Comic Picks By The Glick

Doctor Jonathan Shipwright has just survived a shipwreck.  Nevermind the fact that when we first meet him he’s staring up at some birds from his back on a dusty road.  We learn about his situation when he has a conversation at a broken-down diner with a yellow-coated inspector who gives the impression that he knows more than he’s letting on.  Said inspector is also completely indifferent to all of the spiders crawling around the booth where he’s sitting. Dr. Shipwright eventually has enough of the inspector’s questions and teleports into the kitchen only to find himself face to face with a rather talkative woman who’s cooking up what’s left of her boyfriend.

If that sounds too crazy and/or weird to you, then it might be of some comfort to know that the story manages to work its way towards a certain kind of sense by the time it’s all over.  I’m glad that it did because it’d be really be hard to recommend this comic on any level it it remained inscrutably weird for its entire length. What it becomes, however, is the kind of series that I think would’ve been better appreciated back in the 90’s when the weirdness would’ve stood out more and the idea behind the shipwreck of the title might’ve captivated on its own.

I say that and the fact that this comes from Warren Ellis does make it slightly more disappointing for that reason.  Ellis’ works from that era really stood out for their big and crazy ideas because no one else was telling stories like that.  “Shipwreck’s” brand of “inscrutably weird” is a lot more common these days and has been done better elsewhere. This story does have the stylishly angular artwork of Phil Hester who does his damndest to give the book a dreamlike feel where the creeping dread gives way to moments of visceral horror every so often.  It’s not enough to get me to fully recommend this story which has washed up on our shores two decades removed from when it would’ve been best appreciated..

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Lately, writing out these Previews Picks entries every month has felt more like a grind than a fun diversion from all the reviews I write around here.  So this month I’m going to try something new. Below the link are my thoughts on the most notable solicitations from DC, Dark Horse, Image, and Marvel as well as some assorted news stories relating to some of these publishers.  This is likely going to be the format for anything Previews-related going forward. If you’ve liked how I’ve given Marvel/DC/Image/Dark Horse their own Previews Picks each month then now would be the time to say something about it either in the comments below or via e-mail.

Aphra’s creator, Kieron Gillen, is credited as a co-writer on this arc, but the story here does feel more like the work of incoming co-writer Si Spurrier.  That’s not a bad thing as Spurrier has done some great work at Marvel and other publishers in the past and here he seems to be focused on throwing as much stuff at the title character as possible.  For starters, the punnish title which indicates the central conceit of this storyline as Aphra is now under the thumb of murder droid Triple-Zero. While the droid isn’t exactly being vindictive about his time spent calling Aphra “master” he’s certainly not above putting her in some very sticky moral situations that leave a lot more people dead than the good doctor is comfortable with.  One of these situations has her crossing paths with disgraced Imperial officer Magna Tolvan who finds a new purpose (and more) when she makes pursuing Aphra her priority.

The good news is that Spurrier acquits himself well as the new writer on this title.  He’s leaving his genre-deconstructuralist tendencies behind and concentrates on making Aphra’s corner of the “Star Wars” universe one of the more appreciatively weirder and offbeat ones.  Expect to see a glib multi-armed assassin, to a probability droid whose mind is always blown, to data storage facility where the Empire keeps all of its research products that were too crazy for mass production, and the destructive power of the phrase “Snugglebum Oogiewoogie.”  Yes, this volume of “Aphra” is as crazy as “Star Wars” gets these days and that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

My only real issue with this volume is that the writers are guilty of throwing almost too much stuff into a single storyline.  To the point where all of the character, action, quirk, and plot twists start to feel like a bit too much for a single arc. I’m also left feeling that bringing Triple-Zero back and in this particular role feels “too soon” after the events of the previous volume.  Still, too much ambition is a better sin to have than too little and the art from Emilio Laiso is fantastic. He’s got an impressive eye for detail and has a real knack for imaginative creature and mech designs. Not the smoothest handoff as far as shifts in writers go, but still one that shows “Doctor Aphra” to be in very good hands.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

What’s new in the land of “Kamuy?”  Sugimo and Asirpa have just pulled the latest convict with a tattooed skin out of the sea at a fishing village.  Unfortunately for them, they don’t know that he’s the man they want or that he’s a serial killer with a death wish.  While he’ll kill a man at a drop of a hat to keep his identity safe, this guy just wants an epic death and he thinks Sugimoto is the man to give it to him.  While the series maintains its breakneck pace through this section, aided in part by the surprise appearance of Lieutenant Tsurumi, it also gets queasy assist from the killer’s overtly sexual response to the thought of being killed by Sugimoto and a ludicrous boost when a killer whale gets involved in the action towards the end.  Whether or not these things constitute positive additions to the story will likely depend on the reader’s tolerance for such things.

