Elsewhere

Two weeks ago I wrote on PopMatters about John McCrea's artwork for Mythic, then this week I wrote on CSBG about 1987's 3-D Three Stooges #3. While McCrea's art is a blast, the rest of Mythic has yet to find its footing, and 3-D Three Stooges #3 was a letdown in all ways, so...not the most exciting material overall, but that's how it goes sometimes, as we all know.

Something I Failed to Mention
I think I said all I wanted to about both of the above topics in each of the above columns. They were more narrowly focused pieces than I often write, so not as much got missed as usual. I did just watch the episode of House where Kutner kills himself, and I must say, it seemed like a completely pointless death that they threw in because they needed an easy excuse to get rid of Kal Penn before he left for his job at the White House. The whole storyline centers on House being bothered by how out of nowhere the suicide was, how there was no evidence or reason for it, and I totally agree. Now, of course, I understand that there have been suicides like that before, that not everyone's depression is obvious and that not all suicides have explicit reasons or specific motives behind them. But any deaths of characters in fiction, no matter the cause, ought to have reasons in-story, even if not in-world, and they ought to fit with the established truths of the character's life. This was not that case with Kutner at all. This has nothing to do with comics, but it's where my head's at right now.

Elsewhere

Two weeks ago I wrote about all the things I love the most in Nonplayer. That's a book I've been anxiously waiting to see a second issue of for years, and now that it's finally in my hands, I can say confidently that it did not disappoint in the least. This week, I wrote another 1987 and All That column on Comics Should Be Good about the first ten issues of Captain Atom. Considering how minimal my experience was with that character before, I had almost no sense of what to expect, so it was quite a delight t find the book to be an exceptional take on the complexity and fluidity of human morality.

Something I Failed to Mention
Thought my Nonplayer piece was fairly comprehensive in terms of discussing the series itself, there was a more personal reason for writing it at this time that I didn't get into. I mean, the main reason is obviously because issue #2 just came out last month, but I was inspired to focus on that title in particular because lately I've been unexpectedly getting into video game culture. I have never been a very serious gamer. Growing up I had a Nintendo 64, and I played it with some regularity, but it was never a real passion of mine. I did beat Quest 64, but that's the only game I ever played all the way through. Later, in college, one of my roommates had an Xbox, and I got briefly obsessed with both Fallout 3 and Oblivion, logging many, many hours on each of them. Other than those 3 games, though, I never played anything too seriously, and my main exposure to video games was watching my friends play them while we hung out and ate junk food and shot the shit together. I would spend hours watching my buddy Aaron play World of Warcraft, or a group of us would get together at Brad's house and take turns wreaking as much havoc as possible in Grand Theft Auto III. Stuff like that. Video games have always been a tangential part of my life, something I enjoyed but never cared about too deeply or paid any serious attention to. Over the past few months, that has started to change little by little. I am still not a gamer myself, nor do I ever expect I will be. Too much money and time goes into that hobby, and I've got comics for that already. But I'm a huge fan of video game podcast The Indoor Kids, and I've been getting really into some Let's Play stuff, specifically Cry and the Late Night Crew. For instance, just last night I stayed up until 3:30am watching the livestream of Late Night with Cry and Russ (which, to be clear, was not when it ended, that's just when I tapped out from exhaustion). It was awesome and hilarious. So all of this newfound interest in video games, even though it's all based on other people playing them, was picking up steam right when Nonplayer #2 came out, so it seemed like the perfect time to get that issue at last, and I almost couldn't help but write about it.

Elsewhere

Two weeks ago, I wrapped up my three-part series on The Names over at PopMatters. This week, my newest 1987 And All That column went up on Comics Should Be Good, covering Fantastic Four #304-307. I liked those comics quite a bit, but evidently they and the rest of Englehart's run on the book don't have the best reputation, as you can see in the comments. I totally understand the criticisms, but for me, those issues touched on my favorite part of the Fantastic Four, examining the drama and dysfunction that comes with them being a family as well as a superhero team.

Something I Failed to Mention
In my Names pieces, I was focusing on the stuff I liked about that series, what it did best and why it left an impression on me. And I touched on, in at least one of the posts, the fact that the whole series centers on Katya Walker trying to find her husband's killer, and that she does not accomplish that goal by the time the book comes to a close. I don't really have a problem with that ending, because I think the entire creative team handled it quite well, but I will say that it's a bit frustrating to have nine issues worth of a mystery that never gets solved, that was never going to be solved. It's not a bad ending, but it's a drag of an ending, because the reader wants to know who murdered Kevin Walker and why just as much as Katya does. Like her, we have to learn to live with not knowing, and there's value in that to be sure. All the same, I'm still curious, and as much as I enjoyed The Names from start to finish, it's hard not to wonder if I might've enjoyed it even more had the central question been answered.

