comics

First off, and unrelated to comics, I guested on this week’s installment of Oi! Spaceman, where I talk Moffat and feminism, Mawdryn Undead, and Vox Day. It was great fun, and you should check it out.

Also, I’ve decided to start using those free digital copies Marvel likes to give away with its print comics, by which I mean publish them for you to use. All digital edition codes can be redeemed at marvel.com/redeem, but will only work for the first person to try them. 

Star Wars #14

A serviceable installment that sets up what I’m sure will be a fun conclusion. Deodato’s art is rapidly lapsing into self-parody, however, with his use of heavy shadow really starting to feel like something he wheels out when he doesn’t feel like drawing both halves of someone’s face. Combined with an issue that has an awful lot of boxes to check and you have a lackluster though by no means bad installment of this crossover. 

Digital code: THMHQP1HU6Q0

A-Force #1

Fun, although it does that irritating thing where two of the characters on the cover don’t actually appear in the book. It’s a slow start, and clearly we’re going to spend a while getting the band together, as it were, but Willow wrote that well with Ms. Marvel, and I’m sure she can do it here as well. Slightly more worried by the news that there’s another cowriter coming on board, as I felt like the Secret Wars run of this lost focus, but I’ve loved Kelly Thompson’s criticism for years, so I’m even excited for that. All told, a nice blend of “all female book” and classic Marvel team stylings.

Digital code: THM36XW9J242

Invincible Iron Man #5

In classic Bendis style, the first arc ends without strictly speaking resolving, and the cover is a complete lie. But this is a well-designed fight issue in which what’s going on remains clear throughout even to my often forgetful mind, and the revelation of what Bendis plans on doing with Mary Jane in the title is a brilliant use of the character. And I love the Tony/Stephen Strange relationship. 

Digital code: THMVD1GHVPPA

The Ultimates #3

Al Ewing is good at many things, but he puts together some of the most satisfying team books on the market, coming up with interesting collections of characters who play off of each other well and in various combinations. Everyone save Black Panther gets a genuinely great moment here, and the sense of scale of this book – this time they’re trying to fix time itself – is reliably exciting. The highlight, I think, is Miss America and Blue Marvel’s relationship, in which each of them visibly considers themselves to be the senior partner. Also, a cameo from Puck. 

Digital code: THMSIEX0SF6P

Miracleman #6

A slower issue that feels a bit overstuffed – like Gaiman tried to shoehorn his last collection of unused ideas for this arc into one issue. The sweet indiscipline of youth. Anyway, this has been a real joy of a six issue run, and I’m genuinely excited to see the next arc and how smooth the transition from twenty-year-old work to new work is.…

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Vader Down #1

It’s a good week when this is the sort of thing occupying the bottom slot of my list, because there’s almost nothing wrong with it. You can, perhaps, tell that Aaron is better suited to his characters than Gillen’s – his dialogue for Aphra and company feels like a hollow imitation of the characters. But that’s a minor detail in a comic that giddily makes Vader seem tremendously powerful and tremendously fucked all at once. Good fun, and hard to imagine a Star Wars fan that isn’t going to be loving this.

The New Avengers #3

I love the pentacled Cthulhu villain that is Moridun. And the three-scenes-in-one banter at the start. And Power Man deciding to call out Wiccan on his name. And really most of this. And I’m fascinated by POD, a character I’m not actually sure I’ve registered as a thing before, but who is without a doubt the most interesting part of this issue. Good stuff; I think this is the current best of the Avengers books.

Ms. Marvel #1

Ms. Marvel punches gentrification. It’s as awesome as you’d hope from that description. The “artisinal sushi” line is probably my favorite of the week, and the backup story by Alphona is genuinely charming. Mike looks like a great character, and I can’t wait to see what Wilson ends up doing with her. While I definitely prefer Alphona’s art to Miyazawa’s, this series is clearly in wonderful hands as ever.

Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl #4

Gloriously out of left field, Phonogram swerves away from all of its apparent plots, connecting back to them only fleetingly and midway through, in an issue that’s mostly black and white for good measure. It’s the sort of thing that makes you genuinely surprised that we’re officially Done With Phonogram in two issues time, as it gestures to just how much there is to do with this world and these characters. How will this tie back in? Will it tie back in? What the fuck is Gillen doing? I have no idea, but I’m wholly confident it’s brilliant, so whatever. “I liked Claire Danes’s earlier, more difficult material” is definitely the second funniest line of the week though.…

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Secret Wars #7

Well, it was perhaps inevitable that as every other bit of this series completely goes off the railst he main series would eventually suffer. The delays and distantly epic tone of this finally conspire to create an issue that’s just disjointed and contextless. Did large swaths of plot happen in tie-ins I didn’t buy? Did I forget things from last month? Should I care? I don’t know, but I honestly had no idea what anybody’s plan or goal was here, and the result was an entire issue spent waiting for a punchdown that got delayed to issue #8 as part of the bullshit extension of this series and a cliffhanger that blatantly wasn’t part of the original outline. Complete mess. 

