Bought/Thought for September 28, 2011 - SPOILERS

[TheCorpulent1]

Green Lantern: New Guardians' first issue was less than impressive. The condensed version of Kyle's origin was good. The plot seems interesting enough, but there's frankly just not enough of it. It takes Tony Bedard the better part of 20 pages to tell us who Kyle is, imply that you, like a couple of characters in the issue itself, probably don't care about him (yet, presumably), and show that rings from the various Rainbow Corps are flocking to him. Why? Don't know, check next issue. So there's not a lot of content here for the money, unfortunately. Tyler Kirkham's art is pretty good, but it doesn't make up for the decompressed pacing.

Aquaman, by contrast, was pretty good. It also didn't have a lot of plot, I suppose, but Johns makes up for it by giving us a good idea of what the tone of the series will be going for. Aquaman's kind of a big question mark for a lot of people, I'm sure, since he's never really gotten the kind of star treatment Johns seems determined to give him now, so easing readers into reading about Aquaman by integrating all the s*** he takes into the comic itself is kind of clever. It gets a bit old to me because I already love Aquaman, but I'm sure it's reassuring to the people who've picked up this issue due to the hype while still wondering why, to some extent, in the back of their minds. The Trench folks look like they might be interesting, but it's too early to tell. They seem to be a lot more tribal and uncivilized than the Atlanteans, though. I'm looking forward to learning more about them. Speaking of Atlantis, I like the idea of separating Aquaman from the kingship for a while. I hope he does eventually get sucked back into Atlantis and its politics and headaches, since it really enriches the character, but for this back-to-basics start, limiting Aquaman to Mera and his father's New England lighthouse sounds good. Simple, easy for the masses to wrap their collective head around, and a good way to focus on Aquaman just being Aquaman, which more people need to realize is awesome. Ivan Reis' art is spectacular, as always too.

The Mighty Thor's first arc ends on a decent note, which I suppose is appropriate. It's had spectacular moments and awful moments, but for the most part it's hovered somewhere right in the middle. The priest being made into the new herald of Galactus comes off very goofy, and I can't say Coipel's design for his herald form is very inspired. The Surfer getting stuck back on Earth for the umpteen-millionth time is as tired as it sounds. Thor losing his s*** at Loki is ham-fisted and neglects the complexity of both their relationship and Thor's personality. But it's just the latest symptom of Fraction's problem, which is that he seemingly thinks of Thor as little more than a rage machine. The Destroyer's presence is just stupid. Odin has it steal Mjolnir from Thor and then it only appears for like two pages before Galactus backs off due to entirely unrelated circumstances. Waste of the character that comes off as just another way for Fraction to manufacture some dickish angst from Odin and Thor.

Frankly, this issue was just tiresome to me because of Fraction's constant mishandling of Thor. I tried desperately for the first few months of this series to explain his mishandling away or find excuses to justify it, but the fact of the matter is that the man simply writes a bad Thor. That's it. That extends to most of the other Asgardians too. They're like bad impersonators of the characters I know and love. It's depressing to see them this way, but I know it's futile to wish Fraction would just finish out his run and leave anytime soon because the comics are still selling well and Thor's got a lot of buzz from the movies right now. As bad as Bendis twisting the Avengers around into horrible parodies of themselves was, seeing Fraction do it to Thor is exponentially worse for me.

Secret Avengers was all right. I was excited for Ellis' run after his first issue because he had the Secret Avengers face down such a great, crazy threat. But now he's followed that up by pitting them against... a truck. He does his level best to make it interesting, I'll give him that; but in the end it's still just a truck, so it's hard to wrap my head around any roster of Avengers having a hard time with it, let alone this roster of super-badass Avengers. The ending is good for the chilling implications it presents, but that's not really enough to save this issue from feeling generally kind of stupid. Also, Kev Walker's style doesn't suit the Avengers anywhere near as well as it does the Thunderbolts, although he still does okay.

Annihilators: Earthfall was also just all right. It's main failing is that there's not much in the way of explanation about why the threat on Earth is so dire, especially when we find out that that too is a result of the Universal Church of Truth's actions. Basically, it comes off looking like Cosmo pulls the Annihilators off of an assault on massive Universal Church starships blasting the crap out of each other in space to deal with... a bunch of camouflaged Universal Church aliens on Earth. What? Anyway, there are a couple other little points I took issue with--Quasar being the only one who gives a s*** about Earth even though Beta Ray Bill has also sworn to protect it and Thor not being with the Avengers who respond to the Annihilators' arrival--but those are relatively minor (and obviously reflect my personal bias as a huge Thor fan). Overall, it was an okay start to an arc that I have a feeling is going to be underwhelming, but we'll see. Tan Eng Huat's art looks a bit cleaner here than I've seen it before; I wonder if it might be the inker.

The Rocket and Groot backup is fun but it's over too quickly to really savor it. Mojo is a great villain for the two of them, though, so I have high hopes for its future parts. Timothy Green II provides great art that really jumps off the page, too.

Bought plenty more this week so I'll get around to those eventually.

 

[Duker Jay]

What did you think of the beard on Thor?

More importantly, why did it all of a sudden appear?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Because Thor pushed the hair follicles out of his face through pure force of will.

I actually didn't like the beard. It looked really weird on Coipel's Thor, probably because Coipel always draws Thor with a weird-shaped caveman face.

 

[Duker Jay]

I thought it looked really strange. Like all of a sudden Thor's jaw shrunk two sizes too small.
And, he doesn't seem to have it anywhere else. I just don't get the significance of having it. At first I figured maybe it was to denote a passage of time...but then they didn't even mention. Loki didn't make any reference to it...not even a peep.
And it doesn't really look like it'll have any pertinence to the next arc since it's apparently a Odin/Serpent backstory.
Anyway...

 

[JewishHobbit]

*sigh*

I bought nine comics this week... you'd think I'd like at least one of them. I can't say there's a single comic that I read that I'd define as being really good... and I'm struggling to call any of them mediocre even. I will say this though... my shop sold out of tons today again. I had remembered to call them about 1pm (2 hours after opening) to hold a copy of Green Lantern: New Guardians and Justice League Dark. I got there at 4:30 and they had apparently sold out of JLD before I called. They called their sister store, who still had a copy, so they gave me someone else's and they're having that copy sent to their store to replace it. So I got what I wanted. I really wanted to skim the Fury of Firestorm and maybe get it but it was gone so that's a no go. Oh well.