Much easier to appreciate is what comes next as the story goes back to Asirpa’s village to show us what awaits soldier Tanigaki now that he’s mostly recuperated from his injuries.  That would be the arrival of two fellow soldiers who believe that he may know something about the anti-Lieutenant Tsurumi conspiracy they’re involved in. This leads to a series of tense strategic showdowns as Tanigaki has to figure out how to get out of the village and take out a sniper who’s just as good as he is with only one bullet.  It’s good stuff and that’s even before the bear gets involved in the conflict.

While it’s nice to see that mangaka Satoru Noda can hold the reader’s interest when he shifts the focus entirely away from his protagonists, he does circle back around to them by the end for some key revelations.  The minor one being Asirpa’s Japanese name, and the major one being her connection to Noppera-Bo -- the thief who stole the gold everyone’s after from the Ainu in the first place. This sets up what looks to be a very promising storyline as our crew is going to have to break into a jail to get some answers.  With the help of no one less than the biggest goofball in the series, of course.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

It was a fun idea while it lasted.  I’m talking about the idea of Laura Kinney assuming the mantle of Wolverine during the run of this title.  After this volume she’ll be back to being X-23 in a title of the same name from a different creative team. Honestly, that development is more than a little disappointing.  Having Laura assume Wolverine’s mantle felt like a step forward for the character. One that showed she could replace an A-list character, but do so on her own terms. All that’s over with after this volume, which wraps up writer Tom Taylor’s run.  Though you might not be expecting things to be at their best with the writer attempting to put his own spin on another… *ahem* classic Mark Millar “Wolverine” story, it managed the neat trick of exceeding my expectations.

After the previous volume my biggest concern with this one was “How is the art going to turn out?”  To my surprise, things are actually better this time around. It appears that artist Salvador Larroca and colorist GURU-eFX have decided to double-down on making the human characters (and those humans who were also in the movies) look as realistic as their techniques will allow.  While some faces still come off looking like they’ve been pasted onto the art, their efforts actually mesh better with the overall art here more often than not. I still wish that they’d just ditch this approach entirely as Larroca shows here that he can deliver perfectly appropriate alien faces without the “enhancements” that have been applied to the human ones.  His design sense and action work are also still on form here as the scenes of the water ballet performance on Mon Cala look great and the big spaceship battle that closes out the volume is impressively epic.

Even better news is that while there were some rocky bits in the storytelling in “The Ashes of Jedha,” “Mutiny at Mon Cala” shows writer Kieron Gillen perfectly on form here.  The storyline concerns the efforts of the Rebellion to recruit the Mon Calamari to their cause, and while we all know how that’s going to turn out the actual mechanics of it are pretty entertaining to observe.  They involve (in no particular order) the kidnapping and impersonation of Mon Cala’s Imperial Moff, an undersea jailbreak to rescue royalty, the unexpected return of Leia’s guardian Bail Organa, C-3P0’s performing arts debut, and Queen Trios of Shu-Torun proving her loyalty to the Rebellion.  It’s a great heist story that also manages to effortlessly work in the kind of witty asides that Gillen loves to pepper his work with. “Mutiny at Mon Cala” was basically everything that I was expecting from his and Larroca’s run on this title when it was announced and it builds things up in just the right way for hope to die in the next volume.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

While I liked the first volume of this title well enough, the second one leaves me feeling that this storyline has a real big problem to it.  It’s not in how Charles Soule handles his large ensemble. He gets the characters more or less right and divides up the action so that no one of them feels neglected over the course of the volume.  Neither is it in the six different artists who each handle a single issue in this collection. While they may lack the star power of those who contributed to the first volume, the reality-shifting nature of the threat posed by Proteus actually makes the artistic chaos work for the story rather than against it.  The reasonably conventional styles of Phil Noto and Paolo Siqueria give way to the reality-bending work of Matteo Buffagni and (most impressively) Aco as Proteus makes his bid to give the people of the world what they want and the phantasmagorical hell that results from it. Ron Garney and Gerardo Sandoval then go on to split the difference as they bring the story to a close.  A story that is ultimately about the return of Professor X, which is not a problem in itself either.

No, the biggest problem with Soule’s storyline is that he introduces a major new character in the returned Xavier, now calling himself X, and basically decides to let the creative community figure out what to do with him.  X is the mind of Charles Xavier in the relinquished body of Fantomex and he doesn’t come off as anything like the Professor who founded and mentored the X-Men over the years. In fact, due to a last-page twist in the eleventh issue it’s really hard to say how much of his actual character we’re seeing in these issues.  While Soule gets some credit for not simply bringing Xavier back wholesale and for trying to find a new angle on his character, his motives and purpose are left frustratingly opaque at the end of this volume. What Soule should’ve done is stick around for another twelve issues and given us (and by extension the creative community at Marvel) his take on what the character’s new dream is and how he’s going to interact with the other mutants out there.  Unless someone actually sits down and does this kind of dirty work don’t expect X to have a very long or memorable shelf life as a character.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Why do a major "Doctor Strange" story in the pages of his ongoing title when you can spin it out into a mini-event instead!