Comic Picks By The Glick

I wasn’t planning on writing a review of this volume, or any of the other first volumes coming out of the “Dawn of X” relaunch.  No, my original plan was to bring in Myron and Rob (who was supposed to be with us on that podcast but had some last-minute scheduling conflicts) so we could talk about all of the first volumes in one go.  That may still happen, but it’s been pushed for reasons that I think are pretty obvious at this point.  So until then, I’ll be reviewing these new volumes as they come.  Starting with… “New Mutants?”

Vol. 1 of Coates’ run reminded me of the most annoying parts of Ed Brubaker’s run.  Vol. 2 gave us a good super-hero-in-a-super-prison story.  Vol. 3 does a bang-up job of threatening to derail my interest in this series.  Part of that’s due to a confusing plot which initially starts off with the return of Steve’s old adversaries, the ultranationalist group known as the Watchdogs, as they’ve been kidnapping migrant workers to sell off as slaves.  Then we find out that they’ve also infiltrated the N.Y.P.D., because Mayor Wilson Fisk needed footsoldiers and Alexa Lukin supplied them.  But now they’re being killed off by the actual, long-serving cops led by a new version of Scourge.  Which should make them the good guys?  Except that they’re doing this against the law, which is what brings in Steve and the Daughters of Liberty to stop them and make the town safe for Fisk and his crew again.  Did I get all that right?

This is definitely the most grounded volume of Coates’ run so far, and it’s a good argument for having him focus on the superhero theatrics that defined the first two volumes.  Confusing plot aside, it’s always a tricky proposition to involve the title character in realistic issues since having him solve these things risks trivializing them in real life.  Still, this volume is further dragged down by the art of Jason Masters.  He can do solid work where realism isn’t demanded, but his work here feels flat and simplistic.  I’d throw in “rushed” as well, but the fact that four other artists contributed to this volume kind of speaks for itself.  Masters and two other artists worked on the final issue, which promises to put the return of Aleksander Lukin/Red Skull business back on the front burner if not bring it to a climax.  I wasn’t prepared to look forward to something like that.  After reading through this volume, I’m more than ready for any kind of return to superhero grandstanding.

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The last time we were in “Oblivion,” I mentioned that the Faceless Men were a genuinely interesting challenge facing Nathan Cole and the rest of the cast.  Vol. 4 manages to dispel a lot of that interest early on.  That’s when we find out that they’ve managed to learn English and are able to communicate normally among themselves.  Which is how we learn that the group which kidnapped Ed’s community has done so in order to learn more about them, with an aim to find out how to get to Earth.  One amongst them, Dakuul, has a more personal interest in humans:  He just likes killing them.  This is frowned on by his superiors, but he’s part of some elite warrior cast, and blah, blah, blah, they’re just funny-looking humans after all.

As for the actual humans, things are more promising on that front.  The military has a plan to get the humans back, and it’s a good one that relies on how both worlds overlap with each other.  Before that happens, there’s some drama between the Cole brothers, and a surprise appearance by a Faceless Man that needs to be worked through.  When the actual rescue mission kicks off, Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici deliver some great “Aliens”-esque action and some genuine struggle as both sides find themselves pretty evenly matched.  The last third of this volume is arguably a high point for the series as I didn’t expect the mission to turn out the way it did.  Vol. 4 does leave us with an intriguing final complication that looks to hold my interest until vol. 5 arrives.  Whenever it does.

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Doctor Doom is unquestionably one of Marvel’s A-List villains.  Even though his main nemeses are the Fantastic Four, it’s always a big deal whenever he shows up to tangle with another hero or team like Spider-Man or the Avengers.  While the character’s stature and popularity have been enough to warrant a few solo miniseries over the years, this new series from “She Could Fly’s” Christopher Cantwell and artist Salvador Larroca represents Doom’s first ever ongoing series.  Has it been worth the wait?  If you’re looking for a low-key, character-driven, occasionally quirky superhero title, then… yes.

Are you ready for a BLOOD FEUD?!  It looks like that’s where the story’s headed not too far into vol. 4 as Mob’s brother Ritsu fully awakens to his own powers (with some questionable help from Dimple).  Unfortunately for him, this has come along at a time when his emotional stability has taken a hit, thanks to Student Council President Kamuro’s morally dubious efforts to clean up the school.  Rather than use his powers to turn this around, Ritsu decides to commit to this plan in a way that frightens even the president and attracts some unwanted attention.  First from a group of thugs hailing from other schools, then from an organization that’s been keeping an eye out for people like him and his brother.  Between these things, Mob finally catches up with Ritsu and decides to teach him a thing or two about the the responsibility he believes these powers should be treated with.

I wasn’t expecting their discussion to go in the way that it did, which was a nice surprise.  The problem is that after all the buildup the Mob/Ritsu confrontation gets in this volume, mangaka ONE abruptly puts it on hold.  Now the title character is teaming up with an old rival to take down the above-mentioned organization before any harm comes to his brother.  It’s a decent enough direction for the story to take, only I liked where the story was going before this happened and the organization in question appears to just be generically evil at this point in the story.

Still, I’ll give ONE credit for making Ritsu’s actions come off like a natural extension of his character.  His ongoing thoughts on the nature of these powers and how they should be used are also delivered well here, alongside some bone-crunchingly intense fights.  I have to say that after four volumes, the mangaka’s art style continues to leave less doubt in my mind that it’s a stylistic choice as opposed to being outright amateurish.  It’s not without its problems, but vol. 4 is another solid entry into this series that I hope Dark Horse will see about releasing just a little bit quicker.

