Comic Picks By The Glick

After saying that you should buy this collection over Becky Cloonan’s latest volume of “The Punisher” yesterday, I figured an explanation as to why was in order.  “By Chance or Providence” collects the creator’s three self-published one-shots along with a heaping collection of sketches.  Though they all share the same feudal, nordic setting and feature some kind of supernatural aspect to them, these stories are only linked by the tragedy that love -- familial or romantic -- brings to its protagonists.  That, and the fact that they’re all quite good.

This volume collects the final pieces of sequential art that Steve Dillon did in his legendary career.  I say “final pieces” and not “full issue” because Dillon was only able to complete a few pages in the beginning, middle, and end of the first issue of this collection.  The rest are filled out by the artist who does the lion’s share of the work in this volume, Matt Horak.  Completing an issue of comics started by Dillon isn’t a task I think any artist would envy, but to my surprise Horak actually does a capable job.  His style’s fairly comparable to Dillon’s with its emphasis on clean linework and expressive figures.  Horak also places a greater emphasis on detail in his characters and backgrounds, which is always nice to see.  There’s also an issue here from Laura Braga which isn’t her best work, but understandably so when you realize that she had to pull it together on short notice after Dillon’s passing.  That said, Horak’s work is the most pleasant surprise in this volume and I look forward to seeing what else he has to offer in future comics work.

Now, Horak is sticking around on “The Punisher” for the time being, but I don’t think I’ll be following this title any further.  In spite of the solid art this series is likely to have, it doesn’t look like the stories will be getting any more interesting if this volume is any indication.  Writer Becky Cloonan is a very talented artist and has written solid stuff elsewhere, but the story in the first volume was incredibly generic and it doesn’t get any better here.  I’ll admit that it’s always at least a little fun to see Frank Castle deal out violent death to those who deserve it, and Face’s drug-fueled escalation of craziness is a decent origin for a “Punisher” villain.  Still, the story is ultimately about Frank taking down some mercenaries with a drug that is supposed to turn them into super-soldiers.  What it really does is turn them into cannon fodder.  Frank’s final showdown with their leader Olaf is only interesting because of its iceberg, as opposed to seeing the enmity the two are supposed to possess towards each other be resolved through violence.

If you’ve never read a “Punisher” story in the last decade then I can see how this exercise in rehashing the character’s tropes could be entertaining.  Cloonan has done better than this and unless you’re as big a fan of Dillon as I am, you’d be better off checking out her anthology “By Chance or Providence” from Image (even though it has nothing to do with “The Punisher” at all).

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

As far as I’m concerned the third volume of Ewing’s “New Avengers” is still the best Marvel superhero title I’ve read this year.  For all intents and purposes “U.S.Avengers vol. 1:  American Intelligence Mechanics” is the follow-on to that and it retains much of what made that previous run great.  An eclectic group of heroes fighting some truly despicable bad guys?  Check.  Lots of intricate planning from A.I.M. head Roberto DaCosta to stay one step ahead of everyone?  Check.  Genuinely clever writing and character development?  Check.  An ability to utilize crossover storylines to further the main plot of the title?  Check to the extreme, because the final issue here is a tie-in to “Secret Empire.”  Honestly, I would’ve been fine if they had left that issue off to start the next volume because the volume comes to a full stop just as it’s ramping up for the next big thing.  That issue aside, “U.S.Avengers” is a very satisfying continuation of everything that Ewing was doing on its predecessor down to the enjoyably slick art from Paco Medina (with Paco Diaz and Carlo Barberi ably assisting as well).

Yes, I’m counting “Ultimates 2 vol. 1:  Troubleshooters” as an “Avengers” title because it basically is.  Its characters just tackle threats on a much larger scale.  The problem here is that their biggest threat is something they can’t fight:  The disruption of the title’s momentum after the “Civil War II” tie-in from the previous volume.  If you were expecting the team break-up that came at the end of that volume to last longer than the first issue here, then you’d be wrong.  Still, once Ewing gets the team back into place things start ramping up quite well as the Ultimates face off against the N.S.A.’s team of super-powered Troubleshooters and the revelation of the universe-level threat behind the chaining of Eternity and the corruption of Lords Order and Chaos here.  New artist Travel Foreman is a bit too gritty to deliver the same grandeur that Kenneth Rocafort did, but he’s very willing to go as weird as Ewing needs for this story.  Which is very.

I am a bit concerned that the scope of the story has become too large here to be wrapped up in the next volume (no further issues have been solicited after the anniversary issue #100).  After everything he’s done here at Marvel Ewing has shown himself to be a very clever writer and he might deliver a satisfying end to this flawed-but-entertaining run of “Ultimates.”