Justice League Dark #1 - This was alright but there isnt' really a plot here. Basically, something is going wrong and we see glimpses of the cast... and that's it. I finished it and really had no idea what I just read. It might be a good set up for the first arc but the first issue itself did nothing to pull me in. The characters and artist make me want to continue for a while but Milligan's always been an overrated writer in my eyes. I'm hoping he pulls this one out and makes it great but I'm not holding my breath.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #1 - This one disappointed me a lot. We get a recap of Kyle's origin, which I guess is nice for potential new readers (though they'd still not get it as the whole scenerio surounding his origin wasn't talked about) but I got nothing out of it. It was a waste of space for me. Then other rings fly off people to Kyle and he's attacked... the end. Just like in JLD, this issue had pretty much no substance... all set up. I'll stick with this for at least the first arc but I've already decided to drop/not pick up Green Lantern Corps and Red Lanterns. I'm not against dropping this one too.

Fear Itself: Hulk vs. Dracula #2 - While the spontaneous buy of the first issue imperssed me and made me eager to read the rest of this mini, this issue made me regret spending the money on it. Nothing really happens. At the end of last issue Dracula sent some people to attack Hulk to measure him. This issue Hulk smashes ininterestingly, Dracula watches, and then announces they're at war. It had a slightly better plot than JLD and GL:NG but not by much. The only semi-interesting thing about the mini is my curiosity of what's going to come of this Raizo vampire. But yeah... disappointing followup to the first issue. I'll probably skim the last issue to see if I want to buy it.

Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #2 - I don't know... I was just bored with this issue. I liked the first issue, maybe due to Iron Fist's prominant role. He's not in this one much and I didn't find the Bride of Nine Spiders as interesting either. I've never really found Shang-Chi to be all that appealing so all in all I was bored. Then the main foe comes into play and it seems like I should know him but I have no idea nor do I care about him. Maybe it has something to do with the main Spider-Island event, which I'm not reading. Yeah, pretty disappointing, though not as bad as most of the rest. Like with Hulk vs Dracula... I'll likely skim the last part to decide if I want to buy it.

Annihilators: Earthfall #1 - Well... at least it isn't $5 because then I'd be furious with this. I didn't much care for the original Annihilators mini and this one isn't much better. It might be better as it moves forward but I think I just don't care about the characters. They all play best when bounced off of someone more relatable and none of them are relatable. Quasar's the closest but he's never done anything for me. Also, they just on a whim mention Silver Surfer's departure without any explanation. Reading Corps' review of Mighty Thor gives me an idea of why but it would have been nice to get an explanation in the actual comic.

As for the RR & Groot story... it was okay. I wont' say it was good because it wasn't but the final page could bring some promise for the issues to come. I'm not a HUGE fan of the villain but it could work well here.

New Avengers 16.1 - It's no secret that I go against the flow when it comes to Bendis but this issue bored me to tears. I think the biggest thing was Neal Adams's art. I know he's a legend and all but I just don't like it... at least not here. Norman breaks out of prison... but I thought I'd heard he already broke out during the Osborn mini... I could be wrong. And the characters just weren't as fun and defining as Bendis usually writes them. They were all just so boring and the plot was boring and I just found I didn't care. It could just be that the art completely took me out of the story but I don't know... I think this was just a bad package all the way around.

New Mutants #31 - I quit. I didn't even finish this issue. I made it around halfway and just gave up I was so uninterested. I skimmed the rest and realized that I just have zero interest in this book at all. I don't think I'm even going to bother with the next issue. I LOVED X-Man when he first came out but DnA have taken away any interest I have in him. I used to LOVE Cannonball and Sunspot but, again, DnA have made them uninteresting. The ONLY reason I'm not dropping this book immediately is that I'm curious what's going to happen with Blink in the next arc. I consider her a loose Generation X character so that's got my interest... but I'm not holding my breath.

Honestly, between this and Annihilators: Earthfall... and then Earthfall before that... I've been very disappointed with DnA. Even Heroes for Hire didn't exactly impress me (I dropped it afterall) and the majority of their cosmic stuff post War of the Kings was only mediocre. They're quickly becoming a falling star for me.

X-Men Legacy #256 - This arc has sucked. I thought Age of X was decent and then the aftermath of it in this title was fantastic through the end of the Legion arc. Then this arc started and I was super stoked and it's just not been good. This issue itself proved just as impressive as the previous two issues... which isn't. I just don't care and I'm quickly beginning to not mind Carey's leaving the title. Sad but true.

Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive! #523.1 - I don't read this book. I've never even skimmed it, but Phaed has been complimenting it left and right and when I skimmed this issue I thought I'd give it a shot randomly. It was the definition of a spontaneous buy. So I brought it home and I'll be honest, when I said I could barely call anything even mediocre, I lied. This really was a GOOD issue, but just not quite good enough to make me want to continue reading. If the next story wasn't a Spider-Island tie-in I'd be more interested in trying another issue but I'm not messing with all that. I've only read two issues of the Kung Fu tie-in and I'm already bored of it.

But I don't really regret buying the issue. It was good... and maybe if it falls on a light week I'll give the next issue a shot, but I'm not holding my breath. I'd likely buy them at half priced books if I see them though.


Best and Worst of the Week

Best: Black Panther - This was the obvious choice and it's sad that it's so obvious because it didn't exactly blow me away. Decent issue though.

Worst: New Mutants - It's sad that a comic I just flat out stopped reading just barely beat out about 6 other comics for worst place.


All in all, I am just very disappointed with this week. This is probably one of the worst quality weeks of comics for me in a very long time... maybe ever. I've never been so frustrated at the end of reading so many comics. At least Black Panther gave me a slight breath of fresh air.

