Comic Picks By The Glick

I think if I wanted to be a hipster, this is the volume where I would declare that this series is “Over.”  That’s right “One-Punch Man” is no longer cool because our hero no longer embodies the title of his series.  When an alien spacecraft lands on Earth and proceeds to lay waste to the city, all of the Class S heroes (and Saitama) are on hand to fight off the attack.  Actually, the S-rank heroes busy themselves with fighting off an immensely powerful shape-shifting alien while Saitama strolls onto the ship and takes the fight directly to the invaders.  Things go about as well as you’d expect for the bad guys until Saitama meets their leader.  One punch later and… he only shatters the leader’s armor only to unveil his ultimate form!  When the last page rolls around, it’s clear that they’ve been trading blows for a while.

Yeah, I know, “*spoilers*.”  But c’mon, it’s not like you’re reading this series for its captivating plot.  The events of this volume do raise an important question.  Namely, “WHAT IS ‘ONE-PUNCH MAN’ IF ITS HERO CAN’T DEFEAT HIS ENEMIES WITH ONE PUNCH ANYMORE!?!?!?!?”  The answer is one of two things:  Either it’s the end of all good things in this world and all future expressions/experiences of joy will merely be pale echoes of past glories as we try to remember what true happiness really felt like as the seconds tick down towards the ends of our lives and the universe itself.

Fortunately the “or” in this situation happens to be, “Still a really damn good superhero manga.”  ONE and Yusuke Murata introduce a ton of new (mostly distinct) characters and set up a seemingly insurmountable threat in an absurd yet undeniably effective manner.  The S-ranks’ fight against the shape-shifter on the ground is also involving enough with its expert balance of struggle, action, and humor that it could’ve sustained the entire volume by itself.  Yet we would’ve lost Saitama’s hijinks on the ship as he defeats all of their defenses with typical ease until he meets the big bad.  Yeah, this may be the volume where the protagonist of “One-Punch Man” no longer defeats all of his enemies in one punch, it continues to be tremendously entertaining.  Hipsters be damned.

This penultimate volume doesn’t get off to the best of starts.  Sure it shows us Toni Chu in Heaven making nice with Abraham Lincoln and Genghis Khan, but then it jumps over to showing us Olive Chu’s future career with the FDA.  It’s good for some laughs, but its relevance to the main story is unclear at this point.  Then the story jumps tracks again in the second issue to show us some of Mason Savoy’s history, the Pope getting on the anti-chicken bandwagon, Amelia’s writer’s block, and Tony and Colby heading off to Yamapalu (last visited in vol. 2) to get some answers.  I realize that between this volume and the next, we’re down to the last ten issues of this series.  It’s just that the opening issues here really had me worrying that writer John Layman didn’t have a plan for how to properly wrap up his signature series.

It wasn’t all panels, screenings, and checking out places to eat at the con.  ...Actually on second thought, it really was with my phone and 3DS picking up the slack otherwise.  But for the plane trips there and back I had to rely on the comics in my backpack.  They were generally quite good and one of them even managed to convince me to keep following it after I was prepared to give it up after this volume.  So after the break are my thoughts on “This Damned Band,” “Hellboy in Mexico,” “Black Science,” “Yotsuba&!,” and “Paradise Residence.”

I’m doing my best to shake off the annual bout of post-con depression here.  This year’s Fanime didn’t have the depressing lows or thrilling high of the previous one, but it was an awesome experience overall.  That’s because there was enough going on between panels, screenings, and visits to the dealer’s hall and artist’s alley that I didn’t need to kill any time by hanging out at my room unless I had to.  For things like sleep.  John and I are already making plans for next year with the hope that we’ll find an easier way to get rooms, that Steve will be back next year, and that we’ll get more of our friends to come along.  In the meantime, what follows are my thoughts on the con that was, along with what has become our “Day Zero” tradition.

My friend Steve joins us again at Fanime.  This time, to talk about some manga he actually likes!

(The con was awesome, as usual.  Expect my thoughts on it this Friday.)

I’ve been writing these “Previews Picks” ahead of my trip to Fanime and I’ve been saving this one for last.  Mainly because I thought that after nothing came out of Sakura-Con, we’d get some juicy news from Dark Horse Manga at Anime Central this past weekend.  As it turned out, they didn’t even have a panel at the convention.  Carl Horn will be at Fanime carrying the banner for the company, but I’m not expecting any announcements from the con.  Much as I love it, Fanime just isn’t high profile enough for a major manga publisher to use it as a platform.  I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong here, though.

