Belated Comics Reviews (August 19th, 2015)
Happy to say that my comics have made it to the correct shop, and then out of the shop and to my home, where I have read them and ranked them from worst to best of what I was foolish enough to pay for. (Though strangely, Loki didn’t make it home, and I don’t think I saw it in the shops. Will follow up and review it next week one way or another.)
EDIT: After several people expressed disappointment about the lack of Loki, I got a digital copy and added it to the list.
Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #4
A great issue #2.
Guardians of Knowhere #3
For most of this, it runs along without any of Bendis’s most infuriating writing tics. The Angela/Gamora confrontation is excellent character work with added punching. The plot moves off of Yotat and towards things recognizable as characters we care about. Mike Deodato draws gorgeous lightning. It’s a solid comic. And then it does a cliffhanger that amounts to “a person appears.” No explanation of this person. Maybe she is identifiable, but she’s not identifiable in a way that I can identify, and I’m nearing a quarter-century of reading Marvel comics. It’s not a cliffhanger in any useful sense; there’s no excitement. There’s a question, sure, namely “who is that,” but there’s no reason for me to be invested in the answer to it.
Doctor Who: Four Doctors #2
It’s a bit longer on action sequences than plot, in a way that’s not entirely satisfying, but that’s probably going to come out in the wash given that it’s a weekly event. All the same, this is mostly reapers chasing people as opposed to actually moving forward. But there’s enough charming and funny bits to make it an enjoyable trip.
Secret Wars: Secret Love #1
A fun anthology one-shot. The Daredevil story’s a bit off the boil for me, but the others are varying shades of delightful, with the Ms. Marvel/Ghost Rider story probably being the highlight from any serious perspective, and the Squirrel Girl/Thor story being the highlight from any moral one. Nice way to get some oddball talent into Marvel, and it’s always nice to see an odd genre like the romance comic get a revival.
Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders #2
The only possible complaint to have about this book is that it deserved more than two issues to tell its story. Still, it’s an enormously compelling case for Faiza Hussain as a character. Really, she needs an ongoing role in the Marvel Universe. Preferably as Captain Britain.
Loki: Agent of Asgard #17
A marvelous ending to Ewing’s run. Ewing is not a hugely subtle writer, which is manifestly not a criticism. He writes big, broad, and bright comics that wear their hearts on their sleeves. And this one’s heart is basically Alan Moore’s definition of magic and some infrastructure of Promethea. Given that Moore does not write big, broad, and bright comics that unabashedly scream their themes as text as loudly as possible, this is a delightful thing to do. One of the real gems of its era within Marvel, this series.
Trees #12
Admittedly, I found time to reread #1-11 since the last issue came out, so I’m actually in the position to understand this. That said, this seems to continue the beautiful clarity of this second arc; the stripped down setting to two stories does this book favors, and this is flat out a better run than the first arc was. Here it kicks into gear, with some real and gripping tension, especially with the cliffhanger. Ellis remains one of the few writers to consistently turn out comics worth their cover price.