Comic Picks By The Glick

Andronika the Scythian, “Andy” to her friends, has been a soldier of fortune for a very, very long time now.  She’s not immortal, she just hasn’t found the right time to die yet.  Same goes for her comrades Booker, who lived through Napoleon’s march into Russia, Joe and Nicky, both veterans on opposite sides of the First Crusade.  While they’ve been able to keep their long lives secret from the world at large so far, it’s something that has become increasingly difficult in the modern age.  So when a former CIA spook gets proof of their invulnerability and gives it to his contracted pharma bro boss, Andy and her comrades’ life gets a lot more difficult in a hurry.  If that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve also started having dreams of another one of their kind.  A female marine stationed in Afghanistan who’s about to learn all of the good and bad of her new life in a hurry.

The end is near and as the build-up in this volume makes clear, it’ll likely be worth it in the end.  Picking up right after the tragic death at the end of the previous volume, a lot of big stuff happens.  Mark has it out with Allen, decides that he needs to end Thragg once and for all, and finally ties the knot with Eve.  Then the real fighting begins as our heroes take the fight to the home base of Thragg’s New Viltrum Empire.  The idea isn’t to defeat him and his legion of offspring there.  No, they’re going to get him to follow them to the place where the real fighting will take place.

It’s not a masterpiece of plotting or military planning, but it’s hard not to admire the simplicity of Mark and company’s plan once it’s revealed.  Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley also pack the volume with lots of moments that are both fun -- Terra’s reaction to seeing her parents’ superhero costumes -- heartbreaking -- the montage of the final day Mark and Eve spend with Terra before going off to battle -- and surprising -- Thragg’s restraint when his daughter hugs him for comfort.  You can also expect some surprises, as Robot’s actions nearly gave me a heart attack when he starts “assisting” with the battle.  Oh, and this being the next-to-last volume of “Invincible” expect a major character to bite the bucket as well.  The first of, well, only a few I hope.

If this volume has any weakness, it’s that the overall plotting is little low-key and I was kind of expecting more surprises along the way.  Vol. 24 still delivers all of the action and character development that I’ve come to love and expect from this series and leads me to believe we’re all set up for a worthy end to “Invincible” in the next volume.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Retroactively speaking, there was one good thing about how writer Tom King delivered an utterly formulaic and predictable start to his “Batman” run with “I Am Gotham.”  It meant that he had a relatively low bar to clear with subsequent volumes, which he did with (mostly) relative ease on “I Am Suicide.”  With “I Am Bane,” however, we see the writer sliding back into the comfy chair of formula.  The good news is that there are enough interesting details in the story itself, along with the developments offered in the other stories included here, to keep it from backsliding completely to the quality of the first volume.

It may not be part of the Mignolaverse, but Mignola, Golden, Stenbeck and Bergting's period supernatural horror series is definitely worth a look (it's first half, at least).

The second volume of this early 20th century adventure manga has an interesting mix of the nice and the nasty.  Much of the “nice” involves former soldier Saichi “Immortal” Sugimoto and tween Ainu huntress Asirpa hanging out at her village.  We get to learn plenty about the Ainu culture, such as how the size of a woman’s tattoo depends on the prominence of her husband, and how they give their children disgusting names initially to ward off evil spirits.  There’s also plenty more about their cuisine as we see Asirpa fix otter and rabbit dishes.  Saichi also has to suffer through eating a raw eyeball, but finally gets one over on his Ainu comrade when he tries to introduce her to the wonders of miso and she instantly regards it as “poop.”

All this is good fun and provides a nice counterpoint to the manga’s nasty parts.  These include an encounter between Saichi, a group of soldiers from the division that’s been tracking them, and a big brown bear.  It’s a surprisingly brutal sequence that includes a bit of face-based ultraviolence (and its aftermath) that would fit right in amongst the collected works of Garth Ennis.  We also get to see more of Lieutenant Tsurumi and find out that the reason he wears a plate over his forehead was because a piece of shrapnel carved out a chunk of his frontal lobe.  This has turned him into the kind of man who loses his temper quite easily and flies into finger-eating and cheek-stabbing rages.  It also makes him into an effective villain, in case it needed to be said.