The Uncanny Avengers #2

Also a complete mess, but with an intriguing mixture of elements on the team that makes me kind of want to hang on for at least another issue or two, just because I’m increasingly intrigued by Duggan as a writer. But at $3.99 a pop, that’s hard to justify, and if this doesn’t pick up into something where I have an idea of what the fuck is going on in the Marvel Universe I’m probably going to start buying some more Image books. 

Thors #4

Unsurprisingly, as this converges back towards Aaron’s ongoing Thor plot and back towards the shambling mess that is Secret Wars it faltered badly for me, with the ending being a confused mess of mostly identical looking characters. Still, there are some charming bits here from its actually good idea of “Thor-based police procedural.” I suspect Aaron is a writer I like more in the small details than the large plotting. Still, done with his Thor run for the time being, I think. 

Spider-Gwen #2

The lengthy delay and alternate universe setting are really throwing me out of this, and it’s increasingly feeling like a book that’s all style and no substance. I think Spider-Gwen has generally worked best when adjacent to the rest of the Marvel Multiverse, as opposed to in her own AU, and may well drop this and just quietly hope the character gets the Miles Morales treatment down the line, because this just isn’t doing it for me.

All-New All-Different Avengers #1

A slow start to a promising book, ending with the team far from assembled and not a ton of impressive plot looming over things. Still, it’s a good writer and a good team, and much as the first story is a bit of a let-down the Ms. Marvel/Nova backup is a total hoot that redeems the package. Still excited for this book, even if I’m really shaking my head at the general sense of totally mismanaging this relaunch. 

The Infinity Gauntlet #5

By far the best of the Secret Wars related books, due to owning the characters it created over its five issues and giving a resolution based on their stories and concepts that didn’t really tie in to the increasing clusterfuck that is the larger crossover.…

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Uncanny X-Men #600

As an ending to the now months old Bendis era, this is firmly… adequate. The cryptic and open-ended resolution in terms of Beast is frustrating, not least because I’m pretty sure the “Trial of Hank McCoy” was teased for over a year before coming to virtually nothing, and because there’s something unsatisfyng about putting a character in a position like this and then dropping him for another writer. It never leads to a good resolution. Add the fact that there was zero reason to hold this to fucking November and you have a recipe for a book I kind of scowl at and then go “well, glad I’m not following the X-Books anymore.”

As for the Iceman stuff, sure, OK, I guess it’s nice to have a gay character in the X-Books that are being consciously pushed to the edges of Marvel for licensing reasons. I’m sure it’ll mean a lot to all the kids who don’t actually read comics and live in a media world where coming out stories are an increasingly small part of queer narratives. Let’s be sure to take a nice victory lap by driving the price of the comic up reprinting a shitty and barely relevant thirty-five year old story in the back because we’re so proud of ourselves. 

Also, the story of how Cyclops got from here to the status quo at the start of Secret Wars? Literally more interesting than anything in this comic. And apparently not to be told. Brilliant.

Miracleman #4

A weaker issue, featuring what, chronologically, must have been one of Gaiman’s earliest uses of the “embed a prose story within his main story” trick. In this case it’s an overtly children’s story take on some sci-fi concepts that ends up revealing the ways in which the Miracleman mythos is impoverished more than it actually works, and takes this book back in the direction of “historical curiosity” and away from “fascinating.” This is surely a one-issue blip, and I’m terribly curious to see Evelyn Cream on the cover for next month, but nevertheless, a bit of a bum note. 

Contest of Champions #2

Removed from the financial abuse that was its launch week, this is a fun and frothily madcap fight book that I can already tell I’m going to completely lose the plot of, although Ewing is usually reliable for reminding me issue-to-issue, so that should still work out. Especually because we have whole diagrams on the recap page. And I have faith that this is going to take some altogether more interesting turns as it goes on, so I’m content to stick around, just because Al Ewing on a big interdimensional punching book really is fun. Do be sure to stop back tomorrow, by the way, for the weekly Doctor Who podcast, where Ewing is this week’s guest, and where there’s a nice meaty interview about comics on the back half, including loads of talk about this book.

