Comic Picks By The Glick

Cliff Chiang's art is great, but Brian Vaughan's attempt at creating a puzzle box of a comic is decidedly uneven.

This is a volume of “Delicious in Dungeon” where the emphasis is on the plot and characters rather than the dishes created from defeated monsters.  Sounds like kind of a mistake, doesn’t it? If you’re like me and the series has had you engrossed since the first volume then chances are you’ve got some investment in the story being told here.  So vol. 7 winds up being a great example of showing how the series has legs beyond its signature gimmick.

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

Steeple

All of the books from Dark Horse that I was considering for this month involved potential.  Not so much that I was expecting greatness from them, but that they had the potential for that or just to surprise me.  So why does “Steeple” get this spot? Because of all the things I’ve heard about its creator, John Allison, over the years.  Whether it was his webcomic “Scary-go-Round” or the soon-to-wrap-up slice-of-college series “Giant Days,” his works have yet to disappoint his critics or fans.  So it would appear that it’s been my loss that I haven’t checked out anything he’s done before now. I realize that the expectations of whether or not I’ll like a particular creator are a lot to hang on a series about two women investigating supernatural happenings in a sleepy coastal parish that may also involve the rapture, but I figure I should check out “Giant Days” as well just to make sure I’m getting the full picture of Allison.

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

Batman:  Last Knight on Earth HC

It’s the future, and do you know where your Batman is?  Bruce Wayne doesn’t. He’s just woken up in Arkham Asylum without a sign that he’s ever been Batman.  The world outside Arkham appears to be all the worse off for it as the Earth of the DC Universe looks like it’s last legs.  So what’s someone who’s never been the Caped Crusader to do? Pick up the bottle with the Joker’s severed and still-living head in it and head out into the wasteland to find some way to put the world right.

Billed as “the last Batman story” from team supreme Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, I think that’s kind of a misnomer.  It’s only the last “Batman” story from this team until their next one. Even if their “Metal” wasn’t as good as its hype, Snyder showed that with “The Batman Who Laughs” (review forthcoming) that he does better work with a singular focus on the character.  So I’m expecting the quality of this collection to be on the level of their regular “Batman” work and for Capullo’s art to look fantastic in the oversized “Black Label” format.

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

Outer Darkness/Chew #1 (of 3)

“Chew” is no stranger to odd crossovers, having already done one with supernatural rural noir “Revival.”  The catch this time is that the series is crossing over space, time, and genre to mash up in some way with creator John Layman’s current series “Outer Darkness.”  As to how this is going to happen… it’s likely going to involve the cyborg badass murder machine chicken known as Poyo.  I mean, he’s on the cover along with the regular cast after all, and he’s already crossed over with “The Walking Dead” though I don’t think that was canon.

I’m hoping this does well and brings a lot more attention to “Outer Darkness.  It’s apparently not doing as well as it should be or else Layman wouldn’t be doing this and we’d already be halfway into the solicits for vol. 3 at this point.  So pick up a copy of this when it comes out, or wait for the trade like I do. Just buy enough copies of this miniseries to make sure “Outer Darkness” can continue on its own terms without having to resort to stunts like this in the future!

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

X-Men:  Grand Design Omnibus

The first three hundred issues of “X-Men” are unique among Marvel comics of that length in the sense that the majority of them were written by one person:  Chris Claremont. Even then there’s a lot of sprawl in his run and that’s even before you try to reconcile it with the weirdness from the first sixty issues or so.  Enter Ed Piskor. The “Wizzywig” and “Hip Hop Family Tree” creator had a vision: To condense those three hundred issues into one cohesive saga over six oversized issues spread across 488 pages (according to the page count in the omnibus).

Did he succeed?  From what I’ve heard, the answer is yes.  To the point where not only is his work being reissued in one omnibus edition, but it’s also spawned another “Grand Design” project:  “Fantastic Four” from Tom Scioli.  

There are a couple of catches, however:  The single issues and subsequent collections were issued in an oversized format and I can’t tell if the omnibus is going to keep those same dimensions.  Also, if you went and bought all three volumes right now, it’d save you $10 over the $100 cover price of this omnibus. So maybe this isn’t so much a recommendation to buy this omnibus as it is a reminder for me to get all three existing volumes of “Grand Design” before they go out of print.

The descriptive text on the back of this volume says, “Ryoko Kui, the master storyteller behind the beloved manga series Delicious in Dungeon, pens seven brand-new tales that will delight fantasy fans and manga devotees equally.”  Half of that sentence is unimpeachable gospel. The other half is a real case of Your Mileage May Vary.  While I think that all of the stories featured in this anthology are enjoyable, some are definitely moreso than others.

The last time I reviewed a volume of this title, I mentioned that Andrea Sorrentino’s art was what really made this series.  That continues to be true here in vol. 3 as we follow a couple of different plot threads there.  The first and longest of them involves one of the posse who went to confront supernatural killer Norton Sinclair in the Black Barn:  Father Burke. While his comrades perished, Burke winds up following Norton on a surreal trip through time. Not space, though. Whether it’s a small desert town, a steampunk haven, or a fascist metropolis, he always finds himself in Gideon Falls.

Sorrentino has no problem giving us several distinct versions of the title city.  While that’s impressive in itself, it’d be even more so if there were some architectural or stylistic consistency between each version.  Still it’s forgivable in the way that the artist keeps ratcheting up the surrealism as Burke chases Norton and shows him one unreal sight after another.  It’s honestly surprising that Burke was able to hold onto his sanity through all this. Not quite as surprising as the revelation as to how he actually fits into the series’ mythos which asks us to accept that it happened without providing a real explanation as to how.

I’m putting that flub down to writer Jeff Lemire having too much fun coming up with things for Sorrentino to draw.  As for the final two issues, the writer devotes one each to showing us what happened to Father Quinn and the Norton Sinclair who switched places in their Gideon Falls.  Both feature more enthusiastically disorienting art, and they even manage to advance the overall plot a bit too. Still, I’m increasingly being left with the feeling that “Gideon Falls” main legacy will be its cementing of Sorrentino as an incredible artistic talent than that it told an interesting story.

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