Comic Picks By The Glick

This is the culmination of several years of storytelling at Marvel, from its major crossovers starting with “House of M” to “Secret Invasion,” to it’s post event initiatives like… “The Initiative,” and “Dark Reign,” to the events of its flagship title, “New Avengers,” during this time and other events such as the return of Thor.  So those of you who haven’t been following the events of the Marvel U for this time need not apply  For those of you who have, it’s a pretty successful conclusion to the events of the past few years as Norman Osborne’s desire for power mixes with Loki’s desire for mischief in a way that leads the former Green Goblin to lead all of the superhero forces at his disposal against the Gods of Asgard.  If you think that sounds like a catalyst for all of the superheroes to finally put aside their differences and unite in the face of a common threat, then you thought right.  I won’t deny that it certainly is thrilling to see all of the Avengers (New and otherwise) team up and take down Osborne and his crew, but a couple key events just aren’t explained well enough in the story for them to have the effect they needed to.  The biggest problem is that if I hadn’t been spoiled to the fact that Carnage has been slowly taking over the Sentry’s mind for quite some time, then I’d have had NO IDEA what was going on with him towards the end.  Still, it’s an entertaining enough wrap up and essentially required reading for anyone following the ongoing narrative of the Marvel U.

Coming from the creators of the late HBO series “Carnivale” isn’t exactly something I’d consider using as a selling point (mainly because I and the populace at large haven’t seen it), but this came highly recommended from a friend of mine.  After reading it, I have to admit that I enjoyed it more than I expected to.  Taking place shortly before the events of “Civil War” (and right after Warren Ellis multi-year “Extremis” storyline) Charlie and Daniel Knauf’s story finds Tony Stark exploring the limits of his new Extremis enhancements while prominent military, political and criminal figures with ties to his past start turning up dead while the Iron Man armor is seen at the scenes of these crimes.  Having Tony lose control of his armor and come under the suspicion of his friends isn’t a new storyline by any means, and while the Knaufs try to jazz it up some by tying it to the man’s new enhancements, it never loses that familiar feeling.  What I did like about the series was the old-school Marvel feel it had to it thanks to the numerous guest stars in this arc (Captain America, Nick Fury, and the Sentry all feature prominently) that actually serve a purpose in the narrative, and the continuity it had with Ellis’ previous arc (which I wasn’t expecting, but was pleasantly surprised to find).  Topping it all off was Patrick Zircher’s art which drives home that old-school superhero feel in a good way.

This volume of Mike Carey’s “X-series for the hardcore fan” finds the book in transition.  Having wrapped up his multi-volume tale of Professor X’s quest for identity and coming off its tie-in to the “Utopia” crossover, the series had four months to kill before plunging headfirst into more crossover action in the “Necrosha” and “Second Coming” events.  While such a schedule would seem to preclude the forming of any long-term plans for the book, Carey makes his case here for the title becoming a Rogue-centric book with the younger X-characters serving as a supporting cast by having Cyclops ask her to be a leader of sorts to these kids since her energy-absorbing powers put her in an ideal position to show them how their own powers can be used with some experience.  She doesn’t initially agree to it, but her hand is forced when old “Generation X” villain Emplate arrives on Utopia in his pan-dimensional lighthouse looking to snack on the marrow of the island’s mutants.  Fans of Rogue will particularly enjoy this volume since she gets a chance to show off her newfound control of her powers and display some real ingenuity in dealing with an enemy who can move between dimensions.  I also really enjoyed the art from Daniel Acuna who has a very lush, retro style and is equally capable of drawing mutant superheroes fighting as well as other-dimensional Lovecraftian horrors.  As is the case with just about all of Carey’s “X-Men” books, they’re not something I’d recommend to the general public, but they’re great fun for X-fans like myself.

Remember how I talked about on the podcast earlier this week about how reading the events in “Blackest Night” made me want to go check out the tie-in volume of “Green Lantern” to see how it filled in the gaps.  Then I went on to say that while it had some really good parts, the stories there really didn’t do much more than fill in these gaps in a very exposition-heavy way.  Well, these volumes of “New Avengers” are just like that, only worse.  As it turns out, the nitty-gritty details behind the Skrulls plan to invade the Marvel Universe make for pretty dully stories the way that writer Brian Michael Bendis tells them.  Now there are some nice details, such as finding out that the events of “Annihilation” sparked their plan, and seeing how they tricked “Reed Richards” into finding a way past the humans’ skrull-detectors, but the vast majority of these stories just explain things that I really didn’t care about (despite nice art from Billy Tan and Jim Cheung).  The exceptions here are the two issues with art by Michael Gaydos which focus on Luke Cage and Jessica Jones’ relationship during key parts of the crossover.  Effectively, these are just two more issues of Bendis and Gaydos’ excellent “Alias” series and show that the man still hasn’t lost his touch for writing these characters even when he’s hip-deep in crossover nonsense.

This was another title I’d heard lots of good things about and after I found it for 50% off at Comic-Con, I figured I’d give it a shot.  The premise involves legendary spymaster Nick Fury forming and training a team of teenage superheroes to fight against the forces of the terrorist organization known as H.Y.D.R.A., who are revealed to have been secretly in control of S.H.I.E.L.D. ever since Fury was a part of it.  What I like about this volume is the fact that writer Jonathan Hickman does a good job establishing the scale of the threat and convincing the reader that it’s a big deal.  He’s also done his research on the history of these two organizations, shown off in the supplemental pages after the first issue, and he and artist Stefano Casselli definitely know how to stage exciting action scenes.  However, my enjoyment is hamstrung by the fact that the reveal about H.Y.D.R.A.’s takeover of S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t feel genuine — it’s just something we’re told rather than shown, and these kinds of reveals are so old hat in comics that it’s going to take more than that to get me to care.  The cast itself isn’t all that interesting either as most of the title characters come of as generic angsty teenagers, and while Fury’s badass spy schtick works well when he’s a supporting character in other people’s comics when he doesn’t have to show any depth as a character, it turns into more of a liability when he’s the main attraction.  Still, enough works here to make me interested in checking out the second volume… assuming I can find it for a similar discount.

If you’ll recall, I was looking forward to this series just to see how artists Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon interpreted this particular time in the “B.P.R.D.” universe.  I don’t know if it was the strength of the material that they had to work with, but I was underwhelmed here.  That’s probably my own fault in some regards since I was expecting the art to pop with the energy that’s on display in their other works like “The Umbrella Academy” and “Sugarshock,” but writers Mike Mignola and Josh Dysart aren’t really telling an energetic story here.  What we get is a reasonably creepy ghost and vampire story as B.P.R.D. founder Trevor Bruttenholm sends four ex-military men to investigate a series of mass mutilations occurring throughout Europe.  It has its moments, but the story is more of a slow burn that eventually sputters out rather than bursting into flame.  Much like its predecessor, “1946,” this story had me wishing that they’d done a proper Mignola/Arcudi/Davis “B.P.R.D.” tale instead.

These are the last two volumes of the series before it re-launched as just plain “Punisher” with Rick Remender taking over full writing duties from Matt Fraction.  I know that sounds like a particularly pointless bit of info, but that’s how this series has felt to me.  Aside from some clever bits like the Stilt-Man funeral and “World War Hulk” crossover issues, as well as the last issue of the series (collected in vol. 5), “War Journal” never really found its footing as the middle ground between Garth Ennis’ funny (in “Marvel Knights”) and serious (in “MAX”) takes on the character that it so wanted to be.  The funny was never quite funny enough and the serious parts were more dull than anything else.  As it is, the series as a whole is something that I’d recommend to fans of the character rather than the general public at large.

I almost called this one “The Blackcast.”  Then common sense intervened.

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You wouldn’t think that a Wolverine story written by Warren Ellis with art by Lenil Yu from the late 90’s would merit a hardcover edition, but here it is anyway.  Less a commentary on the story itself than on how the creators’ status has risen at the company over the past decade, this hardcover is grossly overpriced at $20 for four issues of content.  The story involves Wolverine (during the time he was without his adamantium skeleton) being hunted by MacLeish, a villainous killer our hero thought he had killed years ago.  Had I read this back when it came out, I probably would’ve thought it was an above-average story involving the title character, but I’ve since been spoiled by Ellis and Yu’s later and better works, not to mention the work of other writers (Jason Aaron, Greg Rucka, etc.) who have written the character themselves.  Still, it gets some points for the clever title.  If nothing else it makes me wish for Ellis and Yu to team up again to do a follow-up called “I’m Getting Better.”

Continuing with tonight’s theme is the latest from the creators of “Death Note.”  While that series was entertaining for a while, it jumped the shark with the death of its co-protagonist halfway through and then crashed and burned spectacularly at the end.  I wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of reading another manga from writer Tsugumi Ohba and artist Takeshi Obata, but the premise of their new series “Bakuman” (two kids set out to become manga creators) was so substantially different that I figured I’d give it a shot.

While this series is different, it shares enough of its predecessor’s dense, wordy style that if you liked it there and have an interest in creating manga and seeing how it is created, then you’ll probably like this too.  A healthy appreciation (or tolerance of) shonen manga cliches is also recommended as our heroes talk at length about their manly passions, and romance blossoms (kinda) for one of the leads.  That stuff bored me to tears, but at the same time it’s still interesting to see the Shonen Jump formula applied to something that is so far outside its usual purview.  For that alone, I’ll keep reading it but at this point I’m more interested in the characters’ manga than the characters themselves.