Invincible Iron Man #3

This is continuing to pick up nicely, to where I’m going to go ahead and add it to my pulls, especially because I admit to being terribly curious what Mary Jane is going to be doing in this book.…

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Batgirl #45

It’s a good week when this is the worst comic in it, as it’s not a bad comic in any way, shape or form. I mean, it’s Batgirl at a wedding. Sorry, a lesbian wedding. Sorry, a lesbian wedding where one of the characters is trans. Every part of this is marvelous. The only part that’s not wonderful is Dick Grayson showing up and being a complete jerk. Which is, to be clear, called out unambiguously in the text, but I dunno, apparently I have feels about Batman comics and one of them is that Dick Grayson shouldn’t be the overly entitled ex-boyfriend.

Stumptown #8

Rucka does his thing, plots advance, Dex does things that are clever and rash at the same time, and they end up biting her in the ass. The character bits between Dex and her sister leave me slightly cold, however, and I admit, this arc isn’t quite grabbing me at this point in it, with the main hook feeling contrived. I assume there’s a twist, but in said twist’s absence this is a bit rough.

Chew #51

Glad to see this book move into the homestretch, and even more glad to see it have such a sense of energy as it does so. Love the diegetic ad pages, glad to see an Olive-focused issue, she being the best character by some margin. And the intro in heaven is great too. When this book works, it has a delicious mixture of grotesque silliness, and for all my occasional frustrations, I’m looking forward to seeing the home stretch.

Mercury Heat #5

Not as good as the previous issue, due largely to having an awful lot of exposition to do, much of it needing to be delivered by videophone, which is just tough to draw excitingly, and Nahuel Lopez, being a standard quality Avatar artist, is not really up to enlivening it much. (“Lovely” brokeback on the cover, though.) But the ending is a piece of deliciously sick comedy that plays to the 2000 AD roots of this beautifully. Kieron Gillen at Avatar is apparently a recipe for Pat Mills homages. Not complaining.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1

Delightful in the way that only an issue of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl can be, this one has teleporters, food courts, German alien robots, and, of course, lots of squirrels that say important things like “Chkkt!!” and “Chukk.” Plus footnotes. And catchphrases. And computer science. I don’t know how to sell this book, but apparently Marvel does, so OK then.

The New Avengers #2

It’s such a good week that there are two comics featuring Squirrel Girl in it. And though this one features mind controlled Squirrel Girl, she’s mind controlled by a multidimensional entity unleashed by evil Reed Richards that replaces her head with a gemstone. Also Tippy-Toe’s head. There are panels with mind-controlled squirrels with crystals for heads. Much like computer science and footnotes, this seems like it should sell the book, y’know?

Black Magick #1

Another Greg Rucka comic, this one featuring a female detective who’s also a witch.…

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From worst to best of blah blah blah

Invincible Iron Man #2

Picked up because it was a massively light week, so I figured I’d give Bendis another issue to impress me, which he didn’t really pull off, though I’m more inclined towards this book after two issues than one. It’s Bendis, and so instead of a big splash at the beginning we’re going to put a multitude of chairs in place in a heavily decompressed manner that’s only arguably suited to serialization. It also remains the case that Bendis is generally good at making this improbable approach work, or at least not fail. And he does write a good Tony. I’ll probably give this until Mary Jane shows up at least.

Darth Vader #11

And the trap Gillen has been building around Thanoth finally closes, and in a clever and exciting way, pitting Vader against Aphra, who manages the impressive feat of escaping with her life, at least for now. We’re plummetting towards a big crossover, and it’s pretty easy to see how we’re going to get from here to there, but the pieces are all carefully enough positioned that I’m still excited about it. Hell, I’m more excited about this crossover than The Force Awakens, whose trailer didn’t have nearly enough lens flare for a J.J. Abrams film.

Karnak #1

Really a book that sells itself: Warren Ellis writes a character whose superpower is identifying the flaw in all things. Karnak is one of those ideas that you wonder how Marvel didn’t do something with him (like give him to Warren Ellis) years earlier. No, he probably isn’t an on-going idea on the level of Iron Man, but he’s obviously someone who can be used for amazing and brilliant stuff. Ellis being Ellis, this is a patient start – an introduction to what Ellis writing the character means, whcih is lots of bitterly nihilistic snark and competence porn, of course. But it’s electric in that classic Ellis way, and a book it’s impossible not to love. Or at least, for me not to love.

 …

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You know the drill.

