Comic Picks By The Glick

Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?  Even when that thing is seeing privileged, arrogant, and condescending icy blonde white schoolgirls put in their place?  I realize that’s a rather specific categorization, but it’s wholly appropriate to this “Empowered” spinoff volume. As the title implies, it’s a team-up between Emp and her former frenemy Sistah Spooky which follows loosely on from the events of vol. 8.  In that volume, Emp and Spooky went to Hell to confront the latter’s Infernal Service Provider and get the soul of Spooky’s girlfriend out of its fiery pits.  Things didn’t go exactly as planned and now the ISP has come back to lock Emp and Spooky in a pocket high school hell dimension filled with the latter’s former classmates who are all looking to get a piece of her for getting a better infernal deal than they did.

This vengeance takes the form of traditional high school encounters exaggerated to horrific effect.  From biology dissection subjects which come to life, to singing competitions overseen by demons, to monsters made out of cafeteria food, there’s no part of high school life that isn’t mined for its awful subtext.  That’s the biggest problem with this miniseries as there’s so many of these encounters and they all basically play out the same way: Emp and Spooky are rushed to the latest encounter, they’re terrorized by the white girl(s) du jour, then Emp and/or Spooky find a way to turn the tables and it’s off to the next nightmare.  It’s debatable whether this would’ve sustained four issues, but at six it just feels like overkill.

I’ll admit that this is in spite of writer/creator Adam Warren and artist Carla Speed McNeil doing everything they can to energize the proceedings.  Warren’s dialogue has bite and he’s more than willing to dive into all of the issues of class, race, and privilege which the subject matter brings up.  McNeil thrives on all of the craziness she’s been given to draw, making things like demonic texting and emojis come off imaginatively on the page. The problem is that their talents are spent propping up a repetitive idea of a story.  If they had deviated from the established setup to tell a different story, rather than the same one over and over again, then this would’ve been a far more worthy and engaging spinoff.

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Much like the first volume Jimmy’s Bastards vol. 2:  What Did You Just Say? is one of the writer’s better recent comedic efforts.  This doesn’t mean that it’s particularly funny, unless the sight of seeing an insane Sean Connery-alike humping someones leg or men walking around with ginormous breasts sends you into irrepressible giggle fits.  That last bit is actually pertinent to the plot of the volume which has MI-6 agent Nancy trying to reverse the “gender fluid” epidemic which has swapped the genders of everyone in the world. She’s going to have to do it without Jimmy’s help, however, as he’s still massively traumatized from finding out in the previous volume that he was tricked into having sex with all of his daughters.  Russ Braun’s art is still great, the story’s execution is surprisingly solid for how ridiculous it all is, there’s an actually amusing bit of comedic ultraviolence in the final issue, and we’ve got the occasional moment where Ennis manages to make a decent point about modern-day standards. None of these change the fact that we really didn’t need a parody of James Bond’s worst excesses in this day and age, let alone one that can’t manage to be consistently funny.

Despite this coming as a follow-up to the original “World of Tanks” miniseries, World of Tanks vol. 2:  Citadel is actually a prequel.  We get to see what Karl and Freddie, two of the German tank operators from the previous mini, were up to during the Battle of Kursk while also getting a look at a Russian tank squad and how they have to deal with the awful British tanks they’ve been given.  If I’m being generous then the book’s all-over-the-place focus is an attempt by Ennis and artist P.J. Holden, who does his level best with the setting and characters, to mimic the chaos and uncertainty inherent in war. The good news is that whichever way you wind up feeling about that, Ennis’ traditional focus on ordinary people trying to do their best to survive the horrors of combat hasn’t lost its appeal.  Even if the characters here are a bit less defined than in his other war stories. Of which “Citadel” finds itself being in the middle of that particular road, yet still quite readable nonetheless.

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For a series where the majority of its first volume built up the mystery of the place known as The Black Barn, it took some real guts from creators Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino to actually show off what it was in the same volume.  Now that they’ve done that, what does the series have to offer us? An appreciatively creepy aesthetic and mysteries that only enhance its scary appeal as the characters in this series try to reconnect with The Black Barn.  For Norton Sinclair and his doctor Angela in the urban sprawl that is Gideon Falls, they hope to find some release from the web of horror that is slowly closing in on them. In the case of Father Fred and Deputy Clara Sutton who reside in the quaint rural community that is Gideon Falls, it’s to find a measure of redemption and a missing brother, respectively.  But how can there be two different versions of Gideon Falls occupied by these characters? And why does Norton have the same name as the man regarded as the community’s first murderer who died on the same day The Black Barn was first seen?

There are plenty of mysteries in “Gideon Falls” and they tend to outpace the answers that Lemire chooses to dispense to the reader.  That’s actually not a problem so far as I’m enjoying the creepy aesthetic that he and Sorrentino are pursuing here. They’re all about creating eerie, surreal imagery that leaves the reader uneasy as they turn each page.  In fact, it’s mainly because of Sorrentino’s work that I’m enjoying this series as much as I am coming after the relative disappointments of Lemire’s “Royal City” and “Descender.” The artist is the writer’s most capable artistic collaborator yet with his willingness to engage in experimental layouts, and surreal panel designs while maintaining a consistently appealing style to the characters and their world.  Two volumes in and I still have faith that Lemire knows where he’s going here -- even if the route now looks like it has more in common with “The Dark Tower” than “Twin Peaks.” Yet it’s Sorrentino’s work here which proves to be the real incentive for me to stick around in “Gideon Falls.”

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Above-the-Board Recommendation:

The Wicked + The Divine vol. 9:  Okay

Yes, Kieron Gillen does seem to find his way up here quite frequently.  It was honestly a tough choice this month between this and… well, it probably won’t be too hard to guess what other title I was considering for this spot when you start reading past the break.  Ultimately, it came down to the fact that creators Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie have done a great job of setting things up for the finale of this series. Vol. 7 explained lots of things and set up an impressive cliffhanger which hinged not on despair but hope while all the specials in vol. 8 added some extra depth to the overall story.  Now we’ve come to the final volume and everything is set up to make the reader feel like we’re about to see Persephone put one over on the (almost) immortal Ananke. I’d have no complaints about seeing that happen, except Gillen is the one who set it up. Nothing he’s written has ever been that straightforward and I’m sure there will be a twist or two (or three, or four…) in this final volume.  Nothing that will make me want to use this volume’s title as an indication of its overall quality, I hope.

The first volume of mangaka Shuzo Oshimi’s latest look at how the life of a milquetoast male is upended by an unconventional female didn’t get off to the best of starts in my opinion.  There was some drama to be had in seeing how shut-in Isao Komori wound up in the body of high school girl Mari, but it was of the conventional and familiar kind. Vol. 2 isn’t as much of an improvement over that as I would’ve liked to see even though it digs further into the complications Isao faces in Mari’s body.  Complications like doing makeup and the far more difficult task of maintaining Mari’s relationships with other girls. That last bit takes a dramatic turn for the worse when Isao/Mari goes with her friends to hang out with some boys at a nearby mall and winds up wittingly and unwittingly sabotaging every important relationship she has.  Including the one with Yori, the sole person who knows about her situation.

We find out that Yori has her own reasons for wanting to get Mari back and they seem to imply some kind of unrequited romantic affection.  This, along with the amateur detective stuff she and Isao/Mari get into with these two volumes, is enough to make me want to see where Oshimi is going with this character.  So it’s a little disappointing to see her shoved into the background for the majority of vol. 3. Not helping vol. 3’s case either is the fact that it’s mostly an extended cringe read as Isao/Mari’s life falls apart in exactly the way you’d expect.  From dealing with the complications from the one bit of female physiology we all knew he was going to have to deal with, to the loss of her social status, and a forced bit of romanticism from one of Mari’s male friends, much vol. 3 seems designed to make the reader feel as uncomfortable as possible.

