Comic Picks By The Glick

Yes, I’m just as surprised as you that we’re only getting this now as opposed the Turtles’ heyday in the 90’s.  That may be a good thing.  Can you imagine how this crossover would’ve read during that era where it was style at the expense of all substance?  With veteran Bat-writer (and creator of BOOM!’s excellent “The Woods”) James Tynion IV at the helm, it actually winds up reading much better than that.  The setup is simple enough:  An accident with a trans-dimensional portal winds up sending the Turtles and Splinter, along with Shredder and a portion of the Foot Clan, to Gotham City.  Naturally, Shredder sees the city as being ripe for conquest, while the Turtles and Splinter seek to stop him by the means they have available to them.  Both groups wind up on Batman’s radar after the Turtles interrupt a raid by the Foot on a WayneTech lab.  From there (after the necessary introduction via fisticuffs) the Caped Crusader teams up with the Heroes in a Half Shell, to take down Shredder who finds willing ally in his quest in the form of Ra’s Al Ghul.

As an excuse to facilitate the team-up in the title, the story itself is fine.  Tyinon has a good grip on the Turtles’ individual characters and has some fun in their interactions with Batman.  From Donatello fawning over the Batmobile, to Michelangelo riding on the giant T-rex in the Batcave, to the Turtles introducing Batman to the greatness of pizza, he clearly knows what fans want to see.  Still, the most meaningful bit for me was when Batman gets some time with Raphael (who is having another one of his angry moments) to explain his origin and what the fight against crime means to him.  I guess in my old age I want to see the crossovers between franchises as I like have just a little bit of depth to them.  This miniseries does have plenty of style thanks to Freddie E. Williams II’s art and how he has this knack for making the characters appear larger-than-life.  His designs for the “mutanimal” versions of Batman’s rogues gallery are also pretty cool as well.

The whole crossover is as tasty as a regular peanut butter cup and about as filling too.  Buyer beware, however:  The actual story here is a little over 120 pages long with 50 (FIFTY!) pages of variant covers from Williams and other artists.  I didn’t mind that too much because I got this collection for $6 during a sale from ComiXology.  It’s currently available only in hardcover, but I’m not sure I’d be feeling as amenable to this crossover as I was if I had paid full (or even half) price for it.

As uneven as Bendis’ output has been recently, it’s still nice to know that he can still write a good “Spider-Man” story.  Mostly.  With the Ultimate Universe having come to an end with “Secret Wars,” Miles Morales is now part of the Marvel Universe proper.  He’s still attending Brooklyn Visions Academy and trying to find a way to balance his superhero career, both solo and as a member of the Avengers, with his school life.  The problem is that he’s failing pretty bad at it, and his awful grades prompt his mom to get her mother, a no-nonsense tough-love type, involved in getting Miles’ life as she sees it back on track.  If that wasn’t bad enough, Miles’ appearance as the new Spider-Man on the block is getting some attention from the old Amazing one’s villains.  Specifically:  The Black Cat and Hammerhead.  With this new guy being one big question mark to them, they want to find out what his deal is and if he needs to be taken out of the picture before he becomes a real problem to them.

Miles’ troubles at school and home are the stuff of classic superhero drama and yet they still manage to entertain here.  Bendis is clearly invested in the material as his protagonist’s reactions to all this drama feel genuine.  There are also some good moments here between Miles and his best buddy Ganke.  While the latter serves an invaluable role as a confidant to his buddy, his fanboy nature does get the better of him here when he tries to force a friendship between Miles and Fabio “Goldballs” Medina (imported over from Bendis’ “Uncanny X-Men” run).  Really, all of the human drama in this volume is rock-solid and is the real core of this series.

That’s also true because the superhero action pretty much fizzles out at the end.  The fight with Blackheart in the beginning is fine as a means to give Miles a big win for the start of his new series.  As for the business with the Black Cat and Hammerhead, it really feels kind of pointless by the end.  There’s nothing wrong with having Miles face off against some of the members of Peter’s old rogues gallery, but there were clearly easier and smarter ways for them to get the information they wanted.  It does give artist Sara Pichelli a chance to show off her skills with superhero action, even though she’s just as good with all of the human drama.  The next volume does show more promise in balancing the human/superhero aspects of this series as Jessica Jones shows up and the story deals with the fallout of “Civil War II,” so that’s good to know.

I’m not done with Brubaker yet this week.  To be honest, after the writer decamped to Image along with Sean Phillips to do “Fatale” and their subsequent creator-owned titles, I didn’t think we’d ever see another volume of “Criminal.”  It had a very good six-volume run over at Marvel, but no ongoing storyline that needed to be continued.  Also, their Image titles sell better than “Criminal” ever did, so it’s not like there’s a real financial incentive to bring it back.  I’m glad they did as “Wrong Time, Wrong Place” gives us two more quality stories about the tragically violent Lawless family.

“Wrong Time” spotlights Teeg Lawless, doing a 30-day stretch for an outstanding bench warrant after he was busted in a bar fight.  Which, surprisingly, had nothing to do with the heist he just took part in for local mob boss Sebastian Hyde.  Things are going well for the man, until people start trying to kill him.  Surprisingly, these people aren’t out to get him on Hyde’s order.  Teeg’s a survivor, if nothing else, so the question here becomes who gave the order to take him out?  Revealing that he lives isn’t a spoiler because the back cover gives away the fact that Teeg is still alive by the time the second story, “Wrong Place,” comes around and we get to see what life was like when he goes out on a job and brings along his son Tracy, as the driver.  This is Tracy’s story as he learns a predictably hard lesson about getting to know other people at a time like this.  Whether or not anyone has to die in order for him to learn it, well, that would be telling…

Brubaker offers an illuminating look at the two most interesting recurring characters in the “Criminal” mythos.  Teeg may come off as a heartless killer, but there’s always a cold logic behind every action he takes.  As for Tracy, the origins of his isolationist tendencies are made quite clear here.  Both issues are also a great showcase for Phillips too, as he captures the cold grime of the prison from the first story, and the relative peace of a rural small town quite well.  However, the real showpieces for the artist in these issues are the comics-within-a-comic:  “Savage” and “Fang the Kung-Fu Werewolf,” pastiches of “Conan” and Marvel’s 70’s Kung-Fu titles, respectively.  The stories told here may be a bit on-the-nose with their parallels to the ones in the main plot, but the offer Phillips a rewarding chance to cut loose and have some fun with the styles he’s homaging here.  It’s clear that the creators haven’t lost the thread with the characters and world of “Criminal,” and any future returns stand a good chance of being welcome ones after seeing how this one turned out.

This spy series from Brubaker and Epting is great fun, so long as you're only admiring its surface.

It isn’t that this series has suddenly become dull in its examination of the ongoing misery of the title character’s life as he transitions into high school.  There’s too much disturbing stuff on display for that to happen.  Such as when we witness the loss of his virginity in a way that’s almost as uncomfortable for the reader to experience as it is for our protagonist.  We also get to see his attempts to fit in at high school by going along with the flow, yet not actually investing himself in it.  He gets some acquaintances and even goes out on a real date, but Punpun ultimately fails to develop any meaningful connections with those around him.  Which is kind of the point, it seems.

No, the problem here is that the misery is starting to become predictable in its occurrence.  Even if you’re not able to guess exactly what’s going to happen to Punpun, you can still rest easy in expecting the worst from pretty much every situation he finds himself in.  The adolescent stew of emotions, hormones, and raging insecurity is all too familiar to me.  Yet my time in high school still had its high points too.  I realize that the parallel narrative involving Punpun’s (former?) friends Masumi and Shimizu is meant to counter this by showing to people who have formed a connection which manages to get them through the worst life has to offer.  The problem with that is, well-executed it may be, it manages to just be predictable.  Where Punpun’s arc is marinated in despair, Masumi and Shimizu’s bucks it at the exact moment you’d expect it to.

This volume does manage to have the unlikeliest of breakout characters in Punpun’s Mom.  It turns out that she’s a lot more disturbed than anyone would’ve given her credit for prior to this volume as we see in a flashback that casts a whole new light on the defining moment of domestic violence from way back in the first chapter.  We learn more of her sad history, see her try to break the cycle after connecting with one of Punpun’s old friends in the hospital, and then…  Well, remember what I said about expecting the worst?  The volume ends with fresh heartbreak with the possibility that things will change as Punpun’s Dad comes back into the picture.  I’m interested in seeing how his return will turn out, even as I prepare for it to turn out as awfully as everything else in his life did during this volume.

I hope everyone enjoyed Batgirl’s time in Burnside because it ends with this volume.  It was a fun detour and while the stories from writers Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher, along with Babs Tarr’s art (along with many other talented artists) didn’t prove to be as revolutionary as their buzz would indicate, they still put a fresh spin on the superhero formula.  Take the main arc from this volume that has Barbara Gordon hanging out with friends, fighting bad guys, and slowly worrying that she’s losing her mind in the process.  That’s because a sinister villain known as The Fugue has found a way to attack Batgirl’s greatest strength:  her memory.  His is an incredibly creepy gimmick and the creators do a good job of portraying it in all of its insidiousness.  The good news is that it ultimately leads to a proper climax for this run as all of Barbara’s friends team up to help her out and take out all of the bad guys the Fugue has roped into his scheme.  Granted, you may wonder why The Fugue didn’t just utterly destroy his nemesis given the power he’s revealed to have had over her.  It’s handwaved away via the usual supervillain megalomania (his vengeance is personal, you see), but that would’ve broken the series and the character, and prevented us from having a fist-pumping climax where Batgirl puts one over on him.  Formulaic, but still good fun.

The rest of the volume is rounded out by two issues written by Fletcher and illustrated by three different artists, and the “Batgirl:  Endgame” one-shot written by Fletcher and Stewart, with art by Bengal.  Fletcher’s two-issue arc serves to bring back the leader of Gladius for a rematch against Batgirl and serve as an unofficial crossover with “Gotham Academy.”  It’s a fun bit of fluff that doesn’t really add much to what has come before.  However, the two-page spread near the end which calls back to the memorable one from the first issue of this particular run serves as a nice reminder of all this series has accomplished and helps to draw a line under things.  The “Endgame” one-shot is far less consequential as it just has Batgirl working to save as many people as she can before the Burnside bridge is blown up to halt the spread of the Endgame virus.  This may have little relevance to the crossover it ties into, but it still manages to be a pretty great showcase for Bengal’s skills as an artist with its emphasis on action in a silent issue.  Overall, “Mindgames” was a solid end to the Fletcher/Stewart/Tarr run and another welcome reminder of how superior execution can elevate the superhero formula, which the creators will be departing from with “Motor Crush” from Image later this year.

For all intents and purposes this is the grand finale to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s run on “Batman.”  Yes, there’s still another volume with their names on it arriving in december, but in addition to collecting their final issue together it’s also called “Epilogue.”  Which kind of hits the nail on the head.  “Bloom” then represents the end of what was certainly the most popular and arguably the most creatively successful run of the “New 52.”  If anyone was expecting Snyder and Capullo to whiff on delivering a satisfying finale, then you’re going to come away disappointed.  Even if the ultimate outcome of the story is obvious from before you start reading this volume.

T’Challa is having a really good year so far.  After Chadwick Boseman made a striking debut as the Black Panther in “Captain America:  Civil War,” the character’s latest ongoing series debuted to over 300k in sales.  It’s not the biggest debut of the year, but I don’t think that anyone was expecting a new “Black Panther” series to do this well.  This means that a lot of people got to see what writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has planned for the title character as his kingdom crumbles around him.  While T’Challa has often been presented as the smartest man in the room, whether he’s hanging out with the Avengers or the Illuminati, even he is having trouble dealing with villains who can manipulate the hate of Wakandans to their own ends and control the country’s vegetation and weather.  He also has to contend with two former members of the Dora Milaje who feel that the system has failed them and their country and are now seeking to create a true democratic republic.  Toss in the fact that his sister, Queen Shuri, is still in stasis after facing off against Thanos’ Black Order and enhanced human slimeball Ezekiel Stane is helping to back the bad guys, and it would appear that T’Challa is about to learn a very hard lesson about the limits of his abilities and power as a king.

Coates certainly wastes no time in throwing the title character in at the deep end when it comes to the challenges he faces here.  It’s clear that the writer has a story he wants to tell about T’Challa, his kingdom, and his people, and he’s got a very able collaborator in artist Brian Stelfreeze.  With all of the parts in place, I feel like I should be more excited about this storyline than I am.  While I’m certainly not against superhero comics where most of the action is delivered in words rather than actions, most of the talking here is pretty straightforward and devoted to exposition regarding the characters’ motivations and ideas.  This is Coates’ debut as a comic book writer, so we can probably chalk that issue up to the man learning the ropes of the medium.  It still makes for a rather slow start to what is going to be (at minimum) a twelve-issue storyline.  Honestly, these first four issues left me hoping that things will get better rather than excited by the prospect of two more volumes of what we got here.  Even if he loses his kingdom, I’d still like to see T’Challa re-emerge as the smartest man in the room by the time this is all over.