The Uncanny Avengers #1

Man, this was a disappointment; I decided I’d pick it up on the strength of the preview story in Avengers #0 and how much I liked the last two things Duggan wrote. But this hide-the-ball nonsesnse is just tedious, especially when we get down to the obvious “nobody is really explaining the mutant status quo post-Secret Wars” problem. The first half of the book is a reasonably fun team fight, but it loses momentum at the halfway point, and the couple pages at the end introducing the nominal threat of the arc just fail to take root. Very meh.

A-Force #5

Dragged down by the weight of Secret Wars at this point, this is a perfectly fun issue with some great individual moments that nevertheless ends as a tease for an ongoing series with a still hazily defined premise. I liked it well enough, but I’m hard-pressed to see why launching this during Secret Wars was a good idea. Also finding it hard to be that invested in the character we’re apparently calling Singularity.

Spider-Gwen #1

Another one sandbagged a bit by Secret Wars, the abrupt stop and restart of this book did no favors for its momentum and drive. It picks up pretty well, but I’m finding it hard to invest in its alternate reality; the supporting cast just doesn’t really pop for me. Fun, and I’ll stick with it a bit longer, but no real passion for this.

The New Avengers #1

A fun debut; this is a solidly engaging team book that picks up one of the more promising and less developed themes in Hickman’s Avengers run and takes it in the sort of oddball and grandiose direction only Al Ewing can. Squirrel Girl and White Tiger end up having the most idiosyncratically wonderful double act in recent memory, and the mix of comedy and weird horror this book stirkes is properly delightful. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Guardians of the Galaxy #1

This does a good job of picking up where it left off before Secret Wars, changing just enough to be interesting and making a reasonable explanation of all of its changes up front. Kitty Pryde as the new Star Lord is as delightful as you’d hope, the Thing is an excellent addition to the book, and this cheerily gets on with the business of being Bendis’s Guardians of the Galaxy, a take I basically like. Right.

The Wicked and the Divine #15

An odd issue; Gillen talks in the backmatter about it starting a new mini-arc within the larger Commercial Suicide arc, and there’s definitely quite a tone shift, but it’s not quite clear where we’re going yet, and this issue sort of wanders off as it goes on. The Amaterasu/Urdr throwdown is quite good, and I love what Gillen is doing with Cassandra’s strange mix of being right and wrong; the back cover quote of “you’re doing this wrong” is so very, very projectiony of her, but then the ending of the book just sort of rushes up out of nowhere, and the one-page backup ends up being more interesting in its implications than the main story.…

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As always, from worst to best of what I bought.

Sandman Overture #6

Ultimately, this fails under the weight of five previous issues spent going “well, maybe it’s all going to come together in the end.” Which, obviously, you know better than, or at least I do. No, the truth is that there’s no good reason for this miniseries to exist. It served mainly to waste J.H. Williams’s talents for two years on a mediocre and uninspired book, the result of which ends up being some of the worst work of his career simply because, for all its formal brilliance, it’s a pain in the ass to tell what’s going on, and usually what’s going on wasn’t worth the effort. None of the crackle or energy of Sandman is present here; it’s just a tired exercise of checking some boxes and getting to the end of the plot. What an utter disappointment of a book.

Young Terrorists #1

Picked up off the rack because it was a light week, and because I was intrigued by a book blurbed by Laura Sneddon (a critic I have great regard for, but whose taste differs pretty sharply from mine) and Julian Darius (a critic I have literally no respect for whatsoever, but whose taste runs close to my own) that used the tagline “get radicalized.” It’s messy – an eighty page opening issue that luxuriates a bit too much. Artist Amancay Nahuelpan is working in that messy, scratchy style of Daniel Žeželj or Riccardo Burchielli, which trades a degree of clear storytelling for impact, and the premise feels ever so slightly tired. I don’t want to say there are too many books that are taking terrorism seriously as a tactic instead of treating it as something to reflexively demonize, because there aren’t, but this mostly just leaves me wishing Bendis and Maleev were putting Scarlet out on anything like a reasonable schedule.

Providence #5

I admit to having a terribly large amount of fun with all the St. Anselm’s segments, that being my wife’s alma mater. (She was particularly tickled that her school motto was proposed by a bunch of Necronomicon-obsessed occultists.) This is a weird and deliberately unsettled issue based around dreams and time breaking down, and I’m curious how the transition into “Herbert West: Reanimator” is going to work in terms of tone from this heavily dream-inflected issue (mixing mostly “Dreams in the Witch House” and “Color out of Space”). But, perhaps as expected, this is transitional. Although Moore is clearly having a lot of fun with characters getting to explain things in ways that go over poor Robert Black’s head. “I’m more of a revivalist” indeed. 

Mercury Heat #4

I wondered when this would pick up a bit. Gillen finally provides the exposition drop that the book proper had been lacking, and as a result Luiza’s character comes appreciably more into focus. It’s funny, the plot kicks into a properly functioning gear, and for the first time we get an issue where all the parts seem to be working together.…

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Speaking of reviews, I could use Weird Kitties reviews for Sunday. snowspinner at gmail. Doesn’t have to be long at all; just a recommendation for something Hugo-worthy. (Next up on my reading list, The Dark Forest, but I don’t imagine it’ll be ready for Sunday.)

From worst to best of what I bought, which was surprisingly little this week. And next week will probably be even more ridiculously small. Ah, the direct market.

Doctor Who: Four Doctors #5 There are some nice moments here – I quite like the Twelfth Doctor’s inversion of Hartnell’s “what’s a breach for” into “what’s a bridge for? Burning.” It’s a pity Neil Edwards is drawing him to look like Peter Cushing in the scene in question. More than a bit uncertain about the Ninth Doctor cameo as well – it seems like a pointless side trip, and the claim that no timeline exists in which he’s not “fantastic” is frankly ridiculous. All in all, a nice bit of fluff, but ultimately marred by being a five week summer event that had three weeks pass between its last two issues and concluded after the series came back and when better-than-average Doctor Who methadone like this was no longer nearly as needed. Fun, but it feels like it should have been so much more.

Nameless #5

Speaking of series hurt by their delays, here’s Grant Morrison’s engagement with nihilism. Somewhat puzzled by his pastiche of the famous seance-gone-wrong sequence in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing; is he trying to suggest that Moore is a nihilist? Dense and chewy Grant Morrison is always a pleasure, but his heart just doesn’t feel like it’s in this.

Batgirl #44

It’s interesting, there is, by any normal standard, too large a cast here. But the storytelling is clear and does a good job of reintroducing characters as it uses them, and the book is terribly fun. Particular kudos this month to Bengal, who steps in for Babs Tarr and maintains much of the book’s signature high panel-count style (no wonder Tarr needed a break) while bringing her own style to things. This really is one of the best superhero books of its day.…

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Some quick site announcements, by which I really just mean “yes, we know there are still some things that are a bit wonky and we have our entire IT team on it, but our entire IT team is better known as ‘Anna,’ so it goes at the speed it goes.” Working on the remaining layout and formatting problems now – those on smaller screen resolutions should be having a much better experience than they were yesterday, and we’ll have it even more improved later tonight. Then we’ve got some backend stuff that nobody but me is going to notice like making it so I get comments sent to me via e-mail, and sometime next week or so we’ll start working on redesigning the comment system.

For now, comic reviews. As always, ranked from worst to best of what I paid money for. And tomorrow, Jane’s back with the second part of her look at Doctor Who Season Twenty.

Guardians of Knowhere #4

It is in some ways difficult not to simply feel angry at this book. Four issues gave nothing that could meaningfully be recognized as a plot. Deodato’s artwork shows all of his worst problems, namely a tendency to prioritize mood over storytelling (I had no shortage of trouble figuring out when characters were being killed or just knocked out here). But more than that… what’s the point of this? I mean, there wasn’t even a self-contained plot or arc to speak of, save for a debate about the ontological validity of Battleworld between Gamora and Angela. It was just four issues of Deodato mood pieces and contrived fight scenes. Utterly horrible miniseries, and emblematic of the way the initial promise of Secret Wars is just being squandered in the most cynical and wallet-draining ways imaginable. 

The Infinity Gauntlet #4

Despite my increasing reservations about Secret Wars, this is continuing to be a real treat. Duggan caught my eye with his tie-in to the dreadful Black Vortex crossover, or whatever the hell that thing was called – I’ve already forgotten – and this is the second thing of his I’ve read, and his skill at writing young characters in emotionally mature drama with lots of spectacular punching is really impressive. This issue’s a bit sloppier than some – I admit I lost the plot of the fight scene for a chunk of it – but the character beats are still enormously strong, and I’m genuinely invested in how it ends, which is way more than you can say for most of Secret Wars.

Sex Criminals #12

Hilarious in the way that only Sex Criminals is, which is to say that within the first seven pages the phrases “translated from some kind of weird cum angel language” and “are you just saying that because I booped your clit” have both appeared. So has the beginning of a really good discussion of the way in which female sexuality is historically treated as a form of monstrosity. So, yes, this is basically perfect and wonderful. …

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