Comic Picks By The Glick

“Don’t Split the Party” was the lesson learned by one RPG-centric comic, but Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans aren’t inclined to follow the rules.  Which is why vol. 2 starts off with Ash, Matt, Angela, and the newly-Fallen Sol stuck in the Eternal Prussian-occupied ruins of Glass Town, while Izzy and Chuck are clear on the other side of the world looking for allies.  The former group wants to leave the world of DIE, while the other wants to stay. Over the course of this volume, the motivations and allegiances of a few of these characters will shift as some of them realize they’ve got either better reasons to stay or are just having too much fun to quit.  The main rule for leaving DIE still stands though: Everyone must agree to leave. Or rather, everyone alive must agree to leave.

Expect tales of gaming crunch, a lucky fool vs. a titan, the seductive vampire all the girls should watch out for, awkward family reunions, and the secret fantasy history of the Bronte family in this second volume.  Don’t worry, Gillen has a plan and it includes working a lot of disparate plot elements together while taking a deep dive into what makes the rest of the cast tick. He does good work on that part, even if the previous volume’s star, Ash, gets the best moment when he lets us know about his unreliable narratorship.  Great job on setting up expectations that this story will likely read quite differently the second time through, Mr. Gillen.

So vol. 2 is an improvement over the first, now that I’ve had my expectations properly adjusted.  Its biggest problem still persists, however, as I still don’t think the elements of drama and horror are working all that well with the writer’s wit.  It works a little better, now that we’re digging in deeper to the characters and their world, but “Die” doesn’t feel like it’s firing on all cylinders yet for me.  Except for Hans’ incredible art, which effortlessly brings this world of terrible fantasy and all its disparate elements to amazing life on the page.

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Tough-as-nails cyborg bounty hunter Beilert Valance made his debut back in the 80’s when Marvel originally published “Star Wars” comics.  Writer Robbie Thompson was apparently so taken with this character (or someone at Marvel who loved the character and knew where Thompson buries the bodies) that he bought the character back in the pages of his otherwise unremarkable “Star Wars:  Han Solo -- Imperial Cadet” miniseries.  Here, Valance is hired along with several other bounty hunters to take out none other than Darth Vader.  This is being done through an intermediary of the smuggling group known as the Hidden Hand whose activities have finally put them on the Empire’s radar.

“Target Vader” was originally serialized in the wake of Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncoli’s “Darth Vader:  Dark Lord of the Sith” series.  I mention this because it’s been plainly obvious that Marvel wants to have a new “Darth Vader” comic out every month.  This comic was made to fill a void and it sure reads like it too. There’s lots of familiar backstabbing and tough-person talk trying to pass itself off as characterization, with Valance himself not making much of an impression beyond his “Terminator”-esque appearance.  Placed within a story that’s competent but otherwise bland in all regards -- down to its use of Vader -- it’s a return that doesn’t warrant much celebration.

Marvel certainly didn’t think so.  If they did, then maybe they would have given one of the SIX different artists -- Marc Laming, Cris Bolson, Stefano Landini, Marco Failla, Roberto Di Salvo, and Georges Duarte -- who worked on this series enough time to do the whole thing themselves.  “Target Vader” isn’t one of those comics where each of its six issues is done by a single artist. No, these six artists all jammed together (likely to the tune of impending deadlines), with as many as three pitching in on a single issue. A comic can still be worthwhile if it has this kind of artist pile-up -- just look at vol. 6 of “Doctor Aphra.”  “Target Vader,” on the other hand doesn’t have a story that’s even half as interesting.  It’s all kind of a mess, and while this comic may not be outright awful in any one area, that’s about the best that can be said for it.

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Things haven’t been going well for Robbie Reyes, the Ghost Rider.  After losing control of his car, the Hell Charger, he wants to be done with this whole Spirit of Vengeance business.  Good thing that he’s a member of the Avengers, who can not only pool their talents to get him out of this mess, but call in an exorcism specialist like Daimon Hellstrom to help.  Except none of it winds up working and Robbie winds up in Hell face-to-face with its current ruler: Fellow Ghost Rider Johnny Blaze. He’s been doing his best to keep the realm infernal in order, but he needs more power in order to do so.  Robbie’s power, specifically. Blaze wants to race the youngster for it, except he’s so over this Spirit of Vengeance business. It isn’t until the current King of Hell threatens Robbie’s brother, Gabe, that the “Challenge of the Ghost Riders” begins.

