has spent his whole life trying to find some kind of humanity for himself, and finally touches it when he tries nanotecheroin, a drug/nanobot hybrid designed specifically to get androids high. Most of the issue is us watching Kafka experience that high, revisiting parts of his past, both specific and symbolic, guided by a nude woman who claims to be death but is probably really just a powerful, perhaps even supernatural hallucination. It gives Wood ample opportunities to draw some crazy, near-abstract stuff, since it's all essentially Kafka's dream, so it doesn't need to abide by any rules. Casey can go a little nuts, too, and that's the whole spirit of this book from the cover to the backmatter—free-flowing creativity. It makes for an incredibly fun read, and a bit of a challenge in places, more a comment on or exploration of the comicbook medium than the superhero genre. Kafka being a hero is, for the debut at least, largely incidental. It helps explain his existence and gives him some rich material for his high, but his being a robot is more important, and so is the mere fact that he's on drugs. This issue does what a first issue ought to do, introducing the story's protagonist and inserting him into an interesting situation, and it does so with style. Casey's writing is verbose without being dense; Wood's art is chaotic without being unclear. It's a damn impressive opening move.
X-Force (vol. 1) #25: The big 25th-issue extravaganza sees Cable return to X-Force, and it's a pretty big disappointment from my point of view. I've been loving this series since it switched gears and became all about a group of young, angry mutants trying to forge their own path, but with poppa Cable back in the mix, I'm not super optimistic about where this comic is going anymore. It took such a long time for the old, Liefeld-era crap to be disposed of, and just when it seemed like we were done with that for good, here comes perhaps the most classically Liefeldian character of all time. The story's fairly weak, too, all about the team trying to reclaim Graymalkin (or at least its programming) from Magneto, which, again...it's just all Cable shit, the comic's past showing up and taking the reins again. I was also sort of confused by everyone's behavior...Exodus arrives suddenly with a weird offer to take a specific set of X-Force's members to someplace called Heaven (it's Graymalkin), and the reactions from the heroes seem off to me. Cannonball, rather than being all "Fuck you" like usual, agrees to go with Exodus, but only if certain extra people from X-Force can come along. Then that the whole thing turns out to be sort of a scam, because Cannonball gives Cable the means to track him when he leaves with Exodus, which feels like it defeats the purpose of his going in the first place. If Cannonball is legitimately interested in what Exodus has to say, then why have Cable and the rest of the team do a track and rescue thing? If Cannonball's not interested, why not tell Exodus to shove it? I have a hard time understanding the motivations, and it's all immaterial, anyway, since the real point of all that is just to get Cable to Graymalkin so he can be pissed off at Magneto for stealing it. Oh, and the reveal of Magento, as well as the much earlier reveal of Cable, are both about as unsurprising as possible. I'm sure there's more I could say, but I'm finding I don't have the energy to keep going, because this issue was more deflating than anything else. I disliked it passionlessly.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: October 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #24: This "Red Prince Blues" storyline is moving awful slowly, but at least it's always moving. It creeps along but never stands still, and never lets go out the reader's attention, either. Most of it I liked, some of it I didn't care about, and there was one scene I feel sort of conflicted over, which I will now proceed to discuss at length in a probably pointless effort to make up my mind. It's four pages of Augustus Medici and an unnamed prostitute talking in his hotel room. They're both nude, so it's clearly post-coital, and...I'm not sure where I land on the treatment of the woman. Not by Augustus, because he treats her exactly as expected, like a prop he has no attachment to but still enjoys engaging with. And that's the point of the scene, that Augustus uses people, that he sees everyone as inferior to him and as his property, but still maintains a certain joy and zest for life. It's in everything he says, most of all his final line, "I am the power company." What troubles me is how Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso handle her, because I can't make up my mind on whether her presence is pornographic/disrespectful/sexist or tasteful/respectful/realistic. It might be all of those things. She's naked, and you see a lot of her ass and breasts, but you see Augustus' ass, too, probably more than hers, while both of their genitals stay hidden. And her nudity isn't the focus, nor is his, it's just a fact of the moment. Then again, she does have a borderline unbelievable hourglass figure, and her nipples stick way out, and there's a panel of her licking her lips with her tongue way out, so...maybe her nudity kind of is the focus, or at least her sexuality. But she's a prostitute, so having her be aggressive and attention-grabbing with her sexuality also makes sense. But also, couldn't Azzarello and Risso have shown us what kind of man Augustus is in some other way than having him pay for sex? Isn't that kind of an easy, almost gross narrative move? I could go on and on like this, ping-ponging around in my head, finding details to support every shade of both sides of the argument. I guess if it's this hard to decide how badly a character was treated, then it's safe to assume she wasn't treated as well as she could/should have been. Maybe it's not an overtly misogynistic scene, but its gender politics are questionable or worse. On a fully positive note, the issue's last panel is a knock-out punch from Risso. The size of the gun in Hank's hand, the terrified but determined look on his face, the moody shadows, the scary grin of the pawn shop owner...everything about it is just top notch work. Does it make up for the problems of the Augustus scene? Probably not, but it is a seriously superb closing beat for what was otherwise a solid issue.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #6: This was a fantastic conclusion, followed by less-than-fantastic conclusion. Let me explain. The first 2/3 of this issue were all about Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps fighting against the giant, amorphous, expanding blob of silvery goo that used to be Legion. They struggle against it futilely, try a few different strategies unsuccessfully, and find themselves seconds away from being totally overrun. The Guardians then order the Corps to retreat, deciding that sacrificing Oa is ok so long as they and their army of Lanterns can live on. Hal refuses to accept that, though, and instead of falling back with the rest of the group, he challenges the Guardians' decision. They try to convince him that he cannot defeat Legion alone, saying that while, yes, the Green Lanterns have access to immense power, it all comes from the central power battery, so each Lantern wields only a fraction of it. Hal hears this information and figures fine, if he needs more power, he can just go to the source. So he flies straight into the central battery, and emerges (in what is probably the best page of the whole series) bathed in green light he can barely contain, before unleashing it all on the Legion blob and winning the day singlehandedly. The Guardians are impressed but also nervous, disapproving of Hal's loose cannon attitude and afraid he'll influence the rest of the Corps, and that's pretty much where that part of the story ends. It's an awesome finish, filled with detailed action from M.D. Bright, who captures the fear and confusion of all the combatants as well as all the spectacle of the fight itself. Had Emerald Dawn stopped there, I think it might've made for a stronger finale, even though, admittedly, Hal's life on Earth still had some unfinished business. So Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones dutifully include a wrap-up for Hal's problems at home, and while it's not a bad ending in terms of what actually happens, it's considerably less exciting or interesting than the rest of this issue. Hal turns himself in, pleads guilty, and serves his time, only to be offered his old job back at Ferris Air when he gets out and, ultimately, getting to be a pilot again. It's nice to see, and facing up to his mistakes makes Hal into the fully heroic character he's never quite been up to now, which is important. Yet it still feels like the comic is petering out, the last few pages especially, which circle back and reference the beginning of the series where Hal's dad died while flying a plane. Hal goes through something similar but, this time, there's a better result. There's nothing wrong with the end of the issue per se, but compared to what precedes it, I'd call it dull at best. Even so, it's a satisfying last chapter, and it definitely accomplishes its primary goal of making me want more Green Lantern, since this mini led directly into what was at the time the new Green Lantern ongoing series. It took Emerald Dawn some time to find its footing, including a few shake-ups in the creative time and a generally slow-moving start, but in the back half of the series, and most of all in the final battle between Legion and the Corps that spanned last issue and this one, it grew into itself and became an excellent comicbook.
X-Force (vo1. 1) #24: Two weeks ago, if you'd asked me who Rusty and Skids were in the context of the Marvel Universe, I would've had absolutely nothing for you. Have I maybe ever seen them before? Sure, it's possible—I've met a lot of mutants in my time. But I definitely have zero recollection of any previous exposure to either character, and didn't know they existed until I read twelve issues of X-Factor for my CSBG column earlier this month. Both Skids and Rusty originated in that title (though not in the issues I read) and were major players in it, so I got to see a lot of them, and I liked them quite a bit. Skids especially has a weird and interesting mutant power. It made me wonder several times why I'd never hear of them, and why they weren't more popular characters. Fast forward to yesterday when I was doing my reading for this column, and the opening scene of this issue of X-Force involves a group of humans capturing two mutants I didn't recognize, named Russell Collins and Sally Blevins. I wondered if I was supposed to know those names, and then just two pages later, Cannonball identified them as Rusty and Skids. And I was like, "That's crazy," to myself. There they were, the same month I happened to have learned about them because I randomly decided now was the time to go ahead and review the X-Factor issues I've had on hand for like a year but kept not using because I did another Louise-Simonson-written series, Power Pack, for an earlier "1987 And All That" piece at the Chemical Box. It was a pretty convenient coincidence, because if I hadn't read those X-Factor issues, I would've had to Wikipedia Skids and Rusty just to know who they were when they showed up in X-Force. Why am I carrying on for SO LONG about this minor connection between two things I read around the same time? Because I loved it when it happened, and it's kind of the most notable thing I can say about X-Force #24. Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo are in such a groove now, and this felt like just one more in a string of very similar issues. The whole thing is a rescue mission, X-Force freeing Skids and Rusty from their captors with little difficulty or tension. It's an intensely simple story stretched almost awkwardly over the length of the issue, punctuated by minimal progress being made in the Domino subplot (per usual) plus a few gorgeous, cryptic pages of someone (Cable? Magento?) doing something in space with the wreckage of Graymalkin. None of it sucks, none of it rules, and none of it leaves a very powerful impression. I had forgotten all about the Graymalkin thing until I flipped back through the issue just now, for example. So yeah, Rusty and Skids were the focus of the issue's main storyline, and their inclusion was easily the detail that stuck out most for me, so that's why I mostly just wrote about them.