 

[WolfCypher]

Amazing Spider-Man 670
I haven't really been liking SI as much as I'd hoped. I'm not hating it...but I guess I set my expectations to unrealistic heights. I did like how this book is telling us what's going on in the tie-ins around the main story with Spider-Man and JJJ, especially since I had no plans on getting most of the tie-ins (Deadly Foes, Venom and Spider-Girl so far being the only exceptions). Ramos's art is still...hit or miss. This week it was better, but still I wish we had a different artist for this event, where there are so many characters, so much action, and so many faces present. His stuff at the beginning of Big Time was actually manageable...what the hell happened since then?! This was probably the best issue of this event yet (NOT counting spin-offs and side chapters), giving us one big story with a few abridged side-stories peppered in.

Venom 7
Well I was dying for this issue to come around. It is the best purchase for me this week (please consider the possibility of bias). Why is the SI side stuff entertaining me more than SI's core story? This issue ties-in strictly with ASM 670. In fact, you are best off reading this issue before reading ASM. I really didn't like the ongoing artist of this series, but his art has actually grown on me. I'm starting to like it, even if the Venoms of this issue looked weird in some pages (its the long gangly stick arms that used to bother me, and there's plenty of that in this issue). I would have definitely enjoyed the conclusion much more so had the solicitations NOT teased us with the spoilers ahead of time that Anti-Venom (the symbiote, not Eddie) was going to die. Should'a kept that under wraps. Venom haters, stop hating. This series is working. Just READ it already.

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man 2
Issue one introduced us to Miles and his family and gave us a very slow start. Issue two is no different. I jokingly wonder if we won't even see Miles in action until like issue 5. I wouldn't be surprised if part 3 was mostly him just trying to design his costume. Hmmm...I don't think I want to spend what little comic money I have on this anymore. I may just wait for the TPB. Arrrhhh. And this would be the worst of my purchases.

Spider-Island - Herc 8
The premise of Herc masquerading as Spider-Man had me sold from the get-go. This arc hasn't been exactly what I expected, but I decided to stick with it. Hmm. Not really anything to say. I...ummm...liked this issue just enough to not warrant any regret. Huh. So, anyway.

Teen Titans (2011) 1
I gave up on the Teen Titans after a looooooong stretch with them.
I do have to wonder why didn't DC take this opportunity to brand these guys as Young Justice? In a lot of ways I actually liked this issue one over Justice League. The art was good, the story was solid, and the changes to the characters introduced actually didn't put me off. Considering the television series, they could have helped market that series, vice versa as well, by the two sharing the same title. Plus, I always preferred the YJ name over TT, especially when the veteran members far past their teen years keep rejoining.

The Savage Hawkman (2011) 1
Herc and Hawk were the two issues I really considered skipping, but I caved in and got these two. I have long given up on trying to understand the origins and histories to the Hawk-characters, so I'm glad this issue doesn't bring any of them up. Oddly, it doesn't establish a new one, either. I'm confused...does this happen after Brightest Day? Was Carter Hall one of the few not effected by Flashpoint? Does he remember dying (I mean, during Blackest Night...and Brightest Day, I guess) and losing Shayera? Will these questions be addressed? What's happened with his life? Well anyway, great art, great writing, and they finally gave us a modern Hawkman who has real wings and NOT a harness he wears. AND apparently...the Hawkman gear was magically alive... Yeah, I'll come back for issue two. See how long that'll last.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Journey into Mystery's writing was as top-notch as ever, but Whilce Portacio's art really brought the issue as a whole down. I really can't stand his art. Everything looks all misshapen and inconsistent and frankly it's very offputting to look at. But I weathered the terrible art and was rewarded with the latest part of Loki's plot to save everyone he loves and screw everyone else. It's good. You know that already if you read it, and if you didn't, what's wrong with you? Read this s***.

I'd review Justice League Dark myself, but I pretty much felt the same way as JewHobs. Too much random stuff, not enough coherent plot. The Enchantress is f***ed up, Shade's got some weird issues, I have no idea who June Moone is but there's apparently a ton of her running around getting hit by cars, Madame Xanadu's a junkie, Zatanna's somehow unstable, and there are people better suited to dealing with magic problems than the JLA. That is literally all I got out of this issue. I'm disappointed because most of the (ugh) "DCU Dark" line has been excellent so far--Animal Man, Resurrection Man, Swamp Thing, and DC Universe Presents all rated among the best reads of their respective weeks for me--but that record seems to come crashing down to mediocrity with this series' debut. I'll stick with it through the first arc since I understand team books especially need a bit of time to get off the ground, but based on #1, I'm not optimistic.

Avengers Academy finishes up its Fear Itself tie-in while managing to continue with its ongoing plot threads excellently. The big shocker ending of the issue is that Veil, after having weathered the worst that the hammer-possessed Absorbing Man and Titania could throw at her, angrily quits the Academy because superhero life is too much for her. So now we know who the mysterious departure from the team is. Honestly, I don't think I'll miss her much. I know her ambivalence was a symptom of the coming-of-age formula for the book and all, but she really kind of irritated me. I'm looking forward to the upcoming new arrivals to Avengers Academy a lot more.

Captain America and Bucky mines the past for another solid story. This time, Bucky's feeling down because, well, shucks, he's just a normal kid hanging out with these big-time heroes with superpowers in the Invaders. Can you guess where the story goes from here? Yep, the Invaders get captured and it's up to BUCKY THE NORMAL GUY to save the day! In spite of the predictable and clichéd nature of the story, Brubaker does manage to make it engaging. Samnee's art certainly doesn't hurt either.

Angel & Faith continues with Angel's quest to resurrect Giles. It's a testament to Gage's talents as a writer that even though I kind of hate how we got to this issue's situation (Angel getting turned evil and killing someone close to Buffy again, then zoning out into a guilt-ridden trance like some kind of weak-willed *****), I'm still thoroughly engrossed by the characters and story presented herein. The prospect of resurrecting Giles snaps Angel out of said trance and Faith reluctantly goes along because, frankly, it's better than watching Angel waste away staring at the walls. The issue of Angel's being there for her when she hit rock-bottom comes up, of course, and it's a perfectly logical way to justify her tagging along even though she's apprehensive (to say the least) about this idea of resurrecting Giles. But that's all basically backstory. The substance of the issue comes from Angel and Faith essentially running around as a detective duo, shaking down demons for information, following a trail of clues, and eventually having a showdown with a bunch of demon thugs when they finally find their objective. It's exactly as fun as it sounds, and it works really well to bring out some of the best aspects of both characters without beating you over the head with them. I would consider myself much more of an Angel fan than a Buffy fan at this point, so it is indescribably wonderful to see Angel being treated so well in the hands of as great a writer as Christos Gage instead of being dragged through the mud by writers like Brian Lynch at IDW. I'm really glad the Buffyverse is all under one roof again if it means more comics like this one. Also, Rebekah Isaacs is an excellent artist. I'd never heard of her before this, but I'd definitely be interested in seeing more of her art when this series is through.

