Comics Reviews (7/24/14)

Amazing Spider-Man #4

Perfectly competent new character introduction, but I honestly can’t think of much to say about it past that. Introducing characters is easy. Using them interestingly is the real test. B+

Daredevil #6

Hm. So, Waid’s Daredevil, at its genesis, was about getting the character away from the shadow of Frank Miller. And man, that shadow looms over this issue with its suggestion that Daredevil’s father was abusive and the return of focus to Daredevil’s mother, which was very much a Miller invention. And yet this is also doing goofy adventure fun, and setting up a trip to Wakanda. Which is… I mean, it’s easy to be nervous when the next issue is called “Law of the Jungle.” Plus there’s a lot of sharp political stuff here. All in all, it’s a strange issue that doesn’t quite tip its hand about where it’s going, which is a lot more interesting than Daredevil has been in a while. B+

Doctor Who (Eleventh Doctor) #1

Oh, good – this is the first Al Ewing coming in the list (Al Ewing and Rob Williams, in fact, but I’m not familiar enough with Williams to talk about him in the general case). That’s good – he’s got three books out this week, but I want to talk about this one first. Ewing’s an interesting writer for me. First of all, he’s a long-time fan and Kickstarter backer, full disclosure. And he’s a solid comics writer. He hasn’t, for my money, had his big iconic series yet, but he’s also yet to write anything that didn’t work for me, and I’m really looking forward to the first project where he really nails his colors to the mast and shows what he’s capable of. (I should note I haven’t read his British work yet, only his Marvel stuff.)

And, I mean, the licensed Doctor Who comic was never going to be it. But damn, this is really impressive. it’s easy to do crap with a licensed property like Doctor Who – you get very little room to say anything major or significant about it, because that’s left for the television series. So you’re left with very self-contained, inward focused stories, or very sterile continuity romps.

Ewing and Williams manage to do neither of these, instead telling a story that’s really quite compelling. There are a lot of really good tricks here – a deft use of narration that gives it a sense of size and scope, a really tight theme, a fantastically well-defined character. The result is something that feels like the best bits of the Virgin era – where the grandeur of the Doctor is paired with the everyday in a really compelling, interesting way. There’s a moment where Ewing drops from the narration for a moment, as the Doctor comes back to the main character, who’s clearly (to the reader) suffering from depression. They chased an alien for a bit, then the Doctor left, like he does, and then suddenly he comes back. And his explanation is this wonderful, small, “you seemed sad.” It’s spot-on characterization for Matt Smith’s Doctor, and it feels very contemporary and now, and it’s really, properly brilliant stuff. Highly, highly recommend this. It’ll be one of the best Doctor Who spin-off pieces of the decade, I think. A+ (Pick of the Week)

Mighty Avengers #12

Mighty Avengers is a really interesting book, in that they got a white British guy to write a book that’s clearly been conceptualized at some point in its development as “the black team.” Ewing is handling this with real aplomb, and the book avoids every single obvious thing it could do wrong. All of which said, this homage to the 70s Blaxploitation roots of Luke Cage that’s also a huge meta-joke about the sliding Marvel timeline and how it means that Luke Cage wasn’t actually around for his own era of history is a little bit trying. Not bad, so much as not necessarily the flavor for this book that I enjoy most. B-

Original Sin #5.2 Thor and Loki: The Tenth Realm #2

Everything said about the first issue applies here: Al Ewing is doing a heroic job with a story that has no apparent reason for existing, and one really wonders how Jason Aaron feels about his career right now. It’s not bad, but it’s really hard to make yourself care about this comic. To recap, a chunk of Todd McFarlene’s Spawn universe that was cast off as part of the process of settling the rights to Miracleman has been declared the “Tenth Realm” of Norse cosmology, and now Thor and Odin have a sister in ludicrous 90s she-armor. If that doesn’t seem kind of funny to you, this is probably your pick of the week.  C

Saga #21

The bits actually centered on Hazel and her family continue to scintillate, but I have to admit, people with televisions for heads all look alike. B+

Supreme: Blue Rose #1

A Warren Ellis mini. It’s playing a lot of cards close to the chest in the first issue, but Ellis is putting some interesting pieces into play. Can’t quite recommend yet – it’s definitely not the sort of series you can judge from one issue. But the first issue is quite strong and interesting, and I want to flag it for people who like getting in on the ground floor as a strange new thing unfolds. A

Trees #3

Well, this is certainly interesting. Any sense that I knew what Trees was doing is thoroughly shattered at this point, as Ellis just jumps to new plots and characters with no obvious connection to what’s come before. (Although there are a few threads picked up from issue #1 that had been abandoned.) The number of plot threads Ellis is intertwining is absolutely massive, and there’s very little sense of plot. Given that Ellis is not prone to sixty issue epics, it’s tough to see what he’s doing with this. Fascinating. Strange. B

The Unwritten Apocalypse #7

Here’s a fun exercise – skip to the next review and read it, and then just imagine the genre described is different and I said “Mike Carey” instead of “Ed Brubaker.” C

Velvet #6

This is sharp, well-done spy noir in a nice, old-fashioned, classic sense. It’s a loving homage to a genre, done straight and without much adornment. Ed Brubaker is good at the genre in question, so it breezes along competently. All of which said, it’s terribly suited to single issues. The month (or more) gap between issues means that when it comes out, all memory of where we were last month is long gone. This one recaps the basic setup, but it barely helps. This feels like an impressionistic slice of genre every month, but as an exercise in storytelling, it needs the trade paperback. C