100 Bullets #24: This "Red Prince Blues" storyline is moving awful slowly, but at least it's always moving. It creeps along but never stands still, and never lets go out the reader's attention, either. Most of it I liked, some of it I didn't care about, and there was one scene I feel sort of conflicted over, which I will now proceed to discuss at length in a probably pointless effort to make up my mind. It's four pages of Augustus Medici and an unnamed prostitute talking in his hotel room. They're both nude, so it's clearly post-coital, and...I'm not sure where I land on the treatment of the woman. Not by Augustus, because he treats her exactly as expected, like a prop he has no attachment to but still enjoys engaging with. And that's the point of the scene, that Augustus uses people, that he sees everyone as inferior to him and as his property, but still maintains a certain joy and zest for life. It's in everything he says, most of all his final line, "I am the power company." What troubles me is how Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso handle her, because I can't make up my mind on whether her presence is pornographic/disrespectful/sexist or tasteful/respectful/realistic. It might be all of those things. She's naked, and you see a lot of her ass and breasts, but you see Augustus' ass, too, probably more than hers, while both of their genitals stay hidden. And her nudity isn't the focus, nor is his, it's just a fact of the moment. Then again, she does have a borderline unbelievable hourglass figure, and her nipples stick way out, and there's a panel of her licking her lips with her tongue way out, so...maybe her nudity kind of is the focus, or at least her sexuality. But she's a prostitute, so having her be aggressive and attention-grabbing with her sexuality also makes sense. But also, couldn't Azzarello and Risso have shown us what kind of man Augustus is in some other way than having him pay for sex? Isn't that kind of an easy, almost gross narrative move? I could go on and on like this, ping-ponging around in my head, finding details to support every shade of both sides of the argument. I guess if it's this hard to decide how badly a character was treated, then it's safe to assume she wasn't treated as well as she could/should have been. Maybe it's not an overtly misogynistic scene, but its gender politics are questionable or worse. On a fully positive note, the issue's last panel is a knock-out punch from Risso. The size of the gun in Hank's hand, the terrified but determined look on his face, the moody shadows, the scary grin of the pawn shop owner...everything about it is just top notch work. Does it make up for the problems of the Augustus scene? Probably not, but it is a seriously superb closing beat for what was otherwise a solid issue.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #6: This was a fantastic conclusion, followed by less-than-fantastic conclusion. Let me explain. The first 2/3 of this issue were all about Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps fighting against the giant, amorphous, expanding blob of silvery goo that used to be Legion. They struggle against it futilely, try a few different strategies unsuccessfully, and find themselves seconds away from being totally overrun. The Guardians then order the Corps to retreat, deciding that sacrificing Oa is ok so long as they and their army of Lanterns can live on. Hal refuses to accept that, though, and instead of falling back with the rest of the group, he challenges the Guardians' decision. They try to convince him that he cannot defeat Legion alone, saying that while, yes, the Green Lanterns have access to immense power, it all comes from the central power battery, so each Lantern wields only a fraction of it. Hal hears this information and figures fine, if he needs more power, he can just go to the source. So he flies straight into the central battery, and emerges (in what is probably the best page of the whole series) bathed in green light he can barely contain, before unleashing it all on the Legion blob and winning the day singlehandedly. The Guardians are impressed but also nervous, disapproving of Hal's loose cannon attitude and afraid he'll influence the rest of the Corps, and that's pretty much where that part of the story ends. It's an awesome finish, filled with detailed action from M.D. Bright, who captures the fear and confusion of all the combatants as well as all the spectacle of the fight itself. Had Emerald Dawn stopped there, I think it might've made for a stronger finale, even though, admittedly, Hal's life on Earth still had some unfinished business. So Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones dutifully include a wrap-up for Hal's problems at home, and while it's not a bad ending in terms of what actually happens, it's considerably less exciting or interesting than the rest of this issue. Hal turns himself in, pleads guilty, and serves his time, only to be offered his old job back at Ferris Air when he gets out and, ultimately, getting to be a pilot again. It's nice to see, and facing up to his mistakes makes Hal into the fully heroic character he's never quite been up to now, which is important. Yet it still feels like the comic is petering out, the last few pages especially, which circle back and reference the beginning of the series where Hal's dad died while flying a plane. Hal goes through something similar but, this time, there's a better result. There's nothing wrong with the end of the issue per se, but compared to what precedes it, I'd call it dull at best. Even so, it's a satisfying last chapter, and it definitely accomplishes its primary goal of making me want more Green Lantern, since this mini led directly into what was at the time the new Green Lantern ongoing series. It took Emerald Dawn some time to find its footing, including a few shake-ups in the creative time and a generally slow-moving start, but in the back half of the series, and most of all in the final battle between Legion and the Corps that spanned last issue and this one, it grew into itself and became an excellent comicbook.
X-Force (vo1. 1) #24: Two weeks ago, if you'd asked me who Rusty and Skids were in the context of the Marvel Universe, I would've had absolutely nothing for you. Have I maybe ever seen them before? Sure, it's possible—I've met a lot of mutants in my time. But I definitely have zero recollection of any previous exposure to either character, and didn't know they existed until I read twelve issues of X-Factor for my CSBG column earlier this month. Both Skids and Rusty originated in that title (though not in the issues I read) and were major players in it, so I got to see a lot of them, and I liked them quite a bit. Skids especially has a weird and interesting mutant power. It made me wonder several times why I'd never hear of them, and why they weren't more popular characters. Fast forward to yesterday when I was doing my reading for this column, and the opening scene of this issue of X-Force involves a group of humans capturing two mutants I didn't recognize, named Russell Collins and Sally Blevins. I wondered if I was supposed to know those names, and then just two pages later, Cannonball identified them as Rusty and Skids. And I was like, "That's crazy," to myself. There they were, the same month I happened to have learned about them because I randomly decided now was the time to go ahead and review the X-Factor issues I've had on hand for like a year but kept not using because I did another Louise-Simonson-written series, Power Pack, for an earlier "1987 And All That" piece at the Chemical Box. It was a pretty convenient coincidence, because if I hadn't read those X-Factor issues, I would've had to Wikipedia Skids and Rusty just to know who they were when they showed up in X-Force. Why am I carrying on for SO LONG about this minor connection between two things I read around the same time? Because I loved it when it happened, and it's kind of the most notable thing I can say about X-Force #24. Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo are in such a groove now, and this felt like just one more in a string of very similar issues. The whole thing is a rescue mission, X-Force freeing Skids and Rusty from their captors with little difficulty or tension. It's an intensely simple story stretched almost awkwardly over the length of the issue, punctuated by minimal progress being made in the Domino subplot (per usual) plus a few gorgeous, cryptic pages of someone (Cable? Magento?) doing something in space with the wreckage of Graymalkin. None of it sucks, none of it rules, and none of it leaves a very powerful impression. I had forgotten all about the Graymalkin thing until I flipped back through the issue just now, for example. So yeah, Rusty and Skids were the focus of the issue's main storyline, and their inclusion was easily the detail that stuck out most for me, so that's why I mostly just wrote about them.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: September 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #23: A slower issue, but not boring. Brian Azzarello intentionally has the narrative creep along, partly to create an air of suspense and also, I'd imagine, so the reader can fully absorb all the cryptic dialogue. There's a lot of very vague stuff said between Benito, Megan, and Daniel about the Trust and each of their roles in it, and since we don't know exactly who/what the Trust is, it's helpful to have time to completely digest what little info we're offered here. Megan, it seems, had to replace her father in the Trust at a young age when he died, whereas Benito's dad is still around and still in charge. This creates tension between Benito and Megan, since she sees him as immature, inexperienced, and lazy while he sees her as stuck up and too serious. The significance of their less-than-stellar relationship isn't clear yet, but it's a nuanced dynamic that Azzarello introduces and explores well in this issue. The far more active and interesting part of the story is, of course, Hank being beaten at poker by Benito and deciding to get some form of revenge. Hank's semi-impotent rage in the face of an ultra-rich opponent is relatable, and helps make him sympathetic even with his rough edges. His dying wife also soften his image, but it's the futile anger that really sells him as a likable if misguided character. When Cole Burns makes his surprise return at the end of the issue to give Hank a hand, it's an exciting and somewhat scary moment. We know what a cold-blooded killer Cole can be, and for him to influence Hank in even the smallest way creates the potential for some serious shit to go down. So Azzarello has his dominoes all lined up, and though he took his time to get them there (and may not even be done yet) the pattern that's emerging is exciting enough that it's worth the wait. This was not Eduardo Risso's best effort, unfortunately. There was anything awful in it but nothing great, either. And it's a little hard to tell how much of Megan's brazen sexuality is necessary for her character and how much of it is just cheesecake. I think Risso mostly does a good job with her in that regard, but there are a few moments that feel oversexualized for no specific reason, and that's always a drag to see. Still, the opening poker game scene was deliciously shadowing and intimate and uncomfortable, and Cole's ultra-coolness shined through in the end, so while it was a mid-level issue visually, it did get bookended by nice, sharp art.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #5: Far and away the most exciting and best-looking issue of this series yet. The whole thing is one long, intense, knock down drag out fight between Legion and the Green Lantern Corps, and M.D. Bright makes it a legit thrill ride. All the constructs Hal Jordan creates to try and keep Legion down are awesome, there's an amazing full-page splash of Salaak and Tomar-Re being punched through a wall, and when Legion spills out of his armor and becomes a giant shiny amorphous blob of death it is spectacular. Bright has been a strong penciler on this book all along, but the art hasn't ever demanded my attention like it does here with the non-stop, highly imaginative action. Legion comes across as a truly serious villain for the first time, and the awesomeness of the Green Lantern Corps is brightly highlighted, most of all Kilowog. The story side of things doesn't suffer any, either. We get Legion's backstory, meet the Guardians for the first time, and watch Hal come into his own as a Green Lantern, exploring his powers creatively and pushing back against the rigid rules of the Corps. Even in the context of the sprawling battle, Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones (plot and script, respectively) manage to get a lot of story progress done and fill in some missing details about what's been going on. Emerald Dawn has seemed a little unfocused up to now, not sure how quickly to move or what its main character was all about, but everything snaps into place here at last. A shame it had to happen in the penultimate chapter, I suppose, but better late than never, and the results are fantastic. This is some top-notch superhero comics, and it ends on one hell of a cliffhanger, so I'm stoked to see what the conclusion has in store.
X-Force (vol. 1) #23: The Externals get dealt with once and for all (I hope) as Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo continue to burn through all the crap Rob Liefeld left behind when he departed this series. I appreciate the patience with which they've been doing this, but it also makes me a little anxious for them to finish so I can find out what comes next, what this creative team can do in their own space. Luckily, this issue made a ton of progress, because on top of the Externals finally being bested—not beaten, exactly, but told to fuck off in a convincing way—the two B-plots that have been running for a while suddenly become one and the same. I didn't even know that's where they were headed, mostly because I didn't recognize that the person Deadpool's been hunting, Vanessa, is also the woman who impersonated Domino in the earliest issues of the series. I probably should have figured that out, and it's even possible I was explicitly told it at some point and just forgot, because that thread has never for one second held my interest. It feels so distant from the stuff X-Force is doing, in terms of geography, story, and tone. Similarly, the story about Domino, Grizzly, and Hammer trying to dig up info on Cable has been hard for me to pay serious attention to in the past. I don't want Cable back in this title, so I can't get very enthusiastic about people trying to find and/or research him. But in this issue, Domnio's group goes after Vanessa, so what has up to this point been two storylines I generally ignore will only be one moving forward, and that's progress. Also, Vanessa promises to tell Domino where to find X-Force, indicating that this may all become part of the main plot soon. The sooner that happens, the sooner the series can move past all these characters and concepts I don't care about, so I'm all for seeing Domino and crew catch up with X-Force as soon as next month. I guess we'll see if I get my wish then.
