Comic Picks By The Glick

One of the rare times where it was a lot easier to pick the worst of the year than the best.

Are you ready for another rousing volume of adventure as the title character struggles to take back his homeland from those who have stolen it from him?  Well, that’s not what happens here!  Vol. 7 is the beginning of an extended diversion from the main plot as Arslan and company have to deal with an invading army from the country of Sindhura.  Working in their favor is the fact that the prince leading the invasion, Rajendra, is something of a fool and thus easily susceptible to the plans of master tactician Narsus.  As a result, our heroes are able to begin their own invasion into Sindhura against its other prince, Gadhevi, in order to secure the Parsian border in this time of conflict.

It’s actually kind of fun to see Arslan and his monstrously capable comrades figure out clever ways to thwart the Sindhuran forces thrown against them.  Usually in stories like these we’re told about how capable our band of heroes are only to see the bad guys repeatedly get the upper hand on them.  In the case of “Arslan,” the protagonists really do have all the smarts and it’s equal parts entertaining and amusing to see them exercise it against the almost comically incapable Sindhurans.

This is assuming you can get over the fact that Arslan and company’s triumphs don’t just feel predictable, but preordained by the plot.  Even if there’s some cleverness displayed in each instance where the Parsians get the upper hand on the Sindhurans, it never really feels like our heroes are ever in any real danger.  The fact that this whole arc is taking us away from the more interesting conflicts between politics and religion happening back in the Parsian capital of Ecbatana is also disappointing too.  Essentially this volume makes it feel like the narrative has wandered straight into filler arc territory.  I’ve certainly read worse versions of these things, but this is still a filler arc nonetheless.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

...With a title like that, what more do you need to know?

Maybe that he’s also “Pantsless Bear-Fighter” for a good portion of the first issue?

Or how about that this series does a decent enough job of delivering enough insanity to live up to that title.  You’ve got Shirtless himself, who lives in a bear house out in the woods and spends his days fighting the bears who cost him the life of his one true love.  Then the bears start coming to the city and he’s drawn into that conflict by his old friend Burke and the promise of a lifetime’s supply of top-quality flapjacks and maple syrup.  A bearplane, hillbilly warlock, and a mechanized fighting toilet are some of the more deliberately outlandish bits of insanity next to weirder ones like Shirtless’ greatest weakness or how he escapes from one fight by swimming upstream like a salmon.  Because why not.

Artist Nil Vendrell is utterly committed to all this and does a pretty great job of delivering on the craziness from Jody Lehup and Sebastian Girner’s script.  While I’d love to give an unabashed recommendation to this volume just for the title alone, I really can’t do that.  Though the script from Lehup and Girner definitely has its strong points, it’s also determined to follow the same basic arc of your average action movie.  Specifically, the kind where the hero is called back into action to do what he does best and is suddenly but inevitably betrayed before his inner strength allows him to overcome and triumph in the end.  It’s an especially ridiculous and crazy version of that kind of story, but it also means you’ll be able to see where all this is going right from the start.  A little insanity with regards to the plotting could’ve gone a long way here, which is something I wasn’t expecting to write regarding a series called “Shirtless Bear-Fighter.”

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

This latest volume of “Jessica Jones” gives me hope that Bendis is going to end his tenure at Marvel on an upswing.  I still have to catch up on “Invincible Iron Man” and “The Defenders” but “The Secrets of Maria Hill” is good stuff.  It even gets off on the right foot by addressing my lingering issues with how the writer apparently threw the title character’s life back under a truck to get the story in vol. 1 underway.  Though that volume ended with Luke Cage finding out where Jessica had hidden their daughter, Danielle, and taking her back, the first issue of this one starts the reconciliation process.  It’s actually kind of sweet as this happens because of Dani’s innocent need for both of her parents and leads to Jessica’s fairly well-reasoned explanation of why she did what she did in vol. 1  Even if the way Bendis handled her actions there definitely led to more drama than was necessary I can at least respect his willingness to engage with that issue here.

As for the main story in this volume, it involves Maria Hill showing up (shot, and high on painkillers) at Jessica’s office one night.  Having been dismissed from S.H.I.E.L.D. she’s now relying on her own wits and devices to survive a contract that was put out on her life.  What she wants Jessica to do is find out who put out this contract on her and why.

The route our protagonist takes to find out the answers to these questions is, like the first volume and the original “Alias” series, an entertainingly seedy trip down some of the less-explored parts of the Marvel Universe.  Jessica mixes it up with Sharon Carter, takes another trip back to jail, tracks down Maria’s father, and we get to find out about one of Maria’s earliest S.H.I.E.L.D. missions that went quite bad.  Nick Fury even shows up for a solid flashback cameo.  It’s entertainingly written with an appreciably twisty plot and great art from Michael Gaydos, with a slick contribution from Javier Pulido.  After this volume, I have every reason to expect that the return of the Purple Man in the next volume is going to be just as great if not better.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Vol. 2 of this series was one of the best things I read last year and proof that Warren Ellis can still knock it out of the park when he puts his mind to it.  So it’s disappointing to see that vol. 3 of “Injection” doesn’t keep to the same standards.  The focus this time is on Brigid Roth, the technologist of the Injection team, and if her character bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain Doctor I can assure you that after reading Ellis’ weekly newsletters it’s purely intentional.  She’s been tasked with investigating the death of a man whose skeleton was found chained to the center rock in a stone circle.  It doesn’t take much for Brigid to find out that this death is tied to local mythology involving Merlin and something known as the Cold House, but the connection it has to the Injection itself spells danger for a great many people indeed.

The biggest problem with this volume is that there’s a lack of urgency for most of its length.  Yes, there’s a dead body to kick off the plot but most of the first half involves Brigid and her female companion slowly investigating things and getting the lay of the land.  Things do pick up once the Other World starts to come into the picture and people start getting their flesh stripped from them right down to their bones.  It does finish reasonably strong with the Injection team facing a potential betrayal from one of their own, yet it’s hard to say that these late-stage developments make up for the lacklustre first half.  Much like the story itself, Declan Shalvey’s art really doesn’t come truly alive until the action starts and people start dying grisly deaths.  This was still a perfectly readable comic and I’m onboard for the (stated) two final volumes of this series.  Vol. 3 just doesn’t leave me hoping for a spin-off miniseries about the further adventures of Brigid Roth in the same way that I still desperately want to see more of Vivek Headland’s.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

The spirit of Amity Arkham has possessed her descendant, Olive Silverlock, and it’s up to her friends Maps, Olive, Colin, and Kyle (with a little help from Damian Wayne) to save the day.  Aside from a vengeful pyrokinetic spirit, the only things standing in their way are Two-Face, The Penguin, an animal-headed secret society on the Academy grounds, and some centuries-old Gotham secrets.  It’s a lot, to be sure, but happy endings aren’t given away -- they have to be earned.

So it’s a little bit disappointing to see the storytelling in this volume regress a bit back to frantic pace that dragged down its second volume.  After a nice haunted circus one-off, the four-issue title arc kicks off and dives headfirst into raising the stakes with the appearance of some A-list Bat-foes while the kids try to puzzle out the mystery of Amity.  It shows that main writer Brenden Fletcher (Becky Cloonan and Karl Kerschl are once again credited as co-plotters here) was trying to cram in too much story here as the plot jumps awkwardly around as the story reaches its climax.  Not helping matters is how an unwelcome and unconvincing twist sees Maps lose confidence in her best friend.

THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT MAPS WOULD DO!  The real star character of this series is utterly devoted to her friends and Olive most of all.  That’s something this series has made clear from the start and it’s character details like these that will keep you invested in the story to the end.  No matter how crazy things get, you’ll want to see things through to the end to see how the kids earn their happy ending.  (And if you’re me, sigh at the fact that Damian never became a proper member of the cast because he really does make a great fit for them.)  Some people may lament the fact that this series never found the single-issue commercial success it deserved.  The catch here is that “Gotham Academy” did get the chance to tell its story to completion, warts and all, over the course of these five volume.  Which is all the success any series can hope for.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Comedy is tough.  It gets even tougher to pull off when it has to transition from one language to another.  The gulf in context between Japanese and English swallows some of the gags from this volume whole, something which only becomes clear after you read the translation notes.  I mean, I was willing to assume that Andre’s cries of “‘Auce Girrrr” were just a random bit of absurdity of the kind this series loves to traffic in.  Just not a particularly funny one.  However, the translation notes indicate that this was actually a reference to the classic manga “The Rose of Versailles” as the main heroine is named “Oscar” and her best friend and confidante is named “Andre.”  It all makes sense now!  Does that make it funny?  No, not really and there’s more where that came from in this volume too.

At least it doesn’t reach “Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei” levels of ridiculousness.  After a certain point in that series you had to keep flipping between the translation notes and the manga itself to have any hope of understanding its humor.  This volume of “Prison School” still manages to deliver plenty of outrageous antics that don’t require translation notes to be funny.  The volume starts off with Kiyoshi trying to rationalize Mari’s groping request through the medium of politics and reaches its comic apex near the end when the boy has to set up an excuse to use the restroom and sets off a marvelously ridiculous chain of fanservice that sees both of his tools being found out.  Business as usual for this series, you see, with the added benefit of a marvelous “I’ve already escaped” cliffhanger setup at the end.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

You know, I figured if anyone could find the fun in seeing Doctor Doom trying to rehabilitate his image as (The Infamous) Iron Man it’d be Mark Waid.  The man has a great handle on knowing how to respect a character’s history and subvert it which he demonstrated to regular and frequently excellent extent on his “Daredevil” run.  So imagine my surprise when I see that Waid wasn’t the sole writer on the two issues in which Doom guest-stars in this volume.  Jeremy Whitley, writer of “The Unstoppable Wasp,” co-writes these two issues and… they’re fine.