Wow, it's a Gage-heavy week. First Avengers Academy, then Angel & Faith, and now Astonishing X-Men. This is the conclusion of his Brood arc in Astonishing X-Men that was awkwardly intertwined with some other arc by Daniel Way that I didn't bother to learn the specifics of because it's by Daniel Way. I'm ambivalent about this story. On one hand, it was great to see Beast come to the X-Men for help when his girlfriend was in trouble. As much as I love Beast with the Avengers, I understand and agree with Gage's notion that they're just a team while the X-Men are his family. I also loved the idea of a mutant Brood whose 'power' is the ability to feel compassion (and the fact that he had ties to the Warbound's Brood from "Planet Hulk" was a nice touch). It'd be great to see this mutant Brood show up again later, maybe even as an X-Man himself. Shadowcat and Lockheed's reunion was somewhat touching too--even for me, and I don't really give a rat's ass about Shadowcat or Lockheed. But all of those good parts were tainted a bit by the X-Men and their kill-crazy approach to the Brood here. They don't just decide to kill the Brood; they're raring to kill the Brood. They only grudgingly let some of the Brood survive at the end of this issue because they're an endangered species and they might be vital to the cosmic ecosystem. So the implication is that this group of X-Men would've been perfectly happy to commit genocide--this group of X-Men who include among their number Beast, the X-Man who quit the team because of Cyclops' murder squad. I have a hard time reconciling the X-Men's kill-crazy mentality regarding the Brood with everything else I know about Beast. It makes for a strange dissonance in what this arc presents to me, which makes reading it a very jarring experience that keeps me from enjoying it as much as the otherwise great writing, dialogue, and art imply I should. But whatever, it's over and now I'm back to not reading any X-Men comics at all, so I guess it's not really a big deal in the long run.

I'm not really sure why I'm still reading FF. It's kind of boring and I find I don't care about what's going on at all. In this issue, Black Bolt is a dick, Doom fights the other villains who are supposed to be his allies, and Reed talks a bit. Oh, Doom gets enslaved by one of the evil Reeds, but obviously he'll get out of it. Hell, he's probably just biding his time now. I don't know. This book is just... blah. I think I'll drop it.

Herc was fun. It's a real shame that this crossover came along after the cancellation because, really, this is what Herc should've been about all along. Hercules needs to be fun, not a mopey *****e. Between Herc as a crazed servant of the Spider Queen and him doin' it with Arachne while the X-Men watch helplessly, this was a fun issue. If only we'd had a few more like these earlier in the series.

Last but certainly not least was Incorruptible. The big bad that appeared in Coalville earlier is revealed in this issue to be St. Lucifer. I can't say I was all that impressed with him, as he appears to just be a supervillain who has his s*** together a bit more than the other supervillains in this universe. Most interesting thing going on with him is that the recently returned Jailbait has apparently joined up with Lucifer. I have a feeling she's really infiltrating Lucifer's organization to help Max, but we'll see. The real treat comes at the end of the issue, when St. Lucifer's attack on Max's prison (yeah, that thing he was building on the edge of Coalville was his own personal prison for his former villain friends) is called off due to the sudden arrival of... wait for it... the f***ing Plutonian! Ooooooooooh snap, s***'s gonna get crazy next issue!

 

[Keyser Soze]

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #1

Justice League Dark #1 is a strange comic. Demonic creatures appear on the street. An amnesiac woman generates a mass of dopplegangers in the middle of the freeway. Characters are attacked by storms of rotten teeth. Women melt, cows give birth to machinery, power stations turn sentient. We get a sense that these events are linked, due to an immensely powerful witch known as Enchantress going mad and imposing the chaos of her mind onto the outside world, and we are thrown into this chaos in media res. It’s all a bit overwhelming, and we are left feeling like the members of the Justice League who make a cameo here: that we’re a bit out of our depth.

It’s definitely strange in a good way, though. Writer Peter Milligan gives this whole first issue a haunting, ethereal quality that feels like a much better showcase for his creativity than the underwhelming Red Lanterns #1. As the narrative progresses, we get a steadily escalating sense of dread and foreboding, a tangible feeling that there is something seriously wrong with the world, and though the specifics may not yet be clear to us, the stakes are terrifyingly high.

If I had a complaint to make about Justice League Dark #1, it would be that John Constantine and Deadman are only featured for one page each. For me, the team lineup gathered for this comic is more exciting than the roster for the relaunched Justice League, and the two components of this lineup I was most interested in seeing were Deadman and especially Constantine. As a result, it was a bit of a disappointment only getting the briefest taste of the roles they might play in issues to come. That said, this does give us a taste of how they’re going to slot into the larger narrative, and I must say I prefer this approach of giving us a glimpse of the disparate threads before they come together than the Justice League approach of not even seeing all the characters featured on the front cover.

But the minimal involvement of Constantine and Deadman is compensated for with some rich characterisation of some of the other players. Zatanna is originally introduced working alongside Batman, suggesting that her history of being a Justice League ally is intact. But it soon becomes clear that, for this particular threat, Zatanna is much better equipped to combat it than her superhero friends, and she demonstrates that in a battle with the likes of Enchantress, she is much more of a force to be reckoned with than they are. We also get a couple of effective scenes with Madame Xanadu bookending the issue. Continuing on from her strong portrayal in Demon Knights a couple of weeks back, here we see a Madame Xanadu that is more experienced, seemingly more powerful, but also suffering from the greater knowledge now afforded to her. But, haunted and plagued by her own personal demons as she is, it seems it is Xanadu who will act as the catalyst to eventually bring our team together.