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Vol. 4 sees this series falling back on its bad old habits of collecting only a couple of issues of the regular series and padding out the paperback with extra one-shots.  But hey, that title at least promises an epic fight, right?  Kinda/sorta.  While Slott has always been willing to incorporate the latest changes in a character’s status quo into is stories -- remember when Spider-Man teamed up with Loki, Sorcerer Supreme -- he ducks out of writing the actual “Immortal Hulk” here.  The character is, shall we say, puppeted by someone with a grudge against Ben Grimm and the happiness he’s found with his new wife Alicia Masters.  This leads to a throw-down between the two superheroes that’s fine for what it is.  Artist Sean Izaakse does do some great work here, particularly with a two-page spread that illustrates a haymaker for the ages.  If the rest of this two-issue fight was on that level, it would’ve been worth the price of admission.

As for the rest of what’s collected here, they’re essentially decent fill-in issues that were marketed as one-shots.  Writer Gerry Duggan teams up with artists Greg Smallwood, Mark Bagley, Luciano Vecchio and Pere Perez for a story about Thing’s connection to Yancy Street.  It’s a heartfelt, but predictable story about Grimm’s efforts to do right by Yancy’s residents when he finds out that the FF’s presence is causing rent rates to spike, with many longtime tenants having to leave as a result.  The artists do good work, Duggan gives us some humorous bits, and it’s quite likely I’ll forget about this story after this volume goes up on my shelf.

I had higher expectations for the “Negative Zone” one-shot, given that it’s coming from “Lucifer,” “The Unwritten,” and “X-Men” veteran Mike Carey.  Though it does have some good art from Stefano Caselli, the story can’t quite rise above feeling like a glorified fill-in.  It’s a decent enough SF plot that has the team venturing into the Negative Zone after they find out that one of Reed Richards’ old experiments may still be active.  It is and the inhabitants of the Zone and the experiment itself aren’t happy to see them.  I liked the ending, which puts an interesting spin on the encounter, but it and the admittedly charming “What Are the Fantastix For?” short from Ryan North and Steve Uy that follows it, don’t really move the needle in terms of getting me to recommend this volume.

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The first half of this volume carries on much as the previous one did.  With writer Jason Aaron, and artist Mahmud Asrar (and Gerardo Zaffino back for another issue here) giving us some decent but unspectacular “Conan” stories.  We see the barbarian recruiting a group of working girls to get some revenge, returning home to find that his friends and family needing some sorcery knocked out of them, and fighting his way through a literal “greatest hits” gauntlet of his past antagonists.  None of these stories are outright bad, they just feel so conventional by the standards of what I’ve come to expect from the character.  Things don’t look any better once we get to the two-thirds mark and find Aaron getting back to the whole “Life and Death of Conan” business by giving us some backstory for those eeeeeeeeevil cultist sibling kids.

Then Conan dies.  No, really, he does.  If you’re thinking that even death won’t keep the barbarian from going before his time, then you’d be right.  As to the means by which this happens… it’s actually pretty interesting.  Surprising, even.  It took him until near the very end, but Aaron FINALLY offers up something new (or at least, new to me) to the character’s mythos in the penultimate issue of his run.  Asrar is also up to the challenge of depicting this new addition and the resulting confrontation is easily the high point of the series.

The good feelings carry over to the final issue, where the evil is vanquished and King Conan rides out to resume his duties as King of Aquilonia.  We get some good action here, but the issue’s heart lies in its final pages as Conan reflects on what happened in the previous one.  It’s a realization that feels true to the character and puts the “curse” he was afflicted with in a new light.  Even if most of the issues in the Aaron/Asrar run were below my expectations of them, they were at least able to finish strong.

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Here’s a follow-up where its ceiling and floor are closer together in terms of quality.  Where vol. 1’s strength was in its portrayal of protagonist Luna Brewster’s mental issues, vol. 2 loses a little bit in that regard.  It’s been a year since the conspiracy-fueled bloodshed at her house, and Luna is now back at school after a stint in a mental hospital.  She’s seeing three mental health specialists and is on a ton of meds, but she’s still delusional.  While that’s consistent with her issues from the previous volume, writer Christopher Cantwell has tacked on some new ones, like her talking eyeball, that feel more like he’s just cranking up her crazy a notch.  That could be down to the fact that Luna is still obsessed with flying woman Mayura Howard and spends most of the volume looking inward to find answers.  Things don’t get better until she thinks to look outward, and find Mayura’s surviving family, for answers.

Surrounding Luna’s story is the kind of story and character quirkiness that threatened to derail the previous volume towards the end.  That includes some bad foreign terrorists and familiar ex-government operatives who are trying to get their hands on the jetpack, said jetpack creator Bill who is stuck in prison (but not for long), Luna’s former counselor Dana who is now homeless as she tries to protect her former patient and who winds up falling in with a homeless group run by the quirkiest of all returning cast members.  It’s hard to say if all this is better written this time around, or if I’m better acclimated to it given that I now know to expect this kind of stuff in the world of “She Could Fly.”  Which is to say that all this didn’t bug me as bad as it did last time around.  Cantwell and artist Martin Morazzo do manage to actually bring it all together into a quasi-climax that actually sort of works.  Both as an ending for Luna’s story, or just this volume if they decide to pursue a third volume down the line.

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