Comic Picks By The Glick

Some of you have already heard that this collection is a real showcase for the talents of artist J.H. Williams III — and you heard right!  I truly doubt that I’ll see a better illustrated superhero comic this year as the man’s genius for page and panel layout (conveying action and story without sacrificing clarity) is visible on every page.  His chameleonic ability to change styles is also on show, and while it could’ve degenerated into gimmickry, it serves each scene well.  While the art is the main attraction here, the story by Greg Rucka is also pretty good.  Not only is his gift for effortlessly writing strong female characters on show here, he also pulls off the doubly difficult task of making Kathy Kane’s lesbianism a necessary part of the story, and on making her motivations distinct from all of Gotham’s other vigilantes.  The problem is that Rucka does too good a job of grounding Kate’s backstory and character in the real world, to the point where the superhero elements seem out of place in her story.  I won’t argue that a “religion of crime” is a great idea for the DC Universe, but here it almost comes off as being more silly than anything else.  That being said, even as someone who appreciates comics more for their writing than their art, this is still worth picking up in hardcover just to admire Williams III’s work.

You know, I like this series but the events of this volume were a real bummer.  After being accepted into the Tokyo Space School, Asumi finds herself acclimating rather well to its curriculum and solidifying the friendships she began in the last volume.  The problems begin when she finds out that if she becomes an astronaut, she’ll have to have a specially made suite to accommodate her — a drain on the school’s strained budget.  Making matters worse is that the teacher who brings this up has a grudge against Asumi’s father and while the plan to dismiss her is decried by the school faculty, one of the higher-ups privately asks him to get rid of her “quietly.”  Then in the second “bonus story,” we see a young Asumi’s efforts to make friends with a girl who was injured in the rocket crash that her father was responsible for.  I’d like to say it ends on a high note, but the “magical realism” employed to make it work didn’t feel right.  Here’s hoping we get less depressing character drama in the next volume, and more focus on the cast’s training to become astronauts.

I don’t know if writer Ed Brubaker knew at the time that this will probably be the last we’ll see of “Criminal” for a while (artist Sean Phillips is busy with other projects including “The Dark Tower” and the follow-up to “Incognito” due later this year), but at least this volume begins the hiatus on a high note.  “The Sinners” brings back Tracy Lawless, the ex-commando turned hired muscle from the second volume, and finds that he hasn’t adjusted well to working within Sebastian Hyde’s organization.  So instead of using him for killing, Hyde puts him to work on solving the mystery behind the deaths of several made men in the city.  It’s a foregone conclusion that Lawless’ investigation will lead him down a dark path of betrayal and violence, but the threats come from unexpected angles here and while our protagonist doesn’t exactly get a happy ending, it’s refreshing to see the main character in a noir thriller like this successfully administering his own brand of justice.  My sole gripe with this volume is in the main character’s romance with Hyde’s wife which feels like it was dictated by genre conventions rather than organic character development.

This latest volume in what is shaping up to be writer Warren Ellis’ most substantial and best post-”Transmetropolitan” work (yes, even better than “Nextwave:  Agents of H.A.T.E.”) not only answers some questions, but also raises new ones right out of their ashes.  After a brief detour showing us the “world-ending” event that the kids performed six years ago, we pick right back up again to find out that Kait’s mystery assailant isn’t all that mysterious and witness firsthand the complications in Luke’s efforts to escape Whitechapel.  It’s gratifying to see that Ellis has stuck with this series as the worldbuilding possibilities he’s set up here just beg to be explored and his always-excellent dialogue supports the convention-busting appeal of the cast.  He also has a great artistic collaborator in Paul Duffield, whose art clearly has a “manga-style” bent to it without being slavishly devoted to one style or a particular set of conventions.

The last time I talked about this series, I mentioned how it was setting the stage for war journalist turned political player Matty Roth’s downfall.  While Matty has proved adept at reporting and putting human faces on the crises of the DMZ, he has always been one step behind the political and military forces that shape the area.  Even the one he voted and now works for, Parco Delgado.  With that as a setup, the stage was set for him to have a downfall that would make the trials of Dash Bad Horse over in “Scalped” look like the day at the beach.  Long story short, that is what happens and the result is an engrossing, if depressing, read.

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Because not only can I not stop talking about this series, we’ve seen a lot of it this year as well.

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The podcast will be coming either much later tonight or more likely tomorrow due to a bad day of epic proportions on the part of the uploader.  In the meantime, this latest volume of “Jack of Fables” finds the series in transition.  With all of its stories and supporting cast sent off to parts unknown in “The Great Fables Crossover,” it’s time for the series to find a new game.  It does that by turning the titular Jack into a dragon (complete with a hoard of gold) and shifting the focus to his son, Jack Frost, as he tries to become a true hero.  Naturally, things don’t go smoothly for either but it’s handled deftly with the series trademark wit, administered with just the right amount of self-awareness to keep things from becoming too precious.  I do like the fact that they seem to be setting up a confrontation between the two Jacks, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they resolve it since writers Willingham and Sturges would never go for the obvious “dragon slaying” metaphor here.

IT’S A CUTE KITTY MANGA!!!

Uh… and there’s not much more to say than that.  If you’re a cat person like me, then you’ll find it impossible to resist this series’ charms as mangaka Konami Kanata does an incredible job of making Chi’s behavior both familiar and utterly believable to any cat owner.  My main issue with the series is that Chi’s “voice” has the same saccharine stylistic quirks of a little kid’s and is completely unnecessary to the action 99% of the time.  I think it’d be better off without Chi’s dialogue… but the manga as a whole is so cute that I just don’t care.

In the space of a week I’ve read two comics that have featured surprise same-sex hook-ups.  The first one happened in the pages of John Layman and Rob Guillory’s “Chew vol. 2″ while the second appeared in vol. 2 of Masayuki Ishikawa’s “Moyasimon.”  Both were quite surprising to read, though it was more surprising to observe that the Americans produced a more interesting scene.

(Minor spoilers for a specific scene in both series follow…)

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While I generally enjoyed the first volume of this series, it was essentially just setup for future stories and its “surprise twist” at the end wasn’t very surprising.  Now that these “future stories” are here, I can say that “Chew’s” future is looking pretty bright.  Re-teamed with his old partner, cibopath Tony Chu is sent on another crappy assignment that ends with him encountering a strange plant… that may be a fruit… that also tastes like chicken.  This leads him to a tropical island where chicken has been recently outlawed, a large-breasted martial arts expert working for the Department of Agriculture, his brother who now has a job cooking this “fruit,” and an international assassin known only as the “Vampire.”  All of this is played dead straight, which makes things even funnier and writer John Layman throws in a few genuinely surprising plot twists along the way which makes me think that he has a plan for this series.  Or he’s just really good at plotting by the seat of his pants.  Hats off to artist Rob Guillory as well, since the series wouldn’t be as entertaining without his comically twisted art.