Elsewhere

This past Thursday my latest 1987 And All That column came out, looking at Wild Dog. I just keep writing about that character even though he drives me crazy. I am thinking I may do one final, glorious reread of everything Wild Dog-related, once I am done reviewing all of Action Comics Weekly, and put up one last thing about it somewhere. Anyway, I have also had two out of three planned pieces on The Names published over on PopMatters, one looking at the various tribes that form throughout the series, and another focusing on the artwork. I expect the final installment of that group of posts to be up in the next week or two.

Something I Failed to Mention
I've mentioned on this blog before about how I sometimes get extra wrapped up in D&D and it makes me neglect my comics, and vice versa. Right now is a big-time D&D period for me, which is part of why the blog has been so slow to update lately, and also why I'm going to continue to fail to produce new material for it right now, by not putting anything other than this explanation here. I'm in the middle of working hard on some D&D stuff and writing this post was basically just a quick break from that, but it's been long enough that I am itching to get back to it (meaning all of 10 minutes), so that's all for now.

Elsewhere

It's been like a month since I did one of these posts but I always like to wait until I have ore than one thing to link to and it just took that long this time around. So 2 weeks ago I published a 1987 And All That post about Iron Man #219-221, a.k.a. the first story arc to feature classic villain the Ghost. He's a character I fell in love with only recently during Jeff Parker's Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers run, and even though the initial appearance of the Ghost is very different, there's a lot about him that has lasted over time, and his first storyline was an exceptional one. This week, another 1987 column went up, looking at Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #122-130. I was not wild about them, but as you'll see in the comments, part of that may have been that I was simply starting too late in the series' history and/or stopping too soon. Finally, this past Monday I wrote about three awesome debut issues on PopMatters: The Maximortal #1, Deep Sleeper #1, and Rebel Blood #1. Super-attentive readers will note that I've written about the each of those series on their own at some point in the past on this blog.

Something I Failed to Mention
I literally got back to my house 2 hours ago from the wedding I mentioned in my last post, so you'll have to forgive me if I can't think of anything to put here right now. I guess I could've held off on this until I had something prepared, but I like to do the Elsewheres on Sundays, and I've got enough other stuff to do this week, comics-blog-related and not, that I figured I should just bang this out while I could.

Elsewhere

I wrote about Jason Little's Borb on PopMatters a couple weeks ago, which was a challenging, engaging, significant book. It's never easy to discuss real-world problems in a funny, charming way that still gets at the heart of the matter, but Borb makes it seem effortless, almost natural. This week, my new 1987 And All That went up on Comics Should Be Good, reviewing issues #13-22 of Booster Gold. I'd never spent nearly that much time with Booster Gold before, and never spent any time with him as the star of his own book, so it was interesting to discover just how full of himself and pigheaded he can be. I'm not a major Booster Gold fan or anything now, but I did seriously appreciate Dan Jurgens' ability to make such a pain-in-the-ass character work as the protagonist of his own superhero comic.

Something I Failed to Mention
I didn't touch on Booster Gold's sister Michelle at all in the CSBG column, even though I took the time to break down the supporting cast. I actually failed to include Rip Hunter, too, come to think of it, but in both cases I excluded them because they were more like temporary additions to the cast than full-time members of it. Michelle, though, ends up dying, and her death marks the only time in the ten issues I read that Booster completely, 100% owns up to his mistakes. He maybe even overcompensates, blaming himself entirely for Michelle dying when, at worst, he is only partly at fault. He makes a few bad decisions while trying to rescue her from other-dimensional kidnappers, and it could be argued that if he'd been smarter about that situation, his sister would've survived. But I also think it could be argued that if she had lived, he'd have died, or at least been stuck in enemy territory, so while I understand his guilt, I don't agree that he's wholly responsible. Anyway, Michelle's funeral is like the last thing that happens in the last issue I reviewed, so it served as a nice little cap, Booster facing his own flaws and inexperience head-on in a way he'd steadfastly refused to do before. As such, I probably should've brought it up, and only didn't because I write those columns in the order the ideas come to me, and sometimes that leads to stuff getting left out because it doesn't pop into my head until after the piece feels complete.

