New Comic Day

[angelophile]

New comic day yesterday. Free comic day, too, but they didn't have any of the interesting comics at my store so I contented myself with getting the 100 Greatest Graphic Novels rundown thing from Wizard and the House of M sketchbook thing. Some nice artwork but doesn't actually inform you about anything to do with the "event".

Fairly quiet week this week: I got:

Excalibur 12 (Average fight issue)
Great Lakes Avengers (GLA) 1 &2 (Absolutely sublime - the worth successor to X-Statix/X-Force)
Daredevil: Redemption 4 (Continuing the high quality miniseries)
New X-men - Academy X 13 (Wonderful Northstar tribute)
Hulk: Grey Hardcover (High quality, old fashioned storytelling from Loeb & Sale)

Cut for spoilers and for people not interested in comics.



Excalibur 12 - Essentially just a big fight issue, there's a fill in artist in the shape of Cliff Richards (presumably not the ageless Brit pop star). His art is inoffensive to the eye and the action scenes are well handled, so there's little to complain about. A good move considering the book's been running late and since it's going to set up the House of M crossover they needed to catch up. While Claremont's embraced the fun, cheesy tone of his past work in Uncanny, in Excalibur he continues to toy with the attempt to be a bit more straight and supposedly gritty as he did with X-treme X-men.

Sadly, while he's usually entertaining, he's not THAT entertaining. Excalibur's average, constantly. Dark Beast has been a good addition to the line-up as he's an interesting character. This storyline adds Archangel and Husk to the mix, but it's hard to tell what they're going to add from this issue, which is just one big punch up. The Weaponeers, a group of characters so uninteresting I don't recall their previous appearance, are attacking the island of Zanzibar. The President turns out to be a mutant, Paige and Warren get caught in the middle and a few of the Genoshian mutants turn up to lend a hand. Unfortunately, the only one with any real personality is Callisto. Hub, Shola and Karima all continue to be characterless plot devices and so there's no real personality to the fight. A little is made of the fact that Callisto and Warren probably aren't best working together since Callisto once crucified Warren by his wings, but seeing as they're not actually given the chance to interact in this issue, we don't know how it'll play out.

In other words, average characters in an average fight scene.

Great Lakes Avengers (GLA) 1 & 2 - It's been a couple of years since there was a really great comic that balanced black humor with super-heroics. X-force was that book and managed in single issues to make you care about the characters that died, quite rapidly it has to be said. It went downhill as it became X-Statix and while Marvel have attempted a couple more humor books, nothing's manage to be quite so laugh out loud funny as X-force was.

This book is. Perhaps even more so.

The tone's a little uneven, admittedly. First off, the fourth wall gets broken a fair bit, but not by the characters themselves thankfully, but rather by the narrative team of Squirrel Girl and her talking squirrel, Monkey Joe. Now, that's quite funny and a bit too cutesy and probably wouldn't work if Monkey Joe didn't steal some of the funniest lines. ("Friends don't let friends listen to the Magnolia soundtrack!"

Effectively, this book brings together the losers of the Marvel universe in a new Avengers team based in Wisconsin. These are guys so lame that even Speedball said he was too busy to join. The infamously lame Squirrel Girl; Grasshopper; Doorman - The Living Portal; Flatman - the 2D Defender!; Big Bertha, The Ample Amazon, alterego of Supermodel Ashley Crawford; Wisconsin's Winged Wonder Dinah Soar; Leatherboy (not a superhero at all, he just misread the advert) and Mr. Immortal. He's, um, immortal.

From the opening page where the dubious taste gag is that Mr. Immortal blows his own brains out and the gore spells out the title page, to the rapid deaths of some of the members (one GLA member lasts 5.8 seconds), there's a similar cynical and dark tone to X-force. But the characters are likable and there are a number of twists where a joke is turned on its head to suddenly become serious. In the end you have less than an issue to start caring about two of the character who don't make it out alive, but I actually did find myself feeling sorry when they bit the big one.

