SHIPPING THIS MONTH: JULY 2009

My Wednesday Comics thoughts:

The old-style Batman logo is a nice touch to open up with, but it’s a shame the newspaper homage falls apart… well, before the panel is even over. Shitty faux-cursive font in the rest of the title box aside, the strip opens with a bunch of hideously bad storytelling choices. The slim one-minute-to-midnight panel tells us nothing by itself, and with the same background colouring is so barely distinguished from the title box that the two might as well have been better combined for a more graphically pleasant and mood-setting effect. The opening narration lies over a panel of someone we don’t see again until the bottom of the page, which is here the end of the strip – however, the lighting and colouring on every panel, regardless of setting, doesn’t separate the two scenes or link this one panel effectively with the final tier.
The layout of the rest of the page, with one tall vertical panel beside three tiers, would normally be read with the vertical first – which is the authors’ intention. However, by leaving no room for the lettering at the top of the panel, Risso forces the dialogue in this panel BELOW the middle of the middle tier, indicating that the panel doesn’t transform from illustrative into liminal at that point in the reader’s eye-flow. Batman now says “Hmm. I wonder how I should TAKE that…” in response to Gordon’s statement that the kidnappers didn’t ask for a ransom, not his musing that lighting the Bat-signal always feels like signalling failure.
And the extended silent preparing-for-murder sequence that takes up the entire final tier is downbeat and inconclusive just for a Sunday serial page – but when it’s the lead feature of the debut issue of this format experiment, it gives the entire project a frustrating tone. Even the bright incoherence of a few of the lesser strips inside would have been preferable for sheer thrill-power – WOW! Look at the EXCITEMENT in your hands! Anyway, lets head towards some of those lesser strips…

The Kamandi page channels Prince Valiant in more ways than mere format – most especially that the text is dull and easily skipped. Great choice of character to do the Val rip on, though – if it had colour approximating a full-process palette rather than blotchy 1993-style Oliff/Vozzo computer fades, it’d be a full success. And lovely touch Gibbons & Sook giving Kirby a page-width art and signature creator credit, especially following the microscopic type on the Kane credit the page before.

Lee Bermejo’s Superman paintings let down the Destroy-ish energy that he and Arcudi are going for – Supes looks like he’s lying in elegant repose for a life-drawing class, not being punched across the city. There’s not much in the script to let down, though; who gives a fuck about a Superman-punching-aliens-in-rubble story now/at the best of times/ever/in the year after ASS did the 70s right?

The Deadman page is fucking gorgeous – no idea who Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck are, but strong chances that they’re animation mates of Darwyn Cooke. The page is great as design – the glowering Deadman at the centre, story panels radiating out from him, subtly tilted; colour-wise – each setting having a specific palette, blending as an attractive whole; as cartooning – note that last panel, with the watch-this-for-later ring right in the viewer’s eyesight while still carrying energy suggesting a burning punch will be thrown in a split-second… and the writing does a fantastic job of setting up the character for new readers and establishing the skimpy plot enough to lead into a full episode next week. Marvellous.

Busiek and Quinones’ Green Lantern page is half-successful – the colouring seems inappropriately muted, the “…New FRONTIERS” caption groaningly heavy-handed – as if Cooke invented the Silver Age, right? – but generally its snappy and fun (and works as a Sunday story strip) enough that when it throws to the Space Adventure! tease in the final panel, I’m wishing we could stay in the 50s bar and watch women talk for 12 weeks instead.

Going in, the Metamorpho series I was actually fearful about – Gaiman’s very peripatetic superhero work this century has been terribly stilted, and that’s one of Allred’s greatest weaknesses – but this is gold. The header-and-cast-footer design is lovely, Stagg’s dialogue is pitch-perfect, the cartooning reads more Herge than Kubert Minor, and I’m crossing my fingers so hard for another three months of “pearl necklace” and “Sapphire’s giant clam” jokes.

Teen Titans on the other page is complete catshit, though. Galloway can’t draw a setting in any of nine panels, so it looks like nothing’s happening nowhere, and Berganza’s script is a frenzied, lonely, crying-into-my-pajamas-while-masturbating nerdblurt of “The Titans are a REAL family! Even if your parents don’t understand you!” which was an overblown undercurrent of the only other Titans books I’ve read in the last 19 years, Devin Grayson and Phil Jiminez’ JLA/Titans – is this what they’ve all been like since then?

Pope’s (Adam) Strange Adventures is another gem – Jose Villarubia’s colours could pop more on a project like this, but they look good on their own terms. And Pope makes great use of the Sunday format page, the best since Kamandi on the inside cover. Smaller and horizontal panels get bigger and break out into huge, tall ones as the action picks up. The action itself is nonsense, but glorious nonsense – crazed blue sphinx-monkeys are attacking! – and done with a carefree snap to the dialogue that begs you to go along with it.

Everytime I see a bit of Amanda Conner’s cartooning, I wish she could be on a regular book with a writer worth reading, so I could enjoy her line, body language and competent storytelling more often. Sadly this teamup with her bloke Jimmy Palmiotti isn’t delivering that here – Why are Supergirl’s cat and Superboy’s dog living in a big-city shopping mall? Why is she hanging out there with them? Why does a pet shop have live animals in a series of shop windows opening ONTO THE STREET? And the final joke brings us back away from the story as presumably being set up – but fingers crossed it comes together in future weeks. I’d love to read a good Streaky & Krypto romp.

The Metal Men strip is a headache in the making: Dan DiDio’s script is so nothing, so pointless, so idiot-plot, so dead-on-the-page dialogue, that I’d love to just skip it every week and breathe easy. But oh, Kevin Nowlan inking Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is so pretty that I can’t pay for it and then flip past it….

No such qualms with Ben Caldwell’s Wonder Woman. This thing is just a shambles – its obviously trying to do a lot with the page size, taking amazing advantage of it layout-wise; but the art itself is too muddy to read (tablet-and-screen to newsprint repro issues?) and his font to convoluted to bother trying. Dubious about the idea of an ongoing Wonder Woman newspaper strip that doesn’t give the newspaper reader a Wonder Woman in costume, too.

The Kubert, A. and Kubert, J. Sgt Rock strip is such a waste of space they should have sold another ad instead – looks like the Kuberts thought they were doing a daily, or at best a half-pager. Six panels include ten pages of Rock getting punched in the face, and then they use the remainder to have nothing happen but an SS Officer say “Now you vill TALK!” Embarrassing. Good colouring, though.

Speaking of half-pagers, Karl Kerschl and Brenden Fletcher get wonderfully into the spirit, splitting a Flash action strip with an Iris West working-woman-romance, both telling different sides of the same story. Fantastic idea, really well-executed visually in two distinct styles (although the mismatched colouring processes don’t make much sense). Sadly the second story doesn’t make any sense, physics-wise, but at least the end of it suggests that might not matter in future weeks.

Walt Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze’s teamup of and on The Demon & Catwoman is kinda fanficcy, but does read like a B-grade licensed newspaper strip. Colour scheme could be less Vertigo, though.

Baker’s Hawkman pages might have looked a little better glowing out of a computer screen than they do enormous on newsprint… but, you know, forget any concerns of quality or worth and just soak up the feathers and swords and pecs. Great, dumb stuff overlaid with knowingly awful purple prose. Roll on next Thursday lunchtime.

The Kubert, A. and Kubert, J. Sgt Rock strip is such a waste of space they should have sold another ad instead – looks like the Kuberts thought they were doing a daily, or at best a half-pager. Six panels include ten pages of Rock getting punched in the face, and then they use the remainder to have nothing happen but an SS Officer say “Now you vill TALK!” Embarrassing. Good colouring, though.

God - I adored that one. Screw the serial format - the page itself is just stunderful.

Air, Capt. America (maybe the b&w?), Razzle, and of course mixed bag large format newsprint comics.

Oh shit, Incoginito issue last (for now at least) too.

OH I FORGOT:
WEDNESDAY COMICS
YOUNG LIARS
Last week's BPRD
and maybe DARK AVENGERS, if I'm feeling flush or drunk or both.

The most literary comic book currently being published continues in AIR #11, while a competing narrative tradition - fairy tales - is examined in FABLES #86. Nothing will ever be the same for my favorite DC superhero in BLACKEST NIGHT #1 while non-canonical but very pretty art is on display in WEDNESDAY COMICS #2. Meanwhile, one of the few Marvel comics I'm still interested examines a slightly politically troublesome relationship in X-FACTOR #46, plus a delusional, wheel-chair bound Dr. Doom.

just Thursday Comics for me this week - wish my shop had gotten in the new Nexus mini though

Meanwhile, one of the few Marvel comics I'm still interested examines a slightly politically troublesome relationship in X-FACTOR #46, plus a delusional, wheel-chair bound Dr. Doom.

Yes, X-Factor keeps being quietly excellent and interesting and mostly unread. Only Marvel I'm hooked on.

Someone on twitter said that the Darwyn Cooke Parker book was out, so I got off my ass and went to the comic shop, and it wasn't there, so I bought Blackest Night. I was kinda hoping it would be more like Eclipso: Evil WIthin and less like Identity Crisis, but it's not.

Yes, it's really quite bad, isn't it? I thought GJ had got that nonsense out of his system, but apparently not. Nasty art, too.

Blackest Night was weird. Mostly because, yes, it read like something Johns would've written half a decade ago. Which is sad, because he's really gotten a lot better (his story in the other Blackest Night book this week, for example, was about 1000x better and more compelling than Blackest Night proper).

But I guess he's already come out and flatly stated that Blackest Night is going to be largely a horror story, so there you go, I guess.

X-Factor is really fucking rad.

I really dig how the X-books these days are utilizing all of these '90s characters who haven't gotten any play in ages. Trevor Fitzroy what???

I also dig that the X-books are in a nice, not-sucking groove across the board...for the moment.

We should enjoy this, it only seems to happen once every 15 years

That makes me feel old.

Speaking of which, I had a o_O moment the other day when I realized the Fantastic Four are not far from their 50th anniversary.

Is Uncanny not sucking anymore?

512 was the best issue in ages, though now its back to Fraction-being-reasonably-charming-amidst-a-blah-story mode.

I can't put myself through more X-disappointment, so I'm just sticking with X-Factor at the moment. When I discovered that Ellis writes a really shitty X-book, it just broke my heart.

Uncanny is, like, 8 billion times better than post-Messiah Complex solo-Brubaker Uncanny. Which was just shockingly poor. They still need to get the fuck rid of Greg "Lightbox" Land, though. Make him stop tracing pictures of his drunken redneck uncle and drawing a ruby quartz visor over his eyes!

For this week I continue to read Blackest Night in GREEN LANTERN #44, take a browse through the new WEDNESDAY COMICS #3, and completely skip every Marvel comic being published.

Re: last week's Wednesday Comics;

I really liked Metamorpho, Strange Adventures, Super-Girl, Batman, and Flash. Luke-warm on Green Lantern, Kamandi and Sgt. Rock. Disliked Demon Cat (super boring), Metal Men (super lame), Teen Titans (super super lame), Wonder Woman (still super hard to read), Deadman (super who cares?) and Superman (super cliche).

Yeah, I'm buying Wednesday too.
Anybody know what the plan is to re-release this in bound editions?

The final final Final Crisis! That was surprising.

Anybody know what the plan is to re-release this in bound editions?

They haven't decided yet.

Hey, dudes: that Citizen Rex thing from Dark Horse is a Gilberto/Mario Hernandez joint, FYI. I would've totally overlooked it if I hadn't noticed the Gilberto stylee screaming at me from the rack.

