Comic Picks By The Glick

There’s been a major development for this series in the time since my last review.  It was announced that “Ajin” will become an anime film trilogy in Japan sometime soon.  While this is good news for creator Gamon Sakurai, I can only hope that whoever is making these films uses this as an opportunity to clean up the messy narrative of the series so far.  Things haven’t gone off the rails yet.  However, Sakurai is closing the gap between the story he wants to tell, and the story he’s actually been telling through means of brute force rather than organic elegance.

For me, “Battle of the Atom” was the most underwhelming “X-Men” crossover in recent memory.  Even though it had some interesting ideas, there weren’t enough to sustain what was basically a fourteen-issue fight scene.  There was plenty of nice art, however.  So the idea that Bendis is revisiting the characters he created for that arc -- the group of evil X-Men led by Charles Xavier Jr. and Raze (son of Wolverine and Mystique) -- didn’t sound like something I’d particularly enjoy.  Except that this concept being reduced down to a four-issue fight scene does make for a more focused and exciting experience.  Particularly when you’ve got Stuart Immonen illustrating it.

Who here remembers the good old days when “Civil War” was being serialized?  Specifically, the delays between issues that caused corresponding tie-in issues to be delayed themselves in order to not spoil the events of the main series.  Like the Punisher’s dramatic return to the Marvel Universe after spending some time away in MAX-land with Garth Ennis.  Those days are back now with “Secret Wars” as the Hickman/Ribic event series has come into its own set of delays.  Over a dozen tie-ins have been pushed back a week or more, though it doesn’t look like the main series will miss a month.  Yet.  It does look as if the November ship date for the collected edition may be in danger, but that’s just a problem for trade-waiters like me.

Of course, if you needed a reminder of why I like to wait for the trade in the first place… now you’ve got it.  That said, neither “Civil War” or “Secret Wars” has anything on the delay the title kicking off Marvel’s solicitations has enjoyed.

Getting a special above-the-board mention this month is B.P.R.D.:  Hell on Earth #135.  Why?  Because the solicitation text mentions that this is the start of the final “Hell on Earth” arc.  This doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the series.  Were I a betting man, I’d assume that the series will be getting a new subtitle once this is all over.  It’s worth noting that up until “B.P.R.D.” assumed its “Hell on Earth” subtitle, Mignola and Arcudi were pretty much just winging it in terms of the overall direction of the series.  We got a lot of good stories out of that approach, but with the changeover came a new sense of purpose and a genuine “raising of the stakes” as it became clear that the end of the world is at hand and everyone is basically fighting to shape what comes next.  Whatever that is, I look forward to reading about.  I just hope that they can finally make the Black Flame into a compelling antagonist as his efforts to test the limits of his power are apparently the starting point for this arc.

I forgot to mention it in yesterday’s rundown of September’s solicitations, but this title is wrapping up its run with issue #24.  That makes this the next-to-last volume and you can see the rush to wrap things up in the main story.  First, we get a flashback illustrated by the title’s cover artist, Nathan Fox, which shows us how wild-haired FBP member Cicero DeLuca not only joined the organization, but went on to become a field agent instead of a researcher.  Writer Simon Oliver cleverly inverts expectations by making the training academy for the organization one where the geeks who solve the physics problems are more highly valued than the jocks who have to actually go in and implement the solutions.  Oliver also ties things into the main plot by having Cicero become inspired to change his focus after reading the writings of fellow FBP agent Adam Hardy’s father.  We also get to see Cicero’s first real test as a field agent where things do not wrap up as tidily and heartwarmingly as you’d expect.  Overall, this two-issue arc is one of the better storylines I’ve read in this series as it successfully fleshes out Mr. DeLuca’s character while offering some appealingly off-kilter art from Fox.