There's plenty of Marvel in jokes, silliness in the shape of Bantoc the Leaper, Katie Power gets an appearance that could be considered a little near the knuckle, many more Marvel characters appear, some so obscure I have no idea who they are, but when humor threatens to swamp the book suddenly you're brought back to earth with a bang. A great book and I'm sad it's only a 4 issue series, there's potential for much more than that.

Daredevil: Redemption 4 - This daredevil miniseries continues to roll along, never fast paced but an interesting and often chilling read. This issue things get even darker as the history of the Flood family is dealt with and it's hard going. Child abuse is central to this story now, as well as the murder of the child that set this story off, but not in the way I was imagining. Each issue grows darker and there's moments where the appearance of the spandex-clad Daredevil threatens to derail the story, rather than enhance it. I'd rather see more of Matt as a lawyer, which wasn't too apparent in this issue, rather than the flashy Daredevil. However, this is a great mini-series and when it makes it into trade form, provided the final 2 issues hold the quality, I'll be recommending it in trade form.

New X-men - Academy X 13 - Tying into the recent Wolverine issues, New X-men is a continuity heavy issue this month, but it's a testament to the writing that it never feels like it. Seeing the night that the brainwashed Wolverine kills Northstar from the kid's perspective neatly slots into the story in the Wolverine comic, as does the abridged version of how Northstar's body was stolen. presumably the memorial service that takes up some of the book is mirrored in next issue's Wolverine, where we'll supposedly see more of Bobby's involvement. It's impressive that these "retellings" of scenes that have appeared in Millar's book don't sap interest for me - rather they enhance the story as they should do. Many characters get their moment to shine, incredibly impressive given the scale of the cast and the fact there are so many ties to the other book.

This is the X-men book I wanted to read - a real tribute to Northstar, not Millar's supposed "tribute" to Northstar fans of reviving him as a brainwashed zombie and sicing him on Wolverine. the focus on Northstar's Alpha squad and particularly Victor, with more heavy hints about his sexuality, are nicely handled without becoming schmaltzy. Julian and Sophia give me reasons for me to adore them all the more. like Rahne's squad last issue, I want to see more of Northstar's squad. Presumably one of them is Rubber-Maid, from the Schizm arc of X-treme, where Jeffrey also came from, but I don't recognize the others. There are many more brilliantly handled character moments- Josh's resentment of Wolverine, Dani's impotence, Shan's dealing with Alpha Squad, David's paranoia about his fear fueled illusions in previous issues.

Excellent stuff. I can' believe sales are dropping off for this book. If anything they should be growing rapidly.

Hulk: Grey Hardcover - In the third of their "colour" books for Marvel (after Daredevil: Yellow and Spider-Man: Blue), the tried and tested team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale turn their hand to the early days of the Incredible Hulk.

Loeb concentrates on the central "character" concepts of the Hulk story - a love story; a father-daughter relationship; and a man/monster tragedy. it's pretty much the expected themes and as with the other colour books, uses a present-day framing narrative. Banner's narration gives us a grounded perspective for a tale in which his human form is for the most part absent. This book probably works best in collected form, like much of the Loeb/Sale work, with lots of lavish splash pages. I'm not wholly sure that the approach taken to the design of the Hulk and the narrative was the right one - supposedly the character was based more on the "Bulk" spoofs of the stories than on the original art style, which in my opinion means the goofiness can undermine the Hulk's supposedly shocking stature and power.

However, there is a strong, simple narrative but what helps is that Loeb adds shades of grey (appropriately) to the Hulk's personality, making him seem less like a cardboard cutout monster. There's hints of Frankenstein, of Mice and Men and the Elephant Man in there, sometimes with direct quotes. It all ties together nicely and this is another of Sale and Loeb's "Year One" books that will stand the test of time.

Comments

[shadow-weaver.livejournal.com]

neato icon =)

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

Actually, got a new version of it to upload...

[freaky-science.livejournal.com]

hey angelophile it's me Soundwave form DM.NET i just read GLA its quite cool, it's nice to see the lame-assed supers having a go, they gotta get Puple Man to show up.