Comics Reviews (April 15th, 2015)

The Legendary Star-Lord #11 (aka The Black Vortex #12)

There’s a metaphor here in Kitty’s reluctant but inevitable embrace of the Black Vortex and decision to become a cosmic entity despite the fact that the power will inevitably destroy her. I think it’s a metaphor for how I keep paying money for this fucking story.

Thor #7

I want to like this book, especially given the caliber of the people who hate it. But my underlying objection stands, not least as it becomes increasingly obvious that Roz Solomon is Thor, which was always the most obvious choice. I mean, they may yet subvert it, but at this point, if they subvert it, it’s going to be a cheap twist, and if they don’t, it’s going to be so obvious that it wasn’t worth doing a mystery. Either way, this is a yawn.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #7

Fun, although I feel like the two plot thread aspect of the book ended up being a bit of a weakness here, with each plot feeling like it wanted about four more pages. Still, it’s called “Kick ‘Splode,” and it does what it says on the tin.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #13

It’s always terribly fun looking at a creator across books, especially when you see the same basic themes and reflections on storytelling cropping up in Doctor Who and Loki. Not that those are two books that exist that far apart from each other in the grand conceptual scheme of things. In any case, a climax, and the point where Ewing finally moves the book completely out of Gillen’s shadow, which, to be fair, is the sort of thing that really should take thirteen or so issues to do, given the size of that shadow. Fun stuff, and a nice setup for Secret Wars. (A side comment – it’s genuinely weird to have Hickman’s lead-up to Secret Wars dry up at this point. I know there’s two more issues coming, and I’m sure they’ll be long on blood and thunder, but it’s still a strange gap, and one that casts an odd shadow over the rest of Marvel.)

Ms. Marvel #14

The twists here are predictable, but generally in the sense of “it’s a classic because it works.” Still, for this book that’s a middling issue, and it was a really good week of comics, so here in the rankings this lands.

Uncanny X-Men #33

There are moments where Bendis’s propensity for avoiding normatively “big” moments in favor of little ones really pay off, and a “Kitty Pryde and Illyana Rasputin go on a road trip to Monster Island” issue as the penultimate installment of his Uncanny X-Men run is a prime example. Completely and utterly delightful.

Crossed Badlands #75 (aka Homo Tortor #1)

As Moore does future Crossed, Gillen does prehistoric Crossed. There’s something more than a little Tales of the Black Freighter about this, with its parallel timeframes and sense of impending doom. It’s only a first issue, and there’s much that’s going to have to develop, but it’s a big, fascinating conceptual start that parallels both the latest WicDiv (with its idea of human civilization having had various failed starts in prehistory) and Moore’s Crossed work. This more than holds its own opposite Alan Moore writing the same title the same week. That’s a hell of a feat.

Crossed +100 #4

Really digging the growing sense of dread that Moore works in here – the relative absence of the Crossed and any sense of explicit horror (except as a historicized event) gets more and more unsettling, while Moore makes some solid observations about science fiction. It should really get a Hugo nomination.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #11

It’s a Doctor Who comic with a subplot involving Scary Monsters-era Bowie being tempted by the Goblin King from Labyrinth. Plus formal complexity. And an Edge of Destruction homage.