Comic Picks By The Glick

Two volumes in and I’m still not as engaged as I feel I should be with this series.  Picking up from the ending of vol. 1, time travel is introduced as a major plot point as Erin, Mac, and Tiffany find themselves thrust into the strange future of 2016 where they’re greeted by an adult Erin.  There’s a lot of surprise, anxiety, and disappointment to go around as the girls find out about all of the crazy tech that our time has to offer and both Erins have to deal with the complications from coming face-to-face with who they were and who they wound up being.  While they’re puzzling out what to do next, sci-fi craziness creeps in around the edges as the Adults look to find ways to sterilize the damage being done to the timeline and a clone of Erin shows up with the offer of sanctuary for the girls.  At least, that’s what she says she’s offering.

Surprisingly, the addition of the time-travel angle to “Paper Girls” does help to make its conflicts that much clearer.  The Adults are out to make sure that the timeline is preserved at any cost, while the Kids have different ideas about that.  Unfortunately, it’s not clear exactly what the Kids’ agenda is beyond the “Adults are monsters” soundbites we get here.  The Kids also seem to be doing a lot more damage to the eras they’re in as all of the monsters 2016 has to deal with are a result of Clone Erin’s appearance.  This does add up to the title still feeling very puzzle box-y as the answers we get to the questions present in the series are ultimately going to determine whether or not it’ll wind up being a worthwhile ride in the end.

I will admit there are still some interesting bits to be found in vol. 2.  Brian K. Vaughan convincingly nails Adult Erin’s anxiety at coming face-to-face with her past self, and even manages to deliver some heartwarming moments in the process.  Mac is also hit with a surprising revelation about her future that’s handled quite well, while seeing the girls’ reaction to HD TVs (and the most recent “Ninja Turtles” movie) is good for a laugh.  Cliff Chiang also delivers typically excellent work, whether it’s involving the girls just talking to each other, or having giant maggot monsters duke it out in a river.  What’s here is basically good enough to hold my interest and keep reading this title, but “Paper Girls” isn’t a series where I’m eagerly anticipating every new volume.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

The last volume of “Black Science” marked a surprising turnaround.  Instead of continuing to show how things got worse for its dimension-hopping travelers, things focused entirely on leader Grant McKay’s character and how he finally realized what he’s been doing wrong and how to make it right again.  That trend continues in vol. 5 as it heads straight into farce from the get-go.  Grant arrives in the fantasy-based dimension his daughter Pia has been living in for the past few years as their savior and proceeds to immediately ruin the peace she has managed to broker between its warring tribes.  Things only get worse (and more darkly comic) from there as Grant gets drunk and makes a fool of himself at a royal dinner and then steals the horse of Pia’s fiancee in an effort to find the powerful artifact of a witch in order to make things right again.  Parts of this could read as depressing as this series have ever been, but writer Rick Remender and artist Matteo Scalera pitch the tone in just the right way to make it all more fun than you’d expect.  So when the time comes for Grant to make an unexpected sacrifice to make things right, the sense of tragedy involved really hits home instead of feeling like another instance of the characters being ground down for the sake of drama.

As good as the first two-and-a-half issues collected in this volume are, the rest find the series reverting to its old tricks and tone once Grant and Pia make a stop in their home dimension.  It’s bad enough that Kadir has set up shop with Grant’s wife, but we soon find out that someone else has been waiting for the scientist’s return along with the Pillar.  Things only get worse from there and the volume ends on the kind of depressing note that had me thinking about giving up on the series at one point.  However, that was the point where Remender and Scalera managed to turn things around and get me involved in “Black Science” again.  So they can clearly recognize when things have become too bleak and a re-adjustment of the tone is in order.  That’s what I’d like to see when vol. 5 comes around.  I know they’re capable of this, it just remains to be seen if they know that they’ve reached this point again.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

I believe I made my complete and total dislike of this title’s current villain, Harusada Tokugawa, honored mother of the shogun, pretty clear in my review of the previous volume.  Re-reading said review, I regret more the fact that I used the word “power” three times in the space of two sentences than any of the thoughts I expressed regarding her specific character.  Seriously, the level of villainy she was shown to have engaged in over these past few volumes is staggering.  The only way I felt that I could be satisfied with her comeuppance would be for Harusada to recognize that she had made the wrong choices in life before she was put to death.  That doesn’t happen.  All I’ll say is that it’s a credit to mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga’s skill that this doesn’t become fatal to my enjoyment of this title.

Out of all the new characters introduced in “The Force Awakens” it probably makes the most sense to give Poe Dameron his own ongoing series.  After all, “hotshot pilot for the Resistance” does offer up a wider variety of story possibilities than “growing up on Tatooine” and “growing up as a stormtrooper” (though, in the right hands, that might have some promise).  So here we have the “Poe Dameron” ongoing series from writer Charles Soule and artist Phil Noto, no strangers to Marvel’s “Star Wars” comics.  As the first ongoing title set in the era of “The Force Awakens” I was wondering how much latitude Soule would get in order to explore this period.  The answer turns out to be not very much.  Thankfully Soule’s skill at working with what he’s given serves him well here and turns this volume into a better read than I was expecting.

As the villain in “Renew Your Vows,” Dan Slott’s “Spider-Man” contribution to “Secret Wars,” Regent wasn’t all that special.  While it was interesting to see a villain with a power-hoarding gimmick like his amass enough power to take over the Marvel Universe, his main purpose in the story was to just be the big bad that Peter Parker and his family had to overcome at the end.  Still, it’s not like Slott would create an all-new villain for Spider-Man (particularly for such a high-profile and bestselling miniseries) and then never use him again.  So we get the return of Regent in this latest volume of “ASM:  Worldwide” as he looks to take over the Marvel Universe using the powers from the heroes and villains he has locked up in his high-end prison.  It’s about as exciting as it sounds.  Had Slott made more of an effort to give Regent more personality than he had in “Renew Your Vows” this might not have been a problem.  Except that the villain is now lacking the one interesting aspect of his character -- the fact that he did succeed in defeating all the heroes -- and he’s even more dull to read about here as a result.

That doesn’t make this volume a lost cause, however.  While Regent may be driving the plot of this volume, its most interesting conflict comes from Peter Parker and Tony Stark.  Both are at odds for most of the volume as Parker Industries’ stock is on the rise while Stark is struggling, and Peter’s insistence on keeping his secret identity leads to some awkward moments with the futurist.  Particularly when Stark tries to recruit Spider-Man, saying that he can always come work for him after Parker Industries crashes and burns.  That’s when the fisticuffs start.  Norman Osborne also gets a lot to do in this volume as well.  From dealing with his ex-wife at a corporate dinner, to figuring out Regent’s identity in a great bit of self-aware detective work with Betty Brant and Mary Jane, to actually doing something about the villain on his own.  Oh, and MJ gets to have some fun as a superhero again when she has to save Peter and Tony’s butts when Regent has them on the ropes.  (She also gets the spotlight in the not-bad reprint of “Amazing Spider-Man Annual” #19 included here to round out the page count.)  Along with Giuseppe Camuncoli’s always-enjoyable art, there’s enough going on around the edges of the main story to make this volume a decent read.  Though, if Slott wants to bring Regent back for a third go-round, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him to make this guy into a worthy villain.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

The title to this series (as well as its first volume) is entirely appropriate considering the character’s origins.  Originally an amalgamation of Gwen Stacey and Deadpool who showed up on the variant cover to “Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars” #2, the character image became quite popular with fans.  But how do you turn such a thing into an actual character capable of carrying her own comic stories?  In lesser hands, this might have been an impossible task.  However, in the less sane hands of Christopher Hastings -- the creator of “The Adventures of Doctor McNinja” -- it actually works out surprisingly well.  Hastings hit upon the genius idea of having Gwen Poole be a fangirl from our universe who has found herself in the Marvel Universe.  As a result of her encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel Universe and its conventions, she knows that you’re either a hero in a costume or just an extra.  So she gets herself a superhero outfit and starts learning the ropes of the hero business firsthand.

She gets off to an unsteady start, stealing a virus from the Black Cat and selling it to Hydra because she needs the money.  Which is no problem because the Avengers will take care of it, right?  Except they’re in space and now she has to team up with Howard the Duck to get it back. This is only the start of the ridiculousness under Hastings’ watch, and the whole volume is pretty funny and imaginative on balance.  I say that because there are the occasional bits of sentimentality and darkness that pop in from time to time. They’re ostensibly there to remind you that there’s more to this book than comedy, but wind up just disrupting the book’s playful tone.

Said tone is best exemplified by the bright, clean art from Gurihiru that really sells the comedy in the series.  It’s also enough to make the otherwise fine art from Danilo Beyruth, who handled the back-up stories, look busy and dull by comparison.  Which are two things this volume is not.  She may have got her start as a tenuous spinoff of “Deadpool,” but “Gwenpool” stands on her own thanks to Hastings’ inspired approach and Gurihiru’s wonderful art.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Gillen and Larroca's epic about Vader's fall and rise is the best "Star Wars" comic to come out of Marvel and a must-read for all franchise fans.

While I’ve enjoyed the previous two volumes of this series, I haven’t been entirely crazy about them.  Though the love triangle at its core between jellyfish otaku Tsukimi, gorgeous cross-dresser Kuranosuke, and his straight-laced brother Shu is competently handled, there’s not a lot much new there.  Even when you consider the crossdressing angle.  Mangaka Akiko Higashimura does have a solid parallel plot as the other female otaku of AMARS come together under Kuranosuke’s guidance to start a dressmaking operation in order to save their residence from being demolished.  Yet this part of the series is also home to its most annoying element:  The other female otaku.

If one of Higashimura’s goals with this series was to show that female otaku could be just as annoying and lacking in social graces as their male counterparts, then mission accomplished.  It’s not that the social awkwardness of nerds can’t be mined for good comedy.  The problem here is that things are played up to such a zany extent that the characters start feeling like joke machines rather than actual people.  “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” fangirl Mayaya has been the worst offender for most of the series (and this volume).  The way she proclaims the similarities between that classic tale and her life have been grating for a while now, along with her active incompetence at just about everything else.  Then you have misconceptions that are meant to come off as hilarious, but just make the characters in question look dumb.  Even if doll fanatic Chieko does know an incredibly talented dressmaker, you’d think she’d mention that this person’s skills relate only to dolls rather than actual people.

Yet there is hope to be found for these characters in this volume as well.  Mayaya, specifically.  As it turns out, the tall thin otaku is perfectly suited for one role in the girls’ dressmaking operation.  Said role is also one that forces her to confront her insecurities and actually grow a little as a person.  There is some wackiness attached to said growth, except now it actually feels like it’s coming from the character this time.  If Higashimura can actually bring some humanity to the most annoying of these otaku, then maybe there’s hope for the rest of them here.  I’ll keep reading to see if that’s the case.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com