Comic Picks By The Glick

We’ve known for quite some time that the tendrils of the Nanyang Alliance under Sojo Levan Fu have infiltrated the Federation and Zeon forces.  What this volume makes abundantly clear is just how for that infiltration extends. Things start off in a lighthearted fashion with the Federation forces headed towards some down time after successfully subduing the Rig.  By lighthearted I mean we’ve got Io throwing a hissy fit in the process about not being able to cram as much ammo as he wants onto the Atlas Gundam, and the bridge crew dreaming about what food they’re going to eat. Meanwhile, the Zeon forces are making preparations to interrogate the newly captured Claudia Peer while Darryl has to play daddy some more to the still-regressed Karla.

Zeon’s possession of Claudia would appear to be a major win for them, if it wasn’t for the fact that mangaka Yasuo Ohtagaki tipped his hand as to how deeply they’ve been infiltrated by Nanyang in the previous volume.  The infiltration goes so deep that they even manage to pull some power moves in regards to shifting the allegiance of certain cast members. Honestly, it’s impressive from a plot standpoint to see Zeon so thoroughly subverted as a result of all this and I’m curious to see what Nanyang plans to do with their power.  I also want to see what’s going to happen with Darryl as a result of all this after his moment of recognition with Claudia that reveals what has really kept him going after all this time.

The infiltration on the Federation side isn’t as thorough, but it’s arguably more sinister.  If you’ve been wondering who the identity of the hat-and-jacket-clad spy is then you’ll get your answer here.  It’s going to be a bad day for Io when he finds out, and with his mental stability taking a big blow after finding out that Claudia is still alive in this volume I’m not sure what he’s going to do.  So while this volume winds up being mostly setup for the next big storyline, it manages to still be pretty engaging while advancing the plot at the same time. Neat trick, that.

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Alright, so that first volume of “Domino” left some room for improvement as it shifted between intense character drama and freewheeling action-comedy less-than-gracefully.  This volume is an improvement in that regard as it focuses more on the latter than the former and the experience is a lot more enjoyable for it.  It opens up with an annual that’s pretty much just filler, but at least has the decency to offer up three good stories (out of four) around the framework of Domino going about an average day.  The kind that involves dressing up as a clown and going scuba diving in a swamp. Then we get to the proper issues from the main series which cover two quasi-separate stories. I say “quasi-separate” because they’re about jobs that Domino, Outlaw, and Diamondback have undertook at the request of a young Wakandan royal named Shoon’Kwa.  The first job has them heading to Eastern Norway to retrieve a box, without looking inside. The second involves taking out Marvel’s other luck-based superhero before he winds up destroying all of humanity.

Writer Gail Simone does a good job of balancing Domino’s devil-may-care persona with strong morals.  Which means that she’s always going to do the right thing, even if her way of doing things looks a little weird or even crazy.  It’s how we have her following Morbius to take out the king of all vampires off the coast of Barcelona, and accompanying a somewhat disturbed Longshot back into the Mojoverse.  Simone provides the quality banter and intriguing moral dilemmas while artist David Baldeon gives us some nicely detailed action and appealingly emotive characters. Mostly, as he’s supplemented in the final two issues by one, and then three other artists.  Given that the series was abruptly cancelled with its tenth issue, it’s probably not surprising that there were some last-minute changes that warranted the extra artistic help. Still, the story doesn’t read badly for a “We gotta wrap this up now!” thing and it’s all the more surprising that it was cancelled given that it’s getting a miniseries reprieve with “Hotshots.”  Which is something I’ll be picking up too given how this volume was an improvement over its first.