At least Oshimi makes an effort to move the plot forward by the end of that volume.  Unlike all of the cringe-read stuff that preceded it, I didn’t expect the mangaka to have their protagonist directly address the problems facing them in this manner.  It leads to Yori getting back in the picture, an interesting revelation about Mari’s relationship with Isao pre-body swap, and even the current Isao getting swept up in things.  All of this is enough to give me renewed hope for the series. It’s not the best place for a series to be in after three volumes. Yet it’s enough to give me hope that the Oshimi who made “The Flowers of Evil” and “Happiness” such compelling reads will show up eventually.

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Above-the-Board Recommendation:

Star Wars Legends Epic Collection:  The Menace Revealed vol. 2

It’s not that there isn’t anything uninteresting in these solicitations.  It’s just that I don’t feel like giving this spot to the latest round of events, stunts, and next-volumes-of-series-I’m-reading that I’m expecting to be “good” rather than “great.”  Which is why I’m giving it to Marvel’s reprint of the Dark Horse “Star Wars” comics that introduced the best new character to come from the publisher’s time with the license, Quinlan Vos.  He’s an amnesiac Jedi Knight and a wanted man by many people for reasons he can’t begin to fathom. Oh, and while he’s lost his memories Vos still has his connection to the Force. So he’s got this great power at his control but no instructions or discipline on how to use it.  Writer John Ostrander used Vos’ situation to tell stories with a more ambiguous morality than you’d expect to see in a “Star Wars” story and you get to see the start of that here. Admittedly, I haven’t read all of the stories in this collection, but when the other writers include “Conan” and “Jonah Hex” veteran and the Pillar of British Comics that is Pat Mills I’m pretty sure they’ll be solid reads themselves.

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

I Am A Hero Omnibus vol. 11

They made it.

Well, not yet as something could go wrong between now and this final volume’s scheduled release in October.  You know, like an actual zombie apocalypse as depicted in this series. Assuming that doesn’t happen then we’ll all be able to read the final volume of “I Am A Hero” when October comes around.  There’s no doubt that it’s going to be really goddam strange as the title’s detours into giant flesh-monsters and zombie hive-minds have shown in recent volumes. Ill-advised romantic hook-ups aside, the series has been a consistently entertaining look at the disintegration of society via this particular strain of zombism and the disturbed mangaka, Hideo, who is trying his best to navigate it with his companions and his gun.

That we’re actually getting this final volume is what I’m most happy about here.  I’ve talked many times over the years about how Dark Horse has a real problem with being able to complete series.  “Eden: It’s An Endless World!” and “The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service” are on indefinite hiatus -- But not because everyone reading this has already bought up to the current volume of each series, right?  RIGHT? -- along with many other series, and while a new volume of “Drifters” was released in Japan last year it has yet to receive a release date here. “I Am A Hero,” however, has made it to its final volume, supported by its omnibus format and whatever buzz the live-action Japanese movie and TV series were able generate over here.  I’m sure this series has taught the company a few things about how to release manga over here -- notice how we’re getting “Elfen Lied” and “At the Mountains of Madness” in omnibus editions -- and for that I am thankful.

It was Fanime’s 25th Anniversary this year and the overall experience was… still really great.  Aside from a nice art gallery showcasing memorabilia for years past and the “Silver Anniversary” tag plastered on banners and various memorabilia, there wasn’t a big emphasis on celebrating the occasion itself.  Fanime 2019 was another awesome experience that was over way too quick for people like myself and John who came down on Thursday. There were issues, like a lacklustre anime music video competition, the expected round of technical glitches at panels (which, in fairness, were way down from last year), and that one staffer who wouldn’t let me into a panel early because he said all press members had to show up 15 minutes before for that kind of access.  These were all minor problems and between the dealer’s hall, arcade, and (so many) panels I had no reason to go back and hang out in my room while the con was in full swing.

Now here’s where I attempt to explain why: