Comics Reviews (February 18th, 2015)

First off, as alluded to on Saturday, I’ve got the first of the episode commentaries from the old William Hartnell Second Edition Kickstarter ready. Helping bail me out when it became evident that me on my own was not interesting listening is Jack Graham, so if the two of us talking about the first episode of The Rescue sounds fun, well, here it is. (That’s a Dropbox link – I should have enough bandwidth there for anyone who wants it to download it, but if problems arise, let me know and I’ll figure some new hosting out.) We’ll tackle episode two next week. We’re still working out how best to do these and what they should be like, so please, comments are very much welcome, both to give us an idea of how much actual interest there is for this and to help us fine-tune it.

Second, comics! Worst to best of what I bought.

Moon Knight #12

There’s a frustrating evaporation of interesting ethics here, with the character arguing for a particular and extreme moral position turning out to have been corrupt and evil all along. The rest of the plot lines are resolved with a whimper. It’s been a while since Brian Wood impressed, hasn’t it? All told, they should have just let Warren Ellis do this as a miniseries. And now they’re going to… Cullen Bunn? Jeez. I mean, Bunn isn’t a bad writer, but when your book has gone from bracing formalist experiments with Warren Ellis to Cullen Bunn… well, you’ve certainly managed to lose the point of your existence as a book. Dropping this. Frankly, in hindsight, I should have trusted my instincts and dropped it after #6.

Fables #149

The main story is seventeen pages long. The final issue isn’t even solicited yet, but is apparently just going to be an entire trade paperback, which does kind of make the buildup over the course of this arc frustrating – the reality is that this isn’t the final arc and never has been. In any case, I find the months gap before the finale frustrating, and I did the whole “final installment is a surprise book” first, so, really, I’m just ready to be done with the Fables era of my life.

Batgirl #39

Somewhat workmanlike for this series – less playing with an inventive premise and more putting pieces in place for a big pre-Convergence finale. But still fun, and it’s nice to see this vision of the book do something with the Barbara/Dinah relationship.

Multiversity: Mastermen

Unfortunately, it turns out that having Jim Lee draw Hitler reading Superman comics on the toilet was Grant Morrison’s best idea for this issue, and that it turns into an exercise in connecting obvious dots shortly thereafter. Multiversity has been fun at times, but I have to say, I’m glad to see it finally getting to the conclusion after this, if only because I’m really interested in Morrison’s magical ethics here.

Silver Surfer #9

Very much the middle chapter of a story, which is fine, but in a book like this something of a downer – it doesn’t introduce any new bonkers ideas, and it doesn’t pay off any of the ones it has.…

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