After writing that summary, I realize that you have to buy into the idea that the power of a Ghost Rider can only be transferred through some kind of contest like this.  This comes in addition to the fact that the story is just another version of the “Hero doesn’t want to be a hero anymore, but then comes to realize his importance,” tale that’s been done to death for me.  While the Hell-based scenes only have nostalgia for Jason Aaron’s great run on “Ghost Rider” to offer, the Earthbound ones manage to be amusingly over-the-top more often than not. That’s because Blaze has sent a certain insanely powerful Spirit of Vengeance to keep the Avengers busy.  I won’t spoil it here, but it’s a character that Aaron was destined to write at some point and the results here are good enough to make me hope he gets that chance again.

Stefano Caselli provides the art and he does a decent enough job.  I like his style, the level of detail he provides, and his fight scenes, but the visuals don’t get as crazy as you’d expect a story about two supernatural racers storming their way through Hell would.  That leads to this volume being just an okay one overall, though the cliffhanger involving Tony Stark as the smartest caveman in the world does have promise.

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When this fourth volume was announced, it came with word that it was going to be Alan Moore’s final work in comics.  The writer’s official reason was that he didn’t want to start repeating himself, which is fair enough. Unspoken, I would think, would be his utter disgust at how he’s been treated over the years by the major comic companies -- well, really just DC -- and fans in general.  I’m not surprised that he’s stopping now, I’m surprised that he managed to stick around this long. So the strand of bitterness that makes its way through this fourth volume of “League” is certainly expected. Along with the dazzling technical prowess of the writer and Kevin O’Neill, the artist.  What I didn’t expect was for this final volume to be the first one where not getting all the references negatively impacted my enjoyment of the story.

Look at that cover.  You can almost feel the smugness radiating off of it.  No doubt some of it is left over from vol. 15’s cliffhanger revelation that Shogun Iemochi’s new husband, Prince Kazu, is actually a woman.  It read like another kick in the shins at the time, because things have been going bad for the people in the Inner Chambers who want to do the right thing for a very long time now.  The fact that their Shogun was tricked into marrying a woman posing as a man only served to further compound that feeling.

So it’s a real testament to mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga’s skills that Kazu, nee Chikako, actually winds up being a fully sympathetic character by the time vol. 16 is over.  There’s some implied post-bathing manhandling to start with, but it isn’t until we get her backstory that things get interesting.  We see how Chikako has suffered all her life by being born with a deformity, which has made her come off like a lesser person in her mother’s eyes.  Yet when the arranged marriage between her VERY unwilling brother Kazu is set up, she sees this as a chance to finally get some quality mother/daughter time after all these years.

What Chikako didn’t count on was being married to an individual wholly sympathetic to her plight in Iemochi.  Seeing how the Shogun gets her new “husband” to lower her guard and open up is immensely satisfying and even heartwarming as well.  It helps take the edge off of the usual business of how the Emperor and the Imperial Court try to force the country to go one way, with their “Barbarians Out!” agenda, contrary to the will of the world and everywhere else.  (Which makes the 19th-century setting of the series feel much more relevant than it should right now.) Iemochi and the rest of the Inner Chambers may only be able to stall their efforts for now, but experiencing Chikako’s story is what really makes vol. 16 worthwhile.  As well as far less of a drag than recent volumes of this series have been, too.

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The space opera action continues in this volume and shifts to a new setting:  Earth. There’s still some business to take care of in Empire-space, however, as Emperor N’Jadaka makes his move to crush the Maroons once and for all.  Unfortunately he gets more than he bargained for, and his failure allows T’Challa to finally be reunited with his family, and lover, Storm. Much to its king’s surprise, Wakanda has thrived in his absence, suggesting that the gods have finally returned to the country.  The thing is that the Empire is still out there and as it recovers from the blow that was struck against it, it’ll be coming for the man who struck it. This would be a big problem for everyone, except that there’s an even bigger one in the offing as an old enemy of T’Challa’s prepares to return to the spotlight.

