Comic Picks By The Glick

One of the weakest Marvel events in recent memory.  At least it allowed me to get caught up on Cullen Bunn's "Magneto!"

Principal Asano wins one and loses one in my book for this volume.  I was very much looking forward to seeing how his intervention would change the shape of the baseball game between Class E and the varsity squad at the end of the previous volume.  Though he offers some choice motivation that helps the varsity squad turn the tide, some lateral thinking from Class E leads to them winning in the end.  After that, Asano just leaves.  I wasn’t expecting him to break down into any kind of angry rant, but some acknowledgement of how things turned out would’ve been nice.  Even with Class E and Koro-sensei coming out on top for once, this feels a bit anti-climactic.

That’s not the case in the second story from this volume has the military being frustrated by their agent’s (that would be P.E. teacher Karasuma) lack of progress in training these kids to take out Koro-Sensei.  So they send in a replacement, Takaoka, who was a colleague of Karasuma’s from back when he was part of the airborne brigade.  While Takaoka is all smiles at first and comes bearing lots of free candy for the kids, it’s quickly revealed that his style borrows a lot from “The Great Santini.”  Takaoka makes for a great, hateable villain and whether or not he remains as the kids’ P.E. teacher comes down to a duel between him and Nagisa with a real knife.

It may seem unlikely, but mangaka Yusei Matsui pulls off that part of the story quite well.  Granted, I’ve seen martial arts movies and comics that deal with the kind of strategy that Nagisa employs here so what he does is actually credible to a certain extent.  Also, I like how we get a potentially interesting and morally troublesome story thread to pursue with the character.  Helping matters is that Matsui set things up with a nice visual flourish involving Karasuma’s perceived reaction to Nagisa early on (this volume actually has several of them -- he’s getting quite good with delivering memorable visuals).  Asano also shows up at the end to remind everyone who’s really in charge in a way that doesn’t grate at all.  Karasuma still gets the victory while the principal’s power is further established.  Quality work all around with this volume that leaves me looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Something that escaped my notice last month:  A new series called Switch from Stjepan Sejic, creator of “Sunstone.”  How could I gloss over a new title from a creator I like?  When it involves an apparent relaunch of “Witchblade,” a series Sejic worked on for years, and I’ve had zero interest in ever since it launched.  As it turns out, “Switch” isn’t exactly a relaunch of “Witchblade.”  Yes, the titular artifact does find its way onto an unlikely bearer, but this time it happens to be a geeky high school girl.  While I’m sure that the standard superhero and fantasy tropes will find their way into this series in due course, the second issue describes the new wielder being courted by opposing forces with hilarity and awesomeness following in “Sejic-style.”  If this series really can deliver on the sense of humor and irreverence present in “Sunstone” (and maybe even a little of the drama) then it might actually be a keeper.  The fact that it also began life as a webcomic, a la “Sunstone,” does bode well for it.

How big of an event is “Secret Wars?”  So big that they couldn’t fit the story into the solicited eight issues.  It was announced earlier this week that we’re getting an extra -- ninth -- issue to wrap up Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic’s epic storyline.  That said, it’s not clear if we’re actually getting more of the story or if the page count is just being shuffled around a bit because of deadlines.  While the final issue was going to be a $4.99, 54-page extravaganza, it’ll now be a $3.99, 40-page serving.  However, the real story here is how the deadlines for this series are being thrown out the window and not only will the final issue not be released until all of the realunches are well underway, but the collected edition likely won’t be out before the end of the calendar year.  I’m more broken up about the latter issue.  Given this kind of chaos, it’s not surprising that Hickman is taking a “Marvel Break” to focus on his creator-owned work.

All good stories about ninjas who are also doctors must eventually come to an end.  Such is the case when creator Chris Hastings announced earlier this month that the current arc of this series (currently being serialized at www.drmcninja.com) will be its last.  I’m cool with that.  You can only sustain inspired craziness like this for so long and the fact that he’s been doing it for nearly a decade now boggles the mind.  Better to quit while you’re ahead and, “King Radical” shows that’s still the case as the Doc gets serious about getting Rad.  Based on the solicitation text for this volume, I was expecting a zany riff on “Sleeper” as Doc goes undercover in King Radical’s organization and starts to come around to his quarry’s way of thinking.  That doesn’t happen.  What does happen involves the King of All Hobos becoming the Mayor of Cumberland, Doc’s mom getting hit with a mummy’s curse, Gordito enrolling in middle school, Dr. McLuchador, a giant robot with a most unusual power source, and the revivifyingly radical effects of Mountain Dew Code Red.

It’s a surreal, outlandish, and utterly ridiculous experience in the best tradition of this series.  Best of all is that Hastings never lets the narrative fly completely off the handle into nonsense.  What you get here may be really goddamn weird, but it still works on its own terms.  Case in point:  When King Radical explains his personal history and it winds up being all sorts of bizarre, funny, and even kind of sad.  He may be the most radical man in this radical land, and yet the world he came from was the most radical of all.  Now he’s stuck in this half-rad world and doing his best to try and make it a little more like home.  King Radical actually comes off as kind of tragic here and still the villain as his plans endanger the lives of everyone in Cumberland.  Of course, this is still a story where a couple of pizza-making analogues for the Mario Bros. have to deliver a hundred golden cockatrice sausage pizzas in half an hour through a fiendish gauntlet of Bad Dudes (and a tiger).  So don’t fear that this series is going to start taking itself seriously anytime soon.  Which is good, because with the end in sight I want to see it go out in style.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

If the previous volume was The One Where Everything Goes Wrong, then this is The One Where Things Start Turning Around.  After nearly losing everything to Julianne -- The Eraser, Meru is only able to make it out of Hong Kong thanks to some posthumous help from Dusty and his music.  Making her way to the rendezvous point by the Ganges river in India, she finds out that her next step is to track down the First Immortal to receive the additional training she needs to stop The Eraser.  That she meets the First Immortal shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Unless you’re wondering about whether or not his training will actually help Meru triumph over her nemesis.  That part of the narrative is a lot dicier for our protagonist.

The story follows a pretty conventional path that will be familiar to anyone with knowledge of the conventions of this kind of story.  While you can put “Eye of the Tiger” on loop while reading this, creator Matt Kindt won’t oblige you with any kind of training montage here.  He does break out some impressive stylistic tricks, as always.  They range from the simple “avalanche” effect that introduces Dusty’s Disciples, to the branching off of the “side page” text into the story itself, and the multifaceted psychic battle between Meru and Julianne.  Also, I’m pretty sure that only someone whose mind works in the ways that Kindt’s does would even begin to conceive of finally giving us The Eraser’s full story in the form of a cheesy sci-fi novel.

There are also the fun little details, like how the First Immortal likes to get high on his own very personal supply of mushrooms, that add color to the story.  In addition, the First Immortal’s extended flashback to the origins of Mind MGMT is also quite illuminating, showing us how the organization’s techniques were developed and how they eventually began to go wrong.  Then you’ve got the bit with the politician, Idris, and his machinations as one of The Eraser’s agents.  It may seem like Kindt is setting up a lot of disparate threads, but he manages to pull them together in satisfying fashion by the end of the volume.  When you get there, you’ll definitely feel ready for the upcoming series finale in vol. 6

I almost want to call this, “I’m Sorry, I Can’t Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am:  The Series.”  That’s basically the deal with the title character, everything he does is effortlessly stylish while he also manages to maintain an air of aloof indifference/humility that keeps him from becoming entirely insufferable.  Essentially a parody of the kind of tropes you find in school manga, Sakamoto the character upends them all with style and grace.  Whether it’s something as simple as grabbing an eraser wedged in a door before it can fall on his head, or as complex as whipping up an ersatz hotel room out of school gym supplies, there is nothing that he can’t handle.  If this sounds amusing to you, then go out and get the first volume now.

Me, I’m still kind of on the fence about it -- and I DID buy the thing!  I like the fact that Sakamoto never resorts to violence to solve these issues.  While not exactly MacGyver-ian, the on-the-spot ingenuity he displays in his actions is also cool.  It’s also nice to see a protagonist succeed in a plot-dictated way that’s usually only enjoyed by antagonists… but it gets kind of old towards the end of this volume.  “Sakamoto” is a one-trick pony at this point, minus the boundless creativity demonstrated in a title that sticks to it’s own formula, “My Neighbor Seki.”  (Speaking of which, vol. 3 is just as fantastic as the first two -- it really is surprising how “Seki” has turned out so far.)  There is a hint that Sakamoto’s abilities may be otherworldly in nature.  Or I could just be reading too deeply into a throwaway line at the end of chapter 4.  This volume of “Sakamoto” is amusingly different.  I’m just not sure if it has anything more to offer than what we see here.

Mike Richardson, publisher of Dark Horse Comics, went on record to Comic Book Resources about how the company’s sales have been going up over the last few years.  Which is good because an industry without Dark Horse is a lesser one for that.  While he shrugs off the loss of the “Star Wars” license (as well he should), but 2015 will be the first year the company hasn’t had the benefit of that to boost their marketshare.  If they can post growth for this year, then Richardson will really have something to rub in his rivals’ faces.