Elsewhere

This week, my newest 1987 And All That went up on CSBG covering issues #4-10 of Star Brand. It was the first time that, rather than talking about the defining attributes of the series, I found its lack of consistency the most interesting aspect, and wrote the whole column about that. Not the best reading experience, but a pretty fun critical one. Meanwhile, on PopMatters, I wrote about Copperhead. That series really caught me off-guard, and I'm super glad I gave it a chance.

Something I Failed to Mention
There's a scene in Copperhead #4 that's so funny and well-written, I could probably get a whole column out of it alone. The local self-important tycoon, Benjamin Hickory, very quickly finds himself at odds with new sheriff Clara Bronson so, as egomaniacs are wont to do, he tries to find a way to get rid of his problem. He calls up another cop who used to work with Bronson to try and get some dirt, and then we get the following exchange between them:

It's simple, but the wry delivery from Bronson's old boss, and the final silent panel of Hickory realizing he's being insulted in numerous ways, totally sells it for me. Plus it only takes up one page, so it's the perfect amount of space for a gag like this. It's a nice bit of development for a slow-moving subplot, it helps cement Bronson's personality without her even needing to be in the scene, and it's just solid comedy, classic in its sensibility and gorgeous in its delivery. I read and enjoyed this page four times in a row my first time through the issue.

Elsewhere

Two Thursdays ago, the latest installment of "1987 And All That" went up on CSBG, on the first five issues of Concrete. It was a charming-ass comicbook, and I definitely intend to dig into the rest of that initial series and all the Concrete titles that followed. One Thursday ago, PopMatters published a column of mine about events and comics that "matter," which in some ways felt like a retread of old ground, but it had been bobbling around in my brain for a few weeks so I finally wrote it down.

Something I Failed to Mention
I completely left out of my Concrete review the character of Maureen Vonnegut, the biologist who studies Concrete and who is his love interest. I was never all that interested in Maureen, who seemed to have very little personality, yet I was supposed to buy her as the protagonist's romantic focus. She was very matter-of-fact, a truly professional scientist, which is a fine way to go with a character, but didn't make her charming or unusual enough to win me over, which made me unable to connect with the idea that she'd won Concrete over somehow. He seemed to love her mostly because she was the main female presence in his new life, and that's a lame, almost desperate reason to fall for someone. It's not based on who she is as an individual, but merely on her proximity to him, or at least that's the way it reads. Also, I'm never wild about having one character quietly pine over another. If no one is going to make a move, the endless unrequited love story gets old quick, even if I am interested in or rooting for the relationship (which I wasn't in this case). So I ignored Maureen in the CSBG piece because I didn't feel like going off on a whole tangent about the member of the cast I was the most bored by. I didn't dislike her, but the storyline built around her wasn't one I could sink my teeth into, for several reasons. Luckily, it had little bearing on the primary plots of any of the issues.

Elsewhere (and I'm Back)

Hey all! I got back from Mexico a couple days ago, and today I finally feel up to posting a lil something on the blog. Later this week I'll do the Monthly Dose for February and get those Weekly Action Comics Weekly Reviews a-rollin' again, but for now let's catch up on the stuff I published in other places, some of which came out while I was actually on vacation. Just before I took my hiatus, I had a column on PopMatters dissecting my favorite page from Rasputin #4. I loved doing that kind of analysis for a single page, and it's something I might do more of in the future, I think. Then while I was away, they published a piece I wrote about the first two arcs—and the overall new-creative-team-every-six-issues structure—of the current volume of Moon Knight. We all know that the Ellis/Shalvey issues dominated the Wood/Smallwood ones, but that doesn't ruin the whole project, at least not for me. That same day, my new 1987 And All That came out as well, covering Mister Miracle Special #1. It was a solid comic with great art.

Something I Failed to Mention
I'll level with ya: I barely remember what I did mention, let alone what I forgot. All of the things I linked to above were written some time ago. Even the Mister Miracle column was finished and scheduled almost a full week before it went up, and the PopMatters stuff was done before that, so it's all a little hazy in my mind now, especially with a week in Tulum separating my present thoughts from my memories of things written in the past. Could I read through them to find something I missed or neglected to bring up? Of course, but I've got other things to do tonight, most of all prepping myself to return to work in the morning, so...I'm phoning this one in. I'll try to do an extra thick "Something I Failed to Mention" section for my next Elsewhere post in a couple weeks. Until then, XOXOXO.

