Comic Picks By The Glick

In case you’re wondering about how writer Tim Truman and artist Tomas Giorello’s run on “Conan” has been going — it’s still quality stuff.  While this volume won’t make a believer out of anyone who isn’t already a fan of the legendary barbarian, it’s still an entertaining, action-packed adventure.  “Black Colossus” finds our protagonist falling in with a group of mercenaries who are hired to defend the city of Khoraja from the wizard Natohk and his vile hordes.  When Conan finds himself in the right place at the right time, he winds up becoming the leader of Khoraja’s armies — a position that fits him better than he would have thought.  Giorello is utterly at home depicting whatever situation the title character finds himself in, be it joining a fight in progress on a grassy meadow, leading a group of troops in a parade, and bedding the city’s sovereign in a dark tomb.  Truman continues to show he has a great understanding of how to write the legendary barbarian and makes his transition from soldier to leader of men a believable one.

I wasn’t expecting much from this volume, now that the title character’s ongoing story had FINALLY gained some direction and momentum, but it turned out to be one of the better short story collections this series has offered up.  That’s mainly due to the title story which has Hellboy trekking through the Appalachian wilds with a former soldier returned to settle some old scores with the titular Crooked Man.  Not only is it an engaging story, touching on bits of American folklore that I wasn’t familiar with, but it’s also one of the creepiest stories I’ve read in this series thanks to Richard Corben’s art.  It would’ve been even better if Hellboy had more of a part to play — his involvement is almost incidental to the story.  As for the others, Josh Dysart/Jason Alexander’s “They That go Down to the Sea in Ships” is a fun flashback teaming up Hellboy and Abe Sapien on a job to find the pirate Blackbeard’s skull, and Mignola’s return to writing and drawing with “In the Chapel of Moloch” is similarly enjoyable with Hellboy beating on a nasty demon, for the sake of art.  While the final story, a Mignola/Duncan Fegredo collaboration, fleshes out an interesting throwaway idea from “Darkness Calls,” it ultimately winds up being weird for weirdness’ sake.  Even with that miss, fans of the series will find that this will tide them over nicely until the next proper volume.

In a move that should surprise no one, I talk about another comic book character who has a movie coming out this weekend.

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When I was last talking about Marvel’s merry mutants, I mentioned how the “Utopia” crossover set up a potentially interesting new direction for the franchise.  After butting heads with Norman Osborne and his Dark X-Men and Avengers, all of mutanity has found itself living just out of his reach on a re-purposed Asteroid M in the San Francisco Bay.  No longer having to contend with the political situation on the mainland, Cyclops and the rest of the X-Men now have to figure out how to provide for the two-hundred-plus inhabitants of the island and fend off all of the new threats coming their way.

While I doubt it would surprise anyone to learn that Norman Osborne still has a mad-on for how Namor and Emma Frost stabbed him in the back, he’s not the only problem they have to contend with.  In addition to making sure that the island has enough supplies to function, the “science team” finds out that while raising an asteroid from the bottom of the sea was easy enough, generating enough power to keep it there is another matter entirely.  Making matters worse is that former Marauder Scalphunter has been press-ganged by a group of mysterious super-powered individuals into delivering five Predator Xs to assault the island.  Things have looked better for mutantkind — then Magneto shows up.

In what is the volume’s best plot thread, and an interesting sign of how the dynamic of mutant power has shifted in Marvel’s post M-Day world, Magneto hasn’t come to fight the X-Men, but to join the party.  Even though Cyclops is plotting the future of his species by the seat of his pants, he’s managed to do the one thing that neither the master of magnetism or Professor X has managed to do:  unite all of mutantkind.  Seeing this, Magneto now wants to join the party and help out any way he can.  Only his decades-long habit of attacking and otherwise antagonizing the X-Men has left all of them more than a little wary of his intentions.

Refreshingly, Magneto turns out to be telling the truth and his efforts to try and win over Cyclops and co. are the most interesting parts of the book.  His take-charge nature proves to be at odds with Cyclops’ leadership and every attempt he makes to better life on Utopia only winds up alienating him further from the people whose trust he desires.  Then he searches and finds more radical (and implausible) means to do so.  Writer Matt Fraction gets a lot of good scenes from his characterization of Magneto as a sad old man, once one of the figureheads of mutant power who now finds himself without an invitation to his species last party before its extinction.  It’s a characterization that’s at odds with how he’s usually presented, but it also couldn’t have been done in a pre-M-Day setting and Fraction pulls it off well.

The other main threads involve the fight against the Predator Xs on the island; Cyclops, Prof. X and Psylocke working together to get the sliver of the Void that was stuck in Emma’s head after her run-in with the Sentry; and Wolverine, Colossus, and Psylocke (again) going to New York to track down the people behind the assault and running into Fantomex along the way.  Two of these threads mainly serve to dish up some quality superhero fight scenes, while the other allows for some nice character-driven action as Cyclops dives into Emma’s head to save her from being taken over by a “splinter of absolute evil.”

Now, the context of a Marvel superhero comic is probably the only time that I could take something described as a “splinter of absolute evil” seriously, but Fraction uses the threat of a psychic takeover to have his characters try and think their way out of a conflict rather than fight their way out of it.  While there is some fighting, most memorably when Cyclops realizes that the multiple Emmas in her head are actually manifestations of the Void because she would never say something as “high school” as that and then blasts them to hell.  The majority of it centers around Cyclops and Emma finding ways to re-connect in their minds and ways to use their surroundings to their advantage.  I don’t think I’m really spoiling anything to say that the Void splinter is neutralized, but the way Fraction has Cyclops do it is both truly inspired and true to his character.

This two-issue thread also benefits immensely from art by Terry and Rachel Dodson.  Not only do they have a bright, energetic style that’s perfect for superhero comics, they also show a willingness to experiment with page and panel layout to capture the confusion of the mental conflict in this mini-arc.  With the exception of the last issue, the rest of the issues collected here were drawn by Greg Land.  Now Land gets a bad rap for his photoreferenced style and I’ll willingly admit that it is very distracting in parts.  The man can’t seem to draw a woman who doesn’t seem like she was traced from a men’s magazine, and characters of both genders tend to have their mouths gaping or grinning in ways that distract you from the story at hand.  That said, I do like the detail his photoreferencing brings to his art and his storytelling is clear.  It’s not enough to make me not wish that the Dodsons had drawn his issues as well, but it could’ve been worse.

The final issue in the arc is drawn by Whilce Portacio, and while I generally like his style, his characters’ body language comes across as awkward at times.  That hampers the emotional impact of this issue as it involves the return of Kitty Pryde from deep space.  The mechanics of her return stretch even the most generous amounts of comic book logic, and I still think that she wasn’t gone long enough for me to miss her.  Still, I do like how her return isn’t without complications and there’s a very nice silent montage of panels at the end which show that despite all of the craziness that’s been happening on Utopia, its inhabitants still find a way to enjoy the little things in life.

That’s not the end of the volume, as the four-issue “Nation X” mini-series is also collected here.  This was an anthology series in the vein of the “Dark X-Men” mini-series collected in “Utopia,” and while the stories there were mostly filler, the ones here have a huge advantage in that they’re able to explore this new setting with the entire X-cast at their disposal.  It is, perhaps surprisingly (considering the quality of most X-anthologies), a huge improvement over its predecessor.

Most of the stories are nice little character pieces that have members of the cast touching on issues that the main story didn’t have time for.  We get to see Iceman cracking jokes as a way to get his mind off of how he thinks these are the end days of his species, Wolverine and Nightcralwer on a cross-country trip debating the new status quo and Cyclops’ status as a leader, and Northstar inviting his new normal boyfriend to Utopia and nearly ruining the relationship as a result.  Some of the stories also touch on continuity issues, but in logical ways as Magneto confronts an old “ghost” of Asteroid M, and Armor and Danger hash out their issues (violently) over how the latter killed the former’s friend, Wing.  They’re not all winners, as Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s story about Doop acting as the island’s detective is just too weird for its own good.

Still, it has Allred on art which means that it at least looks good.  The same can be said for the rest of the stories as they’re all visually interesting on some level.  Some stories trend towards a stylized, yet still recognizably superhero comic book style, while others, see “Cannonball’s” Corey Lewis, let their freak flag fly to great effect.  Overall, this is one of the rare anthologies that has more hits than misses, and if all X-anthologies were this good, people wouldn’t complain about how many of them we get in a year.

Overall, “Nation X” is a worthy addition to any X-fan’s library.  While the art on the main story is a mixed bag, Fraction’s writing holds it all together while dishing up wit, action, and characterization in a way that keeps you engrossed in the action.  It’s not an X-book that I’d recommend to people who aren’t interested in the franchise, but those of you who are following its narrative (like myself) won’t be disappointed by what you find here.

For future rundowns of my ten favorite comics in a given year, I think I’ll have to set aside one slot solely to determine which was the better Robert Kirkman title of the year:  “Invincible” or “The Walking Dead.”  While vol. 11 of “The Walking Dead” did a great job of smacking genre conventions upside the head earlier this year, this latest volume of “Invincible” due to the sheer scope, brutality and overall insanity of its action while laying the groundwork for some potentially fascinating stories down the road.  Things open up with the army of alternate universe Invincibles that Angstrom Levy has gathered laying waste to the Image Universe and all the superheroes that occupy it.  It’s a fantastic done-in-one crossover issue, but that’s only the warm-up for the arrival of Conquest, the Viltrumite agent sent to check on Invincible’s progress in assimilating Earth for the Viltrum Empire.  Their multi-issue fight is easily one of the most brutal fights I’ve seen in comics as it comes down to Invincible using the one part of his body that isn’t broken to try and win the fight.  Almost as interesting is the interplay between Invincible and Cecil, as they still don’t like or trust each other, but are forced to work together to save the world.  I’m also looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen when Cecil’s “use the enemy” schemes finally backfire on him.  They will, because there’s no way that his latest catch (as seen in the volume’s almost-final pages) is going to want to play ball.

When I brought in this volume to read at work earlier this week, I told one of my friends that unless it was really good it was going to be the last one I buy.  He said “okay” but thought that my decision was a little strange after noting that I had spent in the neighborhood of $300 on the series so far.  After pointing out that it was probably closer to $200, I told him that it was better to do it now than to continue to watch the series become an increasingly pointless endeavor with this current storyline.  There’s also the fact that by stopping now, I’m saving myself about $140 as the series is currently up to vol. 45 in Japan with no end in sight.

To be honest, I would’ve made vol. 30 my last one as it had a nice volume-length story focusing on Rukia and one of the Arrancars who appeared to her in the guise of her former commander in the Soul Society.  As it turns out, he was originally the Hollow that killed her commander and was reborn through Aizen’s machinations.  Not only was it a physically brutal fight, the personal connection Rukia had to this character gave it an intensity and meaning that a lot of the Arrancar fights have been missing throughout this arc.  Had they all been as gripping as this one, I’d have pre-ordered all the upcoming volumes months ago.

Then you get to the fights in this volume and they’re just sad in their predictability.  You get Ichigo changing into his Hollow-fied form to try and take out Ulquiorra as fast as possible and failing miserably because we haven’t reached the point in the story where he’s supposed to beat the #4 Arrancar.  Then the scene shifts to pick up on Renji’s fight with Szayelaporro (who graces this volume’s cover) which is quickly joined by Uryu.  After the usual “I’m so badass” posturing from both sides, Uryu unleashes his special move to take out that ridiculously named Arrancar with Renji’s help.  I was half hoping that this would be the end of him, but of course it wasn’t as he ate his followers to return to full strength after the attack and vowed to return to finish the fight after he changed into something that hadn’t been burnt to a crisp.  Things wrap up with Grimmjow  taking Ulquiorra out of action so that the newly jailbroken Orihime can heal Ichigo and the two of them can have a proper fight.

One thought kept echoing in my mind as I read through all of this:  “I don’t care.”  This arc has been a pale retread of the “Soul Society” arc with Orihime in Rukia’s role and a far, far less interesting group of opponents here.  In addition to occupying key roles in the world and mythology of “Bleach,” the various captains of the Soul Society were also entertaining characters themselves and their presence is missed here.  The Arrancars have failed to make much of an impression on me at all beyond “I dislike them and I wish Ichigo and company would kick their asses.”  Rather than being characters in their own right, they just come across as insanely powerful plot devices whose only reason for being is to provide the main characters with someone to fight.  Yes, I know that this is a Shonen Jump manga and the fighting is its main attraction, but this series has shown that you can have fights that move the story forward and develop the characters at the same time.  Hell, they did in the last volume!

