Last Issues, First / Last Issues, Second Issues (that could be first issues) and so on...

 

Grand Champion of the Kumite Brian Hibbs is going all Howard Beale above and below this post.  Go check 'em out and get smart.  Or, read me going on about comic books.  Win / win, right?

Disclaimer: This is not to say that Hibbs will follow down the awful rabbit hole Beale goes in Network.  He's just mad as hell and he's out the window telling you about it.  You're human beings, damn it!  Your lives have value!

Capsules of the last weeks after the jump!

Dial H # 15

Mieville / Ponticelli

At $4.99 and stuffed with 38 pages of story Dial H #15 doesn’t disappoint in the “crazy be crazy” department.  My interest in the series had waned after the initial arc but I kept on with it and now at the abbreviated end I’m glad that I did.  Ponticelli’s rough madness grew on me throughout and Mieville introduced some elements I’d never thought of let alone seen in a Dial H comic.  These radical takes on existing property seem to get shorter and shorter runs at relevancy and I’m left wondering what a juggernaut like DC is doing trying to have main line (52) contributions from books like these on a sales level.  One hopes that Vertigo provides a lifeline with realistic expectations.  Oh, also, does anyone give a rip about those Channel 52 things?  Seems an indulgent house ad with no discernible value when “costs keep going up!” (by the by – 7 pages of ads in this one – mostly house and house adjacent)

Though…this is pretty funny.

Prophet #38

Graham / Milonogiannis / Roy

$3.99

First, I got the Jim Rugg cover and it’s pretty great.  I highly recommend seeking out SuperMag #1 by the man himself.  Stylistically and in all different types of delivery Rugg is really and truly a virtuoso talent.  Stunningly flexible. Check it out.  Amazing. (Additional superlatives needed)

Anywho, Prophet is lean and mean as a comic book.  The gang throws us 29 pages of story content with nary an ad.  Even the inside front and back covers are dedicated to story.  It’s a generous gesture and almost certainly costs someone money.  I can’t stress enough how immediately – by breaking the opening page monotony – Prophet slams you into the narrative.  By changing the pace you change the experience.  Not cookie cutter comics.

Also worth mentioning is the continuing and “as the wind blows” back-up selection.  This month, Kate Craig brings us a precious story about the emotional and psychological benefits of not always trying to annihilate anything that has the temerity to exist outside our immediate scope of meticulous plans and schemes.  Being decent, essentially, is its own reward.  The whole thing is enjoyably paced with a nice, emotive style.  Kate also draws amazing and weird hands / paws.  Cool.

Catalyst Comix #2

Casey / McDaid / Maybury / Farinas

$2.99 

Art = NICE.  Each brings an identifiable tone – sense of place – and individual style.  I gushed over each of these in my original review and talked through the motifs they’re employing but I have to say – AGAIN – that the super…SUPER…SUPER star of this thing so far is Brad Simpson.  The color palette for each of these chapters is individual – unique and simply gorgeous.  Colorists just don’t get enough love and this guy is on another level.  A true secret weapon who deserves all the credit in the world for giving this book something to simultaneously help hold it together and break it up.  Get paid, Brad Simpson.  Get paid!

On the other hand your enjoyment of the story is going to be largely dependent on how much you enjoy winking asides.  If, like myself, you generally respond with atrocious and socially unacceptable amounts of sighing and eye-rolling you may want to read this one in the isolation chamber.

At points Casey goes full frontal assault, totally aping Dr. Strangelove, using Vandelay Industries as the company responsible for rebuilding the trashed city (when everyone knows they deal exclusively in latex), and having the group therapy session centerpiece of Change Agents not only fall prey to every, single, boring satirical stereotype trope of such an encounter but also take place in the gymnasium of the Jean M Giraud Fighting Arzachs.

That is to say...it's kind of what you expect from a Joe Casey comic and that's not what I was sold as a "bold re-invention of the super-hero comic experience."

Anywho, all 3 segments here could actually be part of an extended #1 comic.  We’re re-introduced, the supporting cast fleshes out a bit, a new wrinkle is revealed.  I think it’s not a bad strategy early on to give people late to the party a bit of breathing room so, from me at least, the feel of the pace is not too bad.