Elsewhere

Two weeks ago, PopMatters put up a piece I wrote about Toyo Harada from Harbinger and Dario Agger from Thor, a pair of supervillains who are also CEOs, but who wield both their business powers and superpowers in different ways and to different ends. This week, at the same site, I had a column about Ales Kot, Morgan Jeske, Sloane Leong, and Ed Brisson's Change, talking largely about how tough a nut it is to crack. Also, on CSBG, my new 1987 And All That was posted looking at two issues of Daredevil. I swear I didn't pick that title because of all the hype around the upcoming Netflix series, but it was certainly a happy accident.

Something I Failed to Mention
I got nothing. Usually when I write a post, even for this blog, I find myself leaving something out that I initially meant to include because there's no space for it and/or there's no comfortable way to fit it into the rest of what I've written and/or I can't find a good way to articulate it clearly. With the three pieces above, though, I pretty much covered al the ground I wanted to when I began. This is not to say that there's nothing more to say about those topics than I already have, but the points I wanted to make were made satisfactorily in every case, at least by my own standards. I still have a Weekly Action Comics Weekly Review to bang out today, and I haven't yet read all my new comics from the past two weeks, so...I'm going to stop wasting time writing this paragraph and get into some reading or other writing now.

Elsewhere/Snow Day

It's been more than a month since I've done one of these Elsewhere posts, mostly because of the holidays affecting my schedule and those of the sites I write for. Since last time, I've had two 1987 And All That posts go up on CSBG, one on Captain America #325-336 and another on Little Shop of Horrors. Most recently, I had a piece go up at PopMatters discussing how I like but mistrust the entire cast of Hinterkind.

I live in Massachusetts, so today is officially a snow day, as Juno has the whole state pretty much buried. The last two days have been spent preparing for this storm, both at work and at home, so I haven't had time yet for what should've been this weeks Weekly Action Comics Weekly Reviews. Once again, that post will be late. I doubt if it'l be today, even though I technically have the time, because I am enjoying doing nothing in the midst of the blizzard, and will most likely let inertia rule my time. Even writing this tiny post is starting to take it out of me.

Something I Failed to Mention
The Captain America issues I discussed work on one level which I did not explore in my column, as a commentary on the current state of comics and the industry's handling of its more popular, well-established characters. Steve Rogers struggles with feeling like he's outgrown his original identity and purpose, which creates conflict when the government demands he go back to fighting who they say and being their obedient soldier. It's easy to map this onto the idea of the character of Captain America getting to big and complex and modern to fir into his original concept, and the fear his creators understandably have that fans might not enjoy seeing that much growth or change. Similarly, when the government brings in John Walker, a more focused, violent, show-boaty kind of guy, the comic itself presents the readers with a choice: do we want Steve Rogers the fully-realized human or John Walker and his violent spectacle? Obviously the book favors Rogers, but part of how it does so is by giving us Walker as a comparison, a watered-down and obnoxious version of the Captain America idea that isn't enough to satisfy.

Elsewhere

Two weeks back I put out my new "1987 And All That" on Comics Should Be Good, looking at the first four issues of the first-ever The Punisher ongoing series. Also, CSBG celebrated its 10th anniversary a few days ago, which is freakin' awesome, so a big congrats to them. This week, I wrote for PopMatters about the differences between big cities and small towns, as interpreted through several comics I've read lately. That column was inspired by Sometimes a Great Notion, my all-time favorite prose book and something I recently reread.

Something I Failed to Mention
Obviously for the PopMatters post, I focused on the comics themselves, and only briefly nodded to Sometimes a Great Notion as the story that brought all of this city-vs.-country stuff to the front of my mind. I didn't dig into the novel in any way, partly because the bulk of my writing is always devoted to comics, and partly because Sometimes a Great Notion is supremely dense and complicated, so I don't think I could've given it a proper analysis, even just looking at one specific theme, and still had room to discuss comics at all. That's still true, but there is a single bit of praise I'd like to give to Sometimes in a public forum, the one thing about it that makes me claim it as my favorite book above all others forever. Joe Ben's death scene is the best, most impactful, most heartbreaking, most effective fictional death I've ever experienced. I can still remember reading it for the first time, alone in a hotel room in Madrid, where I'd spent the last three in solitude plowing through most of the novel. When Joe Ben finally died, after many excruciating pages of the water rising around him, his body pinned down by a tree, his cousin and best friend Hank standing there helplessly and watching it happen...I had to take a nap. It shook me to my core. On this most recent reread, that scene got to me all over again. Of all the crazy, deeply personal, truly tragic shit that goes down in the story, Joe Ben dying is the moment that burns most brightly in my memory. It rocks me every time I revisit it.

Elsewhere

I wrote a piece for PopMatters last week about Ms. Marvel and how its star handles the many changes in her life in an exemplary fashion. That's a mighty fine series and an important one for many reasons. Go read it. This week I published my latest "1987 And All That" on Comics Should Be Good, looking at Blue Beetle #8-19, specifically focusing on its optimistic outlook. I enjoyed the heck out of that comic, and found myself wishing more modern series could find the balance between comedy and drama that Blue Beetle got so right. Certainly those books exist, but I feel like there's greater importance placed on the serious stuff these days, and less willingness to have some silly, simple fun. Flash Gordon is probably the closest current parallel I can think of.

Something I Failed to Mention
I zeroed in on Blue Beetle's propensity to use sympathetic or at least relatable villains, and it's true that most of the bad guys in the issues I read had some amount of likability. There were exceptions, the most obvious of which was Carapax, a super jerky guy whose mind gets zapped into a giant robot, making him even jerkier. I didn't see the initial introduction to this character in the issues I read (Wikipedia tells me he debuted in Blue Beetle #1) but I did watch him go from full human to human-mind-trapped-in-a-machine, essentially witnessing his origins as a supervillain, if not as a self-important ass. He was gratingly full of himself from the start, and soon as he gained any amount of power, he started murdering people mercilessly. So Carapax was a full-blown, clear-cut villain, with nothing redeeming about him in a single panel of what I read, a rare exception to the series' normal take on its antagonists. That said, the story of Beetle discovering and battling Carapax is also the story of him and police detective Lt. Fisher becoming friends instead of enemies. Fisher had problems with both the Beetle and his secret identity Ted Kord, but over the course of their fighting Carapax together, the two men managed to form something of an alliance. They're not best buds or anything, but they start to work together rather than against each other. Even when the main villain of an arc is a evil as they come, then, Blue Beetle shows its readers that not all opponents are bad, and that trusting in one another produces better results than the opposite approach, since Fisher and Beetle win in the end.

Elsewhere

At PopMatters this week, I wrote a quick piece about my personal preference for hard copy comicbooks, and how I have of late been forced to face the fact that digital comics are here to stay and will inevitably become the norm before long. I also had a new "1987 And All That" column on CSBG covering the first four issues of Silverblade. It was a seriously trippy comic, and I definitely intend to get the rest of the series as soon as I can and see what other madness it has in store.

Something I Failed to Mention
I'm sure there are a million things about Silverblade that I ignored and could bring up here, so I'm going to go with the first one to pop into my head. I didn't really get into Mr. Vermillion and Miss Hothgard, a pair of villains who have a weird relationship (is it romantic? boss-employee? professional partners?) and who hate Jonathan Lord and Bobby Milestone because of an old grudge from Vermillion's childhood. In The Silver Blade, the film that originally made Lord famous and which also featured a young Milestone, Vermillion was an extra who was asked to fill in for Milestone in a key stunt scene, and ended up with a severe injury as a result. I guess the young Vermillion wanted to be or was already a dancer, and the injury he sustained ruined that career for him by fucking up his hip so that he could no longer dance. For decades he's been pissed about it, and in Silverblade he's back for revenge. Writing it out right now, he sounds like an interesting character if perhaps bordering on the overly familiar, but in the comic itself Vermillion comes across as more of a distraction than anything else, an oddball interruption to the already oddball narrative. He's not the main threat of the series, or at least he doesn't seem to be, though I suppose in later issues it may be revealed that they have a connection, and Lord defeats him (or, more accurately, his henchmen) pretty easily in the couple of encounters they have in the issues I read, so Vermillion's presence is somewhat out of place. I don't mind him; he's got some significant damage, not just physically but internally, too, including delusions/hallucinations of dancing again that make for nice visuals. But his importance is unclear. Hothgard, for her part, is barely a character, mostly there just so Vermillion has anyone at all to talk to, and to keep him from losing himself completely when his crazy dancing spells take hold. Again, she may become more important later on, but in Silverblade #1-4, neither she nor Vermillion seem essential to anything else that's happening. They do kidnap Milestone in the debut, and rescuing Milestone from them becomes Lord's first act after he gets his powers, so it's not as though Vermillion and Hothgard have zero influence on the narrative. It's just that they represent side quests for Lord, separate from the real evil he's meant to be fighting, and it's difficult to fully understand their place in the larger scheme. Which I guess probably has to do with the fact that I don't totally know what the larger scheme is yet, since I've only read 33% of the story. So maybe I'm just making a half-baked point based on incomplete knowledge, and this whole thing was a waste of time. But like I said above, it was the first thing I thought of that I didn't discuss in the original column, and now I've said my piece, so...g'bye.

Elsewhere

Last week, I had a new Iconographies at PopMatters looking back at The Last of the Greats and simultaneously lamenting and celebrating its incompleteness. This week, my latest "1987 And All That" went up on CSBG discussing X-Factor #12-23.

Something I Failed to Mention
The focus of my X-Factor review was how terrible life was and seemingly had to be for the stars of that book. So many of their decisions were reckless, self-defeating, and/or destructive, but the series doesn't really give them any better options, either. Having said that (and I said it a lot in the CSBG column), Louise Simonson was careful to sprinkle in positivity occasionally, so that X-Factor wasn't 100% doom and gloom. Often this just meant having the team defeat a villain or villains in combat, but the more effective uplifting material was non-violent and centered on the children who X-Factor takes care of. I'm thinking in particular of the issue—#20, which I already praised as having the best art—where the kids go to Central Park to undo damage done there by Iceman in a fight with the Horsemen of Apocalypse. Though at first they sort of screw it up, mostly because Rusty goes alone and has no plan and almost gets himself killed, ultimately they're able to come together and use their powers intelligently and in concert to melt all the leftover ice and return the park to normal. They also leave some ice behind on purpose, sculpted into large letters with a pro-mutant message (I forget the exact wording and the issue is in the other room, but it's something like, "You shall know them by their deeds. Mutants were here.") It's a major moment of growth for the young characters, and an especially heartwarming beat of happiness in a title that spends most of its time in darker territory.

Elsewhere

Remember two weeks ago when I wrote one of these "Elsewhere" posts explaining how my CSBG and PopMatters columns have been coming out on the same day every other Thursday? Of course you remember, because you hang on my every word. Well, that ended up being a short-lived pattern, because this time around they were published on alternating weeks. This has mostly to do with the fact that the dates of my PopMatters pieces are determined by my awesome editor over there, Shathley Q, and they're partially based on whatever other things the site already has planned/prepared at any given time. Meanwhile, I actually post my CSBG columns myself, so when they line up with a PopMatters post it's a total accident and when they don't, they don't. At any rate, two Fridays ago, I wrote on PopMatters about Mighty Avengers and how it is likely the most Avengers Avengers book around. Then this past Thursday, I put out my newest "1987 And All That" for CSBG reviewing Blood: A Tale. It was a good but supremely weird comic, intentionally hard to follow, if not downright impossible.

Something I Failed to Mention
In my PopMatters column, I name-checked Captain America and the Mighty Avengers, the title that will be replacing/continuing Mighty Avengers come November, and briefly mentioned I was looking forward to it without elaborating on my expectations. I also made sure to say that the worst part of Mighty Avengers was Greg Land's art, which is true, though he is, as I said, way better on that book than I expected him to be considering everything else I've ever seen him draw. I was under the impression he would be following Al Ewing over to the new Captain America and... series, but I recently learned that the artist will in fact be Luke Ross, at least to start. I'm not extra familiar with Ross' work, and that's partly because I have tended not to like it much in the past when I've encountered it. Then again, the preview on CBR of the debut issue looks pretty great, so...I suppose I'm glad to have Ross coming on. Either way, it's at least one step up from Land, talent-wise, and probably several. I'm also curious to see how, exactly, giving the new Captain America (Sam Wilson) top billing is going to change things. Mighty Avengers was centered mostly on Luke Cage, but Monica Rambeu, Adam Brashear, and Blade all played lead roles as well, with the rest of the cast made up of more supporting parts, including Sam Wilson (still Falcon at the time). If he's going to step into the spotlight, that's not necessarily bad, because Ewing has proven he can handle a large ensemble without anyone getting left out or ignored. It will be a change, though, a possible new voice and/or direction and/or thesis for the book. And because what I loved most about Mighty Avengers and wrote my column about was how it had a very specific, consistent, hyper-Avengers message behind all of its stories, if there is a significant tonal shift, I might find myself disappointed. For now I stay excited for the new title to start, but that excitement flirts with anxiety, like so much new-comic-related excitement does, and I can only hope some of what made me a fan of this team remains.

