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