So since the major news about Dark Horse in the past month is a lack of news, let’s talk about that new Comixology Unlimited service that was just announced.  It’s a Netflix-style subscription plan for titles from Dark Horse, Image, IDW, Kodansha, and more where you can add trade paperbacks and single issues to your library for the low price of $5.99 a month.  Anyone interested can try out the service with the free 30-day trial Comixology is offering right now.

It sounds like a fantastic deal.  Who wouldn’t want the comics equivalent of Netflix for these publishers!?  After a closer look, I don’t think that’s what we’re getting.  While Netflix rose to fame on the wide variety of movies, and (in particular) TV shows it had available for streaming, Comixology Unlimited appears to just be offering readers the first few volumes or issues of a given title.  The plan here looks to get readers started on a series and then transition them over to actually paying for it if they like that first free taste.  It’s not a bad deal for what it is, but it’s not what I wanted.  Which would be free access to EVERYTHING from these publishers.  I’ll see what I can read for my 30-day trial and that’ll be it.

Well, it finally happened.  After years of constant delays/postponements, Marvel has finally cancelled the next two issues of Bendis and Mark Bagley’s creator-owned series “Brilliant.”  The first five issues were published erratically over the course of a year and the first volume wasn’t bad.  It did, however, end on a note that was clearly meant to springboard the next arc.  Whether or not we’ll ever see it is anyone’s guess at this point.

Part of me wants to put the reasons why we never saw these issues and their cancellation down to Bendis himself.  After all, he’s the one who has over-committed himself with multiple ongoing titles in the Marvel Universe and additional delayed creator-owned projects.  Bagley, on the other hand, is one of the fastest artists in the business and should’ve been able to draw scripts for “Brilliant” if he had received them.  Except that the artist has also been kept very busy by Marvel over the past few years, including multiple collaborations with Bendis.  The long-delayed pronouncement of “Brilliant’s” death is down to a combined effort on the part of its writer and artist as I see it.

Now it’s time to actually see if we’ll get the next three issues of Bendis and Alex Maleev’s “Scarlet” after all these years.  They’ve been solicited, but will they actually show up?

Originally this was going to be about Geoff Johns’ ascent in the Warner Bros/DC Films hierarchy.  The short version was that I generally saw this as a good thing, particularly if it allows for Johns to put his foot down if he didn’t like something that filmmakers were doing with Superman.  He has done some really good stories featuring the character, after all.

Then spoilers regarding “Rebirth” #1 broke and one of them in particular is a lot more interesting to write about.  The big reveal (which is all over the internet at this point so there’s no use worrying about spoilers) is that “Watchmen” is being brought into the continuity of the DC Universe.  Specifically, Dr. Manhattan is revealed as the being responsible for the creation of the “New 52” and his presence will serve as an antagonistic force for the heroes of the DCU to push back against over the next couple of years.  The other Watchmen aren’t mentioned, though speculation is that Johns has been seeding them into continuity under our noses with his runs on “Superman” and “Justice League.”

As a surprise reveal, this is top-class.  I never thought that DC would actually do something like this in regards to one of their most respected works.  Part of “Watchmen’s” appeal is that it’s a stand-alone work where you don’t have to worry about any of the superhero continuity that it’s now being made a part of.  So I can’t deny that there’s a transgressive thrill to seeing them take this final step.  In retrospect, it seems surprising that they didn’t do this sooner since it’s clear that they have no intention at all of ever returning these characters to Alan Moore.

Which brings us to the fact that “ethically bankrupt” is one of the nicer things I’ve read as a description for what DC is doing here.  Apparently the massive trolling exercise of Alan Moore with “Before Watchmen” wasn’t enough and now Johns is effectively making the curmudgeon the force for grim and grittiness in this new story while he himself tries to bring light and optimism back to the DCU.  Johns is a talented writer who has shown that he knows how to incorporate meta concepts quite well into his stories.  I’m sure what he’s writing here may even be good.

It still doesn’t change the fact that DC’s treatment of one of the greatest writers in comics has been frankly abominable over these past few decades.  Moore deserves better from the company and this is just one more kick in the nuts.  Which is how I see it -- Moore probably couldn’t care less about “Watchmen” at this point.  I passed on reading any of the “Before Watchmen” comics for this reason, and I’m going to do my best to avoid picking up any future stories that feature these characters in a prominent role.  There are a lot of good intentions and ideas behind this “Rebirth” initiative at DC.  However, the new comic from Johns shows that they are being built on the worst of business practices.

Now, here are some thoughts on comics that don't involve "Watchmen" (at least not yet anyway):