Tony Harris might be a gigantic asshole...

... but I can see where he was coming from. Now, I'm not going to launch into an expletive-riddled misogynistic rant about fake-cosplay-girls, but I can understand why he would be skeptical of girls at cons, especially after the realization I came to today. Let me explain - I was riding the bus back to my dorm after picking up comics today, and I was reading the latest issue of Wolverine and the X-Men to kill the twenty minutes of time until I got back to Akers. When I got on the bus, it was relatively empty, but a bunch of people got on at a later stop. Bus is kind of crowded now, but I still have two seats open to my left on the bench I’m sitting on. The bench opposite from me has four of its five seats taken up, with the middle one open. A girl sits down in the open seat farthest from me on my bench, and I glance over because the movement out of the corner of my eye distracts me. It’s a glance that maybe takes a half-second, but we make eye-contact. I may be a little socially awkward, but I’m not that awkward that I was the cause of what happens next.

She literally sat down for a second, sees what I’m reading, and opts to get up and sit on the opposite bench. She saw me reading a comic and she had to get up because she couldn’t even sit on the same bench as me. It’s not like I was reading an Image swim-suit special or something equally sexist, this was Wolverine and the X-Men, a comic that I would think would appeal to the largest number of demographics out of what the Big 2 publish. After I finish reading and we get to another stop, more people get off and more get on, and this time both seats next to me are taken up by women.

Now, I’m not going to pull a Dante and start making broad generalization about broads, but this isn’t the first time something like this has happened; after two years here at school and riding the bus, it’s become a familiar occurrence. I’ve noticed that men don’t have as much of a problem sitting next to a guy reading comics on the bus, but women do; not all women, there have been times when women haven’t avoided me because I happened to reading the latest issue of Justice League. My point is that there is a stigmata associated with comics, specifically in the minds of women. To say there isn’t is just being naïve. So I can understand why Mr. Harris would be skeptical of girls at cons, and how his suspicions would be “confirmed” by asking a cosplay girl about the source material for her costume and finding out she doesn’t know the difference between Cassandra Cain and Barbara Gordon.

That said, there’s a lot he’s not taking into account. For one, cons are a mecca for geeks, and you don’t have to be a comic nerd to be considered a geek in general – it’s a pretty large umbrella that people can fit under. My practice has been to attach an adjective – videogame geek, comic geek, costume geek, etc. So saying these women are there just for the male attention is a baseless accusation since most of these skimpy costumes are also incredibly elaborate; you’d have to be obsessed with them enough that you’re a geek for costumes. You’re technical know-how in this area would be well beyond the average person’s, the same way a comic geek’s knowledge of continuity and characters would also be well beyond that of the average person’s. Both groups have equal right to be there. If you’re going to use the justification that because they don’t know jack about the character they’re cosplaying as, they shouldn’t be allowed to be there, then a reverse argument can also be used. I’ve seen a lot of photos of male cosplayers who look like they bought their costumes, so if you don’t know jack about making costumes, you shouldn’t be allowed to cosplay. Is that fair?

Now, I’ve never been to a con, mostly because I don’t want to spend a minimum of three hours on the road to go to pay a bunch of money to get into a packed convention center, where I’m probably interested in less than 10% of what’s there. Just not worth it for me right now. From what I’ve heard though, it seems like not only are the number of women to men cosplayers is highly disproportionate, with more women than men, but out of the number of women at cons, most of them are cosplayers too. Maybe if the ratio of cosplaying women to non-cosplaying women was more equivalent to the male ratio, Tony wouldn’t feel the way he does. Not to say he’s correct in feeling the way he does (although everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how moronic it is), but it would probably be a good sign for the comics industry if they could draw more female fans who are purely obsessed with the source material the way the male audience is, instead of just bringing in costume geeks.

This is a problem the industry has had trouble correcting, historically speaking. While I’m glad that there are people who love these costumes enough that they’re willing to spend months creating one to wear for maybe three days at a con, I don’t see a reason why they shouldn’t also be in love with the continuity and characters too; I’m not saying they have to, I’m saying the industry needs to do more to get them into the source material. These cosplayers obviously have an interest in these comics, but they don’t want to read the comics, and who would blame them considering how much we as fans bitch about the schlock that gets pumped out? Marvel and DC need to take a hard look at this phenomena because it shows just how much they’ve failed to draw people in, but also that there’s hope for their properties because they’re that iconic and enduring that they can still draw people’s interest despite the crap. Sometimes it’s not even that they’re producing crap – Marvel is publishing an excellent X-Men comic with Wolverine and the X-Men, but its sales are dropping off despite this – why? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they’re more pushing books like All-New X-Men, which only appeal to the same shrinking audience (that’s my theory), when they coud be embracing series with wider appeal like WatXM, X-Factor or the recently cancelled New Mutants.

Comic Reviews for Last Week

Comic Reviews for 11/20/12

I know these are technically comics from two weeks ago (or older), but they were the comics I picked up from my pull last Wednesday.

Bloodstrike #32 – This was another solid, enjoyable issue from Tim Seely and Franc Gaston. This book really is the unloved middle child of the “good” Liefeld revamps; Prophet is the intellectual with a scholarship to Harvard, Glory is the athlete playing quarterback at LSU, and Bloodstrike is the one that graduates with a 3.5 from a state university and ends up with a high five-figure job – respectable by anyone’s standards, but definitely in the shadow of the other two (Supreme is that friend you make on a family vacation that you know you’ll never see again and Youngblood is your three-legged dog that you have to love just for hanging in there).

Seely delivers some melodrama, action, dark humor, actually witty banter, and a legitimately shocking reveal while also throwing in some of that Alan Moore-ish Silver Age meta-commentary; he’s done this in the past with the Slingstone flashbacks, but it’s especially prevalent here. It was sort of like because he was using Suprema, he had to work in some references to these guys’ less shady pasts in the 1960s. It works though, and the mystery does draw you in. Gaston serves up the usual clean, animation-style art; everyone’s costumes look detailed without looking detailed, if you understand what I’m saying.

It’s a shame Seely’s run is coming to an end after two more issues, since he’s put out some genuinely enjoyable comics, plus Keatingue’s run on Glory ends one or two months after that – Liefeld’s reboot books were surprisingly good, so it’s sad that this new era at Image is basically at an end. One thing I hope happens before the end of the run is that I get to see Seely kill off that annoying Born Again director; one of the better characters he’s written, he’s a slimy fuck that you really come to hate. I’m praying that he’s been saving a particularly gruesome, karmic and cathartic (for the reader) demise for this bastard in his last issue.

Grade: 3.5/5

World’s Finest #6 – This issue should be called “Huntress costarring Powergirl and Robin,” because this is really all about her. This isn’t bad, because Powergirl got the focus earlier on in the series when they were fighting the much more cosmic level threat of Hakou, while this issue introduces a street-level team-up with Damian. Levitz gets some mileage out of the “heroes have a misunderstanding and fight” trope, which actually works here. Helena has “borrowed” some money from this Earth’s Bruce Wayne once or twice, and Damian catches her in the act, which leads him to believe that she is the person who’s been siphoning funds from his accounts every week. They fight, and it’s kind of cool to see how Levitz plays with the idea that these characters are not-really-but-still-kind-of siblings. Powergirl also discovers some mysterious Apocalypse stuff, and the issue ends with everybody teamed up.

The plot feels a little thin, but the interaction between Damian and Helena is worth it because of the strong scripting, plus it’s gorgeous as all hell thanks to Kevin Maguire. Perez turns in some pencils that are a little weak, but this issue is mostly Maguire so it’s not a huge problem. Not much else to say about the art, if you don’t know who they are you should look them up.

Grade: 3.5/5

Earth 2 #6 – This is a strong conclusion to Robinson’s first arc on the book. The cast finally has a team dynamic going on and the dialogue is the usual above-average quality. The only real problem with the plotting is that if you tried to jump in with this issue, it’d be pretty hard to figure out what the hell was going on since it just throws all the information at you in the beginning. It’s not impossible to understand (in fact, he does a better job catching you up than most writers do these days), but it does make you question if these issues needed to be so padded. The twist (or maybe I should say twists) at the end do decent job of getting Grundy out of the way and setting up the next arc; Alan’s decision makes sense, and the Atom obviously has to honor his commitments to the military before he could realistically join this team. I’m very interested to see where Robinson goes in the next few months as he gets this team together.

The art is what really shines, though; Nicola Scott has an interesting style, sort of like if Ivan Reis was doing a Jim Lee impression. It looks great during the action scenes, where her figures have Reis’ grace but the action itself exudes Lee’s dynamism. This isn’t to say that she can’t do dialogue scenes, because the talking heads pages have just as much energy. Everybody looks like they’re doing something in an environment where there’s stuff to do. This is hard to pull off, but Scott succeeds magnificently.

Grade: 4/5

Scarlet Spider #11 and Venom #27 – I’m reviewing both of these at the same time (AT THE SAME DAMN TIME!) since they’re parts four and five of the Minimum Carnage crossover. Not much to say about the crossover itself, the whole thing is kind of meh, with Venom and Kaine chasing Carnage into the Microverse in order to stop him from destroying the Macroverse. The action scenes are have some cool bits, Kaine gets some character growth, but overall I don’t care at all about the Microverse or its inhabitants. It’s just a boring setting with boring characters. About the only enjoyable parts are the fights with our heroes and Carnage or Kaine’s Yost-written dialogue exchanges.

The art is pretty good through-out though. Declan Shalvey is a guy that I’ve come to like because of this crossover; he’s not from any particular style I recognize, but it’s a nice clean-yet-rough  cartoony style, so I hope he continues to get work. Khoi Pham only has a few pages in the Scarlet Spider issue, but they are rough, and not in the good, non-traditional artist way (I suspect this has something to do with him trying to pencil Cyberforce AT THE SAME DAMN TIME!). No, the real surprise is Reilly Brown, who does the bulk of the issue. He does a passable Ryan Stegman impression, which I like because ever since he left the book they’ve still used covers from him. My feeling is that if you’re going to have Stegman covers, it doesn’t hurt to bring on a penciller who can draw like him to do interiors. I guess he’s only doing a couple more issues before Pham is back full-time, but Marvel should look into getting him on SS as the main penciller.

Overall, not a bad bunch of issues, but I’m looking forward to seeing Kaine back in Houston next month.

Grade: 3/5

Uncanny X-Force #33 – Not much to say about this; it was good. Once again, Rick Remender brings the heat with another installment in his “Final Execution” arc. There’s a lot of strong character work throughout the issue; Deadpool seems more 3-dimensional in this one issue than in the combined last three years of his solo series and all its spin-offs. It’s also a bit more natural for Nightcrawler to be a little more selfish with his motivations; he betrayed the team last issue to get his revenge on Blob, which is followed up here in both hilarious and horrifying fashion. Wolverine and Daken’s exchange is also a little heart-wrenching; Wolverine’s appeal to his sone feels genuine rather than an attempt at cheap pathos by the author, and the conclusion to their conversation is natural too. Also, I like the meta-aspect to Daken’s death-trap for Logan; this is something fans on the VS. boards have been saying for years, but I won’t spoil it here.

The art is also adequate; Phil Noto has kind of a poor man’s Steve McNiven thing going on, where his characters seem a bit rubbery. I like it though, and the coloring is, as always, great in making the whole series feel consistent despite the multitude of artists on the title.

Grade: 4/5

Green Lantern #14 – Same with UXF, there’s not a lot to say here. I love Mahnke’s art, and Johns continues to develop Simon Baz into a very smart, nuanced character with a lot of background to him. His relationship with his sister is a refreshing change from the usual supporting characters you see in comics (basically they’re just fellow heroes, love interests, friends and employers). I also really liked the play on the old trope of “new superhero fights the veterans,” it seems a whole lot more logical than the usual “misunderstanding;” of course he’s going to try to reason with them, they’re the Justice League. When the ring tries to defend itself though, I thought it made sense what followed. Simon doesn’t try to fight them, he tries to run away because he knows they’re going to ask questions he doesn’t have the answers to, and lets not forget that this Justice League is a bit more douchey; I wouldn’t want to stick around either.

 That said, I don’t care about the Rise of the Third Army crap, it doesn’t make a lot of sense and it takes up space that could have been better spent on the much more interesting Baz.

Grade: 3/5

Batman #14 – Once again, I don’t have a lot to say (maybe if I had the issues in front of me right now?) It’s another solid installment in Death of the Family; you see a bit of detective Bruce and, and I like the Joker’s “Greatest Hits” approach to this crime. I also saw a bit more of Romita Jr. in Capullo’s pencils; I’ve always looked at his art on this book as Frank Miller doing a riff on Batman TAS, but I’ve seen hints of Jr. in Capullo’s work too, and especially in the splash-page in the tank. On the other hand, this story lacks a bit of the adrenaline and Lovecraftian horror of Snyder’s last arc, which definitely hampered my enjoyment of the issue. It’s still a well-paced issue, but it lacks that element of mystery Snyder is so good at.

Grade: 3.5/5

Detective Comics #14 – It’s ironic that Ethan Van Sciver is going to be taking over art chores once David Finch wraps up in December, because I would describe Jason Fabok’s pencils on this series so far as Van Sciver doing a finch riff. That is to say, he tempers some of the better moody and stylistic tendencies of Finch with the detailed and competent draftsmanship of Sciver. Layman also continues to build on his impressive start from last month. He’s got an ear for dialogue, which is always a bonus in my book, plus he seems to have a better grasp of the Penguin and Bruce than Tony Daniel did (not to disparage his solid work, which I enjoyed). I like the subtle approach to the Penguin, too, which works better with Batman than the flashy floating casino we’ve mostly seen him in before. This isn’t to say that Layman doesn’t bring some flash to the script – the fight scene at the beginning reminds me a bit of the one in Batman #2, where Bruce (not Batman) fights off the Talon, and it’s conclusion brings a promising twist.

The back-up is forgettable, though. It’s not bad, but not great either so yeah: forgettable.

Grade: 4/5

X-Men First Class #1-2 – This was… disappointing. I figured this mini-series wouldn’t be that great since it was basically trying to cash in on the success of a two-year old movie, only with more Wolverine, but it’s drawn by Neal Adams. This isn’t particularly bad, it’s just that it’s not all that engaging. The plot is that Wolverine decides to start the X-Men before Xavier… because? I guess he sees a mutant die and the Feds act shady, so he decides to get a group of mutants together. It just gets weaker from there. His first recruit is Sabertooth (I wonder if that will come back to haunt him, he says sarcastically…) and then we get a scene that is directly ripped off from the First Class movie where Magneto kills some Nazis in Argentina, only this version lacks all the subtlety. Then they pick up a Yeti, a holo-projectionist, and the dead mutant from the beginning. The scene where they try to recruit Magneto is actually pretty good, plus the action is very well done, but this isn’t enough to save these issues.

Also, you’d think with an all-star like Neal Adams drawing this, everybody would look bad-ass, but you’d be way off. Wolverine and Holo are decent, but the rest of the cast looks pretty lame, especially Magneto. I’ve seen Magneto with a mullet before, and Jim Lee actually pulled that off, but here? Every time you see him, it takes you right out of the comic because this thing is hideous. He’s got like a widow’s peak going on, and his hair is all stringy… it just doesn’t look good. You throw in the Victorian cape he sports too, and the guy looks like that kid who sat alone in the lunchroom reading Warcraft novels.

Grade: 2/5

Why is comic art sexist?

CBR just had an interview last week with Tony Daniel, where they asked him about drawing female characters, and I thought this was interesting:

Tony Daniel: That's a tough question, because I love all the characters, but I'd say Wonder Woman is probably my favorite to draw. She's always been a character I'd like to tackle, along with Superman and Green Lantern. She's strong, beautiful and I like trying to capture all that with my art. Plus, drawing women comes easier for me than men. I don't tinker as much and things just move faster for me. It makes my day easier when drawing female characters. After Wondy, I'd say Superman, for obvious reasons

That bolded bit is something I’ve believed about most artists for a while; when people talk about sexism in comics, they talk about how it’s a boys club, that these drawings of women are what guys like to see, that they can sell the original artwork for more money with skimpy outfits and pron poses, etc. but I think this is the main reason artists draw such sexist shots of women – it’s easier. For one, it requires less detail, second, there’s a lot of artists who’ve drawn these clichéd poses and what-not in in the past, so there’s a lot of reference material for drawing it. Porn-women require less detail, while Ross Campbell’s Glory probably has more detail to it than the average male character.

Also, we need to factor in internet porn – as Linkara has pointed out in several of his videos, people don’t buy comics for fan-service anymore. Maybe manga, because the largest demographic for that medium is like 10-15 year olds (or at least is was when I was that age reading manga), but look at the demographic for comics – it’s not only targeted at 18 year olds and older, but the majority of people buying them are 20-35 year olds. These are men who are old enough to own their own computers with their own privacy settings; they can walk into an adult movie store – they don’t need to get their jollies from superhero comics when they can find actual porn parodies online of their favorite comics.

Plus, I doubt the average artist makes all that much from selling their original art, considering how many pages they put out a year and the average price of a page. Besides, if you really need a sexy Tony Daniel-drawn shot of Catwoman, wouldn’t it just be easier to pay him to draw a commission where you can have him drawing her doing whatever you want? Not that I’d ever want something like that…

Basically, artists need to put just a little more effort into their craft instead of tracing the same damn Jim Lee Rogue scans every time the script requires them to draw a woman.

Here’s the rest of the article if you’re curious:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42197

It's still porn...

Okay, so... where to begin?

If you went to CBR's homepage at anytime today until around five minutes ago, you would have noticed a very ironic thing hanging in the background - a giant ad for Next Crisis, or whatever the hell it's called. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's this website that does live-action videos of admittedly attractive women in skimpy superhero outfits getting tied-up and tortured by supervillains - it's essentially superhero S&M porn. There's no nudity (from what I've heard; you have to pay to watch and this guy doesn't pay for what he can get for free. Ohhhhh, yeah!), and I guess George Perez designed some of the costumes.

However... it's still porn. That's all it is. And porn that's very insulting to women (so at least it's a lot like the comics that inspired it...) I read an article in Wizard a couple of years ago, back when this thing was taking off, and they mentioned that the female heroes never win; because the men don't want to see that.

What makes this so ironic is that not too long ago you had Tony Harris shoot his idiot mouth off about female cosplayers, saying some very misogynistic things. this was followed up by a lot of bloggers pointing out how much of an idiot he was and how his sentiments are not representative of all the fans or creators of the medium. A lot of these posts were on CBR. So what does CBR do? They let a sexist porn site dominate their homepage with the main background ad. Classy.

Edit: So I guess it's called Next GLOBAL Crisis, and the ad is still up, depending on what you click on. Have a look, it's just bunch of shots of the girls in provocative poses and costumes. Yeah, totally not offensive to women. And they wonder why women say they feel like comics are a boys boys' club...

Reviews For last Week's Comics

It took me a while to figure out how I was going to grade these things (that’s why this is up so late, plus the fact that this took longer than I thought it would), but here’s my first stab at comic reviews. Basically, I’m just going to review what I pick up at the shop Wednesday and try to have the reviews up by Friday. I figure I can have them read by Wednesday afternoon, let my thoughts stew for 24 hours, and then have something up every Friday. But we’ll find out if this works in actual practice as we go.

Okay, so first I want to cover a bunch of back-issues I picked up since they were on sale.

Cyberforce #1 – Yeah, I have no idea what the hell is going on here. Is the writer trying to go for a “Days of Future Past” angle? Is the dystopic future we see through-out the issue the horrible future that the red-headed chick is warning us about? Or do things get worse? And while I’m sure she mentions her name at some point in the story, I still don’t know what it is. Also, who the hell is she talking to in the narration? Don’t get me wrong, I’m used to the internal dialogue-thing comics use instead of an omniscient narrator, but the girl is literally having a conversation with someone we never see. A lot of stuff is thrown at you with extremely vague details, so that you’re not even sure if the writer knows where he’s going with the plot.

This actually feels like a good example of what people mean when they say, “Shitty ‘90s Image writing” – mysteriousness for mysteriousness’ sake, so that when you take that away, it’s nothing but padded action sequences. I’ll say this for the comic, the art is actually pretty good. Clear storytelling, plus it is some of the better pencils I’ve seen from Khoi Pham; while you never learn much about anyone in this comic, they’re at least rendered well.  Plus, there’s the cover and two extra pages of pencils from Marc Silvestri, a guy who I’m always happy to see work from. Also, this comic was free because of a Kickstarter campaign, so I have to give Top Cow props for that.  Still, it’s safe to say I won’t be picking up issue two.

Grade: 2/5 (and that’s only because it was free)

Avengers #13-17 and New Avengers #14-16 – I know this is kind of a cheat to grade them all as one lot, but I think this works because A) they’re all tie-ins and B) they’re all too old for anyone to give much of a fuck about the single issue grades; people picking these issues up are probably getting them in trade, so it doesn’t hurt to approach them like that. But on to the review…

These issues are a perfect example of a writer who doesn’t understand his craft, which is weird since I think Bendis started out as an artist. He uses the weirdest damn structure for both series, where he’ll have a page or two of talking heads followed by a couple pages of action with no dialogue.   I get that he’s trying to incorporate his Oral History of the Avengers bit into the comic itself, but he does it in the most awkward way. For one, he actually shows a better way to do it than the one he uses the most in the comics, by having both the talking head panels and large action splash pages all on the same page, with the people in the small dialogue panels describing the way they saw the events that were going on action panels. This works, it adds a retrospective element that can maybe even provide a glimpse into the character’s psyche. But when he segregates the panels, it just becomes… boring.

 And Bendis, you had Mike Deodato, JRJR and Chris Bachalo! Why not play up their strengths at rendering action scenes? This is more for Deodato and JRJR than Bachalo (who can make talking-head comics fun, if he’s given the freedom to do what he wants, but he’s too tightly regimented and given way too many talky-pages to even save his issues). You can see that all of these guys give an honest try at these pages, but after a while you can see where they just say, “Fuck it, he wants talking heads? That’s what he’ll get, but he never said they had to look different.”

Negatives aside, the art is still very good. All three guys do a great job on the few action bits they get to draw, and before they start to get as bored with the talky-pages as we are reading them, they make an honest attempt to liven them up some, which does help. Bendis does also make some of the fights feel like they’re on an epic scale, and he does a solid job with characterization (I especially like the beginning of the Hawkeye Spider-woman romance in these issues). Plus, Squirrel Girl got a freaking spotlight issue, which is always tops in my book.

Grade: 3/5 (if not for the art, these wouldn’t have even qualified for 2/5)

X-Men #38 – This was actually pretty good. I had my doubts that anyone would be able to follow Brian Wood’s excellent run, which I still wish would have lasted a lot longer, and may have saved this book from getting cancelled. That said, Seth Peck’s first issue was a nice little team-up issue. I’m shocked a team-up with Domino and Daredevil works as well as it does, but that is a testament to how good a writer Peck is. He really sells it with the banter; it’s very charming. Seeing these two characters play off each other makes me want to see them interact more. In fact, while I wasn’t keen on the whole “X-Men Team-Up” aspect this book had for the first thirty or so issues, if they’d been as well handled as this issue, it could’ve worked and ths title wouldn’t have felt so superfluous up until the latter half of Gischler’s run.

The plot itself moves along rather nicely, it sets up why these two characters are in the same place rather quickly and then gets right to the action. Seeing Domino’s luck powers in a casino is a rather fun bit (something I’ve actually thought about more than you’d think), and the art from Paul Azaceta serves this kind of story very well. Paul has a more old-school, maybe even indy style that is less about flash and more about storytelling, which is clear at conveying one action to the next, plus doing a nice job of supplementing Seth’s strong character work with great facial expressions and body language. This is definitely a collaboration where the two parties mesh to enhance the other’s work. It really is a shame this book is ending two issues from now, but at least it’s going out on a high-note.

Grade: 4.5/5

Wolverine and the X-Men #20 – This series continues to grow on me, and I thought the first issue of it was practically revelatory, too. There are a lot of reasons why this is my favorite book every month, but I think the most important one is character work – Jason Aaron is a master when it comes to pitch-perfect dialogue that not only captures the essence of a character, but can also reveal a lot of what’s going on with their current mental state at the same time. When a character does something, it’s not because the plot demands it, but because it’s the only natural course of action for them. That holds true for this issue, which continues to catch us up on what Warren’s personality and powers have evolved into since the end of the Dark Angel Saga, while also introducing a new mutant, Shark Girl (picture Wolfsbane, but with scales, fins and lots more teeth). Jason also works in a couple of members of the Invisibles, a group he introduced at the end of his Wolverine run.

The whole issue works really well as a bit of a riff on the first appearance of Kitty Pryde, where several X-Men have to fight it out with some Hellfire Club goons and The White Queen, all over who got to recruit Kitty. It’s well paced, and the dialogue is snappy. If I have any gripes with it, it’s the art and what he does with Angel. Steve Sanders is a talented artist, and his cartoony style not only fits well with the style of past artists on the book but also does a more than decent job of getting across action and emotion. That said, his Beast just looks goofy (although his Shark Girl looks pretty freaking amazing), plus the coloring isn’t doing him any favors. I’m not sure what Marvel was thinking, but they paired Sanders, who is a cartoony artist by nature, with a colorist that used the kind of color palate and Photoshop effects you’d want from a Greg Land colorist – it’s not the prettiest looking combination.

I also mentioned what he does with Angel’s powers, which was to add energy blasts/sword. I don’t have a problem with this, and that is because I planned on doing basically the same exact thing if I ever got to do the X-Men. This is the second time Aaron has beaten me to the punch (the first was Iceman), but I can’t really hold this against him just because great minds think alike.

Grade: 4.5/5 (the only thing holding this back from a 5 is the coloring)

AVX Consequences #5 – this was a bittersweet issue; I agree with a lot of other critics, this series was basically Uncanny X-Men #21-25, and it’s a hell of a way to cap a run. Gillen, since taking over the old Uncanny from Fraction, has done a brilliant job of dragging it from the boring, poorly-written muck that was the Brubaker-Fraction period. While Cyclops couldn’t be salvaged (I still hate the whole Utopia/General bullshit), Gillen at least wrote a Cyclops that A) was in character based on the previous interpretation and B) a Cyclops that I didn’t immediately detest. That writing is present here -  Cyclops is a conflicted man, he knows what he’s doing is morally wrong, but at the same time he’s doing what he feels is necessary. He’s a Scott that is aware of the way his current philosophy is at odds with that of the Scott of ten years ago, but he can rationalize it based on what mutants have endured in that ten years.

The actual issues moves along at a brisk pace, picking up from the cliffhanger of the last issue, and managing to work in a lot of information. We get an exciting break-out scene where everyone’s powers are on display, we see the new Uncanny team in action as a unit, dangling threads introduced in this mini are tied up and Scott finishes his transformation into Magneto-Lite that started all the way back in Deadly Genesis. The character itself is pretty weak sauce now (he feels like a high-school student’s first fan-fiction version after they’ve finished reading Whedon’s run for the first time), but Gillen makes the process itself very compelling, which is why I’m so sad to see him leave the X-Men because he could make the most poorly thought out editorially mandated direction at least readable, and all too make room for a guy who used talking head stories while cribbing from the X-Men to make the Avengers work as an A-list book – who will Bendis crib from take the X-Men back to the top? But that’s a topic for another day…

One touch I really liked was Scott’s letter to Wolverine, where he acknowledged the shift in the roles they play – ten years ago, Wolverine would be the one taking a harder stance while Scott would have cautioned him about how that would alienate humanity and be a step away from Xavier’s dream. That’s how much these characters have grown (yes, grown); they built to this, with Scott getting more and more cynical as things got worse for mutants after Deadly Genesis, and Wolverine seeing the flaws in his old philosophy by watching one of his closest allies take it up. A brilliant stroke from Gillen.

The art is more than serviceable, but I don’t think it fits this more action-heavy chapter of the series; I have to question Marvel’s art scheduling, because his style very easily could have worked on one of the earlier issues, while one of the earlier artists (like Raney) would have fit better here.

Grade: 4/5

All-New X-Men #1 – This was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. Yes, I still hate this new version of Cyclops because he’s basically a much less intimidating, more platitude-spouting version of Magneto, but this issue somewhat works. It has flaws (that’s for damn sure), but it has some nice moments. For one, I like how Iceman points out what I’ve been think for a while now, and Hank’s plan isn’t all that bad considering the X-Men are probably the biggest users of time-travel stories. The plot moves along quickly, Bendis introduces a new mutant (who has powers I planned on giving a new mutant should I ever get to write the X-Men; I think it’s safe to say I’ll have a post down the road about Marvel constantly doing this), he further establishes the role Cyclops’ new team will play from the end of AVXC #5, and he sets up the premise for this new series.

It’s a lot of stuff, and maybe I’m being greedy or nostalgic for the old days, but I think he could have done more. While he packs in quite a few plot elements, I think he could have taken out some of the more padded dialogue exchanges (already we’re seeing one of Bendis’ eccentricities hold the series back) so that he could have ended the issue with the original X-Men confronting Scott’s current Extinction Team. There’s also a bit of a talking heads problem here too, where several of the characters feel like cyphers. Still, it could have been worse. As for the art, not much to say here; I paid for Immonen, I got Immonen. His pencils do their typically great job, they’re dynamic while also telling the story adequately.

All in all, I’m looking forward to the next issue, but I don’t see why this or the upcoming new Uncanny book are going to be the flagship books when you have the much better (and more revolutionary, and more X-Men-like, etc) Wolverine and the X-Men from Jason Aaron. He’s proven himself time and time again since Schism with this book, and mark my words, he’ll consistently beat Bendis out every month when it comes to quality. Seriously, Marvel, stop sucking Bendis’ dick, he’s you’re Geoff Johns, not your Grant Morrison (that would be Aaron).

Grade: 3.5/5

Next time, I'm doing fewer books (I didn't even review all the books I got last week!)

Cable and X-Force

This is a book I want to talk about briefly because it is the one book from Marvel NOW that I'm looking forward to the most (other than the mystery Joe Mad! project that has been teased for a while, and which will apparently be just the beginning of his return to comics). For one, check out what Nick Lowe had to say about Sal Larroca on the book:

"Larroca's work on the series was described as a reinvention of his work – a mix of his early style from the '90s and the more photo realistic art he did on "Invincible Iron Man" of which Lowe said, 'He's quick and amazing. People complain about how we can switch up artists on books. That's not going to happen here.'"

I love this; I'm a big fan of his old school work, stuff like X-Treme X-Men, which has a bit of an anime look to it. He used this kind of style on his AVX Versus issue, which was a very nice surprise from what I was expecting based on his last few years on Iron Man. The guy really is talented when he's not trying to be a poor man's Greg Land (fuck that guy). Also, the promise that we will actually get a run where the artist will do as many issues as the writer is something I'm looking forward to, since it's something we don't get enough of these days. So far, the only comic I'm reading that is doing that is Snyder's Batman. A book with a good main artist that can hit deadlines is always a huge plus in my book.

There's not much I can say about Dennis' writing, but I've heard good things and I like to see young writers on the rise, so I'm rooting for him. Plus, take a look at this other tidbit:

"There are some inspirations from '90s X-Force here for sure," Lowe said. "But there's also influence from 'Uncanny X-Force' and so on...both this and the new 'Uncanny X-Force' came about at the same time." Lowe said both X-Force series would pick up on the broader ideas from the last run written by Rick Remender as Remender did from Craig Kyle and Chris Yost. But they'd still be differentiated...especially when it comes to the eventual reveal of the mystery big bad of "Cable And X-Force." "We've got some really good dingers we want to try and surprise you guys with.'"

This is another good sign to me. I loved Remender's run, but it seemed to go over the same ground quite a bit, so while I like that this book will try to keep it grounded in that atmosphere, I like that marvel recognized old-school X-Force not only has fans, but good qualities in general; the book really doesn't get its due because of the stigmata from Liefeld, but as soon as Nicieza and Capullo took over, it became the best X-Book at a time when i would say there were a lot of other solid X-Books, and it kept its quality all the way through Milligan's run. Plus, there was the one thing Remender's team lacked - Cable.

Which brings me to the last thing I like about this book - the line-up. As I mentioned, having Cable on the book is great. I think he's a highly underrated character, he's got a good visual, and it gives me hope for Marvel that they have enough confidence in this creative team that they let Cable be the leader instead of trying to keep Wolverine shoe-horned into this team (which is especially good since the ending of AVX Consequences #5, where Scott acknowledges the positive shift in Logan's personality since starting the JG School, and having him stay on X-Force when he's supposed to believe in this school was starting to stretch credibility). You add in Domino (another underused character up until recently), another X-Force standard, along with Forge and Colossus (two favorites of mine), and you've got a solid team. I'm not too keen on Dr. Nemesis, but I said the same thing about Fantomex (a character I really came to love), so I'm keeping an open mind.

I honestly think this book has the potential to be the sleeper hit of the NOW! relaunch, so good luck to everybody involved. I can't wait for it to hit stands. You can find the rest of the article here:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42217

Let's try this again...

Wow, it’s hard to believe I started this blog over a year ago, and then pretty much gave up as soon as I started. I had so much I wanted to do, but time just got away from me. In retrospect, these posts look rather silly to me. It’s not because my opinions have changed (hell, I think they've been reinforced, if anything), it’s the pretty amateurish writing. Well, that and the fact that there’s only three of them. I’m not saying I've gotten all that better since then, but I’d like to think I've improved a little bit.

This time, though, I think I’ll have a much better go.  For one, I've actually got a plan! It always helps to have a plan, right? Plus, I've gotten a pretty big kick in the pants to get something done. My friends are all doing creative things with their lives, making an attempt to make a living off what they love. It’s hard to watch them and not want to be a part of that. While this blog isn't anywhere near as close to what they've been doing, it’s a step in the right direction. If I can push myself to write original content for this blog, I might finally have the drive to write that movie script my buddy’s been pushing me to do.

Here’re just a few ideas I’ve come up with so far:

Comic Reviews – I love to talk comics. I talk about comics the way sports fans talk about their favorite teams, and going to pick up my comics on Wednesdays is what I live for, it’s my equivalent to going to church on Sundays. I’m not thinking of doing anything elaborate, just a brief write-up of everything I pick up on Wednesdays, plus it’ll give me a chance to talk about what I love and loath about current comic trends.

Why I Should Write the X-Men – yeah, I know I’m stealing this bit from MGK’s site, but I love this kind of thing. I love to hear other people’s pitches for comics, and I love to talk about my own. I don’t ever plan doing a Legion or Dr. Strange version and I don’t think MGK wants to do an X-Men one either, so I don’t think I’m stepping on anybody’s toes. I also think I’m a lot more cynical than him, too – I’m pretty sure I’ll never get a chance to write my proposed series for Marvel, so I’ll give more details.

Rants – this is what I’m all about, I love to rant about comics. I can rant about what I like, what I hate, trends in the industry that rub me the wrong way, creators that piss me off – there’s so much material to write about out there.

I know it’s not much, but it’s a start. So yeah, that’s my mission statement – post something. Anything. And see where that takes me. I do have some specific ideas though.