100 Bullets #23: A slower issue, but not boring. Brian Azzarello intentionally has the narrative creep along, partly to create an air of suspense and also, I'd imagine, so the reader can fully absorb all the cryptic dialogue. There's a lot of very vague stuff said between Benito, Megan, and Daniel about the Trust and each of their roles in it, and since we don't know exactly who/what the Trust is, it's helpful to have time to completely digest what little info we're offered here. Megan, it seems, had to replace her father in the Trust at a young age when he died, whereas Benito's dad is still around and still in charge. This creates tension between Benito and Megan, since she sees him as immature, inexperienced, and lazy while he sees her as stuck up and too serious. The significance of their less-than-stellar relationship isn't clear yet, but it's a nuanced dynamic that Azzarello introduces and explores well in this issue. The far more active and interesting part of the story is, of course, Hank being beaten at poker by Benito and deciding to get some form of revenge. Hank's semi-impotent rage in the face of an ultra-rich opponent is relatable, and helps make him sympathetic even with his rough edges. His dying wife also soften his image, but it's the futile anger that really sells him as a likable if misguided character. When Cole Burns makes his surprise return at the end of the issue to give Hank a hand, it's an exciting and somewhat scary moment. We know what a cold-blooded killer Cole can be, and for him to influence Hank in even the smallest way creates the potential for some serious shit to go down. So Azzarello has his dominoes all lined up, and though he took his time to get them there (and may not even be done yet) the pattern that's emerging is exciting enough that it's worth the wait. This was not Eduardo Risso's best effort, unfortunately. There was anything awful in it but nothing great, either. And it's a little hard to tell how much of Megan's brazen sexuality is necessary for her character and how much of it is just cheesecake. I think Risso mostly does a good job with her in that regard, but there are a few moments that feel oversexualized for no specific reason, and that's always a drag to see. Still, the opening poker game scene was deliciously shadowing and intimate and uncomfortable, and Cole's ultra-coolness shined through in the end, so while it was a mid-level issue visually, it did get bookended by nice, sharp art.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #5: Far and away the most exciting and best-looking issue of this series yet. The whole thing is one long, intense, knock down drag out fight between Legion and the Green Lantern Corps, and M.D. Bright makes it a legit thrill ride. All the constructs Hal Jordan creates to try and keep Legion down are awesome, there's an amazing full-page splash of Salaak and Tomar-Re being punched through a wall, and when Legion spills out of his armor and becomes a giant shiny amorphous blob of death it is spectacular. Bright has been a strong penciler on this book all along, but the art hasn't ever demanded my attention like it does here with the non-stop, highly imaginative action. Legion comes across as a truly serious villain for the first time, and the awesomeness of the Green Lantern Corps is brightly highlighted, most of all Kilowog. The story side of things doesn't suffer any, either. We get Legion's backstory, meet the Guardians for the first time, and watch Hal come into his own as a Green Lantern, exploring his powers creatively and pushing back against the rigid rules of the Corps. Even in the context of the sprawling battle, Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones (plot and script, respectively) manage to get a lot of story progress done and fill in some missing details about what's been going on. Emerald Dawn has seemed a little unfocused up to now, not sure how quickly to move or what its main character was all about, but everything snaps into place here at last. A shame it had to happen in the penultimate chapter, I suppose, but better late than never, and the results are fantastic. This is some top-notch superhero comics, and it ends on one hell of a cliffhanger, so I'm stoked to see what the conclusion has in store.
X-Force (vol. 1) #23: The Externals get dealt with once and for all (I hope) as Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo continue to burn through all the crap Rob Liefeld left behind when he departed this series. I appreciate the patience with which they've been doing this, but it also makes me a little anxious for them to finish so I can find out what comes next, what this creative team can do in their own space. Luckily, this issue made a ton of progress, because on top of the Externals finally being bested—not beaten, exactly, but told to fuck off in a convincing way—the two B-plots that have been running for a while suddenly become one and the same. I didn't even know that's where they were headed, mostly because I didn't recognize that the person Deadpool's been hunting, Vanessa, is also the woman who impersonated Domino in the earliest issues of the series. I probably should have figured that out, and it's even possible I was explicitly told it at some point and just forgot, because that thread has never for one second held my interest. It feels so distant from the stuff X-Force is doing, in terms of geography, story, and tone. Similarly, the story about Domino, Grizzly, and Hammer trying to dig up info on Cable has been hard for me to pay serious attention to in the past. I don't want Cable back in this title, so I can't get very enthusiastic about people trying to find and/or research him. But in this issue, Domnio's group goes after Vanessa, so what has up to this point been two storylines I generally ignore will only be one moving forward, and that's progress. Also, Vanessa promises to tell Domino where to find X-Force, indicating that this may all become part of the main plot soon. The sooner that happens, the sooner the series can move past all these characters and concepts I don't care about, so I'm all for seeing Domino and crew catch up with X-Force as soon as next month. I guess we'll see if I get my wish then.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: August 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I read one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #22: I'm not wild about this story, and I definitely don't think it needed to be a two-parter. As Jack's friend—who gets named Mikey in this issue—points out, the story is just Jack complaining about all the strained relationships in his life, wandering from one ruined love to another, but not getting anywhere. The entire last issue was devoted to that, so we pretty much got what a sad and self-destructive person Jack was already, yet for some reason there's an entire second issue that does it all over again. This time, it's mostly about Jack's estranged family, as opposed to his estranged ex-girlfriend, a distinction that does little to make the story any more interesting. There is a nice twist at the end when we learn Jack has been killing random other drug addicts, slowly going through the first ninety-nine of his hundred bullets before he uses the last one on himself. That's the plan, anyway, and as soon as we discover it, so does Mikey, who then, it's safe to assume, becomes Jack's next victim. That's effectively sad, and Mikey was our POV character, so there's something a little unsettling about having the protagonist of this arc kill the only character with whom the reader relates. But it's not enough to make up for how boring the rest of this narrative is, and it comes so late anyway; even if the ending was twice as shocking and five times as good, it would have been a helluva a long trip to get there. I don't know if Brian Azzarello just thought Jack's depression was more interesting than it was (even though, that then raises the questions of why Mikey brings up explicitly how dull it all is) or if this arc was just meant as an exercise in tense mundanity, but whatever inspired it, the whole thing falls flat. Eduardo Risso's art is dark and expressive, and he gets some really strong, nuanced acting out of Jack and Jack's mother during their interaction, but again...anything likable in this second half of the story has a too-little-too-lateness about it because the whole thing is just a retread of the themes and character details of the first half, which was itself slow and unfilling. Luckily, it's over now, and two months isn't an unreasonable amount of time to spend getting to know a character, even if he's immediately understandable but the creators choose to stretch out his introduction anyway.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #4: A very weird pacing to this issue, in which Hal Jordan finally meets the Green Lantern Corps, goes to Oa, and begins proper training with his ring. Several new characters are brought in, but none of them are especially fleshed out. These each have one key characteristic, and that's it: Tomar-Re is dutiful, Salakk is gruff, Kilowog is a ballbuster. I don't expect them all to be deep, fully-developed people in this one issue, but I would rather have felt like I truly got to know one of them than to meet all three but have only a weak sense of what they're like. Meanwhile, everything happens so quickly that neither Jordan nor the reader ever have time to properly react. It only takes nine pages for Jordan to wake up on Earth, get whisked to a planet in Tomar-Re's sector by his ring, then go with Tomar-Re to Oa. That includes two splash pages, and one page worth of Legion ranting villainously. So the time between Tomar-Re's appearance and that of Oa is almost none, and then on page ten Salakk shows up already. It's a bit of a blur, is what I'm saying, though it's not at all difficult to follow. After his arrival on Oa, Jordan learns about the existence of the Corps and a little bit of Legion's origin, sends a projection down to Earth to tell his brother what's going on, and then meets Kilowog and has his first week of training (which occurs in a one-page montage). Then Legion shows up and attacks Oa, which is how the issue ends. Keith Giffen is credited with the plot and Gerard Jones with the script, so I'm not sure how much of the overly hurried tempo should be blamed on each of them. It's not terrible, but it's not great either, a bunch of neat ideas and new cast members that all come and go too quickly to enjoy. M.D. Bright and Romeo Tanghal's art is as good as ever, though, and the splash pages are especially nice. The two I mentioned above are the first and ninth pages, Jordan waking up after last issue's nuclear explosion and Jordan arriving on Oa with Tomar-Re, respectively. Both show large spaces backed by ominous pink clouds, but the first page is desolate, with the tiny, frail figure of Jordan the only sign of life. Oa, meanwhile, has a giant green power battery with a whole civilization behind it, extending farther than the eye can see. They're a strong contrast, and I suppose their proximity heightens that effect, so there's some benefit to the briskness of the narrative. At the end, there's another full-page splash of Legion on Oa, several already-defeated Green Lanterns strewn about him, his giant fists raised in smug victory. It's a great closing image, because it makes Legion intimidating all over again, even though his might has been well established in earlier issues. There was nothing I hated about this issue, but beyond a few huge, memorable images, there wasn't much to love about it, either.
X-Force (vol. 1) #22: Graymalkin is all blown up, the Professor computer system that ran it has shut itself down, and S.H.I.E.L.D. are finally done chasing X-Force. It feels like, after all this time, the looming shadow of Cable (and therefore of Rob Liefeld) might be withdrawing. There's still the weird side plot about Deadpool trying to kill one of a pair of twins and the other weird side plot about Domino, Grizzly, and Hammer trying to access files on Cable, neither of which I fully understand the importance of yet. They're both annoying, the Deadpool one most of all, but they never take up much space so I just roll with 'em for now. The other half of the A-plot of this issue is Gideon and his External friends capturing Boom-Boom, Warpath, and Siryn. In the end, they tell Cannonball to either surrender himself or lose his teammates, which is all stuff that's SUPER tied to the Liefeld era, and therefore sort of obnoxious, but...so far Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo have thrown a Liefeld character out of a plane and literally blown up Graymalkin, so I'm rooting for them to do something equally definitive to cauterize this Externals business once and for all. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but by now I've entered into issues of X-Force I've never read before, so it's exciting to see what the plans are, to find out where this goes. There's a lot of potential in the Nicieza-Capullo team, and they've already done a lot to break free from what came before, but they also refuse to outright ignore it, which I respect. They appear to be working their way through everything little by little, which makes me hopeful for the long term. I did notice Capullo's art being a bit...boobier than before, most notably when Boom-Boom and Siryn were shown in tattered tops with their arms bound in such a way as to make their chests stick out. Then again, in those panels Warpath is also there, totally shirtless, and covered in a ridiculous number of bulging muscles, so...I'm not sure any gender is more or less sexualized than any other in those scenes. But there were also some pretty pronounced breasts in the introduction of the new Weapon: P.R.I.M.E., and Feral's chest seemed to me like it had grown. It's too bad, because Capullo had been up to now a nice middle ground between Liefeld's ridiculous body shapes and, say, normal human anatomy. As he gets more bananas with the builds of people, and as his focus in those changes gets more sexual, I naturally like him less. To be fair, though, not every woman is depicted this way. Domino and Lila may not be exactly realistic, but no attention is ever overtly directed toward their chests, and the twins Deadpool is after, Tina and Vanessa, are actually dressed modestly and built almost like actual people, as much more than any male character here. There's hope, is what I'm saying, that this is a one-time fluke case of extra objectification rather than the start of a trend. There's a lot of hope in general for the future of the series, even though this issue itself is only setting up that potential, rather than cashing in on any of it.