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Here’s what I’m pretty sure is the last collected edition featured in the “Great Color Cull” of “X-Men” titles from last year.  It also makes a better case for itself this time around as the talk of changing the world takes a backseat to some well-crafted superhero action courtesy of writer Tom Taylor and artists Carmen Carnero and Roge Antonio.  By that I mean we’ve got Jean and her team staging a midair heist on a politician’s airplane that winds up going horribly wrong. There’s also a plan to spread hate via nano-sentinels, a tsunami attack on Genosha, Teen Abomination (no, really) smashing Atlantis, and lots of military forces being hijacked to spread the main villain’s hateful agenda.  It’s all ably rendered by Carnero and Antonio, who also do a decent job with the many little character moments sprinkled throughout the volume.

My guess is that Taylor saw the writing on the wall and realized that he wasn’t going to be able to follow through on the world-changing story he had planned.  He does nod to it a bit in the final pages, to little emotional effect. The change in approach is for the better as the story we get here is a good showcase for his character-writing skills and ability to serve up well-executed superhero action.  By that I mean the issues here focus on setting up credible threats to our heroes, only for them to be foiled because the villain didn’t realize how resilient and clever they were. Seriously, there’s some good back-and-forth struggling here between both sides that helped keep my interest in the story high until the end.  It also gets points for having its big climactic moment involve a team-up between Nightcrawler and Honey Badger where the former’s teleportation ability is utilized in a very unconventional manner. Good stuff all around, and now I’m just a bit sad we won’t be able to read more of it.

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The first volume of “Oblivion Song” was disappointing in that it didn’t offer me anything I hadn’t seen before, let alone any real surprises.  This second volume actually does offer up one real surprise in that it wraps up the main story thread a lot sooner than I was expecting.  I figured we’d be dealing with Nathan Cole’s guilt over having caused the Transference and his inevitable redemption arc for a good long while, if not the length of the series.  What we get here, after an opening that tells us exactly how things went wrong, is a fast-paced heist/adventure story that has Nathan escaping federal custody only to rush back into the lion’s den to get his transfer device back.  That’s because the military has decided that this technology which can transport either individual people or large swaths of land between here and Oblivion is going to make a hell of a weapon. Now Nathan has to work with his girlfriend Heather, and returned-from-Oblivion brother Ed to get it back.

The biggest catch with this setup also happens to be my biggest issue with this volume.  It’s not surprising that Ed has issues with returning to our world after the life he built for himself and others in Oblivion.  What really stretches believability, and sympathy, for the character is how fanatical he is about how our world has gone wrong and that everyone should be brought over to Oblivion instead.  It never occurs to him that people might not want to live out their lives in a hostile, alien landscape filled with monstrous predators. This leads him into direct conflict with Nathan, who is trying to undo what he sees as his greatest mistake, and it’s a really ham-fisted way of doing so.

It does get our protagonist thinking about whether he’s doing the right thing and what results from that is genuinely interesting.  Which is how we get a resolution to this volume that I did not see coming, yet one that still feels consistent with Nathan’s character.  Then there’s the striking art from Lorenzo De Felici which propels the action through the middle of the book. It keeps the narrative ticking along even with the aforementioned issues with Ed’s character.  Though this volume does provide closure to Nathan’s arc so far, it also sets up further dangers stemming from Oblivion. After a volume like this, I’m actually interested in seeing how they’re going to be dealt with.

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Strap in as Myron and I take an in-depth look at this epic milestone anthology celebration of Batman.

More than any other, this is the volume I’ve been waiting to re-read once it was announced that the “Silver Spoon” manga had been licensed for U.S. release.  That’s because it finally introduces one of the most significant characters to the main story: Hachiken’s Dad, Kazumasa. (Really, it should be Yuugo’s Dad since Hachiken is the family name and I’ve just been messing it up since I started writing these reviews and… ah, let’s get on with it!)  He’s only featured in ten pages of the first chapter, but the impression he makes is tremendous. That’s partly down to his intimidating character design, where every feature from his narrow eyes to permanent frown just radiates disapproval. It’s also due to how he systematically dismisses everything that Yuugo has accomplished at Ezo Ag with an efficiency that would be impressive it it weren’t so uncaring.

What makes Yuugo’s encounter with Kazumasa really memorable is what goes unsaid during its duration.  The only mystery that “Silver Spoon” has maintained since it began is what caused its protagonist to get as far away from his family in Tokyo as he could.  It isn’t spelled out for us here either. Yet watching Yuugo’s interactions with Kazumasa makes the reason for his actions more clear than any extended speech or internal monologue could.  Yuugo’s helplessness in rebutting any of the points his dad brings up due to his intimidating presence feels quite relatable as well. It’s also telling that Kazumasa even brings out the serious side in Shingo in their brief encounter in the hospital.

This whole sequence in the opening chapter is a high point for the series and easily the most memorable part of the volume.  While it’s nice to see Yuugo get back in time for the Agricultural Fest after-party and have a nice heart-to-heart with Aki about how all his effort allowed it to go off without a hitch, things get back into “wacky hijinks” mode pretty quickly.  Which is fine since that’s “Silver Spoon’s” default state and one that it excels at. It’s just that the encounter with Kazumasa was transcendent by this title’s standards and it does leave you hoping the series would feel confident enough to give us drama like that a bit more often.  Which it probably will if the final page of the last chapter in this volume is any indication.

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Above-the-Board Recommendation:

Criminal:  Bad Weekend HC

When I was talking about the two-issue “The Orville” miniseries in the Dark Horse Previews Picks, I mentioned that you could make a collection out of a two-issue miniseries.  It’s effectively price-gouging your audience, especially if you put it in a hardcover, but you could do it. Now, guess what Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are doing for this latest “Criminal” graphic novel?  That’s right, “Bad Weekend” is a collection of issues 2 & 3 of the title’s current ongoing series in a hardcover edition priced at $17. None of this sounds good on paper, until you hear that the creators are adding extra scenes to the story to flesh it out and up the page count to 72.  Which was the same length as their excellent “My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.” So there’s precedent here and I’m honestly willing to let it slide because it’s Brubaker and Phillips doing “Criminal.” I do wonder what the first collected edition for the current ongoing is going to look like now that this is coming out.

As for the actual story of “Bad Weekend,” it’s about a man who makes comics.  Hal Crane has been in the industry almost since the beginning and he’s currently attending an out-of-town convention to receive a lifetime achievement award.  While the solicitation text promises a look at the secret history of an industry “that’s always been haunted by crooks, swindlers, and desperate dreamers” it’s light on actual details of the plot.  Which I’ve read elsewhere involve Crane’s assistant trying to manage the old man as he embarks on an ill-advised scheme to recover some old art of his. That’s a good setup, and should ultimately prove to be a great read once this hardcover hits in time for Comic-Con.  Regardless of the weird way it took to get here.

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

The Wild Storm vol. 4

Warren Ellis and Jon Davis-Hunt’s reimagining of the Wildstorm Universe has been light-years away from how it was originally conceptualized and is all the better for it.  The WU’s initial success was driven by the hype it had from the Image launch along with the fact that it was Jim Lee’s imprint. Where did good writing figure into this? It didn’t.  Not until Alan Moore showed up to write “Wild C.A.T.S.” It wasn’t until Ellis took over “Stormwatch” that the idea of a writer-driven comic at Wildstorm really started to hit its stride.  Ellis turned “Stormwatch” into a must-read title and subsequently gave the imprint two of its signature titles: “The Authority” and “Planetary.”

It’s that former title which looks to figure into the finale of “The Wild Storm” most prominently as the cold war between International Operations and Skywatch turns hot and it’s up to Jenny Mei Sparks and her group of oddball superheroes to rein everyone in.  I’ve appreciated the slow-burn approach the writer has employed with this series, which has fit well with how the WU was originally set up as our world but with all sorts of crazy government and alien-driven conspiracies behind it. While the fanboy in me is also plenty happy to see Ellis return to “The Authority,” the fact that it’s actually happening now means that I’d really like to see some kind of “post-credits stinger” for the series which involves the “Planetary” team.  I doubt that’s going to happen, but I’ll live in hope until this volume arrives.