I was surprised to find that perhaps the standout characterisation of the whole issue was that of Shade the Changing Man. Now, I don’t really know anything about this character. I know of Shade the Changing Man as part of DC’s British Invasion that would eventually become the starting lineup of Vertigo, and I’m aware that it is Milligan’s most acclaimed work, but I’ve never got round to reading any of it, or regarding it with the same admiration as some of its contemporaries. But in a comic full of memorable set-pieces, Shade’s introduction is arguably the best scene of the bunch. For a total newbie to the character such as me, we are given an introduction to his powers and what he’s capable of, and we get a shocking twist on the familiar “hero’s girlfriend threatens to leave him if he keeps on choosing work over her” set-up. The recurring theme of this issue seems to be the tenuous, shifting nature of reality, and so it’s perhaps appropriate that someone with reality-altering powers such as Shade would play such a memorable role here. I’m now definitely curious enough to go back and check out Milligan’s earlier work with the character.

Perhaps, then, it was a wise choice to not place so much focus on Constantine and Deadman in the early going. Perhaps a lot of other readers are like me, where those two were the main draw, and so featuring the rest of the ensemble early on helps us to build enough of an attachment to those characters so that when they meet our favorites later on it feels like more of a big deal.

On the art front, Justice League Dark is pretty much flawless. A lot of the titles from under the Dark banner have stood out for their distinctive art, and the stylish work of Mikel Janin continues that trend. The script calls upon him to bring some pretty crazy stuff to life, and Janin more than rises to the challenge. The standout sequence from a visual perspective must surely be the Justice League’s attempt to battle Enchantress, providing us with a suitably ghoulish image of the mad witch towering over Superman, and segueing into a tableau-style layout that evokes the inventive work of Yanick Paquette on Swamp Thing #1.

But it’s not just the big set-pieces that Janin excels at. It’s the small things, too, like the way he is able to look a derelict farmhouse look dark and menacing even in bright, cloudless sunlight, or the way Batman always manages to find himself in shadow. Perhaps my favorite touch is the detail of Deadman. A lot of artists just draw his mask as his face, but Janin draws the character with a sense of depth, where the black void around his eye sockets suggest another face lurking deeper underneath the circus mask visible to us, and the red, glowing eyes give him a quality that’s more menacing than the ghostly hero usually attains.

Of course, speaking of the glowing red eyes is a reasonable point of transition to note how effectively the colors of Ulises Arrerola enhance the aesthetic of the comic. Rather than coloring this like a regular comic, Arreola gives everything a waxen, pastel-style shading, with the characters skin having a textured, flesh-like quality. The “almost real but not quite” effect adds to that eerie feeling permeating the book, making the comic look as strange as the story.

Justice League Dark #1 is a comic based largely around foreshadowing. We see the threads of a plot, and the players are carefully laid out before us, but this is almost entirely set-up. But it’s written and drawn compellingly enough that I’m already invested, and eager to see that story fall into place.


AQUAMAN #1

I have a friend called Sergio, and he’s a massive Aquaman fan. For the many years I’ve known him, his unwavering support of the undersea hero made him the subject of much ribbing from myself and our mutual geeky friends. And when even other comic geeks are ribbing you about your favorite superhero, you know you’re in trouble. I’ve laughed at plenty of the tried-and-true “Aquaman is lame” jokes from various pop culture sources over the years, and while I was sure he wasn’t as lame as those gags made out, he was never a character I ever felt much inclined to read about, and so – until now – I’ve never bought an Aquaman comic. Despite all this, whenever Sergio would write about Aquaman, he’d touch on a deep and fascinating mythos full of richness and epic scope for those who cared for it, and I always thought that if an actual comic could portray the world of Aquaman with the same passion as my friend, then the character could stand to become a lot more popular.

Then I read Aquaman #1. Sergio, feel vindicated: this comic’s for you.

I’m not going to pretend like this relaunch of Aquaman as part of DC’s New 52 came totally out of the blue and took me by surprise. Truth be told, I’ve been at the very least curious about the title ever since the creative team was announced back in June. See, as part of DC’s ongoing attempt to restore credibility to this tenured Golden Age hero – following on from the groundwork laid in Blackest Night and Brightest Day – our buddy Aquaman was paired up with the same dream team that helped elevate Green Lantern from obscure hero punchline to A-lister: writer Geoff Johns and artist Ivan Reis. Though the work Ethan Van Sciver and other artists did on Green Lantern: Rebirth and the early issues of the last Green Lantern relaunch also played a role in elevating this fallen mythos, it was when Ivan Reis stepped onboard that we got such classic, top-selling tales as Sinestro Corps War, Secret Origin and Blackest Night, making Johns/Reis the pairing most synomonous with Green Lantern’s resurgence. Who better, then, to attempt the same trick with Aquaman?

Geoff Johns has long had a talent for taking classic characters who have been around for ages, honing in on that one most enduring core quality and bringing it to the fore in a way that makes the character feel fresh and relevant. In the case of Aquaman, that enduring trait he singles out is that scorn and mockery the character has to deal with, which Johns slyly transfers from an opinion held by readers to one held by people within the DCU. Repeatedly throughout the issue, criminals, cops, and even regular citizens (particularly one internet blogger who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Fraction) make gags about how lame Aquaman is, how he’s just “the guy who talks to fish.” At first, this is played for laughs, effectively so (Johns has been stretching his funny bone a lot more since the relaunch, I’ve noticed). But as the issue progresses, this becomes a poignant statement of character.

Through conversation with his wife Mera, we learn that Aquaman has chosen not to return to his undersea kingdom, as he feels like his human appearance meant the Atlanteans never truly accepted him as one of their own, even when he was their king. And thus we get a sense of what it means to be Aquaman: he works tirelessly to defend two realms, land and sea, and on land he isn’t appreciated and dismissed as the “fish guy”, while in the sea he is scorned for being too human. Arthur Curry is a man with no true home, and thus it’s appropriate that his abode of choice is a lighthouse on Amnesty Bay, on the boundary between land and sea.

It’s also worth noting that it’s his father’s lighthouse. A recurring theme in Johns’ character work, particularly in his revival of Silver Age heroes, has been the long shadow cast by lost parents. That is in effect once more here, with happy childhood memories with his father seeming to haunt Arthur’s thoughts. Some words of wisdom from his father – about how he could have had the more glamorous role of ship captain, but chose instead to remain as a lighthouse keeper because it was his responsibility, and one has to live up to responsibility even when it’s thankless – seem to serve as the grounding for Aquaman even in the face of mockery and rejection from those he protects. These little flashbacks and references to Aquaman’s past were also useful for me, as I’m not overly familiar with the character’s origin.