I’m still digging writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ current storyline, even though this and the previous volume haven’t quite captured the spark of the one that kicked it off.  This one sees the writer move around a lot of pieces in the story in advance of the next arc, which will be the writer’s final one on the title.  It’s all done in a fairly dramatic fashion, with artist Daniel Acuna being up for delivering big splashy space combat action, or more sinister, personal struggles as the villain on the ground makes his move.  The action may move a bit too slow in parts, but that’s a minor issue because it feels like Coates has a plan and he’s working towards it. That makes this a solid volume overall and one that has the series in good shape as it moves towards the finale.

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After seven issues of one shots that dodged the main story (though most were still pretty good on their own terms), vol. 11 starts off with the issue I’m sure everyone was waiting for!  Batman breaks out of the dreaming machine and walks through Arkham beating up everyone in his way. It’s a genuinely cathartic experience to see Batman thoroughly dominate everyone in front of him -- physically, mentally, and even both in a couple cases.  Writer Tom King and artists Mikel Janin and Jorge Fornes knew that they needed to deliver an issue where the title character scores a definitive win and they do it with style here.

That need is only partly due to how things played out in the previous volume.  The real reason they needed to give Batman a win at the start of vol. 11 is because he spends the rest of it losing.  His relationship with Gordon and the GCPD is in tatters, while he winds up falling out with the rest of his Bat-family here.  That part feels like the most plot-forced thing in this volume, unless King is planning some misdirection to be revealed later on.  It all leads up to Batman, tied up on a horse, heading out into the desert for some “family time” with one of the last people he ever expected to see back in his life.  Which, and this is the volume’s biggest failing, King doesn’t really dig into the relationship between the two characters here as much as he should have.

While that may sound like a huge bummer to read, it didn’t quite click that way with me.  That’s mainly because in explaining Bane’s master plan, King actually makes it feel like the villain struggled to break the Bat this time.  Rather than just be an unstoppable Venom-fueled train of pain, Bane actually had a master plan that he’s been working his way through for these past ten volumes.  So even if it was painful to see Bane hand Batman his ass here, I felt I had to respect what he went through in order to make that happen. It’s a great buildup for “City of Bane” as I want to see what the strongman has in store for his vision of Gotham.  (After it hits paperback, so all the volumes in King’s run will look good together on my bookshelf.)

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(This volume also collects another one of those “Batman:  Secret Files” anthologies to pad out the page count. None of the stories in it are terrible, but only the opening Andy Kubert-written story with the Joker is a standout.)

Why did Daniel leave the Dreaming?  For love, of course. The tragic story of his romance is told by “Sandman” veteran/survivor Rose Walker to a barely conscious Lucien in the hospital.  It starts off with Rose having a chance encounter with Dream himself that could’ve led to a romance, except that she decided to give her daughter Ivy a shot at finding love for herself.  Their relationship blossoms and things are going incredibly well for the both of them. Until they aren’t and writer Simon Spurrier reveals his real goal with this story: To make it come off like a universal romance that also happens to be driven by the plot.  It’s understandable that things would go bad for two people in love, it just usually doesn’t involve a tattoo that’s fueled by contagious magic. Still, it’s nice to see Rose again, to have the writer deliver an interesting take on her current status quo, to bring in her “father” and not have me hate him, and to have this side story move the main one forward in a meaningful way.  All with hauntingly elongated art from Abigail Larson that recalls the best of the one-offs from “The Sandman,” and shows that she can really deliver the goods when not pressed for time like she was in the first volume.

Main series artist Bilquis Evely is still killing it in the story that follows as her chronicle of Dora and Matthew’s attempt to pick up Dream’s trail in every realm that they visit.  From the depths of Hell, to the courts and huts of Faerie, to the Inn at the World’s End, this arc is chock-full of stunning visuals and shifts in style. Great storytelling too as our two adventurers find themselves embroiled in the drama Dream has left behind in visiting each of these places, while Abel has to deal with the new entity that is now running the Dreaming.  It’s honestly hard to say which of these threads is better as Dora & Matthew’s has the variety of settings and subplots to work through. Meanwhile, the entity reveals itself to be a curious and apt student of stories who wants to do right by his role, but may wind up destroying the place in spite of itself. Both feature Spurrier’s engaging meditations on the nature of stories, which enchant as they feed into the main plot.  It all makes for a second volume just as good as the first, and one that sets up what looks to be a smashing finale for vol. 3

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