Comic Picks By The Glick

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

Resident Alien Omnibus vol. 1

Dr. Harry Vanderspeigel has a secret:  He’s not actually Dr. Harry Vanderspeigel.  He’s actually an alien who has assumed the retired and reclusive doctor’s identity in an attempt to blend in and bide time before he can be rescued.  It seemed like the perfect plan, until the town’s sole doctor was murdered and “Harry” finds himself embroiled in the investigation at both the request of the police and his own curiosity.

That’s the summary for the original miniseries, with two more being collected here.  Coming from writer Peter Hogan and artist Steve Parkhouse, “Resident Alien” was a low-key delight.  It also hit a very specific nostalgia target for me in that it felt like the kind of high-concept TV series that popped up from time-to-time in the 80’s that would last for a season (maybe two if it was lucky) and attract a small but devoted fanbase because it was quite good.  We’re not living in the 80’s anymore, but we’ll see if that turns out to be true when “Resident Alien” debuts on Syfy later this year. In the meantime, this omnibus will be the perfect way for others to get acquainted with this series, and for me to give vols. 2 & 3 a physical, rather than digital, place on my bookshelf.

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

Star Wars vol. 1:  The Destiny Path

After the main “Star Wars” series wrapped up with issue #75 last year, it marked the end of an era for most of the ongoing titles in this line.  No longer were they going to be spent exploring the post-”A New Hope” era, the time had come to excavate the post-”Empire Strikes Back” period. Which means that instead of the familiar trio of Luke, Leia, and Han leading the charge, it’s going to be Luke, Leia, and Lando running the show as the Rebellion finds itself under siege from the new Imperial ship Tarkin’s Will and Captain Zahra, who has a personal axe to grind with them.

After writing the “Poe Dameron” and “Darth Vader:  Dark Lord of the Sith” ongoings and the  “Obi-Wan and Anakin,” and the aforementioned “Lando” miniseries, Charles Soule finally gets his shot at the brass ring of “Star Wars” titles.  I don’t doubt that he’s got a plan for his run, but he’ll also have to deal with higher expectations on my end after his work on “Dark Lord of the Sith” which constantly beat my lowered ones.  He’ll get plenty of help from artist Jesus Saiz, who always delivers quality work, and -- if these solicitations are to be believed -- will be an ongoing presence in the series after these first six issues.

There are signs that this series might be getting back to its old, nasty self.  They’re after the wrap-up of the “Master Swordsman” arc, though. The finish to that storyline serves up some decent action as Kuroko and Kurono’s duel through the ancient castle takes a fiery turn thanks to the former’s shenanigans.  While the swordfighting here gets the job done, the most memorable bits of the conflict come from Kuroko’s utter disrespect towards it. Whether it’s simply turning and walking away from Kurono when she’s spotted taking a katana, bringing some friends into the fight, or grabbing the hem of the swordswoman’s dress with a “‘Kay, stop,” while she’s making a dramatic proclamation, Kuroko’s insouciance is a delight to behold.

Then we get to the next arc, and whaddya know we’re revisiting a very old storyline.  Do you remember when Kuroko (willingly) became the member of an all-girls cult that killed certain members for its perverse whims?  Well it turns out that the corpse of its leader has disappeared from its grave. Oh, and there’s a new string of killings with people having chunks of their neck bitten out and blood trails leading to the nearest sewer opening.  You know, they never did catch the sister of that cult leader…

Is it wrong that I’m looking forward to an arc about a serial killer who lives in the sewers, biting out chunks of people’s necks?  Possibly. Then again, it’s also a sign of how “Normal “Murcielago” isn’t as entertaining as “Nasty Murcielago.” While the hints of a bigger threat tying everything together are pushed here again, this series has always been at its most engaging when it has tried to push the envelope in terms of appropriate content.  I’m not saying that we need another storyline about a serial killer who targets children, but one which is as gruesome and strange as this one looks to be would seem to be just right.

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I complain a lot about how long Kentaro Miura takes between volumes of “Berserk” on this blog.  However, Rei Hiroe’s lack of output on “Black Lagoon” makes Miura look as prolific as a Jump artist with a hit series.  Vol. 9 of “Black Lagoon” was published here in July 2010, vol. 10 in April 2015, and this volume hit print back in January.  If Viz had released vol. 11 just a month earlier, then we could’ve said that Hiroe managed to produce three volumes in the last decade instead of two (the difference between Japanese/U.S. publication dates notwithstanding).

As for the volume itself, it’s better than the previous one mainly because the story there finally kicks into high gear and isn’t waylaid by any mid-volume philosophizing.  It kicks off with an exciting internet cafe shootout between Revy and one of the hitmen “brothers” who have been sent to take out disavowed Chinese PLA hacker Feng as Rock helps her escape with the data she needs to save her skin.  After calling in some favors with Eda and the Church of Violence, Rock is able to piece together what’s going on and figure out a way to keep Feng safe. Unfortunately it also winds up leading the burliest hitman brother and his M60 into the police station that Revy found herself locked up in.

It’s all vintage “Black Lagoon” action with the carnage in the police station being a definite high point of the volume.  All the stuff involving the money laundering winds up delivering satisfyingly complex plot twists and turns. Meanwhile, Feng and Rock have some tender moments regarding the latter’s ongoing issues with the freedom he’s found himself with in Roanapur.  Said tender moments don’t hit as hard as they should because they’re also tied to Rock’s lingering guilt over how the previous storyline wound up. Which was over ten years ago in real time.

Hiroe states in his afterword that he regrets that the publication pace of this series is Olympian and that he hopes it will pick up soon.  However, he also mentions that he did an anime series between volumes (the not as good as it should’ve been “Re:Creators”), and that he couldn’t have continued “Black Lagoon” if he hadn’t.  That doesn’t really speak to someone who has a great motivation for continuing their signature series. If Hiroe does want to move on to other things, then he should do that if that’s what’s going to make him happy.  Better to do that and call it quits on this series now rather than take another four years and nine months to deliver vol. 12.

In short, there are some series that are good enough to convince me that the lengthy wait between new volumes is going to be worth it.  “Black Lagoon,” in its current state, is not one of them.

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It’s been a while since we’ve heard from this world of Families, their Lazarii, the Serfs which support them, and the Waste which are below all.  This return is… surprisingly upbeat coming after vol. 6 which had Forever and company suffering a brutal defeat at the hands of the Russian Lazarus, the Zmey, in addition to betrayal by the Morrey Family.  It starts off with Forever and acting Family head Johanna Carlyle attending to an incursion on the Family’s northern territory, continues to a smashing 2v1 battle between Lazarii, and wraps up with Forever and Sonja getting their first rematch against the Zmey.  These threads are where the main action is, but there’s also plenty of drama bubbling under the surface to intrigue as well. We get to see what kind of physical and mental toll Forever’s successor is undergoing as part of her training, Bethany Carlyle’s imposition of said training and her own issues living up to the Family legacy, and Family head Malcolm Carlyle’s regrets involving his wife who hates him SO MUCH.

That things go well for Family Carlyle is the result of good planning and strategy, along with the assumption of a lot of risk.  It also makes for thrilling reading thanks to how writer Greg Rucka establishes and builds on the tension of each scene and expertly choreographs each encounter as a battle of words or bodies.  Both types of conflicts are expertly rendered on the page by artist Michael Lark as he makes the physical drama appropriately painful, and the emotional kind -- like the encounter between Malcolm and his wife -- hurt just as much.  These things make vol. 6 a more satisfying read than vol. 5, but maybe not as much as “X+66” which served as a reminder that while Family Carlyle may be the best of the Families, they were still running a very fascist regime.  So it’s a neat trick then, getting us to root for them here. I’d be concerned if it weren’t for the fact that Rucka has had Johanna talk about reforming the whole system in the past.  So vol. 6 is a good return for the series, though I have a feeling its most interesting moments are ahead of it.

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Gil is a recently widowed space trucker who’s taken his son, Kadyn, on his latest job:  Hauling a lot of relics from a recently closed museum across the cosmos. Kadyn’s still sad over the death of his mother and the boredom of this trip isn’t helping.  That is, until a giant space eel-shark monster shows up to chomp down on their ship, leaving Gil down its gullet and Kadyn adrift in space. This isn’t the end of their story -- it’s just the beginning.  While Gil is just too damn ornery to die, Kadyn comes into contact with one of the artifacts his dad was hauling around and is now imbued with a power that lets him survive and thrive in the vacuum of space.  Oh, and this power might make him the living incarnation of the warlike humanoids known as the Zazzteks.

“Sea of Stars” is co-written by Jason Aaron and Dennis “Hopeless” Hallum, and reads like it too.  What I mean by that is it reads like Aaron wrote Gil’s scenes while Hallum did Kadyn’s. That’s more because the parts involving Gil are full of the hard-bitten, casual over-the-top-ness that marks a lot of Aaron’s work.  I mean, not only does the guy get a grizzled interior monologue, but he also winds up fighting a single-minded and eventually sarcastic security droid and a carnivorous plant with oxygen for blood. Hallum, for better and worse, has a less distinct style.  Which is to say that Kadyn’s scenes are distinguished more for their oddball plot elements -- his space-monkey and space-dolphin friends, quarksharks, eating deadly space mushrooms without a care -- than the writing itself.

That really sums up “Sea of Stars” in a nutshell.  It has a lot of weird sci-fi elements to it, but they’re all in service of a very familiar plot about a father and son that have to reunite/reconnect.  Artist Stephen Greene delivers the appropriate amount of grit and whimsy to the protagonist’s respective stories. The only real fault with his style being that some of the design elements have a straightforward “[noun] -- but IN SPACE” aesthetic to them, best seen in the indigenous people look of the Zazzteks.  It all adds up to a first volume that’s fine for what it is and not much more than that.

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One of the best, weirdest, and darkest "Star Wars" titles out there.

A while back I called out one volume of this series for being somewhat homophobic in the way that it stereotyped the members of a same-sex couple.  Vol. 13 starts off by making amends for that by doing whatever the opposite of homophobic is as Sugimoto and the rest of his crew fight some blind assailaints in the dark while completely naked.  The first few chapters offer up as much of the main male cast as you’ve ever wanted to see, while mangaka Satoru Noda keeps the bits that would’ve turned this into a full-on hentai manga covered in shadow, or by hands, guns, or convenient mushrooms.  To those of you who are thinking that this might be the time to jump off the “Golden Kamuy” train at the arrival of such a scene, I have one word for you: Don’t. Nudity aside, the whole sequence is an effortlessly thrilling action setpiece as Sugimoto and company have to rely on their wits to outsmart their attackers.  With their dongs out.

Things cool down a bit for just a chapter of picture-taking before the plot kicks back into high gear again.  The reason for that is the cast has finally made it to Abashiri Prison. It’s time to finally find out whether or not Noppera-Bo, the man who stole the Ainu gold that everyone’s after, and Asirpa’s father are one and the same.  They’ve just got to break into the prison first. What follows is an engrossing combination of the title’s mix of action and comedy and some “Great Escape”-style shenanigans. It’s a lot of fun to read, even if the plot feels that it’s moving too fast at times to keep up with character motivations.  It’s a volume-length issue that mainly affects blind gunman Anji Toni and how he’s dragged around by the narrative.

Still, the volume has one last trick up its sleeve for the final act.  It’s not a spoiler to say that something eventually goes wrong with this plan.  That’s the nature of these prison break in/out stories. What is surprising is the extent to which the stakes are raised by the final page.  Vol. 13 leaves off with the reader feeling like the story has reached a climactic point, leaving you desperate to find out what’s going to happen next by the time you’ve finished.

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