Hey, Cooke's "Parker: The Hunter" came out and it was pretty cool! Fucking hardcover prices, though...

I want it, but I can't afford it at the moment.

Wednesday Comics really isn't working for me. A couple are pretty, but overall quality is lacking. Think I'll just spend 40 seconds reading the two or three decent ones in the store.

I hear that. Only Kyle Baker and Paul Pope's strips have given me any hope of thrills, and even those are tempered by the surprising lack of ambition with WC.
Speaking of which, WTF Justice League of Robinson.

Why does DC not realize how toxic the OG New Teen Titans characters are (Batwang excepted)? New JLA line-up is essential TNTT + Mon-El + Green Lantern - Jericho (which, really, might be enough).

okay, the Deadman is awesome as well. About to read Cooke's Parker thing.

One third through The Hunter, quite lovely. Did not realize it was based on my favourite Mel Gibson movie. Well, second favourite. Maybe third, I haven't seen Ransom for a while.
I do realize that the whole 50s/early 60s is Cooke's thing, and lord knows, you gotta do what you're best at, but I kinda feel like a lot of it is old hat with him. I mean, compare it with Dave Bullock's Deadman in Wed Comx. Bullock has a nearly identical style to Cooke, but I still feel a freshness to his layouts.

Just got back from Comic-Con with a gigantic pile of acquisitions, most of which I still have to read (e.g. the new Love & Rockets and the "Abstract Comics" anthology and R. Sikoryak's "Masterpiece Comics" and and and...)

Loved the very end of Legion of 3 Worlds--I don't think it'd have worked with any other character, but Johns has been setting Prime up as the ultimate pissy entitled fanboy for years, and the ending just felt like the perfect payoff for that.

> Did not realize it was based on my favourite Mel Gibson movie.

That's a funny way to spell Lee Marvin.

That's a funny way to spell Lee Marvin.

Heh.

ANYWAYS:

CITIZEN REX #1
DETECTIVE COMICS #ONE JILLION OR SOMETHING
WEDNESDAY COMICS #4 - For what it's worth: 1)FLASH 2)DEADMAN 3)THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF ADAM STRANGE ON A STRANGE PLANET 4)SGT. ROCK and, uh, 5)BATMAN, probably. WONDER WOMAN makes my desert island list cuz I can't remember a damn thing about it no matter how many times I read the strip - a quality that would come in handy in complete isolation.

shazam (I think I missed one or two of these somewhere along the line), 'tec, wamsday, and hey! Glamourpuss is still coming out! But I'm still not buying it.

What is CITIZEN REX?

Anyway, for me, WEDNESDAY COMICS #4 and uh -- that's it.

Citizen Rex = new Gilbert/Mario Hernandez thing from Dark Horse.

oh. hmm.

I'm making an effort to NOT read Wednesday comics until I have a stack of about six of them, cuz that's what I would do if I had been around at Dick Tracy/Orphan Annie/Lil Abner days.

also you would have had polio/ricketts/sand-kicked-in-yr-face

I bought last week's Wednesday Comics by mistake. They all look the same! Duh.

i hate going to the store drunk. i also bought something again accidentally--last ish of thor. sad thing is, i didn't even remember i'd already read it until i got to the part where the ghost woman is talking about how much she likes bluegrass.

if i had polio, i don't think i would be going to the beach
i recently bought a copy of a spirit hardcover that i already owned, that's a costly dumbass mistake.

The Citizen Rex comic is fun, looking forward to seeing where it goes, which could be anywhere.

this turned out to be a huge week!

MOME vol. 15
ASTERIX'S DANGLING POLYP
WEDNESDAY COMICS #3 and #4
Langridge's MUPPET SHOW series 2 issue 1 thing
Rich Johnston's DR WHO one-shot
and the second part of DETECTIVE JH WILLIAMS MAKES PRETTY SOME STUPID COMICS

Looked at Citizen Rex but will wait for collection.

http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/misc/pictures/nerds.jpg