100 Bullets #22: I'm not wild about this story, and I definitely don't think it needed to be a two-parter. As Jack's friend—who gets named Mikey in this issue—points out, the story is just Jack complaining about all the strained relationships in his life, wandering from one ruined love to another, but not getting anywhere. The entire last issue was devoted to that, so we pretty much got what a sad and self-destructive person Jack was already, yet for some reason there's an entire second issue that does it all over again. This time, it's mostly about Jack's estranged family, as opposed to his estranged ex-girlfriend, a distinction that does little to make the story any more interesting. There is a nice twist at the end when we learn Jack has been killing random other drug addicts, slowly going through the first ninety-nine of his hundred bullets before he uses the last one on himself. That's the plan, anyway, and as soon as we discover it, so does Mikey, who then, it's safe to assume, becomes Jack's next victim. That's effectively sad, and Mikey was our POV character, so there's something a little unsettling about having the protagonist of this arc kill the only character with whom the reader relates. But it's not enough to make up for how boring the rest of this narrative is, and it comes so late anyway; even if the ending was twice as shocking and five times as good, it would have been a helluva a long trip to get there. I don't know if Brian Azzarello just thought Jack's depression was more interesting than it was (even though, that then raises the questions of why Mikey brings up explicitly how dull it all is) or if this arc was just meant as an exercise in tense mundanity, but whatever inspired it, the whole thing falls flat. Eduardo Risso's art is dark and expressive, and he gets some really strong, nuanced acting out of Jack and Jack's mother during their interaction, but again...anything likable in this second half of the story has a too-little-too-lateness about it because the whole thing is just a retread of the themes and character details of the first half, which was itself slow and unfilling. Luckily, it's over now, and two months isn't an unreasonable amount of time to spend getting to know a character, even if he's immediately understandable but the creators choose to stretch out his introduction anyway.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #4: A very weird pacing to this issue, in which Hal Jordan finally meets the Green Lantern Corps, goes to Oa, and begins proper training with his ring. Several new characters are brought in, but none of them are especially fleshed out. These each have one key characteristic, and that's it: Tomar-Re is dutiful, Salakk is gruff, Kilowog is a ballbuster. I don't expect them all to be deep, fully-developed people in this one issue, but I would rather have felt like I truly got to know one of them than to meet all three but have only a weak sense of what they're like. Meanwhile, everything happens so quickly that neither Jordan nor the reader ever have time to properly react. It only takes nine pages for Jordan to wake up on Earth, get whisked to a planet in Tomar-Re's sector by his ring, then go with Tomar-Re to Oa. That includes two splash pages, and one page worth of Legion ranting villainously. So the time between Tomar-Re's appearance and that of Oa is almost none, and then on page ten Salakk shows up already. It's a bit of a blur, is what I'm saying, though it's not at all difficult to follow. After his arrival on Oa, Jordan learns about the existence of the Corps and a little bit of Legion's origin, sends a projection down to Earth to tell his brother what's going on, and then meets Kilowog and has his first week of training (which occurs in a one-page montage). Then Legion shows up and attacks Oa, which is how the issue ends. Keith Giffen is credited with the plot and Gerard Jones with the script, so I'm not sure how much of the overly hurried tempo should be blamed on each of them. It's not terrible, but it's not great either, a bunch of neat ideas and new cast members that all come and go too quickly to enjoy. M.D. Bright and Romeo Tanghal's art is as good as ever, though, and the splash pages are especially nice. The two I mentioned above are the first and ninth pages, Jordan waking up after last issue's nuclear explosion and Jordan arriving on Oa with Tomar-Re, respectively. Both show large spaces backed by ominous pink clouds, but the first page is desolate, with the tiny, frail figure of Jordan the only sign of life. Oa, meanwhile, has a giant green power battery with a whole civilization behind it, extending farther than the eye can see. They're a strong contrast, and I suppose their proximity heightens that effect, so there's some benefit to the briskness of the narrative. At the end, there's another full-page splash of Legion on Oa, several already-defeated Green Lanterns strewn about him, his giant fists raised in smug victory. It's a great closing image, because it makes Legion intimidating all over again, even though his might has been well established in earlier issues. There was nothing I hated about this issue, but beyond a few huge, memorable images, there wasn't much to love about it, either.
X-Force (vol. 1) #22: Graymalkin is all blown up, the Professor computer system that ran it has shut itself down, and S.H.I.E.L.D. are finally done chasing X-Force. It feels like, after all this time, the looming shadow of Cable (and therefore of Rob Liefeld) might be withdrawing. There's still the weird side plot about Deadpool trying to kill one of a pair of twins and the other weird side plot about Domino, Grizzly, and Hammer trying to access files on Cable, neither of which I fully understand the importance of yet. They're both annoying, the Deadpool one most of all, but they never take up much space so I just roll with 'em for now. The other half of the A-plot of this issue is Gideon and his External friends capturing Boom-Boom, Warpath, and Siryn. In the end, they tell Cannonball to either surrender himself or lose his teammates, which is all stuff that's SUPER tied to the Liefeld era, and therefore sort of obnoxious, but...so far Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo have thrown a Liefeld character out of a plane and literally blown up Graymalkin, so I'm rooting for them to do something equally definitive to cauterize this Externals business once and for all. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but by now I've entered into issues of X-Force I've never read before, so it's exciting to see what the plans are, to find out where this goes. There's a lot of potential in the Nicieza-Capullo team, and they've already done a lot to break free from what came before, but they also refuse to outright ignore it, which I respect. They appear to be working their way through everything little by little, which makes me hopeful for the long term. I did notice Capullo's art being a bit...boobier than before, most notably when Boom-Boom and Siryn were shown in tattered tops with their arms bound in such a way as to make their chests stick out. Then again, in those panels Warpath is also there, totally shirtless, and covered in a ridiculous number of bulging muscles, so...I'm not sure any gender is more or less sexualized than any other in those scenes. But there were also some pretty pronounced breasts in the introduction of the new Weapon: P.R.I.M.E., and Feral's chest seemed to me like it had grown. It's too bad, because Capullo had been up to now a nice middle ground between Liefeld's ridiculous body shapes and, say, normal human anatomy. As he gets more bananas with the builds of people, and as his focus in those changes gets more sexual, I naturally like him less. To be fair, though, not every woman is depicted this way. Domino and Lila may not be exactly realistic, but no attention is ever overtly directed toward their chests, and the twins Deadpool is after, Tina and Vanessa, are actually dressed modestly and built almost like actual people, as much more than any male character here. There's hope, is what I'm saying, that this is a one-time fluke case of extra objectification rather than the start of a trend. There's a lot of hope in general for the future of the series, even though this issue itself is only setting up that potential, rather than cashing in on any of it.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: July 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #21: What I like most about this issue is that Jack's past as a deadbeat, coked-out security guard looks appealing when compared to his present state as a homeless heroin junkie. By starting in the present and then moving backward, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso manage to make his former life seem like the good old days. As a character, Jack's a nice study in contrasts. He's enormous but insignificant, and has a sort of soft, naive simpleness about him, but also an aura of danger and rage. He's like a sleeping lion, except when he's like a pouncing lion. Jack's story is not especially interesting, which is too bad since he's such a strong lead. His problems are all too familiar, and his apathy toward them doesn't help. He's a fun, strange guy to watch, but the things he does and the people who populate his world don't do much to get my attention. The most captivating detail was that we never saw Graves on-panel, just heard Jack reference an old man who gave him a gun and bullets, then saw the attaché in flashback, but only after Jack had taken it and Graves had presumably departed. It's smart of Azzarello not to waste time having Graves actually explain himself again. The constant reintroductions begin to wear over time. Besides, at this point, with the larger story starting to poke through and a full twenty issues in, it seems reasonable to expect the audience to know who the "old man" is, and if they don't, well...that's just one more thing that makes Jack's nameless junkie friend such a good point-of-view character. He wants to know what happened to Jack, what he did with his gun and how he ended up where he is now, just as much as we do. The mysterious old man is what Jack uses to draw his friend in to the story initially, and it does the same for the reader, whether they know who Graves is or not. So there's some stuff that really clicks, and Jack is a great addition to the ever-expanding world of this series, but the narrative in which he stars is, thus far, nothing special.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #3: Somehow, M.D. Bright is back on pencils, even though Keith Giffen still gets credit for the breakdowns and Romeo Tanghal is still on inks. The creative team continues to grow, but instead of making Emerald Dawn choppy like you might expect, it gets stronger with every issue and maintains a steady narrative momentum. What puts this issue above the first two is that Hal Jordan finally became fully likable and even a tad heroic. After Legion—the giant metal space robot who hunts Green Lanterns—destroys the hospital where Hal's friend Andy was staying and also destroys all of Ferris Air, Hal realizes how in over his head he is, and seeks some help/knowledge, at the source of his power. This leads him to find his power battery, which in turn helps him discover that his ring can talk to and educate him. He sees, via a transmission from his ring's memory banks, Abin Sur's death at Legion's hands, right before Legion shows up to try and kill Hal. There's a chase throughout Abin's crashed ship, because the Green Lantern powers don't work against the color yellow, so Hal can't fight Legion directly. Eventually, his ring leads him to the engines when he wishes half-jokingly for a nuclear option, and when Legion catches up, Hal sets off the nuke, the issue closing on a full-page splash of a mushroom cloud. Colorist Anthony Tollin does an especially nice job on that last page, the cloud done in soft pink hues that aren't nearly as predominant in the rest of the issue. It adds to the suddenness of Hal's decision and the shock of how effective it is. It's also a wonderful halfway mark for the series, the hero and villain trapped together in an enormous explosion after the villain has already caused massive destruction, motivating the hero to more fully step into his role. The conflict between them escalated quite a bit in this issue, but there was still room for Hal to grow as a character and superhero. It's possible Emerald Dawn has fully found its footing now, and certainly this chapter was an excellent action-packed comicbook adventure.
X-Force (vol. 1) #21: Greg Capullo continues to do a great job drawing a whole bunch of characters in panels of various sizes, each of them doing all sorts of jumping and running and fighting and other physical activities. He's in his sweet spot in this issue, with the hulking War Machine and Nick Fury fighting almost the entire X-Force team on a space station. Wide open spaces, cool backgrounds, things to blow up, lots of large-bodied combatants—it's Capullo's bread and butter, so his quality work comes as no surprise. To be fair, there's a sprinkling of scenes with no action, as Fabian Nicieza continues to build on and add new subplots, and Capullo does a good job with those, too. He and Nicieza both seem very comfortable in this issue, jumping from the main story of X-Force vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. to the various side stories intelligently, and getting the B- and C-plot portions knocked out quickly so the A-plot is never out of sight for long. Just like Emerald Dawn #3 above, X-Force #21 involves its stars getting better at their heroism, and then concludes in a devastating explosion. Cannonball and Sunspot learn how to make the most of Professor, the computer system Cable built to run Graymalkin (the space station on which the story takes place). Cannonball and Sunspot have Professor send the weapons and other important cargo from Graymalkin back to their base of operations on Earth, planning for their future rather than rashly reacting to their present like they usually do (and do at the beginning of this issue, even as Cannonball verbally acknowledges that, "X-Force only seems to know ONE WAY ta do things!") It's nice to see Cannonball being a good, thoughtful, strategic leader, rather than being leader just because he has the most forceful personality and Cable liked him best. Too bad for him, though, his growth may come too late, because Graymalkin can't handle all the destructive violence and ejecting of cargo for long, and Professor spazzes out and sounds an urgent alert before the whole place suddenly blows up. It's not quite as thrilling a blow-up as the one in Emerald Dawn, but it's a solid cliffhanger at the end of a tight, well-done, all-systems-go issue.
100 Bullets #21: What I like most about this issue is that Jack's past as a deadbeat, coked-out security guard looks appealing when compared to his present state as a homeless heroin junkie. By starting in the present and then moving backward, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso manage to make his former life seem like the good old days. As a character, Jack's a nice study in contrasts. He's enormous but insignificant, and has a sort of soft, naive simpleness about him, but also an aura of danger and rage. He's like a sleeping lion, except when he's like a pouncing lion. Jack's story is not especially interesting, which is too bad since he's such a strong lead. His problems are all too familiar, and his apathy toward them doesn't help. He's a fun, strange guy to watch, but the things he does and the people who populate his world don't do much to get my attention. The most captivating detail was that we never saw Graves on-panel, just heard Jack reference an old man who gave him a gun and bullets, then saw the attaché in flashback, but only after Jack had taken it and Graves had presumably departed. It's smart of Azzarello not to waste time having Graves actually explain himself again. The constant reintroductions begin to wear over time. Besides, at this point, with the larger story starting to poke through and a full twenty issues in, it seems reasonable to expect the audience to know who the "old man" is, and if they don't, well...that's just one more thing that makes Jack's nameless junkie friend such a good point-of-view character. He wants to know what happened to Jack, what he did with his gun and how he ended up where he is now, just as much as we do. The mysterious old man is what Jack uses to draw his friend in to the story initially, and it does the same for the reader, whether they know who Graves is or not. So there's some stuff that really clicks, and Jack is a great addition to the ever-expanding world of this series, but the narrative in which he stars is, thus far, nothing special.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #3: Somehow, M.D. Bright is back on pencils, even though Keith Giffen still gets credit for the breakdowns and Romeo Tanghal is still on inks. The creative team continues to grow, but instead of making Emerald Dawn choppy like you might expect, it gets stronger with every issue and maintains a steady narrative momentum. What puts this issue above the first two is that Hal Jordan finally became fully likable and even a tad heroic. After Legion—the giant metal space robot who hunts Green Lanterns—destroys the hospital where Hal's friend Andy was staying and also destroys all of Ferris Air, Hal realizes how in over his head he is, and seeks some help/knowledge, at the source of his power. This leads him to find his power battery, which in turn helps him discover that his ring can talk to and educate him. He sees, via a transmission from his ring's memory banks, Abin Sur's death at Legion's hands, right before Legion shows up to try and kill Hal. There's a chase throughout Abin's crashed ship, because the Green Lantern powers don't work against the color yellow, so Hal can't fight Legion directly. Eventually, his ring leads him to the engines when he wishes half-jokingly for a nuclear option, and when Legion catches up, Hal sets off the nuke, the issue closing on a full-page splash of a mushroom cloud. Colorist Anthony Tollin does an especially nice job on that last page, the cloud done in soft pink hues that aren't nearly as predominant in the rest of the issue. It adds to the suddenness of Hal's decision and the shock of how effective it is. It's also a wonderful halfway mark for the series, the hero and villain trapped together in an enormous explosion after the villain has already caused massive destruction, motivating the hero to more fully step into his role. The conflict between them escalated quite a bit in this issue, but there was still room for Hal to grow as a character and superhero. It's possible Emerald Dawn has fully found its footing now, and certainly this chapter was an excellent action-packed comicbook adventure.
X-Force (vol. 1) #21: Greg Capullo continues to do a great job drawing a whole bunch of characters in panels of various sizes, each of them doing all sorts of jumping and running and fighting and other physical activities. He's in his sweet spot in this issue, with the hulking War Machine and Nick Fury fighting almost the entire X-Force team on a space station. Wide open spaces, cool backgrounds, things to blow up, lots of large-bodied combatants—it's Capullo's bread and butter, so his quality work comes as no surprise. To be fair, there's a sprinkling of scenes with no action, as Fabian Nicieza continues to build on and add new subplots, and Capullo does a good job with those, too. He and Nicieza both seem very comfortable in this issue, jumping from the main story of X-Force vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. to the various side stories intelligently, and getting the B- and C-plot portions knocked out quickly so the A-plot is never out of sight for long. Just like Emerald Dawn #3 above, X-Force #21 involves its stars getting better at their heroism, and then concludes in a devastating explosion. Cannonball and Sunspot learn how to make the most of Professor, the computer system Cable built to run Graymalkin (the space station on which the story takes place). Cannonball and Sunspot have Professor send the weapons and other important cargo from Graymalkin back to their base of operations on Earth, planning for their future rather than rashly reacting to their present like they usually do (and do at the beginning of this issue, even as Cannonball verbally acknowledges that, "X-Force only seems to know ONE WAY ta do things!") It's nice to see Cannonball being a good, thoughtful, strategic leader, rather than being leader just because he has the most forceful personality and Cable liked him best. Too bad for him, though, his growth may come too late, because Graymalkin can't handle all the destructive violence and ejecting of cargo for long, and Professor spazzes out and sounds an urgent alert before the whole place suddenly blows up. It's not quite as thrilling a blow-up as the one in Emerald Dawn, but it's a solid cliffhanger at the end of a tight, well-done, all-systems-go issue.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: June 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #20: After all the slow setup and constant misdirection up to now, 100 Bullets takes a minute to more openly and officially than ever declare that there is a larger narrative behind everything we're seeing. That had become fairly obvious, but it's nice to see this kind of acknowledgement and enhancement of it, even though there are probably more questions at the end of this issue than the beginning about what the hell is going on. Shepherd and a new character named Benito have a cryptic conversation about Agent Graves, beginning with the fact that he was supposed to be dead, moving onto speculation about his agenda, and ending on Shepherd steadfastly sticking to a wait-and-see strategy for now. Benito seems like he'd prefer to be more active about it, but he also is apparently there only as a representative of his father, whoever that may be (this is where the questions start to pile up). The details of Benito's life don't matter so much as the fact that he and Shepherd mention Chicago (where Dizzy's story took place back in the first arc), Cole Burns, Lono, and the Trust, all of which are things the audience has seen before. It's the biggest number of callbacks in the shortest space for this series so far by a long shot, which is what makes this issue such a clear announcement of the series' long-term plans. By which I guess i mean Brian Azzarello's long-term plans, since he is the architect behind this monstrous narrative. Eduardo Risso is the star of this issue, though, because he does such a great job balancing the Shepherd-Benito visuals with the activities in the rest of the park, especially local drug dealer Boppa and his friends as they get involved in a turf war with another group. Azzarello balances the two stories well himself, but Risso's work is more important and impressive in that regard. He brings the whole environment and everyone in it to life, and follows the movements of character major and minor with carefully so there is a cohesion to the timeline. He also does a lot of cutting away from Benito and Shepherd to show us something more exciting than two men sitting on a park bench barely looking at each other, because their dialogue takes up most of the issue, and needs to, but it's easy to follow without having to stare at them the whole time. So Risso uses that to his advantage and fills in their surroundings. It's maybe the fullest this book has ever felt, in the art and, now that things are coming together, the script as well.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #2: The creative team changes as Keith Giffen comes in for plotting and breakdowns, Gerard Jones handles the script, and Romeo Tanghal does the finished inks. It's a pretty seamless transition from the first issue, picking up exactly where the story left off last time, with Hal Jordan face down on the ground after flying through a billboard. After a freaky dream, he wakes up distraught but also excited about his new abilities, hoping they will be able to make up for his past mistakes. He pretty quickly comes to terms with the fact that the ring, while amazing, is not all-powerful, and so, in maybe his first moment of true likability, Hal turns himself in for driving drunk and causing an accident that severely injured his friends. He resolves to serve his time and only then figure out how the ring works, but on his first day in jail, a giant yellow space robot who seems a little unstable and is definitely extremely violent breaks through the wall. We see this villain earlier in the issue, hunting Abin Sur, the dead alien who gave the ring to Hal in the first place. Discovering Abin's corpse pisses off the space robot, and it is determined to kill the new Green Lantern ASAP, hence it breaking into the jail. As far as first supervillains go, I can't imagine very many things that sound more fun than a short-fused psychopathic space bot, so I'm definitely on board with that and eager to see how the fight unfolds next time (if there even is a fight, since Hal seems pretty much already beat when the issue closes). And I was glad to see Hal own up to his screw-ups, not matter how hard it was to do and how tempting it must have been to just fly away from his problems in a glorious green blur. It makes me root for him as a hero more than I was before, and so does the pure, indulgent evil of the bad guy, so all told I'm much more committed to Hal's corner than last month. The good guy is getting better, the stakes are getting higher, and the superpowers are really kicking in now, so it's safe to say I'm feeling pretty stoked for the rest of this series.
X-Force (vol. 1) #20: I've got to say, I found this issue a tad disappointing. On its own, it is a pretty solid, standard piece of '90s Marvel superhero radness. But after last month's declaration of independence from the titular team, it seemed a shame for their next adventure to be all about them fighting for control over Cable's old space fortress, Graymalkin. He's dead (or so they believe) and they've officially struck out on their own, yet they insist on continuing to live in his shadow anyway. At first, we see them building their own home, so things are still headed in the right direction, but what with Bridge, Gideon, Domino, and Grizzly all making comeback appearances, this felt like a weird kind of throwback issue. It was more Liefeldian than anything the Nicieza-Capullo team has produced thus far, I guess is what I'm driving at, and it was some HIGH quality Liefeldian material, much better than the man himself would produce, just still not quite what I was hoping for. Capullo does great crowded action sequences, though, and both he and Nicieza manage to do several very quick, tight scenes of catching up on side characters so that the main story could have lots of room to develop. Sadly, it does not resolve as of yet, ending with X-Force staring down a pissed off Iron Man (James Rhodes variety). It is a banging final panel, though, just a full-page landscape shot of the War Machine suit in full ready-to-kick-ass mode, so I admit, it got me excited for the fight coming next issue, even if it's likely going to be pretty much more of the same thing I saw this time out. That's basically fine by me, because even though it feels like there's some wasted potential for more interesting or original stories, Nicieza and Capullo doing a fun spandex action piece is a more entertaining and better looking than loads of stuff in that genre from any era. So bring it on for now, until it can blossom into something more complicated.
100 Bullets #20: After all the slow setup and constant misdirection up to now, 100 Bullets takes a minute to more openly and officially than ever declare that there is a larger narrative behind everything we're seeing. That had become fairly obvious, but it's nice to see this kind of acknowledgement and enhancement of it, even though there are probably more questions at the end of this issue than the beginning about what the hell is going on. Shepherd and a new character named Benito have a cryptic conversation about Agent Graves, beginning with the fact that he was supposed to be dead, moving onto speculation about his agenda, and ending on Shepherd steadfastly sticking to a wait-and-see strategy for now. Benito seems like he'd prefer to be more active about it, but he also is apparently there only as a representative of his father, whoever that may be (this is where the questions start to pile up). The details of Benito's life don't matter so much as the fact that he and Shepherd mention Chicago (where Dizzy's story took place back in the first arc), Cole Burns, Lono, and the Trust, all of which are things the audience has seen before. It's the biggest number of callbacks in the shortest space for this series so far by a long shot, which is what makes this issue such a clear announcement of the series' long-term plans. By which I guess i mean Brian Azzarello's long-term plans, since he is the architect behind this monstrous narrative. Eduardo Risso is the star of this issue, though, because he does such a great job balancing the Shepherd-Benito visuals with the activities in the rest of the park, especially local drug dealer Boppa and his friends as they get involved in a turf war with another group. Azzarello balances the two stories well himself, but Risso's work is more important and impressive in that regard. He brings the whole environment and everyone in it to life, and follows the movements of character major and minor with carefully so there is a cohesion to the timeline. He also does a lot of cutting away from Benito and Shepherd to show us something more exciting than two men sitting on a park bench barely looking at each other, because their dialogue takes up most of the issue, and needs to, but it's easy to follow without having to stare at them the whole time. So Risso uses that to his advantage and fills in their surroundings. It's maybe the fullest this book has ever felt, in the art and, now that things are coming together, the script as well.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #2: The creative team changes as Keith Giffen comes in for plotting and breakdowns, Gerard Jones handles the script, and Romeo Tanghal does the finished inks. It's a pretty seamless transition from the first issue, picking up exactly where the story left off last time, with Hal Jordan face down on the ground after flying through a billboard. After a freaky dream, he wakes up distraught but also excited about his new abilities, hoping they will be able to make up for his past mistakes. He pretty quickly comes to terms with the fact that the ring, while amazing, is not all-powerful, and so, in maybe his first moment of true likability, Hal turns himself in for driving drunk and causing an accident that severely injured his friends. He resolves to serve his time and only then figure out how the ring works, but on his first day in jail, a giant yellow space robot who seems a little unstable and is definitely extremely violent breaks through the wall. We see this villain earlier in the issue, hunting Abin Sur, the dead alien who gave the ring to Hal in the first place. Discovering Abin's corpse pisses off the space robot, and it is determined to kill the new Green Lantern ASAP, hence it breaking into the jail. As far as first supervillains go, I can't imagine very many things that sound more fun than a short-fused psychopathic space bot, so I'm definitely on board with that and eager to see how the fight unfolds next time (if there even is a fight, since Hal seems pretty much already beat when the issue closes). And I was glad to see Hal own up to his screw-ups, not matter how hard it was to do and how tempting it must have been to just fly away from his problems in a glorious green blur. It makes me root for him as a hero more than I was before, and so does the pure, indulgent evil of the bad guy, so all told I'm much more committed to Hal's corner than last month. The good guy is getting better, the stakes are getting higher, and the superpowers are really kicking in now, so it's safe to say I'm feeling pretty stoked for the rest of this series.
X-Force (vol. 1) #20: I've got to say, I found this issue a tad disappointing. On its own, it is a pretty solid, standard piece of '90s Marvel superhero radness. But after last month's declaration of independence from the titular team, it seemed a shame for their next adventure to be all about them fighting for control over Cable's old space fortress, Graymalkin. He's dead (or so they believe) and they've officially struck out on their own, yet they insist on continuing to live in his shadow anyway. At first, we see them building their own home, so things are still headed in the right direction, but what with Bridge, Gideon, Domino, and Grizzly all making comeback appearances, this felt like a weird kind of throwback issue. It was more Liefeldian than anything the Nicieza-Capullo team has produced thus far, I guess is what I'm driving at, and it was some HIGH quality Liefeldian material, much better than the man himself would produce, just still not quite what I was hoping for. Capullo does great crowded action sequences, though, and both he and Nicieza manage to do several very quick, tight scenes of catching up on side characters so that the main story could have lots of room to develop. Sadly, it does not resolve as of yet, ending with X-Force staring down a pissed off Iron Man (James Rhodes variety). It is a banging final panel, though, just a full-page landscape shot of the War Machine suit in full ready-to-kick-ass mode, so I admit, it got me excited for the fight coming next issue, even if it's likely going to be pretty much more of the same thing I saw this time out. That's basically fine by me, because even though it feels like there's some wasted potential for more interesting or original stories, Nicieza and Capullo doing a fun spandex action piece is a more entertaining and better looking than loads of stuff in that genre from any era. So bring it on for now, until it can blossom into something more complicated.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Monthly Dose: May 2014 (SUPER Belated)
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
I actually read these comics back in May like I was supposed to, but have not had the opportunity and/or energy to review them up until now. Luckily, they were all pretty good and memorable.
100 Bullets #19: After telling several disconnected stories with the only apparent throughline being Agent Graves, 100 Bullets begins here to hint more heavily than ever at a larger overarching narrative/plan. Lono catches up with the young couple who stole his money several issues back, who also happen to be Loop's cousin and his girlfriend. So Loop and Lono collide, which leads to Lono figuring out that Loop is Mr. Hughes' son, an apparently significant piece of information, at least as far as Lono is concerned. We know already that Hughes and Graves had some kind of history, so it's not a huge surprise that Lono would know Hughes, too, but seeing his reaction to the name is still a surprising and important moment in the issue. It quite possibly saves Loop's life, which also implies that we may see more of Loop in the future. Why include this epilogue-style chapter in Loop's story where he butts heads with a character we saw a while back unless both Loop and Lono will appear again? And more importantly than that, what if Graves' plan from the very beginning was to bring Loop and Lono together? It was Graves who arranged for Lono to get robbed by Loop's cousin, so it's more than likely that the Loop-Lono meeting was his goal, which broadens the scope of Graves' influence, intelligence, and ambition. Brian Azzarello has done a great job up to this point of telling self-contained tales, but after 18 issues of that, it's very nice to see something bigger begin to develop. Even if it is a slow build, at least it's getting there now. The only thing that bugs me about this issue is the skin-crawling heartlessness Lono displays while sexually abusing Loop's cousin's girlfriend (I can't recall the names of her or Loop's cousin right now and don't have the issue handy, sorry). Obviously the idea is to paint Lono as the downright bastard he is, and it works, but it's still a little hard to read. Eduardo Risso, at least, is incredibly tasteful about what he chooses to show us, and even Azzarello is good enough not to have the actual rape ever happen on-panel. All the same, Lono does and says some deeply despicable shit that turns my stomach whether I have to look directly at it or not. Beyond that discomfort, though, this is a solid issue, and an important brick in the foundation of what will eventually be the massive structure of 100 Bullets as a series.
I actually read these comics back in May like I was supposed to, but have not had the opportunity and/or energy to review them up until now. Luckily, they were all pretty good and memorable.
100 Bullets #19: After telling several disconnected stories with the only apparent throughline being Agent Graves, 100 Bullets begins here to hint more heavily than ever at a larger overarching narrative/plan. Lono catches up with the young couple who stole his money several issues back, who also happen to be Loop's cousin and his girlfriend. So Loop and Lono collide, which leads to Lono figuring out that Loop is Mr. Hughes' son, an apparently significant piece of information, at least as far as Lono is concerned. We know already that Hughes and Graves had some kind of history, so it's not a huge surprise that Lono would know Hughes, too, but seeing his reaction to the name is still a surprising and important moment in the issue. It quite possibly saves Loop's life, which also implies that we may see more of Loop in the future. Why include this epilogue-style chapter in Loop's story where he butts heads with a character we saw a while back unless both Loop and Lono will appear again? And more importantly than that, what if Graves' plan from the very beginning was to bring Loop and Lono together? It was Graves who arranged for Lono to get robbed by Loop's cousin, so it's more than likely that the Loop-Lono meeting was his goal, which broadens the scope of Graves' influence, intelligence, and ambition. Brian Azzarello has done a great job up to this point of telling self-contained tales, but after 18 issues of that, it's very nice to see something bigger begin to develop. Even if it is a slow build, at least it's getting there now. The only thing that bugs me about this issue is the skin-crawling heartlessness Lono displays while sexually abusing Loop's cousin's girlfriend (I can't recall the names of her or Loop's cousin right now and don't have the issue handy, sorry). Obviously the idea is to paint Lono as the downright bastard he is, and it works, but it's still a little hard to read. Eduardo Risso, at least, is incredibly tasteful about what he chooses to show us, and even Azzarello is good enough not to have the actual rape ever happen on-panel. All the same, Lono does and says some deeply despicable shit that turns my stomach whether I have to look directly at it or not. Beyond that discomfort, though, this is a solid issue, and an important brick in the foundation of what will eventually be the massive structure of 100 Bullets as a series.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #1: So what's the right way to credit Christopher Priest when discussing things he wrote back when he was still James Owsley? Like...Owsley is the name on the comic, but Priest is what he goes by now, so I'm not clear on what the protocol is. I guess I'll refer to him as Owsley since that's technically who he was when he wrote this. Agreed? As far as retelling an established origin story goes, Emerald Dawn is exemplary. There is absolutely no assumption on Owsley's part that the reader has any knowledge of Green Lantern/Hal Jordan coming in, so the story is told from the ground up. It begins with Hal watching his father die on a test flight, and ends with him in full Green Lantern gear but not committed to the role yet. In between, we get to see who Hal grew into in light of his dad's death, and truth be told, he's not all that likable a guy. He never does anything horrible or idiotic, but only because he doesn't really do anything of much note. He's sad about being a bad pilot, he's sad about Carol Ferris breaking up with him, and he's still apparently pretty torn up over his father's accident, too. He's mopey, childish, and depressed, which doesn't make him unsympathetic but also doesn't make him particularly endearing. He's no fun, and therefore no fun to follow as a reader, but the comic still keeps from ever being boring. A big part of that is M.D. Bright's artwork, which is so rich and realistic that the issue works quite well as a simple, straightforward human drama piece for the entire first two acts. It isn't until the very end that any superhero stuff goes down, and even that is just Hal being pulled to the crashed alien vessel and given his ring and power battery. There's no fighting, no villains, none of the typical trappings of a superhero story, but that's ok for this opening issue. Its goal is to build the cast first before bothering to throw a wrench in the works, and then when the time comes it's a pretty enormous wrench. Far from making Hal's life instantly better or even making him happier, becoming Green Lantern only worsens his situation. Carol gets pissed at him for disappearing and "stealing" the test plane he was in when he got forcefully transported to the site of the crashed spaceship, and he's saddled with a bunch of power he doesn't understand for reasons that were never explained to him. His powers are not viewed as a gift bestowed but a burden forced upon him, which makes sense considering his generally pessimistic outlook during the earlier parts of the issue. Hal may not have won me over yet, but he hasn't turned me off, either, and Owsley and Bright both do solid, well-structured work that makes Emerald Dawn #1 as a comic far more captivating than its main character. A very solid first beat that makes a lot of smart decisions from cover to cover.
X-Force (vol. 1) #19: Since the end of the Liefeld era, this comic has gotten extremely good at telling meta stories which act as both fictional narratives and real-world pronouncements of the series' intent. This issue is the most obvious and well-executed example of that so far, with the members of X-Force explicitly stating that they don't want to be like the traditional good guy mutants or obad guy mutants, but to carve their own path with their own sense of morality. Basically, it's Fabian Nicieza saying, "No more Liefeld plots, no more crossover bullshit, I am taking the wheel on this comicbook now," which is awesome. Since Greg Capullo came aboard as artist, he and Nicieza have made X-Force a title of progressively higher quality with each issue, even in the shadow of dangling Liefeld-spun threads and the "X-Cutioner's Song" event. Now that they've taken an issue to officially break away from all that and go somewhere brand new, there's a great sense of anything-can-happennes to this book that energizes it as a series and me as a reader. Also, the arguments made by Nicieza (through Cannonball) as to why this team should be allowed to journey off on their own are sound, reasonable, and delivered articulately. I was convinced, which makes it easier to believe it when Professor X also comes around. Yes, X-Force is a squad of relatively young, inexperienced mutants, but they've been through enough as a group now to make their own decisions and make their own way. They're bound to screw up sometimes, but so is everybody. Capullo also gives fresh costumes to everyone (through Boom-Boom), and with the possible exception of Feral, they are all major improvements. Gone are the bulky Liefeld clothes (Warpath even has a line about being able to move better without shoulder pads) and everything is made much more stylish and practical. Feral's costume I point out as the exception mostly just because it is so revealing that I question whether or not she even needs it. She's covered in fur, so clothing seems optional, and if she's going to wear something so barely there, what's the point? But Capullo doesn't overtly sexualize the character in her new duds. If anything, he underplays the sexiness in the one panel where we see the team in their new costumes, with Feral crouched down and off to the side, almost small enough compared to everyone else that you could miss her. So all told, X-Force is looking better than ever before, and all set to embark on a bold new independent direction, so the future's pretty bright for this title right now.
X-Force (vol. 1) #19: Since the end of the Liefeld era, this comic has gotten extremely good at telling meta stories which act as both fictional narratives and real-world pronouncements of the series' intent. This issue is the most obvious and well-executed example of that so far, with the members of X-Force explicitly stating that they don't want to be like the traditional good guy mutants or obad guy mutants, but to carve their own path with their own sense of morality. Basically, it's Fabian Nicieza saying, "No more Liefeld plots, no more crossover bullshit, I am taking the wheel on this comicbook now," which is awesome. Since Greg Capullo came aboard as artist, he and Nicieza have made X-Force a title of progressively higher quality with each issue, even in the shadow of dangling Liefeld-spun threads and the "X-Cutioner's Song" event. Now that they've taken an issue to officially break away from all that and go somewhere brand new, there's a great sense of anything-can-happennes to this book that energizes it as a series and me as a reader. Also, the arguments made by Nicieza (through Cannonball) as to why this team should be allowed to journey off on their own are sound, reasonable, and delivered articulately. I was convinced, which makes it easier to believe it when Professor X also comes around. Yes, X-Force is a squad of relatively young, inexperienced mutants, but they've been through enough as a group now to make their own decisions and make their own way. They're bound to screw up sometimes, but so is everybody. Capullo also gives fresh costumes to everyone (through Boom-Boom), and with the possible exception of Feral, they are all major improvements. Gone are the bulky Liefeld clothes (Warpath even has a line about being able to move better without shoulder pads) and everything is made much more stylish and practical. Feral's costume I point out as the exception mostly just because it is so revealing that I question whether or not she even needs it. She's covered in fur, so clothing seems optional, and if she's going to wear something so barely there, what's the point? But Capullo doesn't overtly sexualize the character in her new duds. If anything, he underplays the sexiness in the one panel where we see the team in their new costumes, with Feral crouched down and off to the side, almost small enough compared to everyone else that you could miss her. So all told, X-Force is looking better than ever before, and all set to embark on a bold new independent direction, so the future's pretty bright for this title right now.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Monthly Dose: April 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #18: "Hang Up on the Hang Low" concludes, with Loop just barely surviving the avenging of Curtis' death. That's pretty much is the bulk of the issue, with a tiny splash of Agent Graves at the beginning and end to round things out. Loop's plan goes off swimmingly at first, as he mows down a bunch of minions and quickly finds himself face-to-face with Mr. Rego, the crime boss responsible for killing his father. But Rego has one last bodyguard, Tommi, the young woman perpetually playing pool in his house, whom Loop assumes is only there to look good, which costs him dearly. Tommi kicks the crap out of Loop while Rego scolds and blames him, until Loop is lucky enough to get the drop on Tommi in just the right way to live through the experience. He then shoots Rego, his arm held steady by Holly, the woman whose bar was burned down as part of Curtis' murder. It's a hollow victory, which Loop admits to Graves after the fact, but it's hard to imagine things ending any other way. Once Curtis got killed, either Loop or Rego also had to die, and Rego was the preferable pick. Eduardo Risso really makes the fight with Loop and Tommi count, if it can even be called a fight. It's a pure ass-kicking right up until the very end, and every blow is recorded in detail for the audience's flinching pleasure. It's important to understand all the pain Loop goes through in the name of revenge, because it helps us feel the same dissatisfaction with it as he does in the end. Brian Azzarello has Rego emotionally assault Loop with the same skill and ferocity as Tommi and at the same time, putting Loop through one hell of a ringer before he makes it to his goal. That seems to have been the point of this entire arc, to introduce Loop, make us immediately warm to him, and then make him go through as much shit as possible in the shortest time. It's an effective strategy, and, not to be all spoilery about this 13-year-old comicbook, but it's not quite over yet.
Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. #6: This series concludes, and it's a rather predictable landing. I suppose I didn't expect the Creator to suddenly become self-deprecating when he "touched" Fury's mind and saw how much better human feelings are than robot feelings. That was a surprise, but it's the only one in here. He was always going to betray his people; he'd hinted heavily at that a few issues back. And Quartermain was pretty clearly on a route to self-destruction and/or turning on his makers, so when he blew the power core it was not a shock. The core also had to come back, and I'm not sure how easy it was to anticipate that it would be the death of all the bad guys, but we pretty much new none of the Deltites were going to survive. The whole story was about them trying to live forever, which marks you for death by default. Bob Harras goes through the numbers here, padding out pages with a whole lot of the Creator explaining his history and his goals, much of which was easy to suss out and none of which was particularly interesting. I did like it when all the captives rose up and broke free, because at least it was exciting, but even that felt like it had to happen. A final confrontation between the two sides is pretty basic stuff. It's not that Harras did a bad job with the story, it's more a matter of the story being stretched too thin in these six oversized issues, so that the final chapter is just a slow and steady arrival at a destination that's been visible for a while. Fury wins, Delta is destroyed, but S.H.I.E.L.D. has to be shut down because the whole thing has been a lie for so long. The writing has been on the wall since halfway through the book. There were also a lot of small distractions in the wording, like consecutive sentences that used the same words or phrases, and too many actual lettering mistakes that made things hard to understand on a first read. I was hoping for something a little more lively and/or inventive, but this was still a cool idea and a series worth reading. I think it's better to do all at once than month-by-month though, because this final month felt like a bit of a waste. I have no idea what to pick for next month...
X-Force (vol. 1) #18: "X-Cutioner's Song" concludes, and even though I've only read 3 non-sequential chapters of the 12 total during this monthly reading of X-Force, I found it enjoyable and satisfying. Greg Capullo is made for this stuff, because he has a way of making immensely bulky characters move naturally. He understands how to position them so that they look, if not realistic, at least believable. Of course this applies to the knock-down drag-out portions of the Cable vs. Stryfe fight that is the centerpiece of the issue, but I'm really thinking more of Apocalypse slowly bleeding out and dragging himself across the floor on his belly like a wounded animal. While no less massive or imposing or wicked than ever, Apocalypse also looks pathetic. I don't know if I feel bad for him, necessarily, but I definitely feel his pain. He's not just a cartoon villain being wiped off the board, but a living thing suffering in its final moments. It works, and adds a lot to the somewhat clichéd scene of Archangel choosing not to kill Apocalypse in a testament to his persevering humanity. Fabian Niceiza's script is full of familiar moments like this: the heroic sacrifice, the "We've been one step behind for too long" scene, the self-destruct countdown. But this is a crossover event, so I don't know how much of those were Nicieza's call, and either way he handles them well. Not too wordy, but using the words that are there to lean into the melodrama at just the right angle. It hums along, and it's focused and clear enough that the reader has neither time nor need to ask questions about what led up to this. Again, though, I think most of the credit for that pacing really belong to Capullo's art, which is expressive and explosive in equal turn, so you're always caught up in the drama, action, or both. Capullo continues to flourish in this book, and Nicieza seems the right partner for him, so with a crossover contribution now officially under their belt, things are looking bright.
100 Bullets #18: "Hang Up on the Hang Low" concludes, with Loop just barely surviving the avenging of Curtis' death. That's pretty much is the bulk of the issue, with a tiny splash of Agent Graves at the beginning and end to round things out. Loop's plan goes off swimmingly at first, as he mows down a bunch of minions and quickly finds himself face-to-face with Mr. Rego, the crime boss responsible for killing his father. But Rego has one last bodyguard, Tommi, the young woman perpetually playing pool in his house, whom Loop assumes is only there to look good, which costs him dearly. Tommi kicks the crap out of Loop while Rego scolds and blames him, until Loop is lucky enough to get the drop on Tommi in just the right way to live through the experience. He then shoots Rego, his arm held steady by Holly, the woman whose bar was burned down as part of Curtis' murder. It's a hollow victory, which Loop admits to Graves after the fact, but it's hard to imagine things ending any other way. Once Curtis got killed, either Loop or Rego also had to die, and Rego was the preferable pick. Eduardo Risso really makes the fight with Loop and Tommi count, if it can even be called a fight. It's a pure ass-kicking right up until the very end, and every blow is recorded in detail for the audience's flinching pleasure. It's important to understand all the pain Loop goes through in the name of revenge, because it helps us feel the same dissatisfaction with it as he does in the end. Brian Azzarello has Rego emotionally assault Loop with the same skill and ferocity as Tommi and at the same time, putting Loop through one hell of a ringer before he makes it to his goal. That seems to have been the point of this entire arc, to introduce Loop, make us immediately warm to him, and then make him go through as much shit as possible in the shortest time. It's an effective strategy, and, not to be all spoilery about this 13-year-old comicbook, but it's not quite over yet.
Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. #6: This series concludes, and it's a rather predictable landing. I suppose I didn't expect the Creator to suddenly become self-deprecating when he "touched" Fury's mind and saw how much better human feelings are than robot feelings. That was a surprise, but it's the only one in here. He was always going to betray his people; he'd hinted heavily at that a few issues back. And Quartermain was pretty clearly on a route to self-destruction and/or turning on his makers, so when he blew the power core it was not a shock. The core also had to come back, and I'm not sure how easy it was to anticipate that it would be the death of all the bad guys, but we pretty much new none of the Deltites were going to survive. The whole story was about them trying to live forever, which marks you for death by default. Bob Harras goes through the numbers here, padding out pages with a whole lot of the Creator explaining his history and his goals, much of which was easy to suss out and none of which was particularly interesting. I did like it when all the captives rose up and broke free, because at least it was exciting, but even that felt like it had to happen. A final confrontation between the two sides is pretty basic stuff. It's not that Harras did a bad job with the story, it's more a matter of the story being stretched too thin in these six oversized issues, so that the final chapter is just a slow and steady arrival at a destination that's been visible for a while. Fury wins, Delta is destroyed, but S.H.I.E.L.D. has to be shut down because the whole thing has been a lie for so long. The writing has been on the wall since halfway through the book. There were also a lot of small distractions in the wording, like consecutive sentences that used the same words or phrases, and too many actual lettering mistakes that made things hard to understand on a first read. I was hoping for something a little more lively and/or inventive, but this was still a cool idea and a series worth reading. I think it's better to do all at once than month-by-month though, because this final month felt like a bit of a waste. I have no idea what to pick for next month...
X-Force (vol. 1) #18: "X-Cutioner's Song" concludes, and even though I've only read 3 non-sequential chapters of the 12 total during this monthly reading of X-Force, I found it enjoyable and satisfying. Greg Capullo is made for this stuff, because he has a way of making immensely bulky characters move naturally. He understands how to position them so that they look, if not realistic, at least believable. Of course this applies to the knock-down drag-out portions of the Cable vs. Stryfe fight that is the centerpiece of the issue, but I'm really thinking more of Apocalypse slowly bleeding out and dragging himself across the floor on his belly like a wounded animal. While no less massive or imposing or wicked than ever, Apocalypse also looks pathetic. I don't know if I feel bad for him, necessarily, but I definitely feel his pain. He's not just a cartoon villain being wiped off the board, but a living thing suffering in its final moments. It works, and adds a lot to the somewhat clichéd scene of Archangel choosing not to kill Apocalypse in a testament to his persevering humanity. Fabian Niceiza's script is full of familiar moments like this: the heroic sacrifice, the "We've been one step behind for too long" scene, the self-destruct countdown. But this is a crossover event, so I don't know how much of those were Nicieza's call, and either way he handles them well. Not too wordy, but using the words that are there to lean into the melodrama at just the right angle. It hums along, and it's focused and clear enough that the reader has neither time nor need to ask questions about what led up to this. Again, though, I think most of the credit for that pacing really belong to Capullo's art, which is expressive and explosive in equal turn, so you're always caught up in the drama, action, or both. Capullo continues to flourish in this book, and Nicieza seems the right partner for him, so with a crossover contribution now officially under their belt, things are looking bright.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Monthly Dose: March 2014
Monthly Dose is a semi-regular column where I reread one issue each month of long-completed series.
