reviews
Comics Reviews (The Fifth of November, 2014)
As ever, from least favorite to favorite, with everything being something I willingly paid money for.
AXIS #4
I’ve been getting this out of spite, out of a general commitment to know what’s going on with Marvel, but after the miserable slog that was Original Sin, this, another overly serious take on “what if heroes WEREN’T HEROIC ANYMORE,” is just a bridge too far. I’ll pick up number nine, but this “heroes are villains and villains are heroes and the Avengers and X-Men are going to war again” baloney is just too much.
Miracleman #13
I was commenting on Tumblr that increasingly, it’s difficult to straight-facedly recommend many of the classics of 80s comics to people who didn’t grow up with them. This is no exception – it’s still brilliant, and you can see so many of the roots of what Alan Moore and his successors would go on to do in it, but everything here has been done better eventually, even if only by Moore himself. At $4.99 for sixteen pages, it remains impossible to straight-facedly recommend.
Chew #44
In some ways this is an improvement for Chew, a series I’m reading in a sort of vigorous demonstration of the sunk costs fallacy. It’s narrowly survived so many culls of my pull list. It’s trying to do something interesting here, and I have hope that part of that being interesting is doing something more interesting than the pile of generic shock deaths it’s pretending to be here. But right now, it’s still just hope.
Gotham Academy #2
This is currently a triumph of style over substance for me, but it’s such a complete triumph of style that I’m going to stick with it in the hopes that it fulfills the brilliance of its premise soon. It’s a book one so wants to see succeed, but it’s still not quite.
The Amazing Spider-Man #9
This was very much why I stuck through eight very generic issues of this. It’s clever and fun and bold, and feels like it’s determined to be a brilliant Spider-Man story that will be remembered for decades. Whether the future history of superhero comics means that a 2014 Spider-Man comic is, as a cultural object, capable of being remembered for decades is uncertain, but it’s everything one could reasonably want out of a Spider-Man comic.…
Dark Water Review
Comics Reviews (October 30th, 2014)
As ever, ranked from least enjoyed to most, with everything being a book I was willing to spend money on.
All-New X-Men #33
The original X-Men touring the Ultimate Universe is proving a bit sloppy. Too many characters split up into too many storylines emphasizes one of Bendis’s weak spots, which is that an issue can pass without a sense that much has happened. Split that over four plots and you run into issues where not a lot actually does happen. A promising cliffhanger, but aren’t they all?
The Massive #28
The six-part structure of the final arc turns out to be at least slightly artificial, with this very much being the start of a new three-part arc. But I suspect calling it a six-part arc was wise, as there’s a real flagging in the momentum here. This is not unusual for this book, which has always disappointed a bit. Not bad, but I’m not going to miss this much when it’s over.
Guardians of the Galaxy #20
Hm? Oh. Yes. This plot. The death of Richard Ryder, and all that. It wraps up pretty well. I’m not sure it was three issues of story, and certainly not sure it was worth pausing the actual Guardians for three months, but fair enough. It wasn’t half bad. Glad to be moving on though.
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #4
I admit, this threw me for a bit of a loop, just because I’d gotten used to done-in-ones, and really wasn’t expecting a multipart story, which in turn made the pacing feel weird throughout. Rereading it, it’s a nice setup for a story. Alice, in particular, gets some excellent material here, as she and the Doctor come into a subtle sort of conflict. This fits into Eleven’s overall story arc quite well, and into the way the nature of the companion has evolved over the Moffat era. Good fun, this. Still highly recommended.
Wonder Woman #35
And so the Azzarello run ends. The rest of the New 52 did away with this book’s ability to actually define a new generation’s Wonder Woman, but it soldiered on and at least provided an interesting vision of her that was consistently one of the few books in the New 52’s first three years capable of being interesting. Here it ends, with some nice callbacks to Marston and the book’s legacy. There’s even talk of submission. There’s little to be excited about in the next phase of Wonder Woman. This, at least, was a book you could be proud of. Good for it.
Saga #24
Is it possible to write a bad comic with a Lying Cat splash page? No. It probably is not. I should really archive binge this in the gap months to actually get up to speed on the plots and characters, because it’s self-evidently an absolutely brilliant comic. Apparently there’s a nice oversized hardcover of the first eighteen issues coming out. Lovely Christmas present, that.
Uber #19
The stuff this book is doing with war comics is absolutely fascinating.…
In the Forest of the Night Review
Let’s play the Kill the Moon game again and put aside the question of public opinion, not look at comments, and just go straight out. Not because I’m about to go on another rave about how this is a transcendent piece of Doctor Who, although it basically is. You can basically fairly accuse it of being Kill the Moon as if it were the Olympic Opening Ceremony, and that’s a fair criticism, so, spoilers, I’m going to put it in second. Well, though you can fairly accuse Kill the Moon of being a pro-life parable. So I guess in the end it goes down to the aesthetics of the thing, and personal preference. I think the ending of Kill the Moon is paced a bit better. So still second, but damn, that’s close.
Comics Reviews (10/23/14)
And at long last, we’re back. As ever, in ranked order, best of the week at the end, with the caveat that I liked everything enough to pay money for it. And I just trimmed my pull account by 25%, so that means I like everything that little bit more. Or that it’s nearly finished. Would have picked up AXIS #3, but ended up not actually picking my own books up today, and forgot to ask Jill to grab it from the rack. I bet I wouldn’t have liked it, though. I didn’t like the first two.
The Amazing Spider-Man #8
I’ve not been loving this title since it came back, and it almost got cut, but I’ll give it at least through Spider-Verse. So, six more issues, apparently. This at least has Ms. Marvel in it, which improves anything.
The Unwritten Apocalypse #10
As I have often said, I am sure this will all ready very nicely as a collected edition, much like the same team’s run on Lucifer did. There too, I bought the comic for years after I no longer had the faintest clue what the fuck was going on, but read it all in the end and enjoyed it. Here, I even sort of can remember the plot issue to issue, so it must be even better, right?
The Multiversity: The Just #1
The long-awaited return of Bloodwynd. Past that, this is a fun little romp through a particular corner of DC’s history, but I admit, I found myself looking forward to the ending – this felt like it moved rather slowly. More broadly, Multiversity isn’t quite fitting together for me yet. Though at this stage, neither was Seven Soldiers, so the jury’s still out. But thus far… this feels a bit flat.
Stumptown #2
Not a ton of movement in this one – we spend most of it rejecting what is, to my mind, a fairly uninspiring theory anyway, namely that of European soccer hooliganism coming to America. I like the cross-team rivalry PI dynamic, though, and I trust Rucka. A slow second issue isn’t a major problem. And even when slow, this book is a lot of fun.
Lazarus #12
An issue of characterization between major plot swings, held up somewhat by the fact that Malcolm is playing his cards so close to the chest that it’s impossible to actually know what’s going on. We’re in a passive role watching puzzle pieces slot into place, which is fine, but I doubt can be sustained over an entire arc. We’ll see, I suppose, bot whether Rucka tries to, and whether it works.
Avengers #37
So, we know this is building to Secret Wars, which is almost disappointing, inasmuch as it means it’s not building towards the end of a story. But two months into this timejump, Hickman is spinning the plates well. The inherent mystery about what goes in the gap between these books and the present-day of Marvel works well. I like the twist with Sue Storm.…
Flatline Review
This review was brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Please consider joining them. Also, if you’re in the New York area, I’m doing a launch party for TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 5 (it’s out, by the way). That’ll be next Saturday, October 25th, at 3:30 PM at The Way Station, in Brooklyn. Copies of all five volumes of TARDIS Eruditorum will be for sale, and I will be signing stuff if you want to bring copies you already own. There’s a Facebook event page here.
Hello folks. Let’s take the temperature of the world, shall we? Comments thus far are quite positive. GallifreyBase has an impressive 84.4% in the 8-10 range, with 9 being the most popular at 32.69%, which has this at slightly more popular than Mummy on the Orient Express. I’ll be honest, that surprises me a bit, as I was, for the first time this season, a bit underwhelmed.
