Weekly Comic Book Review Thread - 4/22/2004

That is really swell of you to offer, thank you! And be careful–I just might take you up on it. I’m always buying, selling, and trading comics and action figures online, and I keep my Want List up-to-date on my website:
http://www.geocities.com/bigbadvoodoolou/wantlist.html

Which is why I don’t buy comics anymore. We don’t have a comic book shop here, and Marvel doesn’t ship non-core books to newsstands. And the last time I checked, subscriptions actually cost more than buying them off the shelf. At least when you live in Canada.

The only thing I collect is Wizard magazine. And now that they have comic previews, I can get a little bit of a fix. Of course, it really depresses me when a preview really grabs my attention, and I know I won’t be able to get the book when it comes out.

I’ve also been screwed into picking up the first half-dozen issues of a new series, and then discovering that the newsstand won’t be carrying it anymore. (Thunderbolts!) I’m not sure why, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Marvel does that to try and lure people into comic shops. Of course, I wouldn’t mind…

IF I HAD A COMIC SHOP TO GO TO!

:mad:

Huff. Huff. Huff. Okay. Breathe…

Vol. 7 is somewhat disjointed. Though Cyril the Super-Saint made me chuckle every time we saw him.

The reason it’s somewhat disjointed is that it deals with the manipulations of Spinning Jemmy … she’s one of the DC Universe’s Lords of Chaos. I don’t envy any writer the task of coming up with an entirely coherent story centering around a being of pure Chaos.

I suspect there may have been some rushing on the writer’s part as well.

I hate to say it, but you’re going to hate Book 3. That is really where Moore embarks on his “Magical Mystery Tour,” and takes the readers on long, psychedelic lectures of the Kaballah, witchcraft, the magick of Aleister Crowley, and more. The art by Williams and Grey is gorgeous as usual, but there was hardly any narrative anymore to keep me interested during these issues.

Marvel is very good about collecting arc in TPBs though. And surely you can find those in mainstream bookstores? Almost any mini series is assured to be put in TPB, and quite a few regular series have their stories collected.

I’m really digging the resurgance of the TPB. It’s helping me expand my reading scope to more than just Marvel. I’ve bought more smaller press books than I ever would have lately thanks to them being conveniently bound in one big chunk. I loved 30 Days of Night but never even saw it in individual issues, thanks to underordering shops. Plus I’ve picked up Fables and Y, the Last Man* from DC even though I rarely give DC a second glance.

Alright folks. After months and months and months of peeking into every single comic book thread started on this board, I’m going to start reading one book. But I’m going to leave it up to you guys to decide on what that book is. As a kid, I loved X-Men (and X-Factor), and survived the whole Jean Grey saga. I read the Ultimate books when they come out on TPB in the bookstore, so I’d like to stay away from all of the above (though The Ultimates is very tempting). I’d like something mainstream, but not a ton of backstory. Something I can jump into right now without spending more than $30 in back issues.

I’m gong to second Runaways. The first arc was the best, the second was almost enough to make me stop buying it (especially as the art deteroriated so much they brought in a pinch hitter while the main guy got it together), but this third arc is surprisingly good. Finally, we’ve got the origin of The Pride and is refreshingly not lame. Of course, this month’s issue was slow as hell and the Runaways are never in any real danger, but I don’t think that the twist in this issue is going to be played as badly as it seems like it could be.

As for Welcome Back Frank, I thought that despite Ennis proclaiming that it’s not a sociological examination of the Punisher, or trying to excuse what he does, he did a great job of giving insight into what is otherwise a great “character” (and it was a lot more palatable than the character-development crap he’s doing in the Max series or in that awful, awful Born (in all fairness, I only read the first issue of Born and flipped through a couple more. There was a reason no one went this far into his origin, but for some reason Marvel feels that it’s got to go back and give origin stories to all the characters that don’t need them (Wolverine, Punisher, Thor, whose next?).

The first: When Joan asks why he kills the bad guys and he answers, “Because I hate them.” and she saysm, "Oh, I thought you were going to say, “to make the world safe for good people” and Frank doesn’t have an answer.

The second:

When he kills the three vigilantes (who have, of course, not gotten anywhere since they spend all their time arguing with each other), despite their request that he lead them and together they can rid crime from the city.

I thought those were brilliant.