100 Bullets #17: It says a lot about this story arc that in only three issues, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso were able to introduce Curtis and Loop to the reader, then to each other, then build their relationship to the point where I really cared about them, and then kill Curtis off in a brutal and heart-wrenching fashion with Loop there to see it. That's a lot to do in a short time, but it doesn't feel like so much the way Azzarello and Risso do it. They cut through the crap and get to the good stuff on every page. For example, we don't see the beating Curtis gets here; not one punch punch is thrown in-panel. It cuts straight from him being cornered to him lying in a bloody, ugly mess on the floor, because there's no need to show the violence once you've made it clear that it's inevitable. Every scene is smartly paced and structured in that way, each of them starting with the first essential line and ending with the last one, with no real filler thrown in. It all matters, starting with every word (and a whole bunch of unspoken words expressed through Risso's brilliant body language and facial expression) exchanged between Curtis and Graves in the first scene. Though their exact history isn't spelled out in detail, the gist of their existing dynamic is covered quickly so that they can get right to complicating it further by talking about and involving Loop. It's a strong opening, and it propels the rest of the issue steadily forward, a slow-burn of constant tension ending in a literal and emotional explosion. I don't really know what else to say about this issue, because there aren't necessarily a lot of specific standout moments. The whole thing stands out as a remarkably tight, moody, effective piece of comicbook fiction, a deliberate and intelligent progression of what was already a great arc. Loop has gone from not knowing his dad to being best friends with him to losing him in violence and fire. That's an awful lot for an already angry, confused, somewhat immature character to go through, and I have no doubt that his reaction next month will be intense and intriguing. 100 Bullets has just gotten deadly serious and immensely tragic, so I'm excited to see just how destructively it all ends.
Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. #5: The oversized nature of these issues has never been more obvious than when reading this one. At one point I thought I was nearing the end, just based on narrative flow, but it turned out I still had 14 pages to go. The main reason for this is that, even as he progresses the story, Bob Harras just can't stop himself from explaining and re-explaining and over-explaining every single thing that happens or has happened. The number of times that the bad guys talked about how close Fury was to being in their hands was straight up ridiculous. I understand that it was the last step in their villainous plan, but even keeping that in mind, they talked about it way too often. It's already been said so many times in the previous four issues, that one or maybe two reminders could've easily been enough here. Instead it gets brought up every few pages from start to finish. Ick. The rapid aging and constant regeneration of the members of Project Delta, and their internal torment over that whole deal, was another long-established theme that got over-explored in this issue. There was just a lot of that all over, old ideas or plot points being rehashed in the dialogue without adding any new information. In between, things did steadily roll forward, but at a snail's pace because room had to be made for all the old hat. That being said, I'm still enjoying this narrative, despite the repetitiveness of the script and its poor pace. Things were sort of kicked up a notch this issue when Fury finally, fully uncovered who he was fighting and what they wanted. He's being brought face-to-face with the big bad now, which I suppose was pretty much a necessary place to leave him at the end of the penultimate chapter. Now the head villain's real plans can be revealed, and Fury can figure out some ballsy way to thwart them. I'm excited to get to that, so it that sense, at least, this issue did its job. It left me wanting more in the end, even though along the way I could've done with a little less. There were, luckily, a whole bunch of really nice visual moments from Paul Neary and Kim DeMulder to carry me through. The cream of the crop was Fury and his crew climbing snow-covered cliffs while wearing enormous, flowy capes. It reminded me of something out of a D&D session, which I'm always for. The Deltites beings tractor-beamed into the orbs also looked great, especially the last time it happened, where one half of the page was people resisting, while the other was a group fully committed to the Delta cause, serenely allowing themselves to be transported. That was a cool contrast. And I dug colorist Bernie Jaye's decision to do the Val-Kate scenes with all-red lighting. It added a surreality and somberness to their already rather dreary conversation. Because it had a decent amount of boring, pointless dialogue, this issue definitely didn't astound me, but I'm deep enough into the story of the series now that I'm invested and eager to get to the end, so I appreciated the good bits and got over the bad ones pretty quickly.
X-Force (vol. 1) #17: After skipping another three chapters, I got to dive into part 8 of "X-Cutioner's Song," which starts with a full-page splash of Stryfe and Apocalypse facing each other down "Inside the temple of Bani Maza, behind the walls of yesterday..." according to the caption box, whatever that even means. It is a badass opening image, though I have no idea how we got there or what the exact significance of the moment really is. Two huge, scary-looking, heavily-armored supervillains squaring off against one another in a chaotic close-quarters setting is cool enough to do it for me even without context. And the brawl these two engage in for the next few pages, which is less of a proper fight than it is Stryfe beating on a fleeing Apocalypse, looks fantastic. Greg Capullo is in his element drawing these two powerhouses, one pounding on the other. They are just the kind of bulky, menacing figures that make his work shine. Sadly, once Apocalypse gets away, things cool off and slow down considerably, and the rest of this issue is more of a status update on all the heroes of this story than it is an actual step forward in the larger narrative. There's a good cliffhanger ending, and it ties into the awesome beginning quite nicely, but in between there's an awful lot of recap talk and info-dumping and standing around. On the one hand, because I'm only reading the X-Force issues of this crossover, getting to see where everyone is and what they're up to was kind of nice. On the other, because I didn't read the chapter that preceded this one and won't be reading the on that follows it, either, getting this kind of breath-catching beat was sort of a bummer. I'd much rather be buried in confusing action like I was last month that have everything clearly explained but nothing interesting going on. I don't blame Fabian Nicieza for this, of course, because he had to write the part of the story he was given. And it's not necessarily his job to give people like me, who refuse to read the rest of the crossover, something exciting or action-packed in every issue of X-Force. It's actually a very good script, able to move between locations and characters efficiently so that all the exposition bases are covered and there's still room for Stryke to whomp on Apocalypse up front and for a wounded, beaten Apocalypse to arrive at the X-Mansion in the end. So all-in-all a very well-done issue, but sort of a snoozer as far as story goes, due to where this specific chapter lies in the structure of the overarching event story.
100 Bullets #17: It says a lot about this story arc that in only three issues, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso were able to introduce Curtis and Loop to the reader, then to each other, then build their relationship to the point where I really cared about them, and then kill Curtis off in a brutal and heart-wrenching fashion with Loop there to see it. That's a lot to do in a short time, but it doesn't feel like so much the way Azzarello and Risso do it. They cut through the crap and get to the good stuff on every page. For example, we don't see the beating Curtis gets here; not one punch punch is thrown in-panel. It cuts straight from him being cornered to him lying in a bloody, ugly mess on the floor, because there's no need to show the violence once you've made it clear that it's inevitable. Every scene is smartly paced and structured in that way, each of them starting with the first essential line and ending with the last one, with no real filler thrown in. It all matters, starting with every word (and a whole bunch of unspoken words expressed through Risso's brilliant body language and facial expression) exchanged between Curtis and Graves in the first scene. Though their exact history isn't spelled out in detail, the gist of their existing dynamic is covered quickly so that they can get right to complicating it further by talking about and involving Loop. It's a strong opening, and it propels the rest of the issue steadily forward, a slow-burn of constant tension ending in a literal and emotional explosion. I don't really know what else to say about this issue, because there aren't necessarily a lot of specific standout moments. The whole thing stands out as a remarkably tight, moody, effective piece of comicbook fiction, a deliberate and intelligent progression of what was already a great arc. Loop has gone from not knowing his dad to being best friends with him to losing him in violence and fire. That's an awful lot for an already angry, confused, somewhat immature character to go through, and I have no doubt that his reaction next month will be intense and intriguing. 100 Bullets has just gotten deadly serious and immensely tragic, so I'm excited to see just how destructively it all ends.
Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. #5: The oversized nature of these issues has never been more obvious than when reading this one. At one point I thought I was nearing the end, just based on narrative flow, but it turned out I still had 14 pages to go. The main reason for this is that, even as he progresses the story, Bob Harras just can't stop himself from explaining and re-explaining and over-explaining every single thing that happens or has happened. The number of times that the bad guys talked about how close Fury was to being in their hands was straight up ridiculous. I understand that it was the last step in their villainous plan, but even keeping that in mind, they talked about it way too often. It's already been said so many times in the previous four issues, that one or maybe two reminders could've easily been enough here. Instead it gets brought up every few pages from start to finish. Ick. The rapid aging and constant regeneration of the members of Project Delta, and their internal torment over that whole deal, was another long-established theme that got over-explored in this issue. There was just a lot of that all over, old ideas or plot points being rehashed in the dialogue without adding any new information. In between, things did steadily roll forward, but at a snail's pace because room had to be made for all the old hat. That being said, I'm still enjoying this narrative, despite the repetitiveness of the script and its poor pace. Things were sort of kicked up a notch this issue when Fury finally, fully uncovered who he was fighting and what they wanted. He's being brought face-to-face with the big bad now, which I suppose was pretty much a necessary place to leave him at the end of the penultimate chapter. Now the head villain's real plans can be revealed, and Fury can figure out some ballsy way to thwart them. I'm excited to get to that, so it that sense, at least, this issue did its job. It left me wanting more in the end, even though along the way I could've done with a little less. There were, luckily, a whole bunch of really nice visual moments from Paul Neary and Kim DeMulder to carry me through. The cream of the crop was Fury and his crew climbing snow-covered cliffs while wearing enormous, flowy capes. It reminded me of something out of a D&D session, which I'm always for. The Deltites beings tractor-beamed into the orbs also looked great, especially the last time it happened, where one half of the page was people resisting, while the other was a group fully committed to the Delta cause, serenely allowing themselves to be transported. That was a cool contrast. And I dug colorist Bernie Jaye's decision to do the Val-Kate scenes with all-red lighting. It added a surreality and somberness to their already rather dreary conversation. Because it had a decent amount of boring, pointless dialogue, this issue definitely didn't astound me, but I'm deep enough into the story of the series now that I'm invested and eager to get to the end, so I appreciated the good bits and got over the bad ones pretty quickly.
X-Force (vol. 1) #17: After skipping another three chapters, I got to dive into part 8 of "X-Cutioner's Song," which starts with a full-page splash of Stryfe and Apocalypse facing each other down "Inside the temple of Bani Maza, behind the walls of yesterday..." according to the caption box, whatever that even means. It is a badass opening image, though I have no idea how we got there or what the exact significance of the moment really is. Two huge, scary-looking, heavily-armored supervillains squaring off against one another in a chaotic close-quarters setting is cool enough to do it for me even without context. And the brawl these two engage in for the next few pages, which is less of a proper fight than it is Stryfe beating on a fleeing Apocalypse, looks fantastic. Greg Capullo is in his element drawing these two powerhouses, one pounding on the other. They are just the kind of bulky, menacing figures that make his work shine. Sadly, once Apocalypse gets away, things cool off and slow down considerably, and the rest of this issue is more of a status update on all the heroes of this story than it is an actual step forward in the larger narrative. There's a good cliffhanger ending, and it ties into the awesome beginning quite nicely, but in between there's an awful lot of recap talk and info-dumping and standing around. On the one hand, because I'm only reading the X-Force issues of this crossover, getting to see where everyone is and what they're up to was kind of nice. On the other, because I didn't read the chapter that preceded this one and won't be reading the on that follows it, either, getting this kind of breath-catching beat was sort of a bummer. I'd much rather be buried in confusing action like I was last month that have everything clearly explained but nothing interesting going on. I don't blame Fabian Nicieza for this, of course, because he had to write the part of the story he was given. And it's not necessarily his job to give people like me, who refuse to read the rest of the crossover, something exciting or action-packed in every issue of X-Force. It's actually a very good script, able to move between locations and characters efficiently so that all the exposition bases are covered and there's still room for Stryke to whomp on Apocalypse up front and for a wounded, beaten Apocalypse to arrive at the X-Mansion in the end. So all-in-all a very well-done issue, but sort of a snoozer as far as story goes, due to where this specific chapter lies in the structure of the overarching event story.
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