Comics Reviews (January 27th, 2016)
You know the drill, I’m sure. Digital codes redeemable at this url for the first person to try them.
Chew #54
A twenty-page fridging as this book continues its long march towards an ending that should have come at least fourteen issues ago.
Saga #33
Another “oh, right, those guys” issue for me, although it reintroduced its characters well enough to actually be followable, which is nice. I’m firmly out of love with this book, though, and honestly considering dropping it and waiting for it to all be over and go on some eventual big Comixology sale. It occurs to me that it’s basically become A Song of Ice and Fire with all the attendant problems – too many characters who are spread out over too many settings, and switching among them in single point-of-view chapters that feel like they take too long. Ah well. Loved the “writer gets first byline” gag though.
All-New All-Different Avengers #4
There’s a cute “political correctness” gag here, but for the most part the “all-different” part of this title is an increasingly bleak joke. This is ruthless traditionalism with a diverse cast. Fair enough, and probably something that should exist, but hard to get excited about. Al Ewing’s been doing the same vibe with a much bolder and fresher tone for years now. I do like Thor’s characterization, but ironically the final cliffhanger, in which Iron Man wonders if she’s “really who she claims to be,” is really one that only would have worked during the interminable “who is the new Thor” plot. Instead the answer to “why is she acting like she’s not immortal” is straightforward, even if it’s the first time she’s actually seemed like an interesting character.
Digital code: THM8ZFRF8513
Black Magick #4
This picks up, with the cop book/occult thriller balance feeling well-struck. It still feels more style than substance, and I’m hoping things settle in the arc-ender (presumably before it takes a break so Nicola Scott can catch up, as she’s not a monthly artist). On the whole this remains a bit of a disappointment to me – not least because I remember years ago when Rucka said he was waiting for Nicola Scott to be free to do another book of Queen and Country, so it’s especially frustrating to see them not quite clicking into high gear on a great premise instead of that. But I’m holding out hope.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #3
This continues to fall slightly short of outright sparkling, and there’s something a little depressing about seeing Ms. Marvel reverse engineered into a formula, even if it is well-executed. But this is probably the best issue yet, and it’s starting to become clear how this is going to work as an ongoing book. The first half is a bit weak – the fight scene is muddy and hard to follow, depending on a “everyone’s chasing the ball that gets tossed around” sequence in a space that isn’t visually clear enough to support that.…
Weird Kitties fizzled out, but I had a few spare reviews lying around and Jane’s holiday is going to run one more week, so here they are.
As the science fiction community mutters “I thought MidAmericon said nominations would open in early January” with baited breath, I note that certain fascist pricks have begun to ramp up their performative chortling. So I figured “why not write a mildly trolling open letter to someone else entirely?”
When I cover it in Last War in Albion, I am inevitably going to have to suggest that Phonogram was a magical ritual to murder David Bowie. Part of this will be a straightforward and well-reasoned technical argument based on The Immaterial Girl’s meticulously rendered and devastatingly well-structured invocation of Michael Jackson’s death, and another part will be the fact that Bowie’s cancer diagnosis would have come right around when WicDiv #1 hit, with Lucifer’s death literally coming ten days after the debut of “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” (“Sue, the clinic called /The x-ray’s fine / I brought you home,” although for the purposes of Phonogram the lyric you’d want is “Sue, I found your note / That you wrote last night / It can’t be right / You went with him”), and of course a big part is just going to be a big influence-based dig through the primary source material in a slightly self-parodic attempt to factually evaluate Gillen’s claims about Kenickie.
From worst to best of what I bought. 
Here’s the official description of this podcast, which James pinged me and told me existed last night:
It is October 1987. Moore is sitting down to dinner after a Glasgow signing to promote Watchmen. At the table is Grant Morrison, a neophyte comics writer. It is the only meeting between them that Moore recalls, although he had given Morrison advice at a 1983 Glasgow comic mart when Morrison was on the cusp of transitioning from a failed rock star to a successful comics writer. Moore will eventually, to Morrison’s chagrin, describe him as an “aspiring” comics writer at the time of this meeting, one of many swipes he will take at Morrison over the years. They talk about vegetarianism. (“Sometimes you can’t live with the contradictions, Grant,” Morrison recalls him saying.)
It’s summer, 1992. Alan Moore is thirty-eight. Just a few years out from the twin smoldering wreckages of Big Numbers and his first marriage, he takes a call from Jim Valentino at Image Comics. Moore is unimpressed with the Image output, thinking, “I’ve been away for five years, and comics have turned into some bizarre super-steroid-mutant hybrid that I’ve got no familiarity with at all,” but the business model of Image appeals to him, and the failure of Big Numbers along with a relatively fallow period in Moore’s output means he needs the money, and so he throws himself into “teaching myself this new language and trying to understand this new audience.” He ends up creating 1963 with Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch, a colorful pastiche of vintage Marvel comics written in explicit contrast to the post-Watchmen style (largely embodied by Image itself) of violent and cynical comics.
It’s January 7