What’s here is an effective follow-up to the promise that vol. 1 showed.  It’s true that mangaka Satoru Noda still loves to slow down the action with text-box asides about the period, but I think I can get used to that.  So bring on vol. 3, I’m ready for more adventure!

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

(Oh, and there’s been a development in regards to my thoughts on how dire this series’ commercial prospects initially appeared to be.  “Golden Kamuy” will be getting an anime adaptation early next year.  This will definitely bode well for its commercial prospects out here, assuming the anime turns out to be the next big thing.)

It’s a big month for Robert Kirkman as both “Invincible” and “The Walking Dead” hit major milestone issues.  This is a much bigger deal for the former series as this is its final issue.  More on that and the rest of Image’s solicitations after the break.

The Marvel Legacy one-shot has arrived and with it, the identity of the resurrectee that issue was supposed to reveal.  To my surprise, it wasn’t some kind of prologue for “The Return of Jean Grey” miniseries that was solicited last month.  Instead, it’s the return of a completely different character.  One who we really haven’t had a chance to miss.

I’d give a proper *spoiler warning* here, but the return in this issue manages to be both unsurprising and underwhelming at the same time.  It’s Wolverine.  Now you may be going, “Wait a sec.  We’ve already got ‘All-New Wolverine’ and ‘Old Man Logan’ and now you’re telling us the original is back now?”  Yes, that’s exactly what Marvel is telling you.  I’d also expect that he’ll be getting his own solo series again in short order so you can have three ongoing “Wolverine”-type titles to buy.  Even though I like the idea of Jason Aaron writing the character again, I really haven’t had the chance to miss the Ol’ Canucklehead since his death.  If the whole point of killing him off was to get people to appreciate him in absentia, then Marvel flubbed that here big time.  Which is par for their course this year.

All this being said, I still have yet to read the “Legacy” one-shot.  Even though I’m sure I’ll be able to get around to it eventually, it sure as hell won’t be in the format Marvel is soliciting here.  For $40 you can get the one-shot in hardcover along with all of the “preview pages” for other Marvel series that have been added to other comics over the past few rounds of solicitations and a copy of the latest “Friends Of Old Marvel” magazine.  To their credit, Marvel has at least made an effort to make that cover price worthwhile with a 224-page count.  It still sounds like a horrifically overpriced way to read the one thing of actual substance in this collection.

*deep breath*  Okay, so about a month back Tom King tweeted a page of art from Jason Fabok with a severed hand catching fire in a wintery backdrop and Fabok tweeted a picture of snow with a statement that he was working with a writer on a secret project.  CBR thought that this meant the two were teaming up for a Rorschach miniseries picking up from the character’s demise at the end of “Watchmen.”  Given the existence of “Doomsday Clock” and the integration of “Watchmen” into the DCU, this isn’t an entirely implausible theory.  King and Fabok have already collaborated on the “Batman” half of the crossover story “The Button” which acts as something of a lead-in to the maxiseries.  It does, however, contradict writer Geoff Johns’ statement that “Doomsday Clock” is a self-contained maxiseries and won’t offer any spinoffs or tie-ins to other DCU titles.

While King and Fabok may eventually get around to doing a Rorschach minseries someday, January’s solicitations offered an actually convincing reason that their next project together won’t be it.  The two are teaming up for the Swamp Thing Winter Special which has the title character shepherding a boy through a blizzard while the two are stalked by a snow monster.  This special also features a story by the character’s late co-creator Len Wein, which was set to be the start of a new “Swamp Thing” series with art from Kelly Jones.  As far as I’m concerned, having King and Fabok collaborate on a story that will give Wein’s final story a wider audience than it would have otherwise is a much better use of their talents than giving us *ugh* more “Watchmen” spinoffs.