Comic Picks By The Glick

I don’t think that the world was crying out for a third color-coded core “X-Men” title, but here we are.  Fortunately the title has a real advantage in that it’s coming to us from writer Tom Taylor after he delivered a very good six-volume run on “All-New Wolverine.”  Does Taylor’s first shot at the brass ring for “X-Men” comics deliver?  Kind of. It has a good handle on its core cast and a timely story, but one that is also fairly surprise-free and whose agenda of change feels doomed to failure.

The true stories of Andre the Giant, Andy Kaufman, and Tetris make for excellent reading in this graphic novelist's hands.

So I was looking at my “to review” pile and saw that there’s an excessively large amount of manga in it.  Enough to take me into December if I tackled each volume at my normal rate. Then I remembered that I’ve got another order of manga coming in from The Right Stuf as I write this and realize that if I do want to talk about all these volumes I’ve read, I should do it as quickly as possible.  That being said, you’ll find my thoughts on several volumes of manga that I’ve been reading -- including the annual volume of Berserk -- condensed down to their most notable bits.

I said in my review of the first volume that, “I’m hard-pressed to see how the second volume improves from here.”  Well, I don’t think that vol. 2 is an actual improvement, but the destruction of my expectations after reading vol. 1 at least let me enjoy this one more.  Not that it does anything to excuse the poor choice of villain for this storyline as Diamondback still projects all the menace of a wet paper bag. Oh he can talk a good deal, and his recounting of what happened when Wilson Fisk made his play to become the Kingpin is a high point, but his plan to become the new Kingpin still feels like more hot air than anything else.  Not helping matters at all is how he gets his ass handed to him twice (AGAIN!), and that’s only because of an awful courtroom sequence that looks nice but is such a transparent device to get the character back on the street that it’s honestly a little painful to read. Not helping matters either is the pivot towards one of Bendis’ pet villains near the end, someone who never felt as threatening as the writer intended him to be.

There are a number of things working in this volume’s favor, at least.  Chief among them is David Marquez’s incredible art which gives the conversation scenes plenty of character and the action scenes plenty of crunch.  A particular standout is the wordless fight between Iron Fist and Elektra which stands as one of the most intense superhero fights I’ve seen in a Marvel comic in recent memory.  Bendis’ dialogue also has plenty of energy to it here and it’s fun to take in even when the characters are just shooting the breeze. Though he doesn’t do as much with the Punisher this time around, the writer gets some surprisingly good mileage out of Deadpool whose fourth-wall-breaking tendencies prove to be a perfect fit for his style.

Between these two volumes I’d say the quality has risen from “kinda disappointing” to “enjoyable if you don’t think too hard about it.”  Even with the fantastic art from Marquez, “The Defenders” serves as a reminder that Bendis has done better work with these characters in other titles.  You should go read those, “Alias/Jessica Jones,” “New Avengers,” “Daredevil” -- before picking up this series which, after vol. 2, can at least be enjoyed by the writer’s completists.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

The cliffhanger delivered at the end of vol. 6 was amazing for a few reasons, but mainly because of how it inverted my expectations of the kind of ending I usually expect from Rick Remender’s work.  So, do he and artist Wes Craig fully deliver on the promise of the tables being turned on everyone who’s currently chasing Marcus and his friends? Nope!  It’s not a complete walkback as Marcus is forced to team up with Viktor and Brandi to fight off the yakuza thugs who have come after them while Maria and Quan, Petra and Helmut, and Zenzelle and Toshawi respectively split up to find their own ways to survive this awful night in Puerto Penasco.

Vol. 7 is the thinnest of the series so far, collecting only four issues.  That’s not as much of a problem as Remender and Craig pack this volume with enough action and incident to make it a satisfyingly dense read.  While the action sustains pretty well for the first half of the volume, it’s the character stuff that will likely stick with you after the volume is over.  Things like Maria’s interrogation of Quan that’s as spontaneous as it is menacing, Marcus’ desperate fight against Viktor that leads the former to a hallucinatory debate with a dead friend, and the revelation of Zenzelle’s backstory that sheds an awful new light on her religious fanatacism.

There are a number of issues, however, that keep this volume from being among the best in the series.  First is that the action is so intense and over-the-top that it strains even the suspension of disbelief for this series that only one member of its cast winds up dying along the way.  Regardless of whether this character deserved their fate, it’s frustrating when another is mentioned to constantly be on the brink of death throughout the volume only to demonstrate a level of survivability akin to Wolverine’s.  Then there’s the fact that Craig’s art, which is on point for the volume’s first half, takes a dive halfway through as it takes on an increasingly rougher look that indicates he was bashing it out against some deadlines. Finally, I think that the change-of-heart demonstrated by one character toward the end of vol. 7 only works because I really wanted to believe it, not because it makes sense for this character.  Still an enjoyable volume overall even as I’m left hoping things get fully back on track when we return to King’s Dominion next time.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Bartlett Bowman is a man who appreciates the simple things in life.  Like sitting on the porch of his family house in the cool of an evening in a small Texas town sipping a blood beer.  Blood beer? That’s right, because like the other members of the Bowman clan, Bartlett is a vampire. They’ve been running the local barbecue joint for years living off of the blood of the animals they slaughter which allows them to maintain an uneasy peace with their rivals, the pious Landrys.  That all changes one evening when a drunken Bartlett wanders into town to keep an eye on his nephews and wakes up in the morning on his porch with all of the family’s cattle slaughtered and one of the kids burning in the sun while hanging from a tree. Bartlett has no idea how this happened or even if it was really him that has sparked a new conflict between the Bowmans and the Landrys as his family has so much to lose now.

“Redneck” comes to us from writer Donny Cates with newcomer (to me at least) Lisandro Estherren providing the art.  It’s the writer’s follow-up to his breakout Image hit “God Country” and feels like the lesser of his creator-owned work at this point if only because it’s clear he’s playing a longer game here.  That title clearly benefited from its short length as it forced Cates and artist Geoff Shaw to throw in every crazy idea they had in addition to firmly tying it to relatable human concerns.  “Redneck” is very much in the same vein (pun intended) as it’s basically a southern family drama with vampires. That adds a certain amount of spice to the story, as do interesting characters like young psychic Perry, and the traditional as he is mad Grandpa.  Still, the story in this volume ticks all the familiar boxes you’d expect it to only with vampires this time around. Estherren’s art is fine as it gives the story a roughness that works but not much more. All this results in a first volume that is a perfectly fine read, yet one that I hope goes in more interesting directions now that the process of setting things up is out of the way.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

“Batman:  Damned” got off to a headline-grabbing start last week.  Not because of its status as the debut “Black Label” title for mature readers superhero comics, or the quality of the storytelling from writer Brian Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo.  No, it grabbed all of those headlines because in one scene Bermejo drew Batman disrobing in a way that showed off his penis. That’s right, the Batpenis is now an official part of comics canon.  Assuming you picked up a physical copy of the comic -- the Batpenis has been removed from the digital editions. If you didn’t, then you’d better act soon because it’s very unlikely DC will keep the Batpenis in subsequent print editions.  Copies of the first issue of “Damned” are already going for $85 on Ebay right now as a result of this.

No more mentions of the Batpenis in this article after the break -- I promise...

For the last several volumes this series has been focused on the martial-arts tournament that Saitama has been competing in so that he can learn more about this particular style of fighting.  While this has been going on, a monster invasion in the city has had the many members of the Hero Association playing defense. Both of these storylines fully collide in this volume as Goketsu, a Demon-class threat and a former champion of this particular martial-arts tournament, offers its competitors the chance to become monsters themselves.  Some of them accept his offer and proceed to challenge Suiryu, the arrogant champion of the match, to test their newfound strength.

There’s no denying that Suiryu’s has needed some comeuppance due to his attitude for a few volumes now.  Is pitting him against these monsters the way to do it? Well, creators ONE and Yusuke Murata show that they’ve got the right idea by having Suiryu break a sweat and even bleed while taking these guys on.  Showing him actually struggle in a fight is a good way to get us to sympathize with him (at last). Then he takes on Goketsu and things go bad. Then to worse. And then on to “all hope is lost.” This might seem like overkill on the creators’ efforts, but this is “One-Punch Man.”  Here, “overkill” just means that they’ve put in the necessary effort to get you to care about the fight at hand.

Which is a good thing too because there’s nothing new as far as the storytelling goes in this volume.  I’ve read plenty of superhero stories where arrogant heroes are humbled against impossible odds and have to learn what constitutes real heroism along the way.  It’s very much the same here. What makes this volume, and “One-Punch Man” in general, worth reading is that the execution is absolutely spot-on. ONE and Yusuke Murata know exactly what to put into the story to keep you invested without any distractions and how crazy the action needs to be in order to present a credible threat.  Oh, and (most importantly) when to have Saitama show up to do the series’ title justice. It’s the superhero formula done close to perfection and it’s remarkable in the way that the creators have been able to keep pulling it off for as long as they have.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com