Friday Evening Loot

Let’s take a look at yesterday evening’s loot from the comic book store. This week heralded the arrival of All-Star Superman, featuring the talents of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. I didn’t used to be much of a fan of Quitely, back on his Authority and New X-Men days, but ever since his work on We3, I’ve come to understand his appeal. Quitely works in the advertising business and you can tell he’s good at design work, based on his excellent page layouts. His faces still aren’t all that great in some places (Superman looks damn awful in this shot) but on other occasions he nails them just perfectly, as with his depiction of Lex Luthor. The story is very straightforward yet cool: there’s a mission to the heart of the sun, it goes awry, Superman saves the day, but at the cost of his own future, it turns out. Morrison starts out pretty nicely with a very compressed way of telling Superman’s origin, just 4 panels and captions that lay out the story in a condensed yet satisfying way. There are also several nice moments where Superman saves innocents in both direct and indirect ways. Moreover, he nails the bumbling nature of Clark Kent, something I’ve always thought adds to his secret identity. He’s such a clumsy, absent-minded goofball as Clark Kent that nobody in their right mind would suspect he’s also the world’s greatest hero, an element that’s been missing from regular Superman comics for all too long now. I’m happy the stories for this series, while forming a larger tapestry, will remain fairly self-contained, as it’s virtually guaranteed that it’ll be a scheduling nightmare, what with Quitely being so notoriously slow (as much as I like his art, I do not understand why, since his pencils are very minimal, and the digital inker does a whole lot of the work in making everything look pretty, cool and impressive—I guess he thinks about each page a lot, perhaps?). So even if it takes two months for the next issue to arrive, at least I can enjoy it in its own right, hopefully as much as I liked this one. Not an outstanding Alan Moore-type comic, but a good one nonetheless.

By comparison, I also bought and read Supergirl #3, written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Ian Churchill. They might as well call this Supergruel because I feel it’s some of the worst writing out there. It’s a hodge-podge of halfbaked ideas that attempt to convey significance but are full of meaningless sound and fury (and somewhat creepy titillation) instead. Loeb’s big idea appears to be to pit Supergirl against all of the superpowered teams of the DCU, starting with the JSA, then the Titans, now the Outsiders, and next the Justice League. Perhaps the Legion in #5, who knows? Both Morrison in ASS (yes, I think that acronym is hilarious) and Loeb in SG use mad evil villain Luthor rather than the Wolfman/Byrne businessman Luthor, but Loeb manages to make him sound like a complete idiot rather than a menace. He’s just a loudmouth bully in a suit (Luthor, not Loeb :p) and Supergirl comes across as quite unlikable too. It’s so bad it becomes somewhat entertaining viewed in that light, aided by the penciler being the artistic lovechild of Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee, which is about as backhanded a compliment I can make—but if it wasn’t for the certainty that Loeb is leaving this book in a few issues (along with the titular character, perhaps?) to go write another book for Marvel that will be offensively late as well, I’d be dropping this like a stone. I’ll admit though that the concept of a black-and-silver evil Supergirl outfit is kinda hot ;)

Luckily, the bitter pill of Supergirl was easy to swallow thanks to the writing skills of Dan Slott, Ed Brubaker and Brian Vaughan. Dan Slott was responsible for the fun yet not silly opening issue of the Thing’s new ongoing series. I was most sceptical when I first heard about this but it turns out that my misgivings were unfounded. Paired with artist Andrea DiVito, who previously worked on more cosmic stuff like Thor’s final story-arc and Beta Ray Bill’s mini-series, he tells a tale of a man turned monster, both reviled and revered—which sounds serious and intense, but it’s light and breezy instead. Cauldron the Scalding Man is one of my favorite oddball villains already! The art is sleek, fun, and sexy when it needs to be. The writing is straightforward fun too, as is the plotting, which contrives to team up Ben with Nighthawk and the Constrictor! An unlikely trio if ever I saw one, and nicely reminiscent of the old Thing team-up series, Marvel Two-In-One (I have yet to devour the first Essential of that one, too). Odds are good that Iron Man will show up too since Tony Stark was in the crowd who got transported to the villain’s hide-out as well, so here’s already looking forward to an action-packed second issue. I also get the distinct feeling that Milan Ramada, the meanie responsible for the Thing’s current trouble, will turn out to be a new, female Armadillo. I don’t know why, it could just be the letters of her name, but her doggie makes me think of an armadillo too, and the original Armadillo would’ve made a good foe for the Thing to fight... But anyway, this is a good comic, so my decision to support Slott through single issues rather than trade paperbacks turns out to have been well-founded. As an added bonus I now have an alternative Fantastic Four title to enjoy, since JMS’s FF, Millar’s Ultimate FF and the Marvel Knights FF don’t do it for me and I’ve been missing the presence of an ongoing FF-related adventure to read. I truly wish Dan Slott would take over a Spider-Man title soon, because I’m yearning for some fun Spidey yarns as well. For now both the She-Hulk and Thing series should be enough to tide me over though.

Even though I kept on saying I wouldn’t, I bought Books of Doom #1 and X-Men: Deadly Genesis #1 (I had to settle for the ugly Quesada cover), because I’m an impulsive weakling. Both of these are written by Ed Brubaker, whose work I’ve enjoyed on such titles as Batman, Gotham Central, Catwoman and the current Captain America series (yes, I know I need to read Sleeper and Point Blank, don’t rush me). I may not have been a fan of his Authority maxi-series, but I’m looking forward very much to him taking over the writing on Daredevil with Michael Lark on art chores. In the meantime, both these Doom and X-Men minis should keep me entertained. I’ve only read Deadly Genesis so far, which wasn’t too bad. Frankly, I’ve lost all interest in the X-corner of the Marvel Universe, but I’m willing to sit this one through simply because of Brubaker, although I’ll admit that I’m not opposed to Hairsine’s art either. It all flows well enough and there’s some sense of menace and mystery, so we’ll see where it goes in a few months time (no doubt this one will suffer various delays as well, based on Hairsine’s track record). The back-up story didn’t do much for me, it stayed on the surface too much. Better luck next time. From what I understand, Books of Doom is basically a retelling of FF Annual #2, which featured his entire origin story (beautifully told, too, one of the best Stan and Jack collaborations of the period). I’m assuming things will be fleshed out more and updated for the 21st century. It’s got art by Pablo Raimondi who did a very nice job on last year’s Madrox mini-series, so if I like this first issue, I’ll be around for the full ride. The cover is pleasantly impressive already, so that’s a good start!

Runaways v2 #10 was another pleasant read. Vaughan and Alphona remain a strong creative team and the kids starring in the book are still likable and “realistic”, as far as that goes for superhero comics anyway. What’s odd is that this issue features several of the much-maligned New Avengers, yet does not announce so on the cover. In a way this is good, because Jo Chen keeps on knocking these beautiful covers out of the park, yet considering the sales bump the obvious presence of Spider-Man and Wolverine would’ve given the arc, I’m surprised they don’t let an unwitting audience know about this. Story-wise I have no real complaints, other than being put off by the implied rape scene. I don’t know what it is, but scenes like that simply feel out of place in a world full of brightly coloured superheroes. Turning supervillainous acts into something this base and, well, intimate, is far less entertaining than a plot to destroy/take over the world. But aside from that, I feel that this book remains on track, and I am hopeful for a fun team-up with Spidey next issue. Vaughan is another one of my picks for Amazing Spider-Man, if bloody Straczynsky ever leaves (the day can’t come soon enough), so it’s nice to see him writing one of my favorite superheroes in this fashion.

The last two things I got were Back Issue magazine #1 and Top Ten: Beyond The Farthest Precinct #4. I adored the original Moore-scripted and Cannon/Ha-penciled maxi-series, but this one just doesn’t live up to it, although Jerry Ordway sure does his best to make the pages pop. Maybe this fourth issue will improve the overall quality of the arc, but despite several individual scenes that were okay enough, the story as a whole hasn’t impressed me very much. It may perhaps be unfair to judge the quality of a title based on Alan Moore having written it in the past, but that’s what you get when you publish a sequel that’s not by someone of the same high caliber. In any case, I do like the art and don’t feel like this is a waste of money, so it’s all still good, but if this were written by Moore, there’s no way it’d still be unread, a full day later ;) Back Issue, then, is a comics magazine that focuses on the ‘70s and ‘80s, which is perfect for me since I adore the ‘80s in many regards anyway, especially comics, and know very little about the ‘70s, so it’s a combination of going down memory lane and getting a cool history lesson. This issue has a long interview with Nick Cardy (of original Teen Titans fame) and pieces on the genre comics (martial arts and romance especially) that have gone the way of the dodo. Lots of pencil sketches again too, as usual. One of the best bargains in comics—and a much longer read, to boot! This one’s highly recommended for anyone who likes to read about comics rather than just reading comics. I hope it’ll be around for a good long while to come.

All in all, a good week. I hope next week will be just as good!