Comic Picks By The Glick

OH NO!  Gieve is departing Arslan’s service!  After being really smug to one of the new officers about how he killed-- I mean, spared his brother from suffering, the minstrel gets in a very well-choreographed swordfight before Farangis shows up to put a stop to it.  Gieve realizes that his services are no longer necessary or welcome here and makes a big show of leaving even as Arslan pleads with him not to go. This would be a heartbreaking turn of events for the series… if it wasn’t a complete sham.  Gieve’s antics were just part of another plan by master strategist Narsus to give him cover to leave so that he could go and act as a spy in Ecbatana.

While I’m normally a fan of characters on the side of the protagonist who are capable of spinning plans ten steps ahead of the enemy, Narsus’ tactical prowess is starting to become a drag on this series.  Every plan of his has gone off without a hitch and it’s reaching the point where the series is struggling to manage even a little bit of suspense in its conflicts since we know that his strategies are going to ensure Arslan’s victory.  Even when the prince encounters a random Lusitanian patrol, something Narsus couldn’t foresee, he still manages to turn it to their great advantage.

So as the series gears up for Arslan’s march to the capital, it’d be nice to see someone on the opposite side give this tactician an actual challenge.  Guiscard may do just that with his 100,000-strong army, but we’ll see. In the meantime, we’re left to smaller things to hold our interest in this volume:  The return of Silver Mask in the end, fear and distrust leading to the suicide of many a Lusitanian after combat, and Arslan displaying a bit of a spine here.  It turns out he can hold his own in combat and can even outmatch an old acquaintance from the other side in rhetoric. I wouldn’t say all this is enough to make this a good volume of the series, yet it’s just enough to keep me from feeling like I’ve wasted my time by reading it.

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We’re all familiar with some version of the story of “Snow White.”  A young princess is sent away to be murdered at the behest of her wicked stepmother, only to escape her fate, hang out with some dwarves for a while, eat an apple poisoned by said stepmother, fall into a deep sleep as a result, and then be woken by the kiss of a passing prince.  It’s a pretty familiar and straightforward sequence of events, right? Well, what Neil Gaiman decided to do was think about how you could keep these same elements and tell a story where the “wicked” stepmother was completely justified in her actions.

The woman was originally a girl who knew some magic in the countryside who caught the eye of a passing king.  They were both taken with each other and the king brought her back to his castle where he lived with his retinue and sole daughter.  While things are good for a while, it isn’t until the woman finally meets the daughter that she finds out what she truly is. From there, it becomes a story of a woman recognizing the horror that has crept into her life and trying to find some way to deal with it.  Of course, if you remember the original story then you’ll realize these efforts are half-measures at best.

Gaiman’s a terrific writer and this story reads as good as I’d expect from him.  It’s also one of the better additions to his growing library at Dark Horse, and the second such addition from adapter/artist Colleen Doran who also did “Troll Bridge.”  She tells the story in incredibly detailed splash pages that tell the story through montage. It may be a little hard to parse the narrative through them, but it’s something which gets easier the further you get into the story.  Which is something that you will feel compelled to do as the awfulness inherent in this tale makes itself manifest in ways that will compel you to see how it all ends.

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G. Willow Wilson got her start doing creator-owned work on titles like the “Cairo” OGN and “Air” at Vertigo before she jumped ship to Marvel and hit it big creating Kamala “Ms. Marvel” Khan.  She’s now back at DC writing “Wonder Woman” and preparing to take over “The Dreaming,” but has still found time for doing creator-owned work at Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint. “Invisible Kingdom,” with artist Christian Ward, is a story about the intersection of faith and commercialism.  How one individual and one group from very different walks of life wind up having to rely on each other when the organizations behind them turn out to not be what they thought they were. All of the trappings of a great space opera are here, it’s just a shame that the core story doesn’t quite support them here.

Yes, I did get a lot of “Star Wars” comics in my most recent order of comics.  “Rebels & Rogues” is the last of them, and the best as well. Rather than spend its time telling one story, vol. 13 decides to tell three instead.  As an onslaught of Imperial probe droids scan the galaxy for any sign of the Rebellion, our protagonists engage in a multi-pronged approach to throw them off their path.  Luke and R2 will be diverting them away from a vital refueling station, Han and Leia will try to cook up evidence of a Rebel base on the planet Lanz Carpo, and Chewbacca and C-3PO are going to rig an uninhabited volcanic planet to blow in order to take out some Star Destroyers.

Naturally, there are catches for all of these situations:  Luke encounters a rogue who may know a thing or two about the Force, or may just have eyes on his lightsaber.  Meanwhile, Han and Leia’s contact turns out to be the latter’s ex, while the planet Chewie and Threepio are rigging to blow isn’t quite as uninhabited as they thought.  Things get even twistier for these plots as they go along and that’s just a little of what writer Greg Pak brings to the table here. In addition to smart characterization and dialogue, he also switches between these threads effortlessly and in a way that keeps them interesting without distracting the reader.

Artist Phil Noto is no stranger to “Star Wars” after working on “Chewbacca” and the first year of “Poe Dameron” and he delivers some very appealing work here.  He’s being asked to draw three different locales, all with their own identifying quirks, and they all look pretty solid even when the blasters are firing (which is often).  Really, the only issue I have with this volume is that it’s basically a batch of extended filler. Pak and Noto essentially got stuck in a lame-duck run on “Star Wars” before it relaunches into the post-”Empire Strikes Back” era in January.  What they’ve delivered here is still well above the kind of storytelling I’d expect from a filler arc, and that’s as good a reason as any to give this volume a look.

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Does the finale to Remender and Scalera's mad sci-fi epic grind its protagonist into dust, raise him to the heavens, or try to do both?

The craziest train in comics continues…

I mean, it’d be easy to fill a couple paragraphs with all of the “What the hell did I just read?” moments from this latest omnibus edition.  Instead, I’ll just fill one: Bando getting a bionic arm and saying nuts to the castration surgery to go fulfill his vendetta against Lucy. Mayu running into the now-bionic psychopath on the beach and getting along with him (for a bit).  Yuka trying to get closer to Kouta during a rainstorm and accidentally grinding her crotch on his leg. Nana getting her own set of removable limbs that keep popping off at the most awkward times. Yuka’s friend accidentally engaging Kouta in some awkward slapstick involving a urine-soaked diaper.  Anything involving the director and his goofy-ass rage faces. Lots of flashbacks involving the murder of men, women, and (especially) children. A prepubescent diclonius being woken up, murdering a couple people and then having an arm blown off. Mangaka Lynn Okamoto’s feeling that there’s never a bad time for fanservice -- not even in a fight to the death between diclonii.

It’s hard to reason why the mangaka would think to bring in such crazy, tone-wrecking plot elements like these.  Especially when she shows that she can deliver a compelling story when she stops with the wackiness and focuses. The flashback to Lucy and Kouta’s shared childhood, which the latter has forgotten/suppressed, is downright heartbreaking to see the two get to know each other and then have Kouta suffer terrifying consequences for telling one little lie.  The way Nyu tries to make it up later in the volume is similarly affecting… until you realize that her boobs are hanging out as she’s doing it. Then there’s the stuff involving director Kurama and his history with the Diclonius Project, how he wound up having two diclonii daughters as a result of it, and how he tried and failed to do right by at least one of them.

I still wouldn’t say that “Elfen Lied” is a good series because its tone and narrative aims continue to be all over the place in a way that suggests mangaka Okamoto is just throwing a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks.  That’s no way to create a series, even before you consider what’s being thrown at the wall. Still, “Elfen Lied” is at least never boring as a result of her approach and that makes it entertaining to me at least since I never know whether I’ll find something good, awful, or nuts whenever I turn the page.

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I hate to dash anyone’s hopes but this is not a tie-in to or spinoff of the beloved “Tie Fighter” PC space combat sim from the 90’s.  Instead, it’s a look at “Shadow Wing,” one of the Empire’s elite Tie Fighter squads. Its current members -- 2nd Lt. Commander Teso Broosh, Sr. Lt. Jeela Brebtin, Lt. Lyttan Dree, and Flight Officers Ganem Kahi and Zin Graw -- are committed to the Imperial cause and believe that the Rebels are traitors and enemies of galactic order.  So when they’re tasked with escort duty for a disabled Star Destroyer it might seem like a waste of their talents. However, these are the waning days of the conflict between the Empire and the Rebels and some people may be less concerned with picking a side than staking out a claim for themselves.

While we know the Empire as a whole is pretty rotten, that doesn’t mean everyone in it is.  Some people believe in the order and stability it provides and fight for that -- without instigating a civilian massacre, or something like that in the process.  That’s how most of the crew of Shadow Wing comes off, and writer Jody Houser does a great job making them all stand out as individuals. This is both in the main story and the short character-focused vignettes which close out each issue.  Credit to main series artist Roge Antonio who does a pretty decent job with the cast and the space combat scenes.

The character work is certainly nice, and it’s also good to see Houser throw in a few twists along the way.  Whether it’s Broosh’s surprise order in the middle of fighting, a Stormtrooper being realistic about his situation, a surprise connection to “Han Solo:  Imperial Cadet” of all things and the basic questions of who lives, who dies, and who’s spying for the Rebels, the story didn’t play out as I expected and that was great.  The surprises keep coming until the end, when some shocking news calls the future of Shadow Wing and the Empire into doubt. So after “Tie Fighter” and “Thrawn” I can only ask for more Houser-written “Star Wars” series in the future.

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With a new numbered “Star Wars” movie due out in a couple weeks, tradition dictates that we’re due another “Journey to” comic ahead of it.  Where “Shattered Empire” showed us what things were like for everyone immediately after “Return of the Jedi” and “Captain Phasma” was a nice character portrait of and continuity fix for the title character, “Allegiance” has precious little insight to offer on its own.  In all fairness, I’m willing to bet that writer Ethan Sacks was very limited in regards to what he was able to actually write about because the people at Lucasfilm really didn’t want to give anything away regarding “The Rise of Skywalker.” So we get four issues of Leia, Rey, Rose, and Chewbacca negotiating with the leaders of Mon Cala while Finn, Poe, and BB-8 deal with merc troubles as they try to recover a weapons cache for the Resistance.

None of this is as interesting to read about as it sounds, and that’s even if you think it manages that much.  The negotiations are a bunch of dull back-and-forths between Leia’s group and Mon Cal isolationists, occasionally punctuated by some functional action setpieces.  As for the other group, theirs is a bog-standard tale of a simple job turning into a bad one all thanks to some very familiar mercenaries. Mind you, the Kendoh Crew will only be familiar if you’ve read Sacks’ other (and better) “Star Wars” comic “Galaxy’s Edge” and it was actually fun to learn that this was the botched job they talked about in that comic.  I also imagine diehard fans of “The Clone Wars” animated series will also get a kick out of seeing a familiar face opposing Leia in the Mon Cala sections.

Even if these are some enjoyable bits of continuity and worldbuilding, they’re not enough to sustain the series.  Neither is the good-looking but stiff artwork provided by Luke Ross, who has also done better work in other “Star Wars” comics like “Thrawn.”  Still, at least I’ll know why the First Order will be rolling up on Mon Cala at the start of “The Rise of Skywalker” since the story ends in a way that strongly suggests that will happen.  I mean, if it doesn’t, then this comic will have even less of a reason to have existed let alone justify the “Journey to” in its name.

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