Comic Picks By The Glick

One of the best superhero comics in recent memory.  'Nuff said.

Low points don’t get much lower than what we got in vol. 10 of this series.  Just about everything that could go wrong for the good guys in this series did, leaving them either dead or out of favor with the new government.  Then we left off with the premise of the series being partly upended by having a man become shogun again.  Where the hell is mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga going to take things from here?  In the end, she manages to defy expectations by making things simultaneously better and worse for everyone in the series.  Though I’m certainly rooting for the members of the cast looking to find a cure for the redface pox, I’m also left fearing that Yoshinaga has done too good a job in creating a villain for this part of the story.

It’s been a long, hard, weird road from the start of the “New 52,” but come this March several of the surviving titles from that initiative will have hit a significant milestone:  Their 50th issues!  Of the 52 titles that launched, “Batman,” “Batman & Robin,” “Detective Comics,” “Superman,” “Action Comics,” “Batgirl,” “Catwoman,” “The Flash,” “Green Arrow,” “Green Lantern,” and “Wonder Woman” will all have reached this mark.  I’d have counted “Justice League” here too, but it’s running late with #49 solicited for this month.  This would be even more impressive if at least one of these titles, looking at you “Green Arrow,” wasn’t rumored to be up for the chop and “Catwoman” and “Aquaman” are currently featuring fill-in creative teams.  As for the fact that of the original 52 titles launched at the start of this initiative, only 25% them hit this particular milestone, that kind of speaks for itself.  Then again, it’s not like Marvel is doing much better with their latest “All-New All-Different” relaunch (save for “Deadpool,” of course).

Renowned and best-selling novelist Margaret Atwood’s first comics project will be arriving courtesy of Dark Horse in 2016.  “Angel Catbird” is described as a humorous, action-driven, pulp-inspired story about a human whose genes wind up getting spliced with those of a cat and owl.  Will Eisner’s “The Spirit,” the Grant Morrison/Chas Truog run of “Animal Man,” and Ryan North and Erica Henderson’s “Squirrel Girl” were cited as influences in this all-ages superhero story.  It’s certainly an impressive achievement for the publisher to land a writer of Atwood’s caliber and her involvement may also give the project some attention from the mainstream press as well.  That said, the last time Dark Horse teamed up with a well-known bestselling writer, the result was the Janet Evanovich co-written “Trouble Maker”which wound up being an expensive flop for the company.  We’ll see if they’ve learned anything from that in the build-up to this new project’s release.

Also, the publisher will be putting out “North” next year.  It’s a crime series co-written by Michael B. Jordan -- currently wowing everyone to great acclaim in “Creed” -- and Nathan Edmonson, with art from Denys Cown and Bill Sienkiewicz.  Jordan strikes me as a smart guy, so I think that he’s aware of the commitment necessary to make his involvement with this project not come off as a kind of vanity project.  He might’ve done better to choose a less-embattled co-writer for this project as Edmonson has been dogged by accusations of sexism in recent months, while his conservative politics have won him few fans.  Still, these issues might be swept under the rug if the project is good enough.  That’s the way these things go, after all.

The Wolverine we know is still dead, but it’s really hard to miss him when we have X-23 taking his place in the “Wolverine” series and the title character here joining the X-Men and getting his own ongoing series as well.  In fact, Old Man Logan is functionally identical to his younger counterpart, save for one defining tragedy (that he eventually got over) and a lot more grizzled crankiness.  This version of the character was created by Mark Millar a few years back and his story was quite popular.  Hence, the reason why we’re getting “Old Man Logan” as a “Secret Wars:  Warzones” series.  I didn’t care much for Millar’s story thanks to his usual awful dialogue, paper-thin characterizations, and plot twists that were primed for shock value more than anything else.  As this series comes to us from Bendis, it has far better dialogue, reveals that are at least somewhat surprising, and (for what it’s worth) a better overall stab at characterization.

Yet Millar’s story actually functioned as one and took the character on a journey that did have a point to it.  Bendis… Well, he decides to take us on a sightseeing tour of Battleworld after an Ultron head falls down from the sky one day and Old Man Logan gets curious about where it came from.  So he climbs the wall of his domain, mixes it up with one of the Thors, winds up in domains ruled by Apocalypse, Tony Stark, the Marvel Zombies, and a kind of approximation of the pre-”Secret Wars” Marvel Universe before being spat out into the current continuity.  Oh, and it’s implied that because his crossing through several worlds was so impressive that he’s destined to play some key role in the finale of this event.  We’ll see about that.

It doesn’t really add up to much overall, even if the first issue does recall some of the gritty appeal of the writer’s “Daredevil” work.  That’s also thanks to artist Andrea Sorrentino, who turns in striking work throughout the series and elevates the product overall.  Bendis does demonstrate a decent grasp of the character here, but I’m left wishing that someone like Jason Aaron (who has demonstrated an even better handle on Wolverine) had been let loose to run wild with the setup established by Millar.  I’d still take Bendis’ version over Millar’s, but after reading both I know that I wouldn’t have missed much if I’d decided to skip reading them in the first place.