Johns crafts a simple, straightforward, highly accessible tale here that does its job at introducing this character to new readers better than many of the New 52 have done. There is a fine balance of action and characterisation to make this issue a rewarding read in its own right, with the looming threat of the monstrous Trench adding an incentive to come back for issue #2. If I had any small nitpick with Johns’ storytelling here, it would be that I don’t like the translations, showing the Trench talking to each other in their own language. It “humanises” them, makes them that little bit less intangible and monstrous. Think how less scary the xenomorphs in Aliens would have been if every so often we got subtitles saying stuff like, “Hey bro, we totally smoked those Marines there! We, like, totally ATE their asses!”

But that’s a small nitpick. Overall, some fantastic writing by Johns here. In the New 52 as a whole, I’ve noted a return to form for Johns, specifically that he seemed to be firing on all cylinders with Green Lantern #1. But Aquaman #1 is easily his best effort from this first month of the relaunch.

Of course, Johns’ writing is only half of the equation. The other half lies with Ivan Reis. I was a huge fan of the stunning work he did on Green Lantern: his clean, beautiful pages were the sign of a superstar in the making. Then, his work on Blackest Night followed through on much of that early promise, showing he was more than capable of handling a massive event. But in the later issues of Blackest Night, and particularly going into Brightest Day, I felt like his work began to get more or a rough, “grim-n-gritty” look I was less keen on. Thankfully, Reis is back on top form for Aquaman #1, a fact made clear immediately from the stunning, instantly iconic cover to the issue: surely one of the best covers of the New 52.

Looking inside the comic itself, the interior art is just as impressive. The action scenes are dynamic and exciting. The Trench look truly monstrous and frightening – a triumph of design. But my favorite parts of the artwork in this issue were the smaller beats, such as the silent reaction shots of various characters that really help sell a gag, or the flashes of annoyance Aquaman gives when someone cracks a joke, or – in one particularly badass moment – when a bullet grazes past his forehead.

As always, the near-symbiotic relationship between penciller Reis and inker Joe Prado bears splendid fruit. Prado’s lines are fine, but have just enough thickness to make Reis’ characters jump off the page. And surely the distinct, textured look of the Trench is thanks largely to the contribution of Prado. In fact, those two opening pages where the Trench are introduced could surely be called an inking masterclass, as we’re presented with the ominous darkness of the ocean depths, then with the emergence of creatures even darker from within.

I also want to acknowledge the coloring of Rod Reis, in particular as regards Aquaman’s vest. I’ve seen some people question why Aquaman has reverted to his classic costume, when his pirate look was much cooler. But the glittering, shimmering quality of Aquaman’s orange vest shows how cool the costume can be. Much like how Hal Jordan’s old duds were revitalised by injecting some glowing green, this plated (and, as we discover, bullet-proof) design looks cooler than ever thanks to Reis’ deft coloring of it.

On just about every level, Aquaman #1 is a huge success. While my curiousity had been piqued, I did not expect going in that this would be DC’s best new release of the week, but it was. I’m now an Aquaman fan, thanks to this issue. And I’m sure I won’t be the only one. I think my friend Sergio is about to have lots of company.


THE FLASH #1

In this relaunch from DC, The Flash #1 finds itself in a position quite similar to that held by Batwoman #1. I read both titles in their previous incarnation. In the case of both titles, the main draw for me in their pre-relaunch run was stunning artwork. Both titles have their respective great artist returning to the book, but now taking on the role of writer/artist, with the respective big name writers that were previously working on the books departing. As a result, with both titles there was a question of whether the artist would be able to hold up the writing end of things. But what sets The Flash apart from Batwoman is that I had dropped The Flash pre-Flashpoint, and so this new volume had the added challenge of trying to draw me, as a lapsed fan, back into buying the title monthly. I went into this comic quite determined not to like it – with all the great titles I’ll be coming back to next month, I had already convinced myself this would just be a one-issue “sample and pass” situation – but I grudgingly have to admit that this really was good.

The Flash really is a team effort. It’s co-written by artist Francis Manapul and colorist Brian Buccellato, both working together to both create the story and give it such a distinctive look. When the art team and the writing team is one in the same, it really enhances the symbiotic nature of story and image in comics in fascinating ways.

I adore Manapul’s pencils. I’ve long admired his ability to create a sense of place in his work. While backgrounds seem to be a chore for some artists – even some talented ones – Manapul relishes in them, creating incredibly detailed cityscapes and varied, vibrant locations. And the people he puts in them are well drawn too, with a stylised flair. This is the stuff I already liked about Manapul’s work, but going into The Flash #1, he pushes his art to a whole new level. With intricate layouts and stunningly crafted pages (look how enthralling a page he can shape out of Barry Allen hanging around his apartment), Manapul is able to create a dizzying sense of speed and motion that marks him out as the perfect match for a character like The Flash.

But a big part of what makes Manapul’s art work so well is that it’s colored by Buccellato. His colors have a brushed, almost water-color quality to them, making his pages look unlike anything else DC has to offer. The palette he uses has a warm, nostalgic glow to it that’s just pleasing to the eye, and is the ideal compliment to Manapul’s vibrant linework.

So, as expected, The Flash looks great. But how’s the writing. Well, I must admit, this comic had a lot going against it going in. In the wake of the relaunch, Barry has been de-aged, his relationship with Iris annulled, and worst of all, Wally West – my favorite Flash – has been apparently erased from the history books. Readers looking to see these grievances are going to be sorely disappointed. But if you are willing to keep an open mind, and approach this title as a blank slate, there’s a lot to like.

Barry Allen and his supporting cast are economically introduced, and though his new antagonist suffers from that old “Hey, it’s your dear old friend from way back that we’ve never heard about until now” chestnut, he displays some powers that should make him an intriguing foil for the world’s fastest man. Aside from that, the plotting is pretty light, but it zips along at a nice pace (appropriate for a comic starring The Flash) and it never felt like it was dragging. I’d say I’m interested enough to want to know what happens next, at least.

