Will Read Comic Books

A First Look at the Ray - aka another comic to buy

Here is the first look at The Ray 4-issue mini starting in December. I do believe I’ll be adding this to the heap.

As an idea, Superman is an archetypal hero of grand proportions - a Messiah-like character whose intentions towards his adoptive planet have always been for its benefit. Practically speaking, however, we instinctively know that archetype so well within the collective Zeitgeist of our age that only when that archetype is taken to its extreme, either in the definition of the archetype or throwing that archetype into something against our core sensibilities does it get interesting.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Grant Morrison is giving us that. 

In this issue of Action Comics, Morrison delivers a story of Luthor torturing (or at least trying to torture) ‘the alien’, while various backup characters fall into place for later returns, most notably a certain Dr. Irons (Steel) and John Corben (Metallo). Superman eventually escapes with sass equal to that of the previous comic and just for fun, we get a call-back to Superman’s Jewish roots (see creator Jerry Siegel) by making his first hint of his Kryptonian heritage a burning bush moment with his Spacecraft. And Superman’s cape can’t be burned, just so’s you know.

I originally thought that Morrison’s bringing Superman back to his ‘roots’ would be totally awesome, but I feel I’ve seen this all before, but in other heroes. I feel like Clark is a guise for a Peter Parker and Supes is the same, but with different powers. Sure, he may be fighting for Socialist ideals to a point, but really, I’m kind of bored. 

Morales and Team bring much of the same for the art - while it is nice, I’m certainly not amazed by its uniqueness in any way. 

TL;DR

It’s not that I don’t like it, I just don’t feel anything with it. I’m not sure this book is going to stay with me by the end of its first arc.

WK

Originally, I was going to say that Animal Man #2 was the greatest #2 I had ever read, similar to its #1 status.

But then I read Swamp Thing #2 and it took that title in one fell swoop.

Snyder (story), Paquette (pencils & inks), and Fairbairn (colours) return for issue 2, leading up from the #1 cliffhanger of Holland meeting Swamp Thing face to face. Surprise and spoiler alert: not The Swamp Thing, just A swamp thing. This issue does what I love to read in just about any genre/media/epic, and that is explain to me some mythology. Snyder very carefully weaves the entire story of Swamp Thing in the DC Universe into a mythos that transcends all of the earlier work, as well as introduce a new ‘group’ to the natural forces of Earth. We knew about the Green and its representative, Swamp Thing, and the Red, who’s dealing closely with our favourite family the Bakers (see Animal Man), but now we know what’s been killing things elsewhere - the Third, the Other. This group is decay/death and one of its agents, Sethe, is after the Green. Consequently—and awesomely—we can infer that three other agents, the Hunters, are after the Red in Animal Man (see? I told it made Animal Man better ) I’m now totally invested in these two books because of this fact. Touché, Snyder, touché. Also, I have no idea who the lady with the white hair is, but I like her.

Paquette and Fairbairn once again bring the fire as well. Once again, when Swamp Thing (or the Green in general, I guess) is around, the panel frames are branch-like, sometimes with little buds on the branches, and when the Other is around, we have splotchy black-and-red lines that are more dirty than anything else. Those subtle cues are great to bring you into the story. Fairbairn’s colours cover a large range of clarity, hue, and depth, creating varied landscapes for the various different stories being unfolded in the narrative. While the work is far more ‘mainstream,’ the two artists have given a level of detail that would put most artists to shame. 

TL;DR

I don’t see how it gets much better than this - a gothic horror superhero comic with depth and mythos to rival anything coming from anywhere. A must-read.

WK

Now that #1 month is over (sort of - there mini-series’ to attend to now), now its time to see if the #2s are as good as their predecessors. In the case of this week’s 3 #2’s, it is certainly true. So to start off, let’s talk about Animal Man #2. 

Sweet merciful crap, I love this comic book.

First, a summary. After Maxine’s uh…new pets… show up, Buddy steps in and starts taking superhero leadership action, and the whole family gets involved. A neighbour gets involved, Maxine does something to him as well, and Buddy realizes he needs to take his daughter to ‘The Red,’ a place he’s never been and never fully understood. This place has some connection to his and his daughter’s powers, but he still doesn’t quite know. From there, we go on an artistically abstract journey with Buddy and Maxine traveling into the Red and the three gross monster’s from Buddy’s dream show up and feast on San Diego zoo, taking human form. Awesome.

What I love about Lemire’s writing is that even more than the previous issue, this book is about a plausible family, each with their quirks and personality. Even though two members of the family have zero powers, there is a feeling of importance to Ellen and Cliff to the story. I have a suspicion that duel narratives may be a strong aesthetic to this book in upcoming issues. For now, the father/daughter narrative is really compelling - what would you do if your six-year-old had the powers of a god? I don’t know, but I want to see what Buddy does in my place.

As for the introduction to the hunters, I loved them, but I loved them even more after reading Swamp Thing #2. It’s fairly clear now that Swamp Thing and Animal Man will be meeting eventually (within the next year of issues, I imagine) since they are both fighting agents of the same team. This is a great way to tie things together: you don’t need to read Swamp Thing to understand Animal Man at all, but knowing Swamp Thing makes Animal Man so. much. better. I get a real feeling of world being created between these two comic teams. 

Foreman’s art is still on that edge of surreal, bringing a level of aesthetic consistency to each character - their models are such that he’s able to be flexible with proportions without losing too much - Cliff, for instance, is very kinetic and is shown to be so by his proportions and perspectives always in flux. What I thought was a slight downturn though, was that the inks were thicker in this issue, creating a muddiness that took a little away from the art. That’s forgivable, however, because the travel spreads are delicious. And the bloated hippos will haunt my dreams. 

I failed to mention Lovern Kindzierski’s colours in the last review, but she’s still on point with a muted palette bolstered by slight gradients that give the book a gritty, organic quality that helps augment Foreman’s art very well. If Lemire, Foreman and Kindzierski keep it up, I may soon have a new favourite comics team (my favourite being Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, and Steve Leiahola from Fables.) These guys seem to get each other very well. 

TL;DR

If you didn’t pick up #1, the reprint is out this week, so pick it up with your #2, because this book is amazing and EVERYONE SHOULD READ IT.

WK

Indistinguishable From Magic: Rebooting the Justice League!

dresdencodak:

So, following the immense popularity of my 5 Essential Character Redesigns post, I decided to take a more thorough stab at revamping DC Comic’s Justice League. I’ve already mentioned before that I think their current “New 52” reboot, aimed at gaining new readers, is terribly ineffective,…

While Aaron Diaz and I have differing opinions on DC’s new 52, this is a great potential reboot that could be an Elseworlds book quite easily. Until that day, you can also read his comics at http://www.dresdencodak.com.

September has now come and gone, and with it 52 new titles from DC Comics, the catalyst to my buying singles of superhero comics again in life. Here are some of my unsolicited thoughts on the hubub that has gone down around this relaunch and whether it was successful in its intentions. At the end, I’ll list off my pull list for October onwards.

• If all DC wanted to do was sell more comics, then mission accomplished - sales reports on various sites seem to be indicating a huge win for DC for getting lapsed and new readers grafted onto the existing fanbase with little hemorrhaging of the previously-dedicated. Win. 
• If DC wanted to bring back multiple genres to their comic offerings then that also seems to be a success - while superheroes are prevalent in most books, we now have horror books, war books, a western book, Sci-fi/Fantasy adventure books, team books, solos, anti-heroes, and regular heroes. There’s a lot more diversity in the genres offered. Win.
• If DC wanted to come away clean from what was before and just reset everything (sort of sideways) well, mission not so accomplished. While the books I picked up were mostly accessible, though slightly because I have a measure of insider knowledge, many other books from the relaunch were so heavily packed with continuity that they were just as inaccessible as they were the month before. On top of that, the insiders are now confused about how everything works history-wise and what may or may not be canon. Fail.
• If DC wanted to diversify in terms of readership through more prevalent diversity in race, creed, gender and orientation, I don’t think they’ve done that well at all. While there are certainly some good portrayals of these marginalized people groups in the books, were still seeing lots of female denigration through objectifyingly-sexualized characters and an extremely high prevalence of straight white dudes. The status, she is quo. Fail.

While only one of the books I picked up was groan-worthy bad, I’ve read that other books fared far worse. Despite attempting to get the best creators out there working for DC, some of the artists and writers just weren’t up to snuff. And that’s too bad.

Over the course of the last month, I picked up 11 of DC’s 52 offerings, more comics than I have ever got ever. Of those books, 6 were great and were automatically on the pull-list for next month; 2 were good enough to keep me reading next month, at least until the end of these respectvie arcs; 2 were good enough to recommend to others, but not good enough for me to buy singles - I may take a look at the trades some day; finally there was one that I hated - I’ll you guess which one that was *cough*Stormwatch*cough*

So, after a month of New52, here’s my October Pull List for DC Comics:

• Animal Man
• Swamp Thing
• Justice League
• Justice League Dark
• Action Comics
• Wonder Woman
• Batwoman
• Demon Knights
• Huntress Mini Series
• The Shade Mini Series (not to be confused with the man warping your thoughts as well speak)

Adding to that, are my two other books:

• Fables
• Super Dinosaur

Both of which I promise to review….eventually.

TL;DR

They are getting my money, so that makes it a success, but they are not getting nearly as much money as they COULD be getting from me for excellent comics.

WK

So, due to a new puppy in the house, this review is late. Please don’t take that as indicative of how I felt about this book, because I think this book has tied itself for first for me in the New 52.

This book is amazing. 

Before I gush about this book, let me go through what I know about Wonder Woman pre-this issue. I’ve read nothing. I know her name is Diana and she’s from an island of Amazons and she’s been blessed by the gods. I feel I know the character - because it’s friggin Wonder Woman - but I, like many, I’m sure, have never heard of any compelling stories for who is supposed to be part of the ‘DC Trinity’, along with Superman and Batman. This may not have been necessarily clear before, but this book sets that straight.

Wonder Woman is written by Brian Azzarello, who has been with Vertigo for some time writing a book about a guy with 100 bullets called, yep, 100 Bullets. He also wrote the Flashpoint Batman tie-in, which I hear was the highlight of the miniseries’ this summer. From what I understand, he writes gritty noir-type stuff. I have also seen a picture of the man and his beard is magical. 

What Azzarello brings to this is just epic. Over the summer In interviews about the book, he kept going on about how this was going to be a horror book. Mission accomplished. This has creepy factor surpassing the weird demon baby scene in Demon Knights and equal to Animal Man. This horror goes beyond the art (I’ll get to that), it just has a feel of doom over the whole affair.

The story is set up to be about a set of power plays between the Greek gods, of whom Apollo, Hera, and Hermes are introduced, with a plan by Zeus taking centre stage as the forward-moving plot element. What I love about these Gods is that they have a old-creature-in-a-modern-world ethic to them, akin to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, with the gods being both familiar and completely alien. As for Wonder Woman herself, she’s just there. No backstory. No origin. Just 6’+ of fierce, female form. This is a Wonder Woman who doesn’t deal with nonsense well, nor does she have a problem employing lethal violence to resolve a situation. I don’t really know how others have written the Amazon princess, but this is a Wonder Woman who would have fit well in the ancient Greek myths of old. I like that a lot.

The pencils, inks, and cover are by Cliff Chiang, with colours by Matthew Wilson. I love Cliff Chiang’s work. I was actually introduced to Chiang’s art a while ago though the mighty power of the internets and just love his hard, clean lines and his ability to make ladies look great without making them all t&a. Chiang also has a flair for fashion, which doesn’t necessarily show up in this book, but in a lot of the other work I’ve seen by him. This, added to the teasers I had seen for #1, made me excited for this book’s art, and I have certainly not been let down. Chiang has loosened his lines a bit to give it a bit more of a rough feel, which adds so well to the horror tone of the book. Being a horror book of sorts, you do expect some level of gruesome, and Chiang does that well, with no over the top gore, but a suitable level of creepy coming from the creation of centaur assassins by Hera. 

Chiang’s Diana is awesomely tall and buff, without her being grossly macho. And, what may be the best part, is that her costume is functional and her boobs are not gigantic. She’s made to fight, and fight she does! Chiang’s actions shots are better than any others from the books I read this month. The scenes are dynamic and forward-moving, with few tired and ‘traditional’ panels. 

Wilson’s work on colours is also really good. He has successfully did what Sepulveda and Passalaqua couldn’t do in Stormwatch - subtle and effective digital colouring. Kudos to you, Wilson!

TL;DR

Wonder Woman #1 is a fantastic start to what looks to be a seminal volume in the history of Diana the Amazon Princess. I’ll be #2 come October for sure.

WK

This week, we only see two New52’s for me - Supergirl and Wonder Woman - as well as Fables #109; a nice and easy week. Let’s get started.

As usual, here’s what I know about Supergirl: she is Superman’s cousin. That is all. I heard the writers, Michael Green and Mike Johnston, were good. They did Superman/Batman for awhile, as well as some Smallville episodes. Mahmoud Asrar is on pencils and inks (with Dan Green) and Dave McCaig is our colourist.

Is this a complete reboot of the character? I think so, however no one can really know because nothing happens outside of a ship crashing and Supergirl fighting a bunch of ‘agents’ in mecha-suits that look like Iron Monger from the Iron Man movie a little bit. During this fight, Supergirl discovers her powers slowly and has a hard time getting that she isn’t on her native planet. And thankfully, for us true nerds out there, she doesn’t come to Earth knowing English. 

To be frank, I was expecting more. From interviews and solicits, I was hoping to see an alien girl put up her nose to the world at large and maybe do what she wants or something equally interesting. I got a big fight instead. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice fight, but that’s all you get. Ah well.

On to the art. First things first: I hate the bottom of this outfit. Do those tabs cut into her pelvis at all? I really hope the costume design team weren’t going for sexy at all, because that mission has failed. I don’t mind the knee-less boots and I think the collared cape looks pretty cool, but that pelvic area…I just can’t look away, and not in any good way.

I like Mahmud Asrar’s pencils quite a bit - I think he can portray a realistic, non-sexualized teenage girl well (at least, I hope that was intention - see above) in various action poses from a variety of angles. I liked the robots as well. However, the inks and colours are dark. I don’t mean creepy dark, either; I just mean dark with not a great amount of contrast. Also, I think it’s the inks that make this panel so…so…well, here it is:

I hate this panel so much. I can’t really tell you why, except that it seems to be a totally different face than the rest of the Supergirl close-ups - this extreme close up just….ick.

Despite the above negative comments, I did like the illustration of Supergirl’s quick acquisition of powers. Both the eyebeam as well as the super-strength beginning were great action pages, full of drama and pizazz. 

Am I going to keep reading this book? I don’t know. Like I’ve said before, I have limited funds on the ol’ comics budget so Supergirl might get cut. It’s certainly above Stormwatch and Grifter, but not by much on the latter. We’ll have to see what issue #2 gets me, I think.

TL;DR

An action scene with ok art and little other plot. Issue #2 better get interesting quick.

WK

cliffchiang:

An early promo image we cooked up to visualize our take on Wonder Woman. The original version has pants!

Uh…..

AWESOME??

I told myself I wasn’t going to get any Batbooks - too much of a temptation to go all in, especially with a buddy that buys anything and everything related to Gotham and/or the Bat Family. I’ve seen darkness, and his name is Bruce Wayne.

But I couldn’t help myself! This Batwoman book kept popping up with gorgeous preview art and art skills from some guy people just loved. I had to pick it up. For posterity. For you. 

Well, mostly for me. And I am so glad I did!

Ok, so usual preamble first: I know nothing about Batwoman, except that she shares a name with a different pre-Crisis character from the goofy, totally sexist era of comics. Wait, that’s every era of comics! I’ll narrow it down to Silver Age, then. She had a mini-series called Eulogy that I didn’t read, which may or may not be the famed run from Detective Comics. I have no idea. And she’s a lesbian.

This book stars J.H. Williams III on story and art, with co-writer W. Haden Blackman, colours by Dave Stewart and letters by Todd Klein. [1] Having someone as both writer and artist came mean that the book falters on or the other, but I don’t see how that’s true in this case—both are superb. I can pick up that Batwoman is ex-army, due to her treatment of her sidekick, Plebe (who was formerly a Teen Titan called Flamebird) as well as some flashback uniform get-ups she’s found in. Throw in (legitimate) pissed at dad issues, and we have a suitably complex character whose sexuality is natural and not fetishized for a male demographic. The villain, a one Weeping Woman, is high on the creepy scale that makes me really want to know her story as much as Batwoman’s. Throw in some extra intrigue from a smoking guy with a skull for a head (Director Bones of the DEO) and you have got yourself a book worth picking up every month on story alone. 

But guys. Seriously. This book is friggin’ gorgeous. I mean, half of book is painted! Painted! Just amazing. Williams’ work is at once uniform and disparate, chaotic and ordered. 14 of the 22 pages are two-page spreads of varying artistic divergence from the general comic book model. The book makes me feel like there is a solid difference from when Kate Kane puts on that mask and when she takes it off, mainly because there is a difference in style between the two. And every mention of the Weeping Woman brings a Latin American artistic touch the defines the villain so much more than the dialogue ever could. I’ll have to spend more time with it, but Williams and Stewart may have beaten Travel Foreman et al on Animal Man as best art team in the New 52. 

TL;DR

The story is great, the art is literally the best of the whole month - pick up this book this month and every other from now on.

WK

1. I haven’t mentioned any letterers so far in reviews, mainly because then names just get far too listy, but also because most letterers perform a necessary, but largely forgettable, job. The reason I mention Todd Klein is because he also works on the Fables books for Vertigo, being the only person to touch every single fables-related issue. That’s a fun fact you can bring to dinner parties.)