Comic Picks By The Glick

I don’t think the world was crying out for a sequel to the thoroughly alright “Avengers:  No Surrender,” which served to wrap up the various “Avengers” series Al Ewing, Jim Zub, and Mark Waid were writing at the time, but we got one anyway.  “No Road Home,” however is the exceedingly rare time when a follow-up to a Marvel event actually surpasses the original. Yes, the main plot is another MacGuffin hunt.  The key difference this time is that the hunt is a lot more interesting this time around.

You could ask, “Is this a good volume of ‘Conan’ comics?” and it would be a perfectly valid question.  A better one to ask would be “Is this volume of ‘Conan’ good enough to justify Marvel snatching the license away from Dark Horse?”  To the first question I’d say, “Actually, it’s fine.” To the second, my answer is, “Not by a longshot.” Dark Horse did right by the Barbarian for over a decade, and I didn’t think he needed another home.  Now he’s back at Marvel, with an A-list creative team in writer Jason Aaron and artist Mahmud Asrar on the main “Conan” book. It’s enough to ensure that this first volume is a decent read. Regrettably it doesn’t get much better than that.

It’s a brand-new series written by Kieron Gillen!  With art from the immensely talented Stephanie Hans!  And it has a literal fantasy RPG setting! What could possibly prevent me from declaring this one of the best comics before I’ve even read it?  Common sense really -- having little is not the same as having none at all. So I actually decided to sit down and read the first volume of “Die” before waxing even more ecstatic about it.

Good thing I did.  “Fantasy Heartbreaker” is certainly an interesting and even at times compelling start for this series.  What it is not, however, is the grand-slam home run that I was expecting from this creative team.

Okay... so this is how the "Hellboy" saga really ends.

This is one of the most satisfying volumes I’ve read in this series after a while.  Not because of any one thing it does. No, this volume is a case of mangaka Satoru Noda throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, plot-wise, and having it all turn out pretty well.  I’m talking about bits like Kiroranke and Hijikata teaming up to rescue Shiraishi from the 7th Division. Only the catch is that the Escape King doesn’t want to be rescued. We also have the sole survivor of the gang of criminals who took over an Ainu village in the previous volume turning out to be a master of disguise and deception.  Which is good because Sugimoto is going to need his skills to actually get Shiraishi out of prison. Then there’s Inkarmat who gets “persuaded” into posing as a fake clairvoyant while Tanigaki and Cikapasi have to rescue her. Tanigaki by using his rifle, Cikapasi by using his Dinky. I definitely can’t forget about how Nikaido, recovering from losing his leg in the previous volume, gets a very welcome gift from a very loud man.

As odd and disparate as these elements sound, they all work completely on their own terms.  The stuff involving Shiraishi at the beginning is great goofy fun, as his very good reason for not wanting to return helps fuel the comedy.  Even better is the hospital chapter where Nikaido’s response to the true nature of his gift winds up being the funniest thing I’ve read all year.  Even when Noda dials down the wackiness for the bits involving Sugimoto and the conman, he still manages to make the tension gripping even before the bullets start flying.  It all leads to a final scene that unexpectedly references “The Empire Strikes Back…” Okay I’ll admit that it’s probably closer to similar scenes from “Rob Roy” and “The Revenant,” but it was still unexpected.  As was just about everything I read in this volume which was the best kind of experience I could ask for.

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You may have already heard that Kelly Thompson will be the writer of “Deadpool’s” latest ongoing series come November.  I’m hoping it’s a big smash and boosts her profile accordingly. Much in the same way that “The Immortal Hulk” has done for Al Ewing.  Because if that happens then maybe she’ll be able to do an ongoing series that doesn’t get the cut after two volumes.