So, The Flash #1 is an aesthetic triumph, and Manapul and Buccellato do a good enough job with the writing that the absence of Geoff Johns is not felt too sorely. I was expecting this to be a comic I’d be dropping after issue #1, but it looks like I’ll at the very least be back for issue #2.

 

[Harlekin]

June Moone is the Enchantress' alter ego, for the record.

 

[Red]

Why did Thor suddenly grow a beard

 

[Keyser Soze]

June Moone is the Enchantress' alter ego, for the record.

See, I didn't know that at all. I just assumed June Moore was a new character created for this story. That adds a whole new dimension of weirdness to the story.

 

[runawayboulder]

Why did Thor suddenly grow a beard

Because he's hardcore.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Justice League Dark #1 - This was alright but there isnt' really a plot here. Basically, something is going wrong and we see glimpses of the cast... and that's it. I finished it and really had no idea what I just read. It might be a good set up for the first arc but the first issue itself did nothing to pull me in. The characters and artist make me want to continue for a while but Milligan's always been an overrated writer in my eyes. I'm hoping he pulls this one out and makes it great but I'm not holding my breath.

Bawha? Milligan isn't even talked about all that much, and most people don't seem to even like most of his modern stuff all that much, how in the world can he overrated

 

[TheCorpulent1]

June Moone is the Enchantress' alter ego, for the record.

See, I didn't know that at all. I just assumed June Moore was a new character created for this story. That adds a whole new dimension of weirdness to the story.

I agree. Would've been nice if that were explained in the issue for us new readers, what with this whole initiative ostensibly being an attempt to ease new readers into DC's comics.

 

[Themanofbat]

Bawha? Milligan isn't even talked about all that much, and most people don't seem to even like most of his modern stuff all that much, how in the world can he overrated

I can't speak for K.Snoze, but in the Vertigo world, where Milligan has written a lot of stuff, his arrival on books seem to be highly touted, and most of his work has been mediocre to decent with the odd gems... hence, the over rated comment.

At least... that's how I feel about his writing...

 

[Tron Bonne]

I can't speak for K.Snoze, but in the Vertigo world, where Milligan has written a lot of stuff, his arrival on books seem to be highly touted, and most of his work has been mediocre to decent with the odd gems... hence, the over rated comment.

At least... that's how I feel about his writing...

Well, I don't know about that. I know most of his Vertigo has been top notch, so that can't be right

 

[TheCorpulent1]

On various recommendations and my own curiosity, I went back and tried a few of DC's other relaunches that I passed on the first time around.

Justice League was a good choice for me to skip. Hal is one of the single most annoying characters I've ever read in this issue, referring to himself in the third person and aching to assert his alpha-male-ness over Batman the entire time. And what the f*** is Cyborg doing in this series? Seriously, what a stupid character to raise to the Justice League, let alone recreate as an apparently founding member of the League. It's an insult to Black Canary and the Martian Manhunter and Hawkman and all of the other characters who are frankly just better than he is who were cut from the League's formation for no apparent reason. If I were a new reader, this issue would've probably convinced me that the Justice League is made up of a**holes and I'd have dropped it. As a longtime reader who's seen this pattern play out before, I'm still dropping it. This is Bendis' New Avengers under DC's banner--a relaunch that will undoubtedly sell well but that misses the point entirely of why the titular team is so beloved.

Justice League International gave me a better first issue than its bigger sister title, but I won't be coming back for #2 of this either. JLI's problem is that the strength of the team lies in the Giffen/DeMatteis era and evoking in the present all the fun and chemistry of that period. That's kind of ruined by a relaunch where none of the characters know each other and the Blue Beetle who acted as the glue holding the whole team together no longer even exists. It's a decent start to an adventure story starring unrecognizable characters wearing recognizable costumes. Maybe new readers will enjoy it, but I can't read it without thinking of what it's lost and how much better it'd be if it hadn't.

I, Vampire was a huge surprise. I actually stopped reading it halfway through because the first half focuses a lot on the Twilight-ification of DC's vampires. Sunlight only vaguely weakens them and cancels out their powers... except Andrew and the newborn vamp shapeshift in broad daylight like two panels after he says that. Inconsistency in the first issue isn't usually a good sign. Oh, and then there's the star-crossed (and utterly banal) romance between Andrew and Mary peppered throughout; two naked, eternal twenty-somethings waxing about their feelings doesn't really interest me at all. But I came back and decided to at least finish the issue after reading some other stuff, and I'm glad I did. The premise of the series--a vampire war going on in the shadows of the DC universe, superheroes and all--is compelling. I'm looking forward to the vamps' first tussle with a Green Lantern or Superman. Andrew's actually not too bad a protagonist when he's not being a romantic weenie, too. The art is also very good and does a lot to establish the dark, mysterious tone of the series. I'm more surprised than anyone to admit this, but I will be back for #2.

Batgirl disappointed me but, in fairness, there's pretty much no way it couldn't. I'm 110% against Babs returning to the role of Batgirl and abandoning the much, much more interesting Oracle role. People talked a lot about how she might still continue to do Oracle stuff but just call herself Batgirl. Well, that's clearly not the path Simone decided to take. This is Babs being as traditional a Batgirl as you could possibly imagine, complete with tired clichés like moving into a ratty apartment (even though Babs had no trouble living pretty well as Oracle), whining about how she doesn't have as much cool stuff as Batman, and making idiotic rookie mistakes like freezing up at the sight of a gun and watching while the villain throws a dude through a window. I get her fear of being paralyzed again, but I'm sorry, you can't really call yourself a superhero and expect anyone to excuse a f*** up on that level. That's pretty much a "hang up the cape and call it quits" sort of mistake. It's pathetic to see Babs reduced to that from the powerful, impressive hero Oracle was. The whole issue left me feeling vaguely disgusted, in fact, so I'm definitely not coming back for #2 of this.