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

I checked the publication date for vol. 37 and found something surprising.  It hasn’t been the four or five years that I thought had passed since the publication of the previous volume of “Berserk” on these shores.  It’s only been three years and eight months.  Does this knowledge make me feel any better about the future of this title?  Not really, but the fact that vol. 39 is already out in Japan does.  If mangaka Kentaro Miura can keep up this pace then we may even see the completion of this title… sometime around 2030.  So no, I don’t think that anyone thinking about picking up this series should do so until the end is in sight and it looks like Miura might actually make it over the finish line.  Those of you like me, who are on this train until whatever kind of end it reaches, can at least take comfort in the fact that despite the length of time between volumes “Berserk’s” storytelling remains as sharp as ever.

This series hails from Gerard Way’s “Young Animal” imprint and features what is easily the best title for an ongoing comic in the current market.  Ostensibly, “Cave Carson” is following in the same path as “Doom Patrol” and “Shade the Changing Girl” in freshening up old DC characters for modern sensibilities.  The catch here is that you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of the most hardcore of DC fanboys who actually remembers the title character in the first place.  So when Way and co-writer/scripter Jon Rivera start the series with an older, retired Cave in mourning over the death of his wife Eileen -- who was also the princess of the underground Kingdom of Muldroog -- I’m willing to accept it and see where they’re going.

I’m not saying that Mark Waid should stop writing stories involving time travel, but it’d be nice if he could try to write one that didn’t thrive on creating as many paradoxes as possible.  Between that one volume of “Hulk” he did and now this first volume of “Avengers:  Unleashed” it doesn’t seem to be a viable approach for him as this approach usually results in narrative chaos than a good story.  At least this story is following up on the plot thread set up towards the end of Waid’s first run of “Avengers” where Vision kidnapped Kang as a baby and hid him somewhere in the timestream.  Instead of wiping the time-traveling conqueror from existence, this just pissed him off and led to multiple versions of him hunting down this current team of Avengers -- with Spider-Man, the new Wasp, and Hercules joining holdovers Captain America, Thor, and Vision -- for revenge.

If you’re looking for a good Kang story that doesn’t get tripped up in paradoxes, check out Rick Remender’s “Avenge the Earth” saga from vols. 2-4 of his run on “Uncanny Avengers.”  “Kang War One” spends its first half churning up as much chaos as it can with the multiple Kangs and the team having to deal with the problems that arise when they were murdered in their cribs as children.  Artist Mike Del Mundo is more than willing to play into all this craziness, with his unique painted style proving to be well-suited to it all.

Things do calm down in the back half with a single issue made up of full-page scenes recounting Kang’s origin and eventual downfall, with the two issues that follow showing us how the various teams of Avengers in different eras make it happen.  These are more conventionally well-crafted superhero stories that have their moments -- to be fair, even the front half has some fun bits strewn throughout -- but they’re not enough to overcome my antipathy towards the first half.  I’d say that this would be a good jumping-off point for people who have followed Waid’s “Avengers” run so far… if it wasn’t for the fact that they’ll be teaming up with “The Infamous Iron Man (A.K.A. the newly-reformed Doctor Doom) in the next volume.  Having Waid deal with the character drama that will result from it seems like a much better use of his skillset than what we got with this volume.

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

It was bound to happen eventually, but I’ve finally encountered a first volume of a new series from Matt Kindt that I’ve enjoyed without reservation.  “Ether” is the story of Boone Dias, a scientist who has dedicated his life to exploring the titular magical realm in order to understand how it works.  See, Boone doesn’t believe in magic or the supernatural.  He’s of the opinion that there are rules and explanations for everything and it’s his job as a scientist to figure out what they are.  This approach has led him to solve numerous mysteries in Ether and seen him recruited to solve its latest:  The death of the realm’s greatest protector the Golden Blaze.  Together with his partner Glum, a giant purple ape who can kick your ass through dimensions and never gets tired of letting our protagonist know he’s an ass, Boone is determined to get to the bottom of this murder.  Doing so, however, will involve finding out the origins of magic bullets, mixing it up with a copper golem, visiting the land of faeries, and most challenging of all, confronting his own personal failings back in our world.

Effectively, Kindt has made a series entirely out of addressing the biggest problem with magic in fiction.  In order for magic to actually work in a story it needs a clearly defined set of rules and Boone’s whole agenda in this series is about sussing them out.  He makes for an endearingly insufferable protagonist in the way he believes himself to be the smartest person in the room at any given time, which is usually true, and isn’t afraid to let anyone know it.  Yet Kindt is perfectly willing to puncture that insufferability to both comedic and tragic effect.  This works because the writer has been paired with a fantastic artist in David Rubin who perfectly captures the magical whimsy of Ether as well as the ground-down reality of our world.  It’s easy to understand why Boone is addicted to this world after seeing it in action, and why he’d neglect his own family life to fathom its secrets.  I do wonder how he wound up in his current situation in our world, as well as what his daughters think of him now, but I’m sure Kindt and Rubin have answers that will be revealed in subsequent miniseries.

Which should be announced any day now.  Right Dark Horse?

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Can something good happen when a six-volume series runs for eight volumes?