Munch, I just wrote a long, impassioned post about why the recently relaunched Catwoman was the best mainstream book on the market, not at all what one would expect, and probably available for about the $30 threshold if one utilized creative shopping techniques. It’s well-written enough to hold an adult’s attention, but sufficiently kiddy-fied to be sold through the mainstream DCU. There are two TPBs available since the relaunch, Dark End of the Street and Crooked Little Town. Those will take you up through issue 10. I believe the run is currently up in the mid-20’s somewhere, and a little shopping on eBay or via comic shops that mark down their back issues should get you caught up with minimal pain or effort.

Another strong contender would be Gotham Central, a police procedural set in Gotham City, which is only up to issue 18 and has one available TPB (the name of which escapes me at the moment). Again, locating inexpensive back issues should be relatively pain-free, and worth the investment.

A good contender from Marvel would be Mystique, about everyone’s favorite shape-shifting mutant doing jobs too dirty for the X-men to be publicly associated with. I believe there’s a TPB out or soon to be out, and it’s not very far along so there aren’t many issues to catch up on. Finding back issues will be trickier due to Marvel’s current printing policies designed to push comics into the area of collectibles, but they should be available with a little additional digging.

I really want to recommend Brian Michael Bendis’ run on Daredevil. which is wonderful and readily available in TPB form, but I don’t think even creative shopping could get you completely caught up for $30. Maybe, and it’s so good that I think if you read the first volume you’d be more than happy to bend your spending limit.

I’ll be more than happy to write about any of these at great length if you’re interested.

Re : Munch’s Request.

I gotta vote for Supreme Power, from Marvel. Not at all attached to the MU, no backstory necessary, great writing.

Ha!

shows off top row of bookshelf, covered with volumes of manga

None of this silly “collectible” stuff for me, thank you. These babies are meant to be read. And I don’t have to wait forever for an anthology, either, because I have a cousin that goes back to Taiwan at least twice a year.

(They called me a nerd for liking Chinese school. HA! Who’s laughing now? :D)

Highly recommend it. This is not the Catwoman you may remember from the '90s, that implausibly giant-breasted caricature of a female, way too top-heavy to slip through windows and ducts like a real cat burglar would have to. Furthermore, she is not the purring, vampy, trampy Catwoman of the 1960s Batman TV show, or the horrible Catwoman Halle Berry will play in the upcoming movie. The current Catwoman, written by Ed Brubaker, is a really terrific crime-noir comic that just happens to feature some people with costumes.

Selina Kyle has more normal proportions after '90s artist Jim Balent made the book into a wank-rag for pubescent fanboys who couldn’t buy Playboy yet. A series of artists that includes Darwyn Cooke, Brad Rader, and Cameron Stewart followed the streamlined, retro approach of Bruce Timm’s art from Batman: The Animated Series. Her new costume harkens back more to high-kicking Emma Peel than the shiny rubber fetish dominatrix costume in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. She still has a mask with nifty little cat ears, and a really cool pair of night vision goggles, but luckily the useless tail is gone. How did that stupid thing not get caught in closing security doors or set off silent laser-beam alarms?

She is also a deeper, more interesting character–certainly not a “super-villain” anymore, but not quite a Batman-caliber upstanding citizen. This cat is a shade of gray, as she sets out to protect the East End, the worst neighborhood in Gotham City, and its generally poor, crime-victimized residents. She may still rob from the rich, but she’s starting to give to the poor (and still keep a little for herself). She has an understanding with Batman–he’ll leave her alone as long as she behaves, and she does, for the most part. She makes enemies with some real criminals: gangsters, thugs, drug dealers, kidnappers, the occasional Batman villain. She has some unlikely allies: Holly, her eyes and ears on the street, a sweet ex-junkie with a cute lesbian lover, and Slam Bradley, the quintessential grizzled, hard-boiled private eye with a heart of gold and a soft spot for women in trouble. (Slam first appeared in Detective Comics #1, so technically he’s older than Batman, and any of us.) The sexual tension between Selina and Slam is fun to read, and handled in a mature manner.

Brubaker really shines writing these crime stories, and the cartoony-yet-dark art perfectly complements his tales of a feline femme fatale and a part of Gotham City that even Batman doesn’t like to venture into. Unfortunately, with #25 (very recent), a more traditional artist took over on the book, and I think it lost a lot of its magic as a result. But I still recommend it highly, especially #1-24 (and you can quickly recap #1-10 in two TPBs). Like James Robinson’s brilliant and beautiful Starman and Brian Michael Bendis’ current work on Daredevil, Brubaker’s Catwoman shines as an example of an intelligent superhero comic, the perfect spandex saga for people who hate spandex. And if you like the DC Universe and Gotham City and Batman continuity, you’ll feel right at home too.