That’s what “Mr. & Mrs. X,” “Jessica Jones,” and “West Coast Avengers” all have in common, in addition to being good.  This volume of “West Coast” in particular is a lot of fun as it starts off with the team facing Gridlock -- the traffic-based supervillain -- before encountering bad times at an amusement park.  It turns out that Madam Masque has assembled her own team of C to D-List supervillains to take on this team and winds up succeeding quite well at it. While we know that Kate Bishop will succeed at freeing them all, her path to that outcome is cleverly complicated when she encounters not one, but two significant people from her past along the way.  Throw in lots of sharp and witty writing -- seriously, the banter between Quentin Quire and Gwenpool never gets old -- and some lively art from Daniele Di Nicuolo and you’ve got a winning first act.

The series keeps the momentum going without a hitch when it moves into the second arc, featuring appealingly exaggerated art from Gang-Hyuk Lim and Moy R.  Here, one of Kate’s significant people hopes to get the team to take an interest in the matter he’s investigating. That would be the fact that Skrulls have infiltrated L.A. and are busy putting together their own cult for nefarious means.  This person winds up being wrong in a way that almost leads to the team having a bloody bad time of it. The team’s struggle is our gain as Thompson and the artists make the conflict into a funny, character-driven one. It all leads to an ending that does its best to put a positive spin on the fact that the series is over.  I’m still disappointed that this didn’t find an audience to last longer, but at least we got these two volumes out of “West Coast’s” latest run.

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This volume gets off to an amazing start with a one-off issue that spotlights the Iron Fist of 1,000,000 B.C.  Actually, she’s not called that at first because she winds up being the very first… in probably the most ignominious way possible.  Sentenced to die for teaching cavemen the city of K’un-Lun’s greatest secrets (read: martial arts), Fan Fei winds up showing the mighty dragon Shou Lao a thing or two and is expelled from the city for it.  She’s left to face the terrors of the outside world -- most of them of the gorilla variety -- and conquer them on her own. It’s a story that absolutely builds on what has come before (the Fraction/Brubaker/Aja run of “Immortal Iron Fist” in this case) but does it in a way that feels like it’s adding something new to the character’s mythos.  That it also features the utterly stylish and inventive art of Andrea Sorrentino, tweaking his style in a way that compares favorably to Frank Quitely, makes it easy to recognize as the high point of this current “Avengers” series.

If only the title storyline was half as good.  It does have some solid art from David Marquez who can effortlessly make a regular superhero fight look exciting, and a superhero vs. vampire fight even moreso.  Yet the artist has a hard time elevating this one as it plays out pretty much as you’d expect. New vampire leader the Shadow Colonel is out to assume leadership of all vampires by killing the ones who refuse to follow him until he can get his hands on Dracula himself.  Where’s Drac in all this? Running away to Russia with his tail between his legs in the hope that all the secrets he’s accumulated in his life will buy him a little peace before his death.

Unfortunately the Shadow Colonel is about as interesting as his name suggests.  He’s got a cool Jin-Roh/Helghast look to him and no personality to go along with it.  At least until the end when the one bit of characterization he gets winds up playing into an ending which has the bad guys winning this round.  There’s some interesting stuff done with Ghost Rider that’ll pay off in either the next volume or the one after that and it’s never not interesting to see Blade show up to murder some vampires.  Yet even with Aaron pumping all the casual craziness he can into this conflict, this “War of the Vampires” never comes off as exciting as it should.

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I think it’s safe to say that “The Sandman Universe” was meant to save Vertigo.  A series of titles spun off from the imprint’s most-loved, -acclaimed, -iconic series -- done with Neil Gaiman’s blessing and input -- that would revitalize the imprint’s flagging fortunes and usher in a new golden age.  Maybe that’s overselling it a bit, but “The Sandman Universe” has now outlived Vertigo itself. All of the titles are coming back for a second year, and being joined by a new (old) one: “Hellblazer.”

Of the four titles that make up “The Sandman Universe’s” initial lineup, “The Dreaming” was the easiest sell for me.  Not only was it set to feature the rich supporting cast of “The Sandman,” but it was also being written by Si Spurrier.  His presence alone was assurance that this wouldn’t be a simple attempt to play the hits and remind everyone of the good old days.  Spurrier is a writer who is always committed to doing something new or at least differently and that’s exactly what he does with this first volume.