Elsewhere

A new routine has emerged in the past month or so for the posts I write for sites outside of Comics Matter. Every other Thursday now sees the publication of both a new "1987 And All That" column on Comics Should Be Good and a new Iconographies post at PopMatters. Which is kind of cool, having a regularly scheduled day where all of a sudden my writing shows up on sites with sizable audiences. It's my big bimonthly moment. Huzzah for me. This past Thursday, I wrote about Infinity Inc. #34-44 and She-Hulk #8. I felt pretty so-so overall on Infinity Inc., and with She-Hulk I was specifically impressed with its use of the shared Marvel universe, pulling ideas from it without actually crossing over with or requiring the reader to bring any outside knowledge from other series.

Something I Failed to Mention
I didn't so much forget to talk about the below page from the end of Infinity Inc. #34 as I did decide not to spend time in the actual column on it, since I had a lot of other ground to cover there and I knew I could give this its own space on my blog. Take a peek and then meet me below:

This weird anti-smoking DC house ad has a lot about it that amuses and also somewhat irks me at the same time. It's ridiculous on the face of it to use Mr. Bones as the spokesperson for not smoking. One of the foundational elements of his character is that he loves smoking, and pretty much does it constantly, except in places where he's forbidden to do so. Even then, he complains and tries to find ways around the rules as often as possible, because he just loves smoking so damn much. And though he's kind of a villain, he's also very sympathetic, funny, and sweet-looking, so just because he does something doesn't necessarily make that thing seem bad. It does make it seem badass, because Mr. Bones has invisible cyanide skin, causing his skeletal appearance and making his powers super-fatal. What I'm saying is, Mr. Bones runs the risk of making smoking seem cool all the time, so drawing specific attention to smoking through him feels like a misguided choice. Also, the actual image of the anti-smoking ad—I believe it's drawn by Todd McFarlane and Tony DeZuniga because they also drew the rest of the issue, the signature says "M/D," and McFarlane co-created Bones, but I'm not 100% sure—makes it looks like Bones is leaning in and offering the cigarette to the reader. His line of dialogue—almost certainly scripted by Roy and/or Dann Thomas, Bones' other creators and the writers of the issue—could also be interpreted that way. I think the intended sentiment is No matter how young and invincible you feel, cigarettes can still harm/kill you but another legitimate reading of it would be It's never too soon to start smoking! If it weren't for the huge "DON'T SMOKE" at the bottom of the page, I'd be way more inclined to see this as pro-smoking propaganda than anti-. Everything about it makes smoking look powerful, seductive, and awesome, except the red block letters forcefully and somewhat awkwardly included at the end. It's a hilariously self-defeating but also annoyingly poorly-planned effort.

Elsewhere

My new "1987 And All That" went up on Comics Should Be Good this past Thursday, covering the first seven issues of Strange Tales. I looked at how Cloak in the Cloak and Dagger parts and Dr. Strange in the Dr. Strange parts went through opposite versions of the same internal conflict, one fighting to resist darkness and the other learning to accept it. Meanwhile, on Friday at PopMatters, I published a piece about Riley Rossmo. I've written about his comics before on that site and this one, and called him my favorite current artist on more than one occasion, so I wanted to do something to officially examine why I love him so much now that his body of work has become so big and varied.

Something I Failed to Mention
I sort of wanted to talk about how Green Wake and Rebel Blood were probably the two most similar of Rossmo's series, with their horrific gore, muted colors, frenzied linework, and brooding main characters. Even then, though, he does things to make them immediately distinguishable. The coloring is faded in both titles, but the palettes he uses are different; Green Wake is full of frogs and frog-like humans while Rebel Blood is full of zombiefied people and animals, so they have their own creatures populating their casts; Rebel Blood is heavy on action and intensity, whereas Green Wake has a lot of quiet, unsettling calm, so they're paced differently, and the art naturally reflects this.

That's about all there is to say on that topic, though, and I also feel like I ignored SO MUCH about Strange Tales. I didn't do any real plot discussion except for issue #7, I only briefly touched on one of the artists' contributions, I ignored my favorite character Rintrah completely, etc. The ground I did cover was fairly specific, so tons get left out. On the other hand...the single thing that stood out the most to me after reading those issues, and the thing that tied them all together, the defining aspect of the series in my mind, is the thing I wrote my column about, so I'm not sure what else I ought to bring up here, exactly. I have too many options, and none of them stand out as more important to bring up than any others. I just felt like I should at least acknowledge how narrow my point of view was in the CSBG review.

Elsewhere

This week, I wrote up a review of Sam Alden's It Never Happened Again for PopMatters. The book was touching, beautiful, and had clear universal appeal. It was also a quick but powerful read, so I definitely recommend it to anyone and everyone. If you'd like a taste, you can read one of the two stories from It Never Happened Again, "Hawaii 1997," in its entirety on Alden's tumblr page here. I also had a new "1987 And All That" go up at CSBG, this time on the first eight issues of Suicide Squad. Spoiler alert: that title rules and 100% earns its reputation, even nearly three decades later.

Something I Failed to Mention
I gave most members of the Suicide Squad creative team individual credit in that post, but never mentioned letterer Todd Klein by name, even though he was there for all eight issues along with John Ostrander, Luke McDonnell, and Carl Gafford. And though the letters didn't do a whole lot beyond the usual dialogue and sound effects, they also never crowded out the art, nor were they confusingly laid out at any point or otherwise unclear. That's already better than plenty of letterers manage to do, so Klein deserves credit for his reliably good work, and there is one area in which his lettering actually stands out: the credits pages. While some issues listed the creators in a standard caption box, several of them did something a little more creative. The first issue acted more like the opening sequence of a movie, with the name of each creator getting its own caption on the second page, introducing them one panel at a time even as the first scene unfolded. Another issue opens with the Squad standing behind a line of trees, and the creators names are almost hidden in the trees themselves, as if they were carved sideways into the bark. And so on. Klein clearly had fun with the credits when he found a way to do so without drawing attention, another mark of strong lettering, and a contribution I wanted to be sure and point out somewhere.

Elsewhere

This week, I had two pieces go up at two different sites on the same day. It sure made me look productive, even though one of them was actually written a week before. That's the magic of the internet! Over at Comics Should Be Good, my latest "1987 And All That" was about Fallen Angels, a fun and odd and somewhat immature eight-issue mini-series. Then on PopMatters, I wrote about how the current Silver Surfer run stacks up against Stan Lee & Moebius' Silver Surfer: Parabale. The two titles have very different interpretations of their main character, and it made me wonder what, exactly, defines the Surfer, and what details are more flexible/expendable. I never landed on a firm answer, but I asked the question a lot.

Something I Failed to Mention
In the Fallen Angels post, I focused on the plot and the themes it contained, as well as discussing each character in the sizable cast in some degree of detail. That all had to do with me getting to my main, closing argument, that Fallen Angels most likely works best as a kids' comic, since it has a lot of life lessons strewn throughout its narrative. The side effect of spending all 2,000+ words on building up to and then making that one point was that I essentially didn't discuss the art at all. The series had, in eight issues, three pencilers and three inkers, who didn't even work together in consistent pairs. Co-creator Kery Gammill drew half of the issues, but not in a row; she did the first two, the fourth, and the seventh. Marie Severin stepped in as penciler just for issue #3, and then Joe Staton handled the rest (5, 6, & 8). Tom Palmer inked three of Gammill's four issues (1, 2, and 7) plus Severin's one, but Val Mayerik was on inks for issue #4, as well as Staton's first two chapters. Finally, Tony DeZuniga showed up out of nowhere to ink the finale with Staton's pencils. It's a messy hodgepodge of artists, with the one thing that ties the visuals together being Petra Scotese's skillful coloring. None of the pencilers are bad on their own, and their styles don't exactly work against one another, but they are different enough to notice, and that gets distracting. It's probably the book's biggest weakness, this artwork irregularity, and it makes Fallen Angels feel less self-confident than it maybe ought to. Then again, the whole series is about teenagers who aren't super self-confident learning to believe in themselves and each other, so in some ways the fluctuating art style fits with that perfectly. So it's annoying but not too damaging to the overall quality of the title. Oh, and Joe Staton's Boom-Boom is probably the best Boom-Boom I've ever seen.