The Flash was okayish. The story's decent, Barry's almost likable, and Manapul's art is gorgeous. But the "almost" in that sentence is where I stumble. In the context of this issue, taken in a vacuum, Barry's certainly a likable character. Unfortunately, this issue comes hot on the heels of Flashpoint, wherein Barry remakes the universe at the end. Barry, who was desperately in love with Iris West and who treated his nephew Wally like a son and who acknowledged and cared about his grandson Bart. So why does Barry's part in this new universe that he remade start off with him on a date with another woman? Why is Wally nowhere to be seen? Why is Bart apparently unconnected to the Flash legacy over in Teen Titans? The whole thing strikes me as another Brand New Day situation, where the "bold, new" Spider-Man era opened with Peter sucking face with some ho who clearly wasn't the wife he'd just abandoned in "One More Day." Here's the upbeat, optimistic Barry we know and love, only he's all happy-go-lucky in spite of having lost everyone he cared about. Maybe I'm being unfair since Barry obviously doesn't seem to remember the pre-Flashpoint universe here, but I don't really care. Like Batgirl, there's a sense that something is just wrong with the picture this comic presents, and I don't really feel like courting that sense of unease by continuing to read it.

Teen Titans sucked. Kid Flash sucked. Cassie "don't call me Wonder Girl" Sandsmark sucked. Brett Booth's "everything must have sharp points!" art sucked. Tim s--actually, Tim was okay. His costume is a colossal eyesore, but Tim himself was roguish and upbeat and super-smart, just as Tim Drake should be. But he's about the only thing that works in the issue. Everything else is a pale imitation of much better tales with these characters from before the relaunch. Also, I don't like the implication that all of these teen heroes are suddenly emerging out of nowhere. It makes it seem like Robin was the only established sidekick and everyone else's clock has been reset. That makes for a jarring and very offputting dissonance between the familiar, well written Tim and everyone else in the comic. If anything, it would've been a lot smarter to keep Tim, Cassie, Conner, and Bart's continuity roughly the same, establish that they've got a strong relationship, and make them the core of the series. Tim can't do it on his own. He comes off as a relic of the pre-Flashpoint universe mixed in incongruously with all of these newfangled (and mostly terrible) reinventions of everyone else. Which sucks.

If Teen Titans merely sucked, then The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men was downright painfully awful. This is easily, far and away the absolute worst thing I've read from the relaunch so far. Ronnie and Jason are de-/re-aged to be roughly the same age and reinvented as students at the same high school. Ronnie's a dumb, closet-racist jock and Jason's a super-smart geek cliché, complete with unrequited love for his less geeky female friend. The dialogue is awkward and sometimes painful to read, the racism 'undertones' are so ham-fisted it's pathetic, and the Firestorm character itself has been altered beyond recognition. I'm not really sure what this series is trying to be, but one thing it's clearly not trying to be is a Firestorm comic. I will definitely, positively, absolutely not ever come back to this comic, for #2 or any other issue, so long as this creative team is in place. Just horrible, horrible stuff.

Batwoman is another comic I'll stick with. I was reluctant to try it because of Rucka's absence. Honestly, Batwoman wasn't a particularly good character until Rucka really focused on her and made her great in Detective Comics. Rucka's a really, really good writer, so I didn't think Williams would be able to follow in his footsteps and make the comic as good as it was under Rucka. But, aside from an awkward pick-up scene between Kate and Maggie Sawyer, this issue was really good. I remember others mentioning that the issue read like it had clearly come before this whole relaunch business was even an issue, and it definitely does feel that way. Bette Kane even mentions fighting Deathstroke with the Titans, only we know from Teen Titans that that incarnation of the team--and maybe even the team itself, depending on how the rest of the first arc plays out--never existed anymore, and the proposition Batman mentions at the end is almost certainly Batwoman's invite to Batman, Inc., of which she was already shown to be a member months ago in the Batman, Inc. comic. But those are minor nitpicks. The story is strong enough to move past them. I'm looking forward to Kate and Bette's bond strengthening while Kate and the Colonel's bond deteriorates. That's a great interpersonal conflict to exploit, given how much Rucka showed Kate relying on her father in his run. Williams' art is gorgeous, as always, and his big two-page illustrations are so good that I don't even mind how often he uses them. Definitely a keeper. Thanks to Ccon and Mysti and everyone else who kept recommending it to me.

Superman was a good read. It's wordy, as others have noted, but that's just George Perez's writing style. Frankly, it made the issue feel like it had a lot more content packed into it than most of today's writers can manage in two issues. The overall plot is pretty solid, with the main plot points revolving around the supporting cast and Clark's life as Clark; Superman's fight with the fire alien kind of rolls along in the background until coming up to the fore as a means of uniting all of the other characters' plot threads. Cleverly done. Even so, my main urge is to write this series off and just continue with Action Comics since, however good Superman is, it's George Perez doing fairly standard Superman fare, whereas Morrison pretty much can't help bringing something fresh and novel to everything he writes. But I think I will stick with this series for a little while, at least.

 

[runawayboulder]

Well, I don't know about that. I know most of his Vertigo has been top notch, so that can't be right

As a Hellblazer reader I'll say that while it's not terrible, Milligan's run has been very matter of fact.

 

[WOLVERINE25TH]

I'm behind on everything so I forget when it came out, but I just read Supergirl today. I literally read it in THREE MINUTES. I read it before a commercial break was over, which is how I KNOW it was THREE F***ING MINUTES. If I'm spending $3 on an issue, you better give me something more than brief REPEATED dialogue and a massive fight issue as your FIRST DRAW-ME-IN ISSUE.

If this thing was $4, I would have pitched a serious fit. I can't remember the last time I felt so ripped off by a comic.

 

[runawayboulder]

Superman was a good read. It's wordy, as others have noted, but that's just George Perez's writing style. Frankly, it made the issue feel like it had a lot more content packed into it than most of today's writers can manage in two issues. The overall plot is pretty solid, with the main plot points revolving around the supporting cast and Clark's life as Clark; Superman's fight with the fire alien kind of rolls along in the background until coming up to the fore as a means of uniting all of the other characters' plot threads. Cleverly done. Even so, my main urge is to write this series off and just continue with Action Comics since, however good Superman is, it's George Perez doing fairly standard Superman fare, whereas Morrison pretty much can't help bringing something fresh and novel to everything he writes. But I think I will stick with this series for a little while, at least.

Did anybody else get Superman #1? Perez has already quit the book with 7 issues in the can. Giffen and Jurgens are taking over. I wasn't planning on getting this book but it really interests me that George bolted already....

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Eh, doesn't necessarