Comic Picks By The Glick

These are the last two volumes of the series before it re-launched as just plain “Punisher” with Rick Remender taking over full writing duties from Matt Fraction.  I know that sounds like a particularly pointless bit of info, but that’s how this series has felt to me.  Aside from some clever bits like the Stilt-Man funeral and “World War Hulk” crossover issues, as well as the last issue of the series (collected in vol. 5), “War Journal” never really found its footing as the middle ground between Garth Ennis’ funny (in “Marvel Knights”) and serious (in “MAX”) takes on the character that it so wanted to be.  The funny was never quite funny enough and the serious parts were more dull than anything else.  As it is, the series as a whole is something that I’d recommend to fans of the character rather than the general public at large.

I almost called this one “The Blackcast.”  Then common sense intervened.

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You wouldn’t think that a Wolverine story written by Warren Ellis with art by Lenil Yu from the late 90’s would merit a hardcover edition, but here it is anyway.  Less a commentary on the story itself than on how the creators’ status has risen at the company over the past decade, this hardcover is grossly overpriced at $20 for four issues of content.  The story involves Wolverine (during the time he was without his adamantium skeleton) being hunted by MacLeish, a villainous killer our hero thought he had killed years ago.  Had I read this back when it came out, I probably would’ve thought it was an above-average story involving the title character, but I’ve since been spoiled by Ellis and Yu’s later and better works, not to mention the work of other writers (Jason Aaron, Greg Rucka, etc.) who have written the character themselves.  Still, it gets some points for the clever title.  If nothing else it makes me wish for Ellis and Yu to team up again to do a follow-up called “I’m Getting Better.”

Continuing with tonight’s theme is the latest from the creators of “Death Note.”  While that series was entertaining for a while, it jumped the shark with the death of its co-protagonist halfway through and then crashed and burned spectacularly at the end.  I wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of reading another manga from writer Tsugumi Ohba and artist Takeshi Obata, but the premise of their new series “Bakuman” (two kids set out to become manga creators) was so substantially different that I figured I’d give it a shot.

While this series is different, it shares enough of its predecessor’s dense, wordy style that if you liked it there and have an interest in creating manga and seeing how it is created, then you’ll probably like this too.  A healthy appreciation (or tolerance of) shonen manga cliches is also recommended as our heroes talk at length about their manly passions, and romance blossoms (kinda) for one of the leads.  That stuff bored me to tears, but at the same time it’s still interesting to see the Shonen Jump formula applied to something that is so far outside its usual purview.  For that alone, I’ll keep reading it but at this point I’m more interested in the characters’ manga than the characters themselves.

The Best/Worst Manga of the Year” panel needs to be longer.  One hour is not enough time to hear such great speakers as Jason Thompson, Christopher Butcher, and Shaenon Garrity talk about what rocked and what did not in the world of manga over the last year.

The only thing more disappointing than not getting into the Dark Horse panel this year was hearing that they didn’t have any new manga news to announce.  Apparently [director of Asian licensing] Michael Gombos only talked about their Clamp reissues and not much else.  I only have Comic Book Resources’ article to go off of, so if additional announcements were made please let me know.

That said, the announcement that Yen Press will be publishing Kaoru Mori’s latest series “Otoyome Gatari” makes up for the aforementioned disappointment.  Yen publishes a lot of stuff I don’t read, one title that I absolutely love (“Yotsuba&!”) and “Sundome.”  Even if it doesn’t live up to its hype, the staff at Yen have my undying gratitude for bringing it over here so I can experience it for myself.

This year’s Comic-Con was a more manageable beast than last year’s.  I don’t know if it was the absence of the “Twi-hards” or just better management on the part of the con staff, but the crowds were less beastly than they were last year.  In addition to seeing panels with great and legendary creators like Moto Hagio, Neal Adams, Brian Michael Bendis and Sean Phillips, my zeal to get to each panel with enough time also led me to hear creators like Keith Knight, Kurt Busiek, Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba talk about their work as well.  Then there were the three panels I attended where Jason Thompson (author of “Manga: The Complete Guide” and “King of RPGs”) was a feature or main speaker and those were very entertaining as well.

Still, the main reason I go each year is for the comics.  Even though I’ve heard lots of people gripe about how comics are getting crowded out of Comic-Con by Hollywood (which is basically true), it’s still the best place around to find good deals on lots of graphic novels.  While I plan to talk about all of these eventually, here’s the full list of what I got at the con (in the order I pulled them out of my bag):

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While the first volume of “Wolverine Weapon X” was pretty much everything you could want, or expect, from a Wolverine story writer Jason Aaron takes a different approach with this second volume.  “Insane in the Brain” begins with Logan in an insane asylum and not being able to remember how he got there, who he used to be, or even what his name is.  Now we all know that he’ll eventually remember, pop his claws and unleash his berserker rage on the guilty parties, but the real fun of the story comes in how Aaron slowly escalates the weirdness of the setting, and showing how the title character is helpless to do anything about it before that happens.  He also creates a promising new villain in Dr. Rot due to the fact that he specializes in messing with the one aspect of Wolverine that’s always been a bit scrambled over the years:  his brain.  The volume concludes with an interesting one-off as Wolverine gets a new girlfriend and the audience hopes that she doesn’t wind up dead like ALL (well, there was that girl from Greg Rucka’s run…) the rest.  You are getting less pages for your money in this volume, but it’s a more satisfying experience.

This is the next-to-last volume of the series and it represents a satisfying build to the finale.  Cade and company wind up taking a very lucrative job that sends them to the planet Wayland — the site of his father’s sabotaged efforts to use the Yuuzhan Vong’s terraforming abilities for good.  That’s only part of the story as writer John Ostrander juggles this thread with others involving Emperor Roan Fel’s Imperials engaging in peace talks with the Jedi, the Sith’s plans to interrupt those talks (as well as other plans to find out what has happened to Darth Krayt), and Nyna Calixte’s efforts to spin all of this in a way that benefits her.  You’d think that having so many threads, characters and agendas to consider would lead to a jumbled mess of a storyline, but Ostrander navigates it all with ease and artists Jan Duursema and Dave Ross make it all look good.  It also highlights how interesting the supporting cast has become as their struggles are just as interesting as Cade’s.  Overall, it’s still the comic to read if you’re looking for some good “Star Wars” storytelling.

If you want to see how art can truly trump writing, here’s your answer.

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It’s easy to see how this series broke new ground at the time in mainstream comics.  The overall “madness” of the premise gives us lots of interesting stories as Shade wanders around Santa Fe trying not to feel guilty while insect legs grow out of his head, and his showdown with the American Scream in a megamart-styled Wild West.  Still, time marches on and a lot of the boundary-pushing that was cool then comes off as rather quaint now.  What makes this volume readable is how writer Peter Milligan keeps to a logical progression of events in this stories, so that even if they are awash in weirdness the plot remains understandable and fairly easy to follow.  The most surprising thing here is looking at artist Chris Bachalo’s style then and marveling at how it has changed over the years.  There are kernels of what would become his contemporary style here, but his older style still works pretty well in terms of bringing the surreal to life on the page.