Then we get back to the main story in the four issues remaining and you can feel Oliver rushing to wrap this series up as best he can.  Forget the de-regulation of the physics protection industry set up in the first volume, we find out exactly what’s behind the need for such a thing in the first place.  Turns out that the universe is still expanding, but the dark matter used to support it has run out.  Now, Adam and his fellow agents are going to have to work with billionaire industrialist Lance Blackwood, who also happens to be former colleague of Adam’s father, in order to create more dark matter and save reality as we know it.  There are some interesting ideas here, such as seeing how Adam survives a close encounter with a quantum tornado, and new artist Alberto Ponticelli turns out to be better at the weird stuff than he is with the ordinary human-interaction parts.  Yet you can feel the rush the narrative is in to set up this end of the world scenario, and it makes for a less-than-involving read.  Oliver does get everything to a point at the end where he can hopefully decompress a little and allow the finale to unfold in a more natural fashion.  Overall, not bad, but when it comes to Vertigo series that were indulged to last as long as they did, I’m left wishing that “Hinterkind” had received the indulgence to last for four volumes like “FBP.”

Something to consider:  “Batman” by Snyder and Capullo has been one of the best-selling titles in the industry since the start of their run with all forty issues selling over 100K each.  Yet Snyder has made more money with his creator-owned Image title “Wytches.”  That being the case, it’s not hard to imagine a future where the creator leaves the Big Two behind to focus on titles that he owns and controls with the artists involved.  Hey, it’s worked out pretty well for Brian K. Vaughan so far.  DC and Marvel will likely continue to serve a valuable role in the industry in the form of getting creators the exposure they need in order to launch their own creator-owned titles.  They can change this fate by simply paying their creators more.  However, do any of you really see that happening anytime soon?

Ever since we started getting Kon’s manga over here, I’ve been waiting to read the one which would live up to the genius of his films.  “Tropic of the Sea” was an early work which showed some promise, but was largely unremarkable.  “Opus” felt like it would’ve made for a great movie, but along with “Seraphim” it remains an unfinished work.  So I went into “Dream Fossil” with the hope and expectation that this would be the manga which finally offered validation of Kon’s talent on the printed page.  That occasionally happened.  It has its moments, but this collection of short stories really succeeds in driving home the concept that Kon had the right idea in shifting his ambitions to film.

Between the first volume of this and “The Fade Out,” Ed Brubaker has made his way back into my good graces after his lacklustre end years at Marvel and the never-quite-as-good-as-it-should-have-been “Fatale.”  That’s still the case in this second volume of the adventures of spy-on-the-run Velvet Templeton, even though there’s a plot twist towards the end which left me rolling my eyes more than anything else.  Backing up a bit, now that Velvet knows her husband wasn’t a traitor the question becomes why was he killed in the first place?  Her former bosses are the ones most likely to know, but that requires the spy to head straight back into enemy territory while everyone is on high alert.  Good thing she’s still one of the best in the business and still has her bulletproof stealth suit that she took as a parting gift.  Of course, even if she gets the answers she’s looking for, will they bring her peace of mind or lead her further down the rabbit hole of international espionage.

Velvet remains a compelling protagonist with this second volume.  Even with the world against her, the woman knows how to handle herself and keep at least one step ahead of her former employers.  Granted, the rings she runs around them does have these guys coming off as distaff relatives of the “Keystone Kops,” but we do get a couple scenes to show that some of them are starting to question Velvet’s motivations and the logic behind her actions.  At this rate maybe one of them will pull his head completely out of his ass in another volume or two.  It’s still entertaining to watch Velvet in action -- beautifully illustrated with a real sense of the period from Steve Epting -- and her interior monologue goes a long way towards fleshing her out as someone who is good with guns and causing mayhem.  The problem is that after all the effort Brubaker goes through in building up his protagonist, he has her make one obvious mistake and wind up behind the eightball again.  Given how well she handles everything up to this point, this development comes off as rather jarring.  After all this, it should be clear that Velvet will find a way to get back in the game for volume three and it will make for some entertaining reading.  That it needed to happen at all does feel like a miscalculation on Brubaker’s part.