This is a story that should have sold gangbusters… about a decade ago.  As it is right now, it’s just one more disappointing signpost on the road to the end of the Ultimate Universe.  The story involves a crossover between the Ultimate and 616 Marvel Universes after the time-stranded X-Men head off to meet a powerful new mutant who has just shown up on Cerebro.  Said mutant has the power to jump between the dimensions and after her initial encounter with these young X-Men goes bad, she winds up jumping them to the Ultimate Universe.  There, the team is split up and has separate encounters with everyone from Miles Morales to Doctor Doom (back with the cloven hoof he had when Warren Ellis wrote him).

I might be tempted to say that “The Ultimate Adventure’s” biggest problem is that its existence is an admission that Marvel has run out of ideas for this once-great imprint.  Except that the Ultimate Universe’s role in “Secret Wars” has already put paid to that idea.  With that taboo broken, you get the feeling that Bendis is making the most of the limited amount of time he has to play around in the universe he helped define.  The good news is that we get some decent banter between the cast, decent action, and lively art from Mahmud Asrar (loved the two-page spreads with Jean using her psychic powers to get info from Miles and Ultimate Jean).  Unfortunately, this is also a rather aimless story that culminates in a rather pointless showdown at Doom’s castle before the team finds the mutant who got this whole mess started and returns home -- but not before Bendis indulges himself a bit more.

To be honest, I could see myself enjoying this story if it had been released before “Ultimatum” knocked a good portion of the Universe down.  The All-New team could’ve interacted with more clearly-defined versions of these characters (save Miles) and the decision to not “go big” for most of the story might’ve come off as refreshing.  As it is, “The Ultimate Adventure” comes off like a trip back to a neighborhood you used to live in that serves as a reminder as to why you left in the first place.

Now here’s a title that I really wanted to like because of its premise.  It starts off with a jobless otaku shut-in being kicked out of his family’s house -- because staying inside his room during his parents’ funeral was the last straw -- and the immediately dying after pushing a couple out of the way of a truck.  Death is only the beginning of this adventure, as the 34-year-old man is reborn as a baby in a medieval fantasy world.  The catch here is that he also retains all of the mental faculties his 34-year-old self possessed, so young Rudy has a huge head start in life and he’s determined not to make the same mistakes again.  Though his dad wanted him to be a swordsman, the kid demonstrates a great aptitude for magic, and we see him learning more about it from his teacher Roxy over the years as he puts all of the knowledge and presence-of-mind from his past life to work.  The idea that someone worthless is doing his best to make the most of his second chance is a compelling one and seeing Rudy slowly overcome the hang-ups from his previous life was interesting enough to keep me reading to the end.

It wasn’t easy, though.  That’s because this volume’s biggest stumbling block is that Rudy’s actions tend to make him come off as a smug little creep more often than not.  Even if he is a 34-year-old in a kid’s body, it’s still creepy to see him enjoy being clutched to his new mother’s ample bosom more than he should, take a vested interest in his parents’ baby-making sessions, refer to the stolen panties of his teacher as his treasure, or argue circles around his dad while sporting a know-it-all grin.  All these things make it really hard to warm up to Rudy as a character.  Though you could argue that these negative character traits are part of the issues from his past life that need to be overcome, that’s not how they’re presented in the story.  The writing, from original light novel writer Rifun Na Magonote, tends to set these things up as jokes, while the art from Fujikawa Yuka really plays up the skeeziness of Rudy’s actions and tends to emphasize fanservice whenever it can during the volume.  In short, this first volume has problems that its creators don’t seem to regard as problems.  It makes me hesitant to pick up the next volume to see if things get better, because how much improvement can there be if the creators have a mindset like that?

Save for the “Endless Nights” graphic novel in the early aughts, Neil Gaiman has been away from “The Sandman” for quite some time.  When a creator is away from their signature creation/character/series for an extended period of time, some people always start to worry about how any kind of revisitation of that material is going to turn out.  People like to cite Frank Miller and “The Dark Knight Strikes Again” as being an example of how bad this can go in comics -- though I’m willing to bet they’ve never had the displeasure of following up Kenichi Sonoda’s “Gunsmith Cats” with its disparaging sequel “Burst.”

However, Gaiman’s talent has continued to burn brightly in the years since he stopped chronicling the adventures of Dream of the Endless on a monthly basis.  Aside from going on to become a bestselling novelist, his comics work in the intervening years has been pretty entertaining as well.  So when it was announced that Gaiman was going to return to “The Sandman,” with story illustrated by J.H. Williams III, there was good reason to be excited for it.  Excitement that turns out to be fully justified in the end.  “Overture” is proof that sometimes you really can go home again and find it just as welcoming as when you left.