Still, does this line make any f’ing sense?  I must have read this three times and I was afraid it was going to give me a Lewis Black aneurysm.  Maybe Casey is trying to say the guy talking is just coming right out of his ass with this stuff but…I kinda doubt it.

Brain…hemorrhaging….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0s0KUUpxo

"If it weren't for my horse..."

Save me…Paul!

The Invincible Haggard West #101

Paul Pope

$2.99

32 pages – No ads

All this goes without saying and to prattle about it would really belabor the point but it’s really and truly quite striking as an artistic statement.  From the hand-drawn sound effects to the visual choices made for each character this thing is a note perfect juggernaut.

Quickly

Each sound effect is perfectly and I mean fucking perfectly suited and delivered.

Contrast a well placed “Klop, Klop, Klop” or “TCHOOF!!” with some digitally inserted garbage in Batman / Superman and that tells you there is a difference between art and product.

The design work is so elegant and beautiful it engenders hyperbole.  In action or at rest Haggard’s “flight frame” is a thing of wonder.  His guns are neon tube death machines with impossible innards.  Hell, the man himself is so pulpy when his scarf gets shot you feel him take things to the next level.  (I pulled two vertical panels out of sequence just to show you the elements)

The supporting characters are well rendered in a minimum of space.  Haggard’s daughter, Aurora, is on for all of three pages and she’s already got a backbone to envy and a multifaceted personality.

This is A work and EXCELLENT.  Battling Boy can’t come soon enough.

Happy reading, everyone!

All over the map: Hibbs' 11/7

Comics, TV, and a movie, after the jump.

Comics, first? OK with me!

FUCK ALAN MOORE BEFORE WATCHMEN: MOLOCH #1: Much like MINUTEMEN, this would be one of the FAMBW books that I was at least curious about -- we don't really know a lot about Moloch, and he's arguably a principal... well, "catalyst", at least, if not "character". And I was hopeful because, hell, Eduardo Risso is drawing it, and that cat can fuckin' draw, y'know? Sadly, though, it has all the subtlety of any other comic that J. Michael Straczynski has written recently, that is: slim-to-none, and the result is just a cliched horrible mess -- Moloch's bad because he's ugly (no explanation for the bat ears is given), and because all women are horrible predatory whores. Yay!

Even Better is how this was hastily solicited to fill in a massive scheduling hole, where, suddenly, they seem to have lost an entire month's worth of FAMBW titles -- going from weekly to skipping five week's worth of issues is a kick in the gut on momentum on this series which was pretty strongly selling to a specific group of customers who are buying the entire project (not specific minis, like I thought in advance) -- well, damn, it makes DC suddenly look like Marvel in terms of schedule.

Either way, I know this isn't aimed at me, but we continue with "Exceptionally pretty, but emotionally bankrupt", which the closest on the Critic scale is, I think, EH.

DEADPOOL #1:  Brian Posehn (!), Gerry Duggan, and Tony Moore do the Marvel NOW! relaunch of  "the Merc with the mouth", and he's pretty much a character that I've never really cared one teensy bit about ever -- to the point where I don't believe (from the tags) that we've ever once reviewed a straight Deadpool comic on the site ever! -- and, hey, guess what, I thought it was reasonably entertaining! I can't say I'd personally add it to my monthly reading stack, but there was some charm and wisecracking, and an imaginatively funny series of antagonists, and it's almost certainly modestly GOOD.

What's funny for me, as a retailer guy, is just how much better this is selling right now then the next book (about 250% of that figure), as well as outselling it's previous incarnation, handily (for now at least) -- I went long on this #1, chasing that fat 70% discount, and I'm confident they'll eventually go (week 15, or 16, I'm guessing), while the next book I can already tell I'll never ever sell them all. *sigh*

IRON MAN #1: is that next book, and, in many significant ways for this retailer, my real litmus test for the commercial viability of MarvelNOW! as a branding exercise for Marvel.

I'm sure that in a month or two I'll write a post-mortum on the launches for TILTING AT WINDMILLS, but going into this my feeling was that Marvel comics are a significantly more popular "brand" than DC, and have a MUCH larger number of "lapsed" readers. The "New 52" launch succeeded by any dream of avarice I might have had, where even books where it was clear that they WOULD be cancelled within a year (HAWK & DOVE, anyone?) still sold 70-80% more copies than I ever thought they possibly could have, and the "big books" totally dominated fourth quarter sales charts.

Now, to me, IRON MAN is the modern quintessential Marvel comic -- two hit movies, lead role in the AVENGERS film, can't HELP but benefit from a big wide "push". DC reboots sold like 500%+ their previous issues, I didn't feel at all shaky going 300% of "current" IM sales, scored the extra discount on the first issue, at least (as I did with most, but not all, NOW! books)

So far? I've sold precisely one FEWER copy of #1 than I have of #522 in the same time period (day #6). Uh? What? The? Fuck? Again: I'm sure that will pick up eventually, but, damn, that's the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen.

The big problem is that I can't actually push the comic very hard on the strength of its contents -- I'm no real fan of Greg Land's stiff-and-lightboxed art, and Kieron Gillan's script, despite being one of the "Yeah, that makes sense!" names attached to NOW!, gives us a story whose premise is essentially that of "Armor Wars". I've read "Armor Wars". God help me, I've even read "Armor Wars II", this isn't what I want to read as the Big Relaunch.

I mean, it isn't terrible, or anything, but it's also not much better than OK, and for a $4 asking price, am I really going to suggest people buy this over, say, STUMPTOWN or even the next book, this week? Yeah, didn't think so.

This week is going to be the real test of it, I think (with 6 NOW! books), but I'm starting to feel like MarvelNOW! is going to be as big of a miss as New52 was a hit, and that's truly terrifying if that's playing out in the rest of the world the same way.

DIAL H #6: A beautiful, beautiful done-in-one story essentially ruminating on the stupidity and banality of some characters, and just how hard it is to "fight crime", and the real selling point for me was that the issue was drawn by David Lapham, who, of course, isn't even cover billed. Yeah, this was a truly great issue of this series -- I thought it was VERY GOOD.

How about some TV? Sure, can do!

ARROW: much to my disconcertion and surprise, I thought this was kind of non-shitty.  I was expecting more "Smallville" (ew), but instead it's kind of about as close to "Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters" (well, or more properly, the monthly book by Grell & Hannigan just AFTER that mini-series) as you're likely to find -- there's a structured mystery, and plan, and it seems like it is playing out alright, and while it's a version of Green Arrow from Earth-TV (Speedy is his sister, Deathstroke is some sort of army torturer, or something, the probably-some-day Black Canary is named "Laurel", rather than "Dinah", so on, so forth) it has an interesting continuing flashback structure -- yeah, I don't love it (I'd never have watched it if I didn't own a comic book store), but I like it very fine. Marc Guggenheim has managed to make a very solid little weekly vigilante TV show.

Two notes: first: man, the budget on this thing seems loooooow, to me -- they're constantly setting scenes in "night clubs" which are fairly clearly a soundstage, with a curtain hanging in the background with colored lights playing against it, and like two silhouettes dancing behind it -- yet they sell it pretty damn well.

Second: this Arrow (oddly called "hood" by most characters IN the show) is a STRAIGHT-UP killer. Some episodes the body counts top a score. And it's all very kind of sub-rosa -- I mean, yes, the cops are after him, but one gets the sense it's more from being a vigilante, rather than being a KILLER vigilante. You'd think that "Laurel", as written, would be appalled by Arrow's actions, but, yeah, kind of not.  It is odd.

Anyway, I think this show is watchable, and surprisingly OK.

THE WALKING DEAD: So far, season 3 has been going swimmingly (I'm a week behind, I think?) -- this has been going breakneck speed, and shock follows shock pretty much every week. What I'm liking the best is that all of the same pieces are in play from the comic, but things come in different order, at different times that you can't really second guess it much. I mean, clearly, we have the prison, we have the Governor, but other than that, "anything can happen". I'm finding this a real thrill this season, and some of the acting this go round is getting downright good -- especially a recent reaction to something that happened involving Rick -- that was some raw-ass human emotion there. This really has been VERY GOOD, with only memories of the first "half" of Season 2 keeping me from wholly embracing it.

What, and a film, too? Sure! (though this has to go faster than I thought, since I just got the call that the truck with this week's comics will be here in a few minutes!)

SKYFALL: The latest James bond film was, I thought, one of the better ones -- it's actually ABOUT something, and when viewed with CASINO ROYALE (skip out on QUANTUM OF SOLACE, I think), it really projects a lot of new possibilities for the character -- but the last act of the film, while emotionally connective, was almost terrifyingly "small" in scope and range for a Bond movie, where you expect it to get bigger and bigger and ludicrous.  There's a crazy villain, however, and bi-sexual flirting (!), and a surprising denouement there at the end, and it even had what I thought were the best credit sequence of the entire series (seriously, it was almost entirely nude woman free, AND relevant to the actual movie, for once). You have to go far to beat MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN in my heart (and SPY WHO LOVED ME / MOONRAKER in my memory, though, watching those again with Ben, I didn't care for either much), and this didn't beat those heights, but, yeah, I thought it was terrific and thoughtful in most ways. It's a very strong GOOD.

Whew! Gotta bounce! How about you? What did YOU think?

-B

All this and Earth, too? Hibbs starts on 5/2

Everybody loves comics!

ACTION COMICS #9: This is a lot more like what I was hoping for from Grant Morrison on a regular ongoing Superman comic -- focusing on President Superman from Earth-23. last seen in FINAL CRISIS -- but I was a bit surprised to not find the "real" Superman anywhere in the story. Still, Silver Age-y without feeling dated, and lots of fun things happen. Gene Ha's art was as awesome as always. I thought this was VERY GOOD. AVENGERS VS X-MEN #3 (OF 12) AVX: Brubaker's got the writing spot this week, so maybe that's why I felt this issue had a bunch more plot? I can't even imagine how this is going to read in trade, with it's crazy tonal shifts every issue? I thought this one was strongly OK.

DIAL H #1: China Mieville's comic debut, and it's pretty decent. There are a few mechanical problems with the set up (most namely: how do you dial four digits 0n a *rotary dial* phone by accident when trying to call for help in the middle of witnessing a horrible beating?), and I have to admit that I'm not sure that I at all like the notion that the H-dial is in a static location, but putting that aside, I very much liked this issue. (On the other hand, I always liked the Robbie Reed version as well) (Sockamagee!)

I liked the schlubbiness of the protagonist, I very much liked the dialed up heroes (Captain Lachrymose needs an ongoing series, stat!), and I just liked the general weird vibe on display here -- this comic could be perfectly at home at pre-Vertigo Vertigo, and whatcha know, it's Karen Berger editing her first superhero comic in 20-something years.

The art by Mateus Santolouco sort of veers back and forth between some Ted McKeever-looking wonderfulness to "Ugh, you need more fundamentals", but it certainly works with the book just fine. Overall: VERY GOOD

EARTH 2 #1: Having read this, I really really can't even begin to understand all of the faffing about in the pre-print interviews of "well, we really can't describe this to you", because, unless there's a dramatic change from what's on display in this first issue (which would then, arguably be a not-so-good FIRST issue), this seems easy to shorthand: it's the formation of a NEW e2-based Justice Society (though maybe they'll never be called that, who knows), where the set-up is in contemporary times, rather than ww2.

I'm a pretty big ("real") JSA fan, and I didn't really like any of the new costumes we've seen so far, so I was suspicious of this at first, but yeah, I very much liked the setup and world building, and slow roll-out of characters.

James Robinson's script was solid -- I felt a real emotional tingle in that scene between Bruce & Helena -- and Nicola Scott's art is as strong as always. I don't know if I will like the new JSA, really (there's really only 7-8 pages of those characters, the rest of the oversized space is dedicated to setting up the world), but as a "Yes, I would like to see more, please" first issue, I thought this was VERY GOOD.

EPIC KILL #1:  If you want to see teenage hotties do acrobatics like River Tam in Firefly, with lots of slaughter, then this is surely the comic for you. Largely reading like a pitch for a movie, it at least has fairly pretty art by Raffaele Ienco that kind of reminds me of John Ridgeway, I think -- detailed, but with straight lines not noodly curvy ones, yet just ever so slightly stiff because of that. Anyway, since the base idea feels so "Seen that a dozen times", the joy of this kind of work is all in the *execution* of the idea, and there's just enough "hey, cool" scenes to have me say that this is GOOD.

GI COMBAT #1: Half the book is about soldiers fighting dinosaurs, so there's that, and as a plus the art is by Ariel Olivetti, and it really fits here; the other half is yet another new take on "Unknown Soldier", who is getting close to becoming DC's equivalent in the if-we-keep-relaunching-him-someone-will-like-it-eventually-right? sweepstakes to Moon Knight. I think they need to try again, as I was really entirely uninterested in this version, sorry. I think this may be a concept that just can't work in the 21st century, maybe because of the "unknown" part, and that doesn't work in our database-driven world (esp with regards to soldiers, I'd have to say). Anyway, like the first half, disliked the second, which means I can't say better then EH.

MIND THE GAP #1 :Another book that reads a little more like a pitch then a comic, but I thought this pitch was fairly terrific. The set-up is for a whodunnit kind of mystery, with the victim's spirit interacting on the, dunno, astral plane, maybe is what to call it, with what looks like a little touch of Deadman-meets-Quantum Leap, maybe?  Jim McCann's script is very strong, and the characters vivid, while the art by Rodin Esquejo and Sonia Oback is realistic, without being creepy and off-putting, like some in that style become. As a bonus, this first issue is oversized @ 48 pages, and just a mere $2.99, making it a helluva deal. No doubt this was a VERY GOOD comic!

STAR TREK ONGOING #8: Given that the premise of the first six issues of this series was adapting/converting classic Trek episodes with the movie characters, you might have missed that they followed that with a two-parter (starting in issue #7), that followed up on the film, with the Romulans and the last drop of "Red Matter" -- I know I sure did until I grabbed this issue to read, and went, "Wait... that's not TOS!" (from the "next issue" pic, it looks like they're going back to that and "The Return of the Archons"). I don't know that I exactly care about the tattooed Romulan faction, or Red Matter, but it was nice to see something wholly new set in this universe (and, in theory, "official"). I thought it was highly OK, and if you miss the TOS characters, recast or not, this was a fun little follow-up.

SUPREME #64: Wow. this should be taught as a masterclass in how to utter destroy a previous set-up in 22 pages, and replace it with the exact opposite. I really loved the clever way that Moore set up his "all versions are true" love letter to Superman, and it's own set up gave all of the ability to complete rewrite the rules as new creators came onboard, but instead Erik Larsen rips it all to shreds and chucks it out the window for the ugliest possible of all iterations of Supreme. That takes mad skills, yo. The craziest part to me is actually the letter's page to the issue (which I suspect won't be in a digital version, sorry) where Larsen defends his actions by comparing this to following Todd on Spider-Man, or whoever followed Miller & Mazuchelli after "Born Again" in Daredevil. the difference, of course, being that there's a 15-or-so year gap here between issues, and while the argument is at least understandable when related to regular ongoing production of corporately owned icons (the trains, in fact, have to keep running), it's utterly bizarre in this case, especially after they went out of their way to try and show "respect" to Alan Moore by illustrating his final "lost" script.

Obviously, the difference between, say, WATCHMEN and this situation is that the creator of the property is the owner and can do whatever they want on work-for-hire material, but there's a dissonance here that my brain is ringing from.

Erik is a talented creator, and this work has a lot of energy, but I really liked the Moore version of Supreme (and pretty much hated the grim'n'gritty take that preceded it), so I thought this comic was pretty AWFUL

WORLDS FINEST #1: I have to say that if I were DC marketing, I wouldn't have scheduled the two Earth-2 related comics in the same week, but I just sell the things, what do I know? But, I also have to say that I really really liked this one, as well. Paul Levitz turns in the first script in months that I genuinely liked from start to finish, and the twin artist (George Perez in the modern sequences, Kevin Maguire on the flashbacks) really worked much better than I thought it would. Yeah, I really thought this was strong, VERY GOOD stuff.

The one problem? That logo. Jesus, that's a horrible horrible disaster -- it looks cluttered and terrible using the "across the room" test (if you can't pick a logo/design element/whatever from across the room, it fails), and it's not at all clear what the name of the comic IS, with "Huntress" being over "World's Finest". Yow.

X-O MANOWAR (ONGOING) #1: If you read the original in the 90s, you've pretty much read this first issue, as it really alters very little of the original setup, just with a little more depth, maybe. It reads well, it's pretty enough, but I didn't feel like "OMG! I need to read the next one right now!" Maybe I'll check back in a few issues to see if they're doing new stories and not just retelling things I already know. Or, maybe I won't. OK.

Right, that's me -- what did YOU think?

-B