Comic Picks By The Glick

“Decompressed” is a funny title for this volume.  That’s because writer/artist Matt Kindt does nothing but put pressure on his protagonist, Mia, and on the reader as well.  Mia is still trying to figure out who killed her father, Hari, in the undersea base he was working at. Keep in mind that said base is slowly crumbling around her and the surviving members of the research team that were inhabiting it.  While everyone is trying to find a way off of the base and back to the surface, they’ve also been quarantined by the authorities on the surface because they might’ve been exposed to an unknown pathogen during their time down there. Or it could just be exposure to the electrocommunication between the jellyfish, and the giant squid and sea turtle under the sea with them.  All this is going on at the same time Mia is rifling through her own personal history with her father and his work to find some clue, or maybe just some closure, to his murder.

This is one of those volumes where while a lot of stuff happens it still leaves the reader feeling that not much forward progress has been made.  I’ll admit that the cast has become better defined after three volumes and Kindt’s dialogue doesn’t grate on me as much, but the overall feeling is that the narrative is spinning its wheels at this point.  All this new information we get, mostly about Mia and her father, starts to feel oppressive after a while. Kindt just keeps going over the same points about Mia’s unhappy childhood, her disappointment with Hari’s decision to leave space and explore the ocean, and how Hari’s effortless charisma brought everyone down here together and may have doomed them all.  If Kindt was trying to create a story where the readers felt the crushing pressure that its undersea cast was experiencing, then mission accomplished. I just don’t think the results are all that worthwhile at this point.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

The first volume of this series worked because of the unique angle writer/artist Jeff Lemire found to address the long-standing shared grief the members of the Pike family felt over the death of their youngest member, Tommy.  Except for oldest sibling and prodigal son Pat, each family member chose to remember Tommy in an idealized fashion, either from a specific point in his life or as the man they hoped he’d grow into. With this second volume we flash back to the 90’s to see Tommy as he actually was:  a quiet, withdrawn boy who’s suffering from severe headaches. We also get to see him make entries into the journal that Pat would later mine for his critically-acclaimed bestseller as he observes his family around him. Tommy takes in everything from Richie’s endearingly brash selfishness, Tara’s uncertainty about her future, Pat’s general apathy, and his parents’ own failings.  Yet what does it all matter when we know that he’s not long for this world?

I’m not going to say that flashing back to show us what Tommy was really like wound up being a mistake that robs “Royal City” of what little mystique it had.  No, really, I’m not. That’s because the thing that weighs down this second volume is how all of the plot threads here, both major and minor, wind up becoming predictable low-key bummers.  Something’s eating at each member of the Pike family, be it cheating on a girlfriend, potential infidelity, trouble at work, or an unwanted pregnancy, and it all contributes to the feeling that life in a one-factory small town really kind of sucks.  Taking the edge off of this feeling is how lived-in Lemire makes these characters’ lives feel. Life may suck for them and these characters do make a lot of bad decisions, but the feelings behind them come off as genuine. Lemire’s gift for coming up with interesting page layouts also makes for an experience that will keep your eye rolling effortlessly across the page.  This may not be the creator’s strongest work, but it’s still good enough to get me to come back for the next, and final, volume.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

What feels like the endgame for this series kicks off in this volume as Sato makes his move.  What move is that you ask? Why negotiations with the Ministry of Welfare -- the same organization that has been kidnapping and torturing demi-humans to see how they can benefit society.  What’s that you say? Negotiating with the enemy doesn’t sound like something that Sato would do? Then congratulate yourself -- you’re smarter than just about everyone else in this volume.  The dumb doesn’t end there as Kei and company realize that Sato’s real objective is to raise some hell at a Self-Defense Force base festival that will have lots of military hardware on display and  two-hundred thousand people in attendance including the prime minister. Something like this has plenty of armed military types handling security, which means that it’s going to be difficult for the most wanted man in Japan to sneak inside.  Unless he just walks right in like he’s meant to be there.

“Ajin” has always been kind of dumb, yet the level of it on display here is kind of special.  From Tanaka’s belief that Sato would actually want to negotiate with the government, to the Ministry’s failure to realize that Tanaka coming alone meant the worst, to the military’s handling of Sato’s “infiltration” of the base, just about everyone drops the ball in one form or another here.  What’s worse is that most of the key players in this volume are dumb in a way that makes it impossible to sympathize with them. Sato’s betrayal of Tanaka feels like it was meant to come off as moment of high drama, but all it did was leave me thinking “You REALLY should’ve seen this coming.” The action is solid as always, with Sato’s assassination attempt on the Prime Minister easily being the volume’s high point, since the lack of talking during that scene helped keep the dumb at bay.  Vol. 11 ends with Kei and company going their separate ways to take care of their own business in a way that further cements “Ajin’s” push towards its endgame. A really dumb one at this point, to be sure, but it’s what I’ve come to expect from the series at this point.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

“Invincible” was a pretty great comic.  So great that it might wind up having two concurrent adaptations to two different mediums.  That Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg had snatched up the rights to a film version and were in the process of developing it broke last year.  Now, Amazon has announced that they’ll be producing an animated version of the series to premiere as part of Robert Kirkman’s development deal with them.  It’s described as an “adult animated” series, which means the over-the-top violence of the series will make the transition intact, and has been commissioned for eight hour-long episodes.  While such an announcement would normally mean the film version has been put on the back burner, word is that Rogen and Goldberg are still working on it.

Which version am I more interested in seeing?  The look of “Invincible” is definitely more suited to animation and I’m expecting that Kirkman’s involvement will mean that the series hews as close to the source material as “The Walking Dead” did.  While I wouldn’t be averse to seeing what Rogen and Goldberg do with the material, their handling of another comic book series that’s near and dear to my heart, “Preacher,” does leave me a little hesitant.  The first season’s slow pace was mostly excusable in that it was designed to be a prologue to the story of the comic. Season Two was a distinct improvement, even if it wasn’t really following its source material all that closely.  After watching the Season Three premiere, I was left with the feeling that it wasn’t bad, but in adapting a specific story from the comic (one of its best) it left a lot to be desired. So Rogen/Goldberg film version of “Invincible” might wind up being good even if it bears little resemblance to the comic it owes its name to.  I’d prefer a version of the series that’s good and resembles its source material, so I’ll make some time for the animated series when it premieres either later this year or early next.

While we’re still waiting to find out how the Batman/Catwoman wedding is going to go down, “X-Men:  Gold” gave us a look at the kind of bait-and-switch that tends to go along with these kinds of events.  The series has been building up to a Kitty Pryde/Colossus wedding for a while now and issue #30 was supposed to be where the big event happened.  Without giving too much away, let’s just say that “a” wedding happened in that issue. Between a couple of characters who have had a relationship that can charitably be described as “star-crossed” if you’re familiar with how it played out in “X-Men” comics from the 90’s or even the animated series from the same era.  It also turns out that the “X-Classified” series is directly tied to this event as well since “Mr. & Mrs. X” will follow the newlywed couple’s adventures.

Surprisingly this twist has apparently elicited frustration and elation in equal measure.  Some are upset about the sudden nature of these developments, while others are glad to see these two finally together.  Me? Let’s just say that all this brouhaha has convinced me to pick up a certain Kelly Thompson-written miniseries that will be on stands soon.  I understand it might be pretty relevant to what’s been going on.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before:  DC is embarking on another initiative to expand comics’ readership and is pissing off its retailers in the process.  It was announced last week that DC will be selling a monthly line of 100-Page Giant anthology collections via Wal-Mart featuring “Batman,” “Superman,” and “Justice League.”  While the majority of these anthologies will be made up of reprints, the part that has rankled retailers is the fact that the ones featuring “Batman” and “Superman” will feature new 12-part 12-page stories from Brian Michael Bendis and Nick Derington, and Tom King and Andy Kubert, respectively.  That Wal-Mart will be getting exclusive stories from top-tier talent has not gone down well with retailers. (Tim Seely will be writing a “Wonder Woman” story for the “Justice League” anthology, sadly for him his name hasn’t been brought up as much in this conversation.)

This isn’t the first time a comics company has tried to tap into the potential of selling at a giant retailer like Wal-Mart.  Marvel tried the same thing a few years back, but solely with reprints and at a higher price point than what DC is offering. Even though it’s only twelve new pages in each anthology, the promise of exclusive content will help alleviate any concerns from this new audience that they’re just getting sloppy seconds.  As well as get sales from regular comics readers, which is the comics’ retailers whole problem with this. I can understand why they’d be angry, but history shows that this kind of outreach usually ends up being swept under the rug in a year. If these anthologies are still going strong with new creators after the Bendis/Derington and King/Kubert runs, then retailers should break out the torches and pitchforks.

As for me, I find it hard to care about all this.  Though the new comics have been promoted as exclusive content, it’s also been said that they’ll be collected in separate volumes down the line.  Which comics retaliers will, in all likelihood, be able to sell at their shops. History tells me that this isn’t going to work, but all this fuss will die down after a while.  Comics retailers may hate what DC is doing, but they still need the company for their livelihood after all.

It was announced a year or so back that Netflix would be making a series out of the Dark Horse title “The Umbrella Academy.”  While we’re still waiting for news about how that’s going, it looks like the relationship between the two companies goes both ways.  I say this because Dark Horse will be publishing comics based on the “Stranger Things” Netflix series. The first of which, from writer Jody Houser and artist Stefano Martino, is here in these solicitations.  It’s set to tell the story of what happened to Will when he was stuck in the Upside Down during the first season.

Will I be reading this?  No, I don’t watch “Stranger Things.”  I hear that it’s good but I’m already too busy reading comics and playing video games (the Steam Summer Sale is on right now, you know).  Yet I still find this to be an encouraging development for the company. As they’ve lost a number of significant licenses in the past few years, this shows that they’re still able to acquire new and interesting ones to replace them.  Maybe we’ll hear about even more projects the two companies will be working on at Comic-Con.

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo follow up their classic "Batman" run with this event series that's the definition of "good, but not great."