Comic Picks By The Glick

It turns out that the previous volume was just a fluke and “Murcielago” isn’t done pushing buttons or the envelope just yet.  In fact, I can see the subject matter in this volume causing even more people to give up on this series altogether.  That’s because the mass murderer of choice here is one who targets little girls and discards them by choking and snapping their necks after he determines that they’re not the one he’s looking for.  The girl we saw at the end of vol. 4 is one victim of his handiwork, one more dies over the course of the volume, and we eventually find out that there have been many, many more victims in addition to them.  It’s disturbing stuff, all the more so because it’s being delivered at a point where I though the title was done trying to shock me.

The thing is, if you can get past all the dead little girls, that this awfulness makes the actual story more involving that “Murcielago” usually is.  When Kuroko’s police handlers get involved in finding out what happened to another missing little girl, she winds up investigating things as well. Though this should be a sign that things will work out all right in the end, I still couldn’t shake the fact that -- given what has come before -- that the kidnap victim could meet the same fate as those who had come before her.  “Murcielago” does love to push its buttons after all, regardless of how disturbing the results might be.

That tension had me reading through the volume faster than usual, while the ending…  Let’s just say that I’m still onboard the series for now even as it tries to find new and terrible ways to push me away.  On that note, the preview for vol. 6 promises the most “taboo” content yet as elementary-school-aged serial killer Rinko starts attending a new school with Kuroko overseeing things.

Then again, maybe I should take the hint…

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

An otherwise great vol. 2 of this series was hamstrung by an ending that made me question how much progress the story had actually made.  Vol. 3 doesn’t make that mistake because by the end of it we’ve finally caught up to and gone past the scene Dylan has been flashing back to since the beginning of the series.  Things start off on an innocuous note as our protagonist has broken up with his old girlfriend, reconnected with Kira, and given up on the whole vigilante business. Naturally, his retirement from that stuff doesn’t last once the Russian mob starts sniffing around Kira in their efforts to find a lead on this masked man who’s been killing their guys.  The ease with which Dylan enacts his plan to get the Russians off of his case is striking in comparison to his reluctant beginnings. It also allows creators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips to set up some really tense questioning, stalking, and action scenes along the way while believably selling the idea that their protagonist has come around on his “retirement.”

Then we get to the end of the volume and are thrown another curve on the whole business of Dylan’s demon.  I, like a lot of other readers, thought from the start that the demon that’s been plaguing our main character all this time has been a mental hallucination.  Brubaker and Phillips, however, have been committed to playing up the uncertainty that this apparition may be more real than we think. Their efforts to continue this in vol. 3 are their most successful yet.  While I’m still not convinced that the demon is real, the creators have actually made its presence more interesting than the “Dylan’s just crazy” explanation I’d been expecting all along. It all ties in to our protagonist’s memory and how he’s accidentally reminded by his mother that his father used to have a son from a previous marriage.  A son that Dylan briefly grew up with and somehow completely forgot about. It’s when he starts to dig into the mystery of this missing son/stepbrother that the underlying mystery of the demon becomes genuinely compelling. While also leading to an astonishingly creepy final page. Great job on that one Sean -- it’s some Grade-A nightmare fuel right there.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

It’s the first crossover of the latest relaunch and the results are… decidedly meh.  Wheeling out Mojo as the bad guy for this event certainly had potential as his evil-TV-producer-from-another-dimension schtick does give the creators a chance to cut loose and come up with some crazy scenarios.  The problem here is that co-writers Marc Guggenheim and Cullen Bunn never really go that far. We get members of the Gold and Blue teams thrust into approximations of familiar scenarios like “Inferno” and “X-Tinction Agenda” as well as settings like Asgard.  The creators start mixing things up with these setups towards the end, but it all boils down to having the X-Men fight a whole bunch of bad guys in ways that we’ve seen many times before. There’s also an attempt at satire in the acknowledgements that revisiting these famous scenes is all part of giving the fans what they want, and part of Marvel’s whole “Legacy” initiative as well, except that it’s as toothless as you’d expect.

Is there anything of value to be had from this crossover?  Well, it offers further proof that Bunn is the better of the two current flagship “X-Men” writers as his dialogue lacks the canned, expository feeling that Guggenheim’s has in his issues.  Jorge Molina delivers some good art in the “Blue” issues that would’ve been better served by brighter coloring, while the artists working on “Gold” get better with each issue from the robotic-looking Mike Mayhew, the more sprightly Marc Laming, and the actually quite good work of Diego Bernard.  As for major plot developments, it’s revealed to the members of the “Gold” team that Magneto is still alive. So that counts, I guess?

Really, all “Mojo Worldwide” did was remind me how good the last Mojo story I read in the pages of “Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine” was.  Jason Aaron pushed the story as crazy as he could go and Adam Kubert backed him up by delivering some truly astounding visuals.  This crossover was complete weaksauce in comparison and the fact that Mojo will be sticking around in the Marvel Universe at the end of it does not strike me as a promising development.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

The next age of “Avengers” starts in a couple months with Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness’ new series.  In the meantime, the “No Surrender” weekly event is winding down and we’ve got the trade collections for the last couple of “Avengers” titles that I still read.  Those would be vanilla “Avengers” and “U.S.Avengers,” written by Mark Waid and Al Ewing, respectively. Both creators are currently working on “No Surrender” along with “Uncanny Avengers” writer Jim Zub, so it’s reasonable to expect that we’ll see some plot threads from these series carried over into that event.  Yet for all intents and purposes the “Avengers & Champions” crossover and the second volume of “U.S.Avengers” represent the writers’ final solo works on these titles. The good news is that they at least manage to go out on some high notes.

My friend Steve joins us to talk about this sequel series that applies great characterization to a fundamentally unworkable premise.

A little over three and a half years ago we reached the end of mangaka Yukio Kishiro’s “Battle Angel Alita:  Last Order” series.  While the majority of the series focused on the title character and the consequences of the intergalactic martial arts tournament she found herself wrapped up in, its final two volumes gave us something completely different.  They were more of a deck-clearing exercise to provide a proper send-off to the members of the supporting cast and plot points that had fallen by the wayside over the course of “Last Order’s” lengthy run. It would’ve made for a disappointing ending if I hadn’t known that this follow-up series was set to begin serialization in Japan later that year.

After sticking it out through multiple titles featuring the “Inhumans” and the “IvX” crossover, it appears that Charles Soule’s reward is his own “X-Men” title.  It’s a team book featuring Old Man Logan, Rogue, Psylocke, Bishop, Gambit, Fantomex, Angel, and… one more character featured on the cover but not properly introduced until the second issue.  They’re not together at first, but circumstance forces them all to team up to fight one of their oldest foes: Amal Farouk, a.k.a. The Shadow King. Farouk is looking to escape his imprisonment on the Astral Plane, and he thinks that he’s found the way to finally do it.  Now, the Shadow King just has to get past this new X-team and the special guest he’s been entertaining for so many years now.

The biggest selling point of this series, for me at least, is that it looks like Soule has a story he really wants to tell.  Granted, “X-Men vs. The Shadow King” has been done many times before, but it’s mainly a pretense to the actual point of the story which is revealed at the end of the volume.  You’re not being strung along over the course of the six issues collected here as the fight against Farouk is handled quite well, with complications in both the Astral Plane and real world.  Soule also has a good handle on the large cast he’s assembled and balances things so that it becomes an ensemble piece where no one feels neglected. It was also good to see that while the story does focus on the return of a certain character, attention is paid to said character’s benevolent and sinister sides while the actual business of the return is interesting in how unsettling it feels.

“Astonishing” got a fair amount of flack when it was announced for not featuring a regular artist, choosing instead to have each issue illustrated by a different one.  The good news is that it means this first volume features a Murderer’s Row of talent in the form of Jim Cheung, Mike Deodato Jr., Ed McGuinness, Carlos Pacheco, Ramon Rosanas, and Mike Del Mundo.  This means that there’s no stylistic consistency to be had in the art for this volume, but each issue looks really good on its own terms with Cheung, Deodato, and Rosanas being the standouts here. There will be another six artists lined up for the next volume, and I’m fine with that.  “Astonishing” has an interesting enough story to support that approach and I’m genuinely curious to see where Soule is going with his story and whether or not it’ll have any long-term ramifications for the X-books.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

It’s the end of an era in these solicitations as a long-running manga series reaches its final volume.  That’s right true believers, Neon Genesis Evangelion:  The Shinji Ikari Raising Project vol. 18 will finally arrive on our shores this August (remember, Dark Horse collections are always advance-solicited by two months).  While there’s still no definitive word on whether or not the company will make it to the same point with “Eden: It’s An Endless World!” they were still able to publish eighteen volumes of increasingly tiresome and desperate “Evangelion”-based fanservice comedy.  Yeah, the first few volumes provided an amusing change of pace compared to the source material. As things went on, the only enjoyment I was able to get from it involved looking for commentary and in-jokes within the localization.

So yeah, as that last sentence implies I’ll be picking up this volume.  The completist in me demands it. Everyone looking for actually decent “Evangelion”-based comedy is recommended to pick up the “Comic Tribute,” “Tony Takezaki’s Neon Genesis Evangelion,” or “The Legend of the Piko Piko Middle School Students.  Or better yet, go out and buy all the volumes of “Eden” you don’t have yet. It’d send a better message to Dark Horse about the kind of manga you want them to publish than more of this licensed crap.