Fights like that, however, have become the exception rather than the rule these days and I’m tired of it.  I’d be more inclined to keep following the series if I thought that mangaka Tite Kubo had a plan for the series; however, after hearing that he’ll keep making the series as long as fans keep buying it at his Comic-Con appearance two years ago I don’t think that’s the case.  I’m also betting that this arc isn’t going to end with Aizen’s defeat, but with the revelation that the struggles of Ichigo and his friends have only played into his master plan JUST LIKE THE END OF THE LAST ARC!  So rather than subject myself to further disappointment, I’m calling it quits here while I can still think fondly of the series and entertain the possibility of picking up the series again at a later date.  Granted, that’s not going to happen for a while so be sure to ask me how that’s going two or three years from now.

That’s a particularly apt subtitle, and one that will surely annoy longtime readers of this series, as the title character is (once again) absent for the majority of the volume.  This time we’re treated to the battle between Zekka and Toji’s “Space Karate” team against the seeded Venusian team who specialize in bio-engineering rather than the mechanical kind.  They’re led by the bestial Homme du Feu who has been promised his freedom and the woman of his dreams by the team’s scheming mastermind Pissarro.  While I’m disappointed that Alita only appears in five panels and speaks only two words, I have to credit mangaka Yukito Kishiro’s skill at giving the Venusian team enough depth as characters so that I actually cared about them even though their loss was predicated by the needs of the story.  Equally impressive is the scale of the fights in this volume (the roof is literally raised here) and the utter weirdness of the Venusian fighters and their weaponry (biologic missiles and rose guns are probably the most normal things in there).  Even though I can understand why people are going to bitch about this volume, I still thought that there was plenty to like about it.  Easily one of the better volumes that didn’t feature the title character.

While this series has accomplished many things over the course of its English-language run so far (such as being consistently hilarious, and successfully satirizing some of heavy metal’s more outrageous aspects), I think that its greatest achievement in the end will be making me look like a complete ass.  Since the beginning of its run, I’ve felt that the series was a one-joke concept that, while very funny, would eventually run out of steam well before its final volume.  That didn’t happen with the first three volumes, and I put it on my “top ten” for last year because of that.  Vol. 4 looked like it might be the tipping point after things got back to normal with the end of the “Satanic Emperor” arc, but vol. 5 is hilarious right out of the gate.  Negishi makes an ass of himself (and is made an ass as well) in so many new and inventive ways that show Wakasugi’s stash of comic situations and conflicts is far deeper than anyone could have realized at first.  Things get even better at the end when Wakasugi starts the buildup for the series’ next major arc which is going to touch on an item that’s been part of the series since its beginning, but never been touched on.  I mean, if Negishi is “Krauser II” then there had to have been a “Krauser I” previously…

Two volumes in and mangaka Tsutomu Nihei’s latest work to be translated into English continues to be a stellar example of how to properly do style over substance.  Badass synthetic human Zoichi Kanoe and his AI partner Fuyu continue their quest to stop the evil machinations of the Data Recovery Foundation by blowing up lots of bio-zombies, buildings, planes, ships, and anything else that gets in their way with maximum prejudice.  We’re also introduced to one of his fellow synthetic humans, Nishu Mizunoe, as she teams up with the now one-handed grizzly bear sniper Kozlov Grebnev in order to find out if he can shed any light on the activities of his father who was one of the founding members of the DRF.  While Nihei gets a lot of rightly deserved praise for his art, which effectively depicts a run-down future dystopia and the high-speed chase scenes that take place within it, I continue to be impressed at the clarity of his storytelling here.  Granted, it’s nothing new or particularly original, but after reading through all ten volumes of “BLAME!” and thinking that he only had the capacity to make something that only he understood, the fact that he demonstrates a solid grasp of the fundamentals of storytelling is downright refreshing.

This was the only manga I picked up at Fanime this year since it was the only thing I could find there at a discount.  The first volume was a surprisingly gripping tale of a group of survivors trying to make their way out of a department store that had been devastated by an earthquake… up until the point where they encounter another group of survivors that are way too cartoonish in their evilness.  You see, I liked the “man vs. his environment” thrills that the first 3/4 of the first volume dished up and I really didn’t care to see the main characters struggle at the mercy of villains who, put together, barely have one dimension in their characterization.  To mangaka Yuki Fujisawa’s credit, he does offer up an interesting moral conundrum or two for our heroes to deal with, and there is one really clever bit of plotting regarding the heroes’ escape.  I wouldn’t exactly say that makes this series a “hidden gem,” but it at least places it in the upper reaches of mediocrity.