That said, this one is tricky, and in a way that feels as though there’s an unusually high chance of my revising my opinion on it upon seeing what it’s actually building to. We’re to the point in the season where the finale is tacitly hanging over things, and this one in particular seems to be making some points about Clara that could feel very different in a couple of weeks. But for me, right now, it feels messy and untidy. Like Mummy on the Orient Express, its emotional resolution is consciously ambiguous, in a way that makes it end off feeling slightly less developed than I think the story actually is. This is due in part to the sneaky power of endings to redefine and reimagine everything that has come before, but it’s also due to the ending actually just not quite fitting with what’s come before completely.
So much of what is going on here hinges on the question of what Clara being elevated to having to “be the Doctor” actually means. Which is indeed a complex question, given the way in which the season has largely treated the Doctor as an object of the sublime – at once wondrous and terrifying. And so for Clara to become the Doctor is not merely aspiration.
This is a marked change – typically the “companion steps up” story is about the companion striving to be better. With Clara, it’s not quite. Indeed, there’s a genuine sense that in becoming the Doctor she has become lessened. In a season in which we have repeatedly been asked to consider the idea of a dark Doctor, and have in many cases simply done so unbidden, without the text particularly pushing us to, just by the knowledge that Peter Capaldi is playing him. Instead, however, especially as her relationship with Danny continues to paint her into an increasingly unsympathetic corner, it feels as though it’s in fact a season about a dark Clara.
And the contours of this revelation have been slyly hidden in the way in which the Doctor’s part has never been written as a traditional lead.…
Mummy on the Orient Express Review
Kill the Moon Review
This review is brought to you by 166 lovely people at Patreon. If you would like to join them in supporting these reviews, please do.
Comics Reviews (October 2nd, 2014)
As always, ranked from least favorite to favorite, with the caveat that I like everything enough to pay money for it.
Thor #1
Why bother launching this on The View if the end result is going to be to spend an issue highlighting how much this is just a continuation of the previous volume of Thor? Why end this with the reveal of the character on the cover? Why have comics not moved beyond the storytelling prowess of 1970s Terry Nation stories? Goddammit.
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #3
It’s interesting to see what parts of this book come from what writers. On the evidence, Al Ewing is providing more of the emotional heft, while Rob Williams provides more of the zany and big ideas, this one incorporating a bevy of twists. The result is something that feels more like the generic Doctor Who licensed comics we always get and less like what had been making this book special in the first two issues. Not bad by any measure, but the fact that a noticeable dip in originality and freshness came with the change to the second writer is a sad sign.
Moon Knight #8
I’m still not entirely sold on the turn to arc-based and continuing plotting. This was fine and a good issue of Moon Knight, but the loss of Warren Ellis’s ideological purity is just that: a loss.
Miracleman #11
I forgot the way this book kicked up a gear in Book Three. V for Vendetta does the same thing, though nobody ever notices because it’s collected in one volume. As should Miracleman be, given that it’s actually not much longer than Watchmen in terms of page count. Instead, as ever, we get $4.99 issues for sixteen pages of story. Bastards.
Silver Surfer #6
At last, the book arrives at its actual premise. And it’s fun, and exactly the sort of “Jack Kirby’s Doctor Who” feel that this book promised over half a year ago. Comics. The medium for people who resent it when things happen in their media. Still, it’s churlish to overly resent this comic because the previous five took too long to get here. This is very fun, and the better of the two Doctor Who comics I bought today. It may share some problems with Thor, but the problems are in past issues, not this one.
Rat Queens #8
No idea what the plot of this book is anymore, but it’s one of those I simply don’t care. It’s fun. Every month. By the time I get to the end of the issue I’m at least enjoying the characters in the issue. Should sit down with this and get into it, as I really enjoyed the first few issues when I shotgunned them. Not working for me as well serialized, but that’s true of a lot of comics.
—-
All comics below that line there are ones I would with a straight face recommend people pick up if their premises sound interesting.…