Its my bar of chocolate, give it to me NOW!

OK, MarvelNOW! has pretty much gotten going, where did we leave off...?  

 

ALL-NEW X-MEN #1 & 2: If one single thing is going to harm this Marvel relaunch, it is going to be these bi-weekly shipping comics. And, heck, scratch "bi-weekly" as #3 is inexplicably shipping NEXT week (wait, what, why?), and that's a bit of a shame because I (unlike Mr. Lester or Mr. McMillan) kind of like ANX.

Now, part of that is that I am really glad we're back to the "old" X-paradigm -- they're operating out the school, mutants are no longer tied to "the 198" or Utopia island, or any of that. And part of that is that Brian Michael Bendis had long since run out his string on the Avengers titles, so seeing him get something fresher is nice. I also think he's very much toned done much of the "Bendisms" that marked too much of Avengers.

Another is that Stuart Immonen is an awesome artist, so it's a real treat to look at.

There's a buncha handwaving that one has to do with the time travel stuff, but I'm willing to give it to him because this is comics, and the story should be more important than the mechanics of it.

Ultimately, I'm willing to give Bendis a bit of rope here -- I think this is a very high OK so far, and as a general direction to make the x-books relevent again, I'm fine with it.

 

CAPTAIN AMERICA #1: I liked this OK as well -- Romita & Janson are always a good art team, and Rick Remender's script is zippy and actiony. I worry a little about the setup -- the text page would seem to indicate that this "Dimension Z" is the home of the book for a while, and I sort of worry about a Captain America comics not set in, y'know, America, but the bigger problem is the $4 cover price, I think.

 

FANTASTIC FOUR #1: Lots of setup, and a reasonable enough pitch for the next 12-18 issues of the comic. Fraction does dependable work here, and Bagley's art just screams "Marvel!" as it always does.  Because it only has a $3 cover price it also gets more goodwill from me, which means I thought it was GOOD, though execution over the months will count for more here than some of the other NOW! books.

 

FF #1: The flipside to Fan4 above, this one is Fraction and Allred, and, hot damn, did I like this first issue. I especially liked the narrative structure that suggests you read the book a second time now that you understand on the last page the reasoning/setup for some of the interstitial pages. My absolute favorite of the NOW! books so far, I thought this was pretty EXCELLENT.

 

INDESTRUCTIBLE HULK #1: Solid set-up for a series, which one should probably expect from Mark Waid. I'm not so sure that the art from Leinil Yu (at least on the Banner pages) really worked in harmony, but the Hulk bits were nice, so it works out. Solidly GOOD, that $4 cover keeps it from the next grade up.

 

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #646:  Kathryn Immonen and Valerio Schiti move the book from Young Loki, to Sif instead.  I kind of don't care about Sif, but Schiti's art is a joy to behold. Hard to see this lasting for long, really, but as a first issue, I thought it was also solidly GOOD.

 

THOR: GOD OF THUNDER #1 & 2: Yay, it's fun Jason Aaron, writing a loutish Thor. Art by Esad Ribic is super spiffy. I also quite like the parallel structures of past and future Thors and crazy godshit in space and whatever, and yeah, digging it... except for that damn $4 cover price, which caps my grade at GOOD.

 

X-MEN LEGACY #1 & 2: It's a damn shame that this came alphabetically last, because I have to go out on a down note, then. Cuz' this just wasn't compelling. It's nothing wrong with Si Spurrier's script, per se, or even Tan Eng Huat's art, though I get he's an acquired taste. I think the bigger problem really is the focus on Legion, who just isn't a very interesting character, and there's less than no reason to call this comic "X-Men" anything. #2 had a printing error, and they put it on paper more suited to a free giveaway comic -- this is likely to be the first NOW! book cancelled.  EH.

 

What did YOU think?

 

-B

Wait, What? Ep. 63.2: Point Two, Point One, Point Zero

Photobucket From the insane to the mundane, from the picture back to the frame, the finale to Wait, What? Ep. 63.2 brings Graeme and I back from our world-wide travels to consider our good ol' pal, Excelsior Basehead.

Yep, Graeme and I talk about how Marvel's handled the first issue of Avenging Spider-Man, the cancellation of the Victor Von Doom miniseries by Nick Spencer and Becky Cloonan, changes to Marvel's incentive payments, and the latest issues of Journey Into Mystery and this year's Point One promotional one-shot. Oh, and because we're us, OMAC #3, Bad Company, and the drawbacks of Netflix. And we do it all in less than an hour! Go, Team Us.

If you want us, you can find us left of center, wondering about you. (Which is to say: iTunes.) Alternatively, if your name is Luka and you live on the second floor, you can listen to us here:

Wait, What? Ep. 63.1: Point Two, Point One, Point Zero

As always, we hope you find it an agreeable and even enjoyable experience, and we thank you for listening!

Wait, What? Ep. 57.2: Playing the Dozens

Photobucket Behind the non-Clowesian eightball again, so this will have to be short and sweet.

First? Graeme and I love you all. Awwww. (See? Sweet.)

Second, the above illustration is from Uncanny X-Force #15, by the astonishingly great Jerome Opena. (I think the whole book is pretty great, because Remender is doing his best to crank things up to 11, but ooo mama that art....)

Third, this installment is approximately eighty minutes long and we talk about a dozen-plus books, including Batwoman #1, Mr. Terrific #1, Legion Lost #1, Superboy #1, Uncanny X-Force #15, PunisherMAX #17, Criminal: Last of the Innocent #4, Journey Into Mystery #627, Drifting Classroom, Bakuman, and, as you'd probably expect, Fear Itself #6.

Fourth, I think our review of Fear Itself is relatively non-skeevy or stalkery, although a bit outraged. (Not as much as perhaps it should be, maybe).

Fifth, my Wordpress interface is really slow and a bit screwy--especially when it comes to backspacing which is something sloppy typist does A LOT--and so I apologize if this entry is both too long and too short, simulatenously.

Sixth, this installment should be up on iTunes and of course it is also hear for you to listen to, comment upon, or even ignore:

Wait, What? Ep. 57.2: Playing the Dozens

Seventh, I go now to prep for our next thrilling episode by reading a metric shit-ton of comics. As always, thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy!

Backwards Lap: Capsule Reviews from Jeff

Yes, dammit.  I am currently committed to this capsule review thing, if only because it forces Hibbs and Graeme to also write reviews and my WASPy upbringing inherently enjoys guilting people into stuff. After the jump: comics from last week, last year, and a very cool fan letter.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #169-173:  Still pretty much a mixed bag for me, but I do love how loose story plotting becomes during this period:  issue #169, for example, teases J. Jonah Jameson showing pictures proving that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but that's barely more than three pages of the story and the rest has Spidey beating the crap out of people he encounters essentially at random.  #172 is the debut of the Rocket Racer, but he gets only the opening four pages and then the rest of the book sets up the return of the Molten Man...and even then, interestingly enough, the cliffhanger is Spider-Man being drawn on by two armed security guards.  (The first page of #173 is Spider-Man getting shot by one of those cops and escaping, only to get jumped by bystanders, one of whom has been taking mail-order kung fu lessons.)

I know I carp on this again and again but: although none of that shit would pass muster in your basic Bob McKee workshop (or, as I recall, Dan Slott's advice sessions on Twitter), it's very fun in the right doses and it helps contribute to that "man, anything can happen" feeling...even when every issue opens and closes with a fight scene, and you have Molten Man coming back from the dead and then dying for the fifth or sixth time.

All that said, the highlight of this batch of issues for me was the following letter from issue #169:

Photobucket

Yup. It's that Frank Miller, approximately nineteen years old, saying everything it's taken me the last thirty-five years or so to try and articulate...and doing a better job of it.  I'm heartened but not surprised to find out Miller's a fan of Andru...but the mention of John Buscema is a little odd.  I wonder if that's why the two of them worked on that very odd issue of Daredevil years later?

Anyhoo, it's all pretty low-stakes stuff but I honestly think it's OK or better. The nostalgia factor bumps it up to a low GOOD for me, but I don't think I should really factor that in.

CRIMINAL: THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT #1: I really shouldn't read interviews.  If I hadn't perused Brubaker's interview with Spurgeon over at Comics Reporter, I think it'd be easier for me to see this as an excellent take on the "guy kills his cheating wife" crime tale with the metatextual stuff being a nice little bonus. But having read the interview, I walked into this expecting the metatextual to be meaty and satirical and a brilliant insight on nostalgia and it was...just kinda okay.  I'm hoping there will be a way that stuff goes a little further: it seems to me that Criminal has always been packaged in a nostalgic way -- Sean Phillips' amazing covers clearly reference those Gold Medal Books, among others -- and I think it might be uniquely suited to comment on more than the "wow, now we think of the past as somewhere safe but it was fucked up, too" element of nostalgia, but the "we even miss the fucked up stuff" element that is a little more distressing.  Is it a form of innocence to pine for something evil? Or is it a sign of corruption? I think this book is going to address this stuff (god, I really hope so), but the first issue didn't really deliver on that for me.  It's still GOOD, mind you -- well-written and lovely as hell, but I'd been primed for something great.

FLASHPOINT: BATMAN: KNIGHT OF VENGEANCE #1:  Thomas Wayne as Batman? Don't care. The Flashpoint version of The Joker? Don't care.  Art by Eduardo Risso, colored by Patricia Mulvihill?  I didn't care...until I saw it. Risso's art is just eye-wateringly good and in the sewer fight scene he has this neat trick of using the page turn to up the surprise by reversing the angle or tightening the focus (or, in some cases, both).  A fight between Batman and Killer Croc in the sewers isn't anything we haven't seen before but I don't think I've ever seen it quite like this. I wish the story had been more than your usual alt-universe blather, but danged if this didn't strike me as a GOOD stuff, anyway.

HELLBOY: THE FURY #1:  Also, in the "Holy Shit, Look At This Art!" category is this book, which somehow manages to be jaw-droppingly beautiful from the first page to the last.  Like Flashpoint: Batman, I don't really care know or care what's going on, but the art by Duncan Fegredo (and colors by the amazing Dave Stewart) and the pacing of Mignola's script miraculously negates all that.  I felt flashes of dread and wonder and, more than once, something like awe.  (I guess this'll sound obvious to you if you've read the issue, but reading it made me feel exactly the way I did when I first watched John Boorman's Excalibur, that same weird mix of the epic and the creepy.) I always feel weird giving books VERY GOOD ratings or higher based on nothing more than just the art but here we are.  Amazing stuff.

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #623:  The art didn't fry my burger this time around but I'm still enjoying the story and Gillen's take on Loki.  In fact, the mix of classic myth and the story's own sensibilities reminds me of the stuff I'm reading in the Simonson Thor Omnibus.  I wish the art didn't look so wispy, but I think I'm gonna give this one a VERY GOOD, nonetheless.

 

Events in mah brain!

It is April, and we're starting this year's cycle of event storytelling. I'm fairly unconvinced this is what the audience actually and truly wants -- at best I tend to think that the market supports them because its been sooooo long since we sold comics purely on the strength of the comics that we've forgotten anything BUT events, but I guess we'll see what shakes out.  

Clearly the market is reeling right now -- January and February were abysmal, and March not really that much better -- and there's a sense to me, at least, that this year's are "make or break" for the Marvel and DC universes in some fashion or another.

 

Not like comics will go away, of course, my big happy thought from WonderCon was that Larry Marder is still doing Beanworld, and getting paid to do so, and as long as THAT still happens, comics are just fine, thanks very much!

 

But that's something more to develop in a TILTING (which, huh, I should get to writing, shouldn't I?) -- this is to talk about the comics themselves.

 

 

FEAR ITSELF #1: In many many many ways, I think that the success of failure of an event can often be determined by looking at its "log line" or "elevator pitch" -- the one sentence summation of what the book is about. I'm not all that terrific at perfectly encapsulating them, for example I'm sure someone can come up with something more precise or sexy for CIVIL WAR than "Superheroes fight among themselves over liberty versus security", but that was pretty much what I used in '06, and it worked a charm, selling a bucketload of comics for me.

 

In the same way, DC's biggest recent hit, BLACKEST NIGHT, can be reduced to "Dead superheroes come back from the grave as murderous zombies" -- that the kind of thing people often say "Wow, cool!" to. The CLEARER the pitch, the more direct and large the sales.

 

FEAR ITSELF is a weird "event" comic -- I'll say straight up that I liked it pretty well. I have problems with bits of it (when don't I?): I thought the Avengers pro-Stark shilling was a bit.... strange, given the libertarian nature of some of the characters; I thought that the interactions between Thor and Odin were kind of heavy-handed; and I thought the lettering was oddly large, but all in all I liked the issue as I was reading it, and I'll even skip to the chase and say I thought it was pretty GOOD.

 

But I still can't log line it! Even after reading it! That's not a great situation.

 

I mean, I could say "An older pantheon of gods returns to kick the Asgardian's asses", I guess? But I don't think that's all there is to it, and, anyway, that sounds way too insider baseball for fan-off-the-street. Very very few people ACTUALLY care about "the Asgardians" as an abstract group, we have decades of sales information to clearly show that. And, clearly, Marvel is struggling with it as well, because THEY'VE yet to log line it themselves -- their marketing is all over the map, and not defining things in terms of story really. Even the title doesn't suggest what the story might be about.

 

Our first week sales were "fine" -- just a smidge above AVENGERS... but I have a hard time considering an event book a hit unless it does, say, twice, three times that. That's kind of the problem with Direct Market 2011 in a nutshell, in fact -- the bottom- and middle- sellers are no worse than flat, and even substantially up in a lot of cases, but the top-selling books have cratered to less than half of what they were 2-3 years ago. That's an ugly prospect.

 

I'm cool with the stock I have on hand -- worst case we'll sell out sometime right around the last issue shipping, but I *want* to have to go back for more, say, before issue #3 arrives in store.

 

Anyway, log-lines, yeah. That's the problem here. The comic is pretty GOOD, but I can't find the words to SELL it.

 

 

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #622: Kieron Gillen's first issue, and also the first crossover tie-in to FEAR ITSELF, and I really REALLY liked it.  If you had said "Neil Gaiman wrote this" I might have believed you. Gillen's always been strong on plotting, but this brings his prose up to a new level, and I'm anxious to see how long he can sustain this questing story with Loki as a lead. I hope it's a real long time.  VERY GOOD.

 

FLASH #10: This is the second "prelude" issue to the upcoming Big DC event FLASHPOINT, and every problem I have with FEAR ITSELF is magnified widely for FLASHPOINT -- what the hell is it about? Well, I've figured out that the best thing to say is maybe "It's 'Age of Apocalypse' for the DC Universe", but if you don't already read comics (and lots of them), then I have to explain what AoA is, right? I guess you could also say "It's an 'Elseworlds' as an event", but same problem, right?

 

Comics ABOUT comics are kind of a hard sell.

 

The problem is compounded by the fact that FLASH has really been a dull book, to date. I *still* don't know what compelling narrative reason there was to bringing Saint Barry back in the first place, and I *like* DC's Silver Age.

 

What I *did* like about this issue was the *idea* of "Hot Pursuit" as being from Earth-47 (or whatever), and I'm intrigued about the rest of the heroes on what could potentially be a "no non-tech superpowers" world, but since I'm sort of expecting HP to *be* the bad-guy here, I suspect that is going to go nowhere? I also hope very very much I'm wrong, because isn't that more or less the plot of the first FLASH arc anyway?

 

Bottom line: There's nothing here that interests me, or, more importantly, creates more interest for FLASHPOINT, and a lot of what DC is doing this year would seem to depend on one or the other of those conditions being met? FLASH #10 was essentially EH.

 

 

BRIGHTEST DAY #23: I know that there's one more to go, and I should probably hold off until then just to see if they tie the loose ends well.... but I can't see how they can?

 

I guess I'm just flabbergasted that the POINT of an entire year of a series, not to mention the end of BLACKEST NIGHT seems to have been to return Swamp Thing to the DCU universe? Really? Realllllllly?

 

Then there's the "And what the FUCK did that have to do with a WHITE LANTERN?!?!" I mean the whole "lantern" concept seems sort of inherently more than about parochial Terran concerns, no? Or how about how this ties in with some of the other returnees most specifically Max Lord? Or how about, how do you return the Terran Earth elemental with a cat from Mars, and another one from frickin' thanagar?

 

Plus, Alec Holland's body? Meatless.

 

Plus plus, how are you returning SWAMP Thing to what's clearly meant to be a Northwestern city (like Portland or Seattle)? Meh.

 

I also think the cosmology, as already established in the DCU is kind of off -- Firestorm ALREADY was the Fire Elemental, and there was mm, whatsname, Niaid is it? as the Water one. I mean, those are DC comics, not Vertigo ones!

 

I don't know.

 

But, at the end of the day, I can't believe all that was leading to the return of Swamp Thing, because I'm a retailer and I know that no Swamp Thing comic NOT written by Alan Moore is going to be commercially successful within a year. So why waste all of the effort to reintroducing what, at very very very best will be a supporting character?

 

I thought this was pretty AWFUL.

 

 

ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #157 and ULTIMATE AVENGERS VS NEW ULTIMATES #3: OK, now I *think* I see what they're going to do here, and it seems like they are going to kill "Spider-Man", presumably by completely crippling Peter Parker. Maybe they'll then turn Peter into the new Reed Richards of the Ultimate U, or, like "Professor P." running a team from his wheelchair or something. I guess there's some slight story potential there.

 

The thing is.... the thing is, as a marketing concept, they sold this entirely the wrong way. We had the postcards proclaiming "THE DEATH OF SPIDER-MAN!" on our counter for several weeks, and MANY people asked about it. "Yeah," says I, "It's in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN". "Oh," says them, "so not the 'real' one". I'd then try to convince them that USM is actually spiffy, indeed, but you can see the eyes glaze over.

 

So, yeah, by marketing it like this, especially with the 3 "prequel" issues, boldly bannered and all that, they're setting up some false expectations, at best. I guess that I feel that if they had just DID it, without trying to make it a marketing "event", that it would have caught everyone by surprise, and sales could have built up from the sheer buzz and audacity of it. But, by doing it "top down" like this, I think you're not going to get the kind of audience response that the Ultimate line desperately desperately needs right now.

 

I quite liked the Spidey portion of these two issues (GOOD), but thought the Avengers portion was overblown, and undercooked (EH)

 

 

 

 

Yeah, that's enough out of me. What did YOU think?

 

-B