Comic Picks By The Glick

There are three different plot threads in this volume, two of which collide with explosive results by its end.  After vol. 4 left off with robot dissident Dengo escaping with Alanna, Hazel, and Marko’s mother, he figures that his best bet to make the Robot kingdom pay for the death of his son is to get in touch with the revolution that is opposing the ongoing galactic war between Wreath and Landfall.  Meanwhile, Marko, Prince Robot IV, Yuma, and Oswald are pursuing them as best their dysfunctional nature will allow.  While all this is going on, Gwendolyn, Sophie, and The Brand (with Lying Cat in tow, of course) continue their quest for the specific kind of dragon semen that will allow them to bring The Will out of his coma.  As I hope these summaries will indicate, this latest volume is another mix of drama, humor, and bet-you-didn’t-see-that-coming sexual situations.  Oh, and of supporting characters dying either heroically or suddenly.  You know, the usual.

As delivered by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, the mix is as winning as ever.  The end-of-volume cliffhanger also leads to another time jump and separation that’s a bit more hard to take than the last one.  Hopefully there won’t be as many deaths with that reunion compared to the bodycount involved in the equivalent event here.  Still, the most striking part from this volume is the opening section illustrating the history of the armed forces of Wreath and Landfall and how they’ve been filled over the years.  It’s pretty clear from Vaughn’s description that even though there are two planets here, they’re meant to function as a singular metaphor for the United States.  The writer has long said that comics are his way of working out his issues with the real world, and while “Saga” appeared to start out as his take on parenthood he’s making it clear now that’s not the whole story.  It’s delivery is a little on the nose, but I’m curious to see how he’ll wrap it up in the end.  Even if my interest continues held by Marko, Alanna, and Hazel (and all of the other members of the supporting cast mentioned here), as always.

Being one of our greatest living comics writers, it shouldn’t be surprising that Alan Moore is one of the few writers to do something interesting with the “Crossed” franchise beyond serving up some shock value with a side of extreme gore.  The writer starts this new series one hundred years after the initial outbreak, where a decimated humanity is slowly crawling its way back from extinction.  Everyone is working to learn more about the pre-history of the time and reclaim its technology, with archivists like Future Taylor leading the way.  It’s on an expedition into the wilds for this knowledge that she encounters some troubling items:  Mysterious shrines in ruins that appear to have been set up by the Crossed, and a video showing someone training the infected for some unknown purpose.  Future knows that this is cause for concern, but the people of her settlement are busy working with others for a big push to wipe out the remaining Crossed in the area.  All signs point to Moore having these characters run straight into a trap, but what if there’s a much longer game being played here?

Thanks to the great Viz manga shrinkage, I finally get around to seeing if this shonen action/fantasy series is as good as everyone says it is.

No, this isn’t getting a podcast.  I considered it, but doing a retrospective for a series where I covered the first 17 volumes in one edition and then summarized the final 10 seemed kind of pointless.  Also, the series doesn’t deserve it.  I’ve written here about the series has had its good parts, particularly in the middle, and how these last couple of volumes just haven’t been on the same level.  I was hoping for a smashing finish based on the final page of the previous volume as mangaka Norihiro Yagi dug deep for a surprise return.  However, that twist turns out to be the biggest problem with the finale.  Those of you expecting to see Claire summon up all of the power and experience she has gained over the previous twenty-six volume are in for some bitter disappointment.  That’s because everything she’s been through up to now has been to allow someone more qualified to defeat the big bad at the end.

Full spoilers for vol. 27 follow.  Mainly to avoid the revelation of who this “someone more qualified” is.  That said, if you’ve read up to the last page of vol. 26, you should have a pretty good idea regarding the identity of this person.

It’s written by Jeff Lemire.  It has art from Dustin Nguyen.  It’s a sci-fi story with an epic scope and with a story that looks to have the fate of the universe at stake.  These are all things that interest me, yet this first volume of “Descender” wasn’t nearly as involving as you’d expect from putting them all together.  The story begins in earnest ten years after eight giant robots, which come to be known as Harvesters, appeared in orbit around eight planets key to the United Galactic Council and left them devastated in their wake.  Humanity was helpless in the attack and has been dreading their return ever since.  Their only lead is in the giant robots’ recently cracked base machine codex which shows that there is one other series of robots in the galaxy that shares their information.  That would be the “Tim” series of companion androids, of which there is only one left in the galaxy:  Tim-22, who is currently stuck on an abandoned mining outpost on a remote planet.

While we’re on the subject of comedic fantasy action stories (in comic book form), here’s the return of the granddaddy of them all.  Of course, we did get “Groo vs. Conan” earlier this year and that wound up being a bit underwhelming.  Have Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier lost their touch with the character after all these years?  This first volume of “Friends and Foes” indicates that the answer is “No,” once you get past the first issue.  Groo’s latest series is a twelve-issue romp (the first four of which are collected here) that has him meeting up with one of the many recurring characters that have been featured in his series over the years.  Unfortunately, the first issue’s story -- involving Captain Ahax, whose ships Groo ALWAYS sinks -- isn’t all that funny once you realize that the creators are nicking the captain’s plan from “The Producers.”  Once you realize that, the story and humor become predictable and obvious as well as not much fun.

Things pick up with the following three stories as our protagonist has run-ins with the crafty gypsy Granny Groo, sorceresses Arba and Dakarba, and the astoundingly heroic and self-absorbed warrior Arcadio.  The setups in their stories are more clever, involving Groo being told not to do anything and then sold, a giant version of himself is created along with magical duplicates in order to defeat him, and dragons.  Evanier gets in many funny lines in these issues while Aragones art…  What can I say?  The man is a living legend with the amount of detail he packs into each page and impeccable comic timing, and his work here shows that he hasn’t lost a step in all these years.  There’s also an ongoing subplot teased throughout these issues as a young girl named Kayli searches for her father.  His name is given as Karli… which is good because it (theoretically) rules out the title character.  It’s a decent enough hook to give the series some momentum, though the attraction here will always be seeing Aragones and Evanier putting Groo into one fray after the other.  If you’re a longtime fan of the series like me, then this will be one more volume you’ll want in your collection.

So it turns out there WAS a reason behind all of the alternate-universe versions of Rex and Rolf that showed up in the previous volume!  In fact, writer Jim Zub delivers a finale that reveals the series to have had more on its mind than frequently hilarious fantasy-based slapstick violence.  That’s not to say that there isn’t lots of shooting, punching, and beer-swilling fun to be had in vol. 6.  Most of this volume is just one giant bar brawl as our protagonists throw down with the many-tentacled threat of Thool, who has taken over the bar/dimensional nexus known as the Gizzard.  This would appear to be enough threat to face for one volume, but this is only the beginning for Zub and artist Edwin Huang.  Over the course of the next four issues, the two creators manage to raise the stakes in impressively creative and outlandish ways.  Rolf’s leg fulfills its purpose as a demonic nexus, pan-dimensional parasites turn out to have low tolerances for alcohol, and unicorns are revealed to be really frikkin’ stupid.  It’s a glorious blood-and-beer-soaked cacophony and immense fun to read.

If that was it, then Zub and Huang could rest easy on a job well done.  Yet they even have more to offer.  Aside from a round of “Tavern Tales” that is more relevant to the main plot than usual, we also get a number of callbacks to previous volumes.  They at least offer up the illusion that there was a kind of master plan behind the ridiculousness on display here.  More satisfying is the final issue where reality is broken, the narrator finds himself out of a job (With four payments and interest left on his new stove!), and the true nature of Rex and Rolf as narrative archetypes is revealed.  It’s something that makes perfect sense after all that has come before.  Yet the best part is when Kusia, the elven warrior woman, looks at all this, realizes it’s not fair and goes to do something about it.  The result is a new hero(ine) archetype and an unlockable achievement too!

I would’ve liked to have read thirty-six more issues of this series (or at least gotten the summaries of the issues that followed afterward to issue #100, but I guess that’s a bonus for those who bought the single issues).  What we got here may not be remembered for its deep philosophical underpinnings or captivating narrative, yet it managed to be really damn funny with memorable characters who made the journey worth following.  So raise your glass and pound one back for a series that knows how bring the funny, the action, and even the heart at the end!

I went into “Fear the Walking Dead” with all the optimism that the quality of the show and Robert Kirkman’s involvement would allow.  It was not rewarded.  Even if there were some nice moments in seeing civilization slip away, they were outweighed by a cast of characters that were boring at best and actively unlikeable at worst.  This is in addition to the fact that we were served up a whole lot of zombie tropes in these six episodes, with a military that was incompetent/corrupt/evil being the biggest offender there.  For some reason, AMC was so impressed by what they saw here that they greenlit a second season before the first had aired.  I can only hope that the showrunners start displaying some of the willingness to buck convention that has defined the franchise so far next time around.

In the meantime, season six of the main show kicks off this Sunday and it has momentum to burn coming off of Rick killing the doctor right in front of Morgan and as the narrative heads into a variation on the “No Way Out” arc.  Hopefully that will wash the bad taste of the spinoff out of my mouth.  That would be in addition to the latest volume of the comic, which knocks it out of the park again.  There’s so much good stuff here that it’s time to break out the bullet points: