Comic Picks By The Glick

“Mad Max:  Fury Road” director George Miller takes on “Man of Steel 2?”  That’s the rumor right now with all of the people who have been reporting it saying that it feels like little more than wishful thinking at this point.  It’s not entirely inconceivable as Miller was associated with a proposed “Justice League” movie that fell apart in the previous decade and he’s likely riding high at Warner Bros. after the success of “Fury Road.”  However, the director already has a proposed “Mad Max” sequel, “The Wasteland,” waiting for the greenlight and as he’s in his 70’s one can’t be sure if he wants to spend any part of his twilight years working on a studio-controlled superhero movie.  There’s also no question that “Man of Steel 2” needs him a lot more than he needs it at this point.  If this rumor pans out at all, I’d be willing to bet some kind of compromise along the lines of Miller doing “Man of Steel 2” in exchange for “The Wasteland” and I could live with that.

As for DC’s November solicitations, it turns out that the company thought that just one “Batman” miniseries co-written by Brian Azzarello wasn’t enough for us this month.

This volume starts off as so much fun!  We get a two-parter involving a former *ahem* daredevil known as the Stunt-Master who asks for Matt Murdock’s help in dealing with this new kid who has took his name.  Murdock agrees only after the new kid’s self-aggrandizing tactics drive the former Stunt-Master to suicide  What follows is a series of breathlessly paced action scenes and surprise twists as Daredevil aims to beat the new Stunt-Master at his own game, only to find that someone is playing a much larger one.  Then we move on to other drama as Matt angsts with Foggy about how good things are going with his relationship with Kirsten (As we all know what tends to happen to Daredevil’s girlfriends…), helps to rescue her from a criminal she put away, deals with the loss of his secret identity by getting a snazzy new suit, and has run-ins with San Francisco’s other vigilante, The Shroud, and the Owl’s daughter.  It’s all great fun, until the last half of the final issue collected here when it all comes crashing down and it becomes clear that what we’ve been reading is the start of  Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s final “Daredevil” arc.

That’s not a complaint, per se.  The fact that their run was ending has been known for a while now, but it still caught me off guard here because I thought we’d get the meat of that in the final volume.  Instead, we’re treated to seeing Murdock’s life fall apart in the space of ten pages as one of his longtime rogues uses his new abilities to dig up a ton of damaging info for our hero.  Even though it’s a tradition in EVERY “Daredevil” run for the title character’s life to fall completely apart at some point, the suddenness with how Waid does it makes that old trope quite effective here.  He also wraps up this volume by bringing in another character that… Well, even that’s probably saying too much.  My only gripe is that as this volume collects issues #11-15, the final volume will just have #’s 16-18 plus the #15.1 issue to pad things out.  It grates that we’re getting a volume with only three proper issues and (what I can only hope is a decent) issue of filler.  Still, after what these creators have done on this title so far, I have to concede that those three issues will likely be worth the price of admission.  We’ll see if that’s true in December.

My thoughts on volumes 21 & 22 as the series wraps up in a satisfying way that still isn't on par with the best it has had to offer.

After the not-bad manga exclusive to the collector’s edition release of the game, we’re now getting the official manga spinoff to “Final Fantasy Type-0.”  While people who have played the game will know that the title of “Ice Reaper” refers to Kurasame, the instructor to Class Zero, those who don’t probably won’t find enough connection to invest themselves in the story being told here.  For those who do, this “Side Story” offers up a decent bit of comfort food that fleshes out the backstory of one of “Type-0’s” more interesting supporting characters.  We get to see Kurasame as a student, a very serious one at that, at Akademia striving to become worthy of being an Agito and experiencing a good amount of tragedy and heartbreak in the process.  From humble beginnings is born one who will become one of the Four Champions of Rubrum.

Of course, the story tells us that so there’s not a whole lot of drama there.  The narrative of this volume is fairly predictable, so don’t expect any real surprises here either.  What this volume does have going for it is (in comparison to the game) a drastically reduced cast of characters.  This allows mangaka Takatoshi Shiozawa to develop the core group a bit more even if he doesn’t get as many moments as he did in the original manga to showcase the game’s flashier mechanics.  He does get to use the game’s one great plot device -- how the crystals remove the memories of those who have died from the living -- here to good effect.  It’s not the kind of great effect that would get me to recommend this title to those who haven’t played the game, but those who have will get a decent amount of enjoyment out of what’s here.

(Now let’s hope this series doesn’t degenerate into near-incoherent nonsense like “Type-0” did at its end.  Good god, no game in the “Final Fantasy XIII” series even managed that particular feat.)

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

In a realization that makes me feel old more than anything else, it’s been ten years since “Avengers Disassembled” was published.  This was the story that saw Bendis take over writing the “Avengers” and turned them into Marvel’s new best-selling team, bringing them a relevance they hadn’t seen in decades.  Whatever your feelings about that particular story, and the writer’s tenure on the various “Avengers” books he wrote, the fact is that “Disassembled” has a certain kind of cachet when used as the title for a story.  If you’re harkening back to that story which signaled a sea change in Marvel’s publishing focus, then it should involve some significant events at the very least.  What “Guardians Disassembled” offers is another example of Bendis plowing through another familiar superhero story -- the one where all the members of a team are attacked and taken out -- without finding anything new to do with it.  This was fun at first, but now it’s starting to get kind of old.

To be honest, there was a lot that fell under the title of this review.  Some of it I still might get to at some point.  For now, I’ve just got a random grab-bag of series I’ve been reading (Thor:  God of Thunder vol. 4,  Loki:  Agent of Asgard vol. 2, Captain America vol. 5) something I decided to pick up on a whim (X-O Manowar vol. 1) and another featuring the work of a creator before she became really famous (Cairo).  For anyone keeping track at home -- two of the Marvel comics mentioned here were found in hardcover format.  Anyways...

While “Senso” marked Stan Sakai’s return to his signature creation, this latest volume of “Usagi Yojimbo” finally catches the series up to where it stopped before going on hiatus.  It’s also one of the better volumes in recent memory.  Not just another great example of the consistent quality of the title, but featuring some excellent stories even by “Usagi’s” high standards.  The opening one, “The Artist,” is solid enough but “Murder at the Inn” is a very well-crafted whodunit.  Featuring the long-absent and missed Inspector Ishida, a paper merchant is murdered at an inn along with the criminal Ishida and Usagi were transporting to town.  The story is very well-paced with an interesting cast of characters/suspects that all have their motives, which makes the reasoning employed by Ishida that much more fun to see as he ferrets out the real killer.  Particularly when you realize that one of the clues is a visual one planted by Sakai with consistency to the time the murder is committed.

The story, “Two Hundred Jizo” may come off as somewhat familiar to longtime readers as it’s another story where Usagi has to free a town from bandits.  At least the action is quite solid and the use of the jizo in the climax was well-orchestrated.  Then you have the final two stories, “The Ice Runners” and “Shoyu” which show us once again why Sakai will never run out of material for this series.  Both take a particular part of feudal Japan’s culture -- the running of ice from the mountains for tribute, how soy sauce is made -- and spin entertaining tales out of them. “Ice Runners” gets some dramatic urgency from the race against the clock inherent in that job, while “Shoyu” offers an involving visual look at the making of soy sauce while spinning a tale about rival businessmen.  I was surprised to be as engaged with this story as I was since I’m honestly not that big a fan of soy sauce itself.

This volume also offers up some bonuses from the Dark Horse Website and Sakai’s “Usagi Yojimbo Sketchbooks.”  We get two amusing comics featuring Sakai’s attempts to interview Usagi, both involving violent and fatal consequences.  More interesting is the story “Sukanku” as it offers a window into the creator’s process as he shows it to us from conception -- a conversation with Sergio Aragones -- to plotting, roughs, and eventually pencils.  It’s the kind of bonus material that I like to see and a fitting end to this great volume.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Originally I was going to discuss this in a separate post about some collections I picked up for half-off their cover price at Comic-Con (maybe expect that sometime this weekend).  Yet the more that I thought about it, the more I came to realize that this volume deserved a takedown of its own.  The idea of an unhinged Tony Stark with his arrogance and smugness turned up to toxic levels may have been an irresistible one to Marvel editorial, as is discussed in the supplemental material at the back of the book.  What we get here, however, fails to realize any of that promise and stands as a real failure of imagination with regards to that idea.  Captain America will still be black and Thor will still be a woman post-”Secret Wars,” and after reading this I can see why Iron Man won’t be “Superior” along with them.