Henry10WHAT I READ THIS WEEK - 26-04-08
April 26th 2008 07:06
And now, for a very late installment of What I Read This Week. I got lazy partway through, so that's why not all of the reviews are accompanied by covers. Or maybe my dog ate them. Yeah, that's it.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #553-554
by Bob Gale and Phil Jimenez
Remember my rant a couple of months ago over the One More Day arc? Well, it turns out that Spider-Man is now totally awesome. I don't agree with the way they got there, but now that they are there I'm really enjoying things. (I probably shouldn't say at this point that the last time I enjoyed Spider-Man this much was during the Clone Saga. Come on, I was 13!)
That said, this arc, written by Bob Gale and featuring new villain Freak, hasn't been quite so much fun as those previous. It could be that Freak looks like an inside-out corpse, or the on-panel meth smoking, but there's a general air of unpleasantness to the proceedings. But with the weekly pace and a truckload of subplots, as well as the frequent use of Spidey's awesome supporting cast, the dip in quality is only a minor one. The Spider-Man relaunch looks like a success thus far.
COUNTDOWN #7-6
by Paul Dini, Adam Beechen, Tom Derenick, Mike Norton and others
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm a few weeks behind.
Honestly, I don't really understand why the comics blogosphere is so down on this series. I've been enjoying it, although that could have something to do with being able to sit and read the whole thing in a couple of days. It compares favourably to 52, which had some stories I enjoyed (i.e. Booster Gold) and others I was bored pantsless by (i.e. anything with Renee Montoya). Countdown is a lot more even. I haven't enjoyed the good bits as much, but there haven't been any plot strands I was tempted to skip over. Also, 52 never did end up tying its stories together into a single plot, whereas all of the threads in Countdown have been a part of the main story. It certainly works better as a single narrative than its predecessor.
These two issues haven't impressed me a great deal, though. Now that the big fightin' on Apokolips is over, the story moves onto the threat of the Morticoccus Virus that Karate Kid is carrying around with him. This one's not as compelling, especially as I don't have a lot of familiarity with Karate Kid and the Legion of Superheroes. Issue #6 is a jarring change of pace, with what amounts to the end of the world being narrated without much urgency. Sure, we know that the world ain't being destroyed, but it would be nice if the writers and/or characters would pretend for a bit. Hopefully the series picks up again after this slump.
INCREDIBLE HERCULES #112-115
by Gerg Pak, Fred Van Lente and Koi Pham
I'm sitting here now, and I still can't believe that just a few months ago I was saying that Hercules couldn't carry a solo title. Honestly, what was I thinking? It's friggin' Hercules, hero of Greek mythology! Sometimes it's hard to get past the way the mythological characters are portrayed in comics to realise that, hey, these are MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS.
So yeah, it turns out that Hercules is interesting enough for his own series. And it turns out that it's great. In the aftermath of World War Hulk, Herc and genius kid Amadeus Cho are on the run from the government after aiding the Hulk. But really, that's just a backdrop for the conflict between Ares and Hercules (which involves a fistfight on the SHIELD Helicarrier during a missile barrage, just so you know).
The only thing I don't like about the series is Amadeus Cho, who seriously needs about fifty smacks in the mouth. And yet, I feel as though Pak genuinely thinks the character is endearing, and not annoying. Hopefully the kid gets less irritating in future.
IRON MAN: ENTER THE MANDARIN #1-6
by Joe Casey and Eric Kanete
This is another one of Joe Casey's revisionist miniseries. This time it's the first appearance of the Mandarin that gets the remastered treatment, and just in time for the collected edition to be on shelves for the film. I've always liked the old-school Iron Man set-up, and the Mandarin was interesting back then despite his roots in idea of the Yellow Peril. Casey does a solid job here, and does so without majorly contradicting the original story. The only thing that gets no coverage is the origin of the Mandarin's rings, but I suppose the Space Dragons might be a little difficult for the movie audience to swallow.
JLA CLASSIFIED #50-54
by Roger Stern and John Byrne
Well, a by-line with those two guys on it is the only reason I need to check something out. And you know what? You probably already know whether you'll like this one. There are no surprises on offer here, just a solid old-school super-hero story where the JLA fight an alien who has a weird fixation on the gods of Earth. If there's a weakness here it's the knowledge that, back in the day, this would probably have been over on two parts. Oh, and the villain ends up being a lot less interesting than I was expecting after the first issue. But besides that it's a lot of fun action, and John Byrne proves that he still has the chops.
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #17-19
by Alan Burnett and Ed Benes
So, I'm assuming that this is a tie-in to Countdown. Lots of villains have been arrested by the Suicide Squad and shipped off to parts unknown. In this arc the JLA find out where they are - a prison planet/rip-off of Marvel's Negative Zone prison. Which is an excuse for boring confrontations between the JLA and the Suicide Squad, and a revelation that was pretty obvious. I despair of DC when they can't even make their flagship title any good, I really do.
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #5-7 (just the Ka-Zar story)
by Christos Gage and Joyce Chin
Just a word of explanation is warranted here - I'm in the habit of reading most of my comics only when the complete story arc is done, so with an anthology title like Marvel Comics Presents that means I'm reviewing about a quarter of the comics listed above. Eventually I'll get to the other material inside, but for now it's just the Ka-Zar arc.
Despite the shoddy art, there's a certain amount of fun to be had here. The plot is dead simple, and I get the feeling that it's just Christos Gage playing with his Marvel toys. You know when you're five, and events go roughly like this - "Well, an evil corporation attacks the Savage Land! Then Ka-Zar fights back! Then Killer Shrike fights Ka-Zar! Then the Plunderer helps Killer Shrike, even though the Punisher blew his head off during Civil War! And Stegron is there! And Brainchild is there! And Shanna is there in a very small fur bikini! And, and, and..." Yeah. And so on. So I was all set to denounce this arc as being devoid of merit, but then Stegron goes and summons an army of zombie dinosaurs. So it's cool.
There are three one-shot stories in here as well. Issue #5 has a Wrecking Crew story that explains why the intelligent Thunderball isn't their leader in perfunctory fashion. There's a pretty good Captain America tale in #6 about another soldier who can't serve because he's 4-F. And there is also an abysmal and incomprehensible Sub-Mariner short in issue #7.
PENANCE: RELENTLESS #1-5
by Paul Jenkins and Paul Gulacy
2008 has been a series of new lows in the world of Doctor Doom. Most famously there was this panel, which may just be the least awesome thing Doom has ever said.
But in this series, Doom is outwitted by Speedball. And not just regular Speedball, but Angry Emo Spike-Wearing Speedball. It's a tragedy. And sure, you can say it was just a Doombot, but then the fact would still remain that DOCTOR DOOM DESIGNED A ROBOT THAT WAS OUTSMARTED BY SPEEDBALL. And that's embarassing in itself.
Oh yeah, Angry Speedball aka Penance hunts down and punishes Nitro for killing a lot of students and kicking off Marvel's Civil War. Avoid it, it's ludicrous in all the wrong ways. Why a good writer like Paul Jenkins continues to take this character seriously is a geniune mystery.
SECRET INVASION SAGA #1
by Lots of People
Look kids, continuity! God-damn, but I love these kinds of things entirely too much. The whole issue consists of Tony Stark reviewing the history of the Skrulls and their doings on Earth, which is mainly an excuse to reprint panels from a lot of awesome, semi-awesome, and totally un-awesome comics. If you want to read Secret Invasion but have no idea what a Skrull is, this is the book for you. The same applies if you geek out over Marvel history, which is me sorted.
TRANSFORMERS SPOTLIGHT - MIRAGE #1
by George Strayton and Guido Guidi
I was enjoying the IDW Transformers comics about a year ago, but since then they've wandered off my radar - which is pretty significant given that I am a totally hardcore Transformers fanboy. The spotlight issues tell one-shot stories that focus on a single character, and have featured some of the strongest work from the line. This time out it's Mirage, the semi-conflicted Autobot who transforms into a racing car. Mirage's inner conflict over which side of the war he should be on is the centre of the story, but it's trying to be too clever. Faking the readers out with a dream sequence is okay, but twice in one story is overkill. I still miss the Dreamwave stuff, to be honest.
UNCANNY X-MEN #497
by Ed Brubaker and Mike Choi
The crazy 'hippies in San Francisco' arc continues, as Cyclops and Emma Frost investigate just why the city has reverted back to the Summer o' Love. Mainly it's an excuse to dress Cyke up like Sgt Pepper, but there's just so much to like about Brubaker's current run, not least of which is that he's presenting the only current version of Cyclops that isn't an overzealous douchebag. Throw in the B-plot with Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus fighting giant robots in Russia, and it's golden.
X-FORCE #3
by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost and Clayton Crain
Ahahaha! In this issue, the mutant-hating Purifiers resurrect a whole passel of old X-Men villains, and dear god, what a brains-trust this team is going to be. I won't spoil who they are, but it's a cavalcade of buffoons. It's easy to mock super-villains, mainly because the genre demands that they always lose, but these guys are losers on a whole different scale.
The rest of the comic has the X-Force team rescuing Rahne and dealing with the aftermath of her capture, but it's not very good, to be blunt. In ten years time, X-Force is the comic that we'll be mocking. Nothing changes, really.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #553-554
by Bob Gale and Phil Jimenez
Remember my rant a couple of months ago over the One More Day arc? Well, it turns out that Spider-Man is now totally awesome. I don't agree with the way they got there, but now that they are there I'm really enjoying things. (I probably shouldn't say at this point that the last time I enjoyed Spider-Man this much was during the Clone Saga. Come on, I was 13!)
That said, this arc, written by Bob Gale and featuring new villain Freak, hasn't been quite so much fun as those previous. It could be that Freak looks like an inside-out corpse, or the on-panel meth smoking, but there's a general air of unpleasantness to the proceedings. But with the weekly pace and a truckload of subplots, as well as the frequent use of Spidey's awesome supporting cast, the dip in quality is only a minor one. The Spider-Man relaunch looks like a success thus far.
COUNTDOWN #7-6
by Paul Dini, Adam Beechen, Tom Derenick, Mike Norton and others
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm a few weeks behind.
Honestly, I don't really understand why the comics blogosphere is so down on this series. I've been enjoying it, although that could have something to do with being able to sit and read the whole thing in a couple of days. It compares favourably to 52, which had some stories I enjoyed (i.e. Booster Gold) and others I was bored pantsless by (i.e. anything with Renee Montoya). Countdown is a lot more even. I haven't enjoyed the good bits as much, but there haven't been any plot strands I was tempted to skip over. Also, 52 never did end up tying its stories together into a single plot, whereas all of the threads in Countdown have been a part of the main story. It certainly works better as a single narrative than its predecessor.
These two issues haven't impressed me a great deal, though. Now that the big fightin' on Apokolips is over, the story moves onto the threat of the Morticoccus Virus that Karate Kid is carrying around with him. This one's not as compelling, especially as I don't have a lot of familiarity with Karate Kid and the Legion of Superheroes. Issue #6 is a jarring change of pace, with what amounts to the end of the world being narrated without much urgency. Sure, we know that the world ain't being destroyed, but it would be nice if the writers and/or characters would pretend for a bit. Hopefully the series picks up again after this slump.
INCREDIBLE HERCULES #112-115
by Gerg Pak, Fred Van Lente and Koi Pham
I'm sitting here now, and I still can't believe that just a few months ago I was saying that Hercules couldn't carry a solo title. Honestly, what was I thinking? It's friggin' Hercules, hero of Greek mythology! Sometimes it's hard to get past the way the mythological characters are portrayed in comics to realise that, hey, these are MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS.
So yeah, it turns out that Hercules is interesting enough for his own series. And it turns out that it's great. In the aftermath of World War Hulk, Herc and genius kid Amadeus Cho are on the run from the government after aiding the Hulk. But really, that's just a backdrop for the conflict between Ares and Hercules (which involves a fistfight on the SHIELD Helicarrier during a missile barrage, just so you know).
The only thing I don't like about the series is Amadeus Cho, who seriously needs about fifty smacks in the mouth. And yet, I feel as though Pak genuinely thinks the character is endearing, and not annoying. Hopefully the kid gets less irritating in future.
IRON MAN: ENTER THE MANDARIN #1-6
by Joe Casey and Eric Kanete
This is another one of Joe Casey's revisionist miniseries. This time it's the first appearance of the Mandarin that gets the remastered treatment, and just in time for the collected edition to be on shelves for the film. I've always liked the old-school Iron Man set-up, and the Mandarin was interesting back then despite his roots in idea of the Yellow Peril. Casey does a solid job here, and does so without majorly contradicting the original story. The only thing that gets no coverage is the origin of the Mandarin's rings, but I suppose the Space Dragons might be a little difficult for the movie audience to swallow.
JLA CLASSIFIED #50-54
by Roger Stern and John Byrne
Well, a by-line with those two guys on it is the only reason I need to check something out. And you know what? You probably already know whether you'll like this one. There are no surprises on offer here, just a solid old-school super-hero story where the JLA fight an alien who has a weird fixation on the gods of Earth. If there's a weakness here it's the knowledge that, back in the day, this would probably have been over on two parts. Oh, and the villain ends up being a lot less interesting than I was expecting after the first issue. But besides that it's a lot of fun action, and John Byrne proves that he still has the chops.
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #17-19
by Alan Burnett and Ed Benes
So, I'm assuming that this is a tie-in to Countdown. Lots of villains have been arrested by the Suicide Squad and shipped off to parts unknown. In this arc the JLA find out where they are - a prison planet/rip-off of Marvel's Negative Zone prison. Which is an excuse for boring confrontations between the JLA and the Suicide Squad, and a revelation that was pretty obvious. I despair of DC when they can't even make their flagship title any good, I really do.
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #5-7 (just the Ka-Zar story)
by Christos Gage and Joyce Chin
Just a word of explanation is warranted here - I'm in the habit of reading most of my comics only when the complete story arc is done, so with an anthology title like Marvel Comics Presents that means I'm reviewing about a quarter of the comics listed above. Eventually I'll get to the other material inside, but for now it's just the Ka-Zar arc.
Despite the shoddy art, there's a certain amount of fun to be had here. The plot is dead simple, and I get the feeling that it's just Christos Gage playing with his Marvel toys. You know when you're five, and events go roughly like this - "Well, an evil corporation attacks the Savage Land! Then Ka-Zar fights back! Then Killer Shrike fights Ka-Zar! Then the Plunderer helps Killer Shrike, even though the Punisher blew his head off during Civil War! And Stegron is there! And Brainchild is there! And Shanna is there in a very small fur bikini! And, and, and..." Yeah. And so on. So I was all set to denounce this arc as being devoid of merit, but then Stegron goes and summons an army of zombie dinosaurs. So it's cool.
There are three one-shot stories in here as well. Issue #5 has a Wrecking Crew story that explains why the intelligent Thunderball isn't their leader in perfunctory fashion. There's a pretty good Captain America tale in #6 about another soldier who can't serve because he's 4-F. And there is also an abysmal and incomprehensible Sub-Mariner short in issue #7.
PENANCE: RELENTLESS #1-5
by Paul Jenkins and Paul Gulacy
2008 has been a series of new lows in the world of Doctor Doom. Most famously there was this panel, which may just be the least awesome thing Doom has ever said.
But in this series, Doom is outwitted by Speedball. And not just regular Speedball, but Angry Emo Spike-Wearing Speedball. It's a tragedy. And sure, you can say it was just a Doombot, but then the fact would still remain that DOCTOR DOOM DESIGNED A ROBOT THAT WAS OUTSMARTED BY SPEEDBALL. And that's embarassing in itself.
Oh yeah, Angry Speedball aka Penance hunts down and punishes Nitro for killing a lot of students and kicking off Marvel's Civil War. Avoid it, it's ludicrous in all the wrong ways. Why a good writer like Paul Jenkins continues to take this character seriously is a geniune mystery.
SECRET INVASION SAGA #1
by Lots of People
Look kids, continuity! God-damn, but I love these kinds of things entirely too much. The whole issue consists of Tony Stark reviewing the history of the Skrulls and their doings on Earth, which is mainly an excuse to reprint panels from a lot of awesome, semi-awesome, and totally un-awesome comics. If you want to read Secret Invasion but have no idea what a Skrull is, this is the book for you. The same applies if you geek out over Marvel history, which is me sorted.
TRANSFORMERS SPOTLIGHT - MIRAGE #1
by George Strayton and Guido Guidi
I was enjoying the IDW Transformers comics about a year ago, but since then they've wandered off my radar - which is pretty significant given that I am a totally hardcore Transformers fanboy. The spotlight issues tell one-shot stories that focus on a single character, and have featured some of the strongest work from the line. This time out it's Mirage, the semi-conflicted Autobot who transforms into a racing car. Mirage's inner conflict over which side of the war he should be on is the centre of the story, but it's trying to be too clever. Faking the readers out with a dream sequence is okay, but twice in one story is overkill. I still miss the Dreamwave stuff, to be honest.
UNCANNY X-MEN #497
by Ed Brubaker and Mike Choi
The crazy 'hippies in San Francisco' arc continues, as Cyclops and Emma Frost investigate just why the city has reverted back to the Summer o' Love. Mainly it's an excuse to dress Cyke up like Sgt Pepper, but there's just so much to like about Brubaker's current run, not least of which is that he's presenting the only current version of Cyclops that isn't an overzealous douchebag. Throw in the B-plot with Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus fighting giant robots in Russia, and it's golden.
X-FORCE #3
by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost and Clayton Crain
Ahahaha! In this issue, the mutant-hating Purifiers resurrect a whole passel of old X-Men villains, and dear god, what a brains-trust this team is going to be. I won't spoil who they are, but it's a cavalcade of buffoons. It's easy to mock super-villains, mainly because the genre demands that they always lose, but these guys are losers on a whole different scale.
The rest of the comic has the X-Force team rescuing Rahne and dealing with the aftermath of her capture, but it's not very good, to be blunt. In ten years time, X-Force is the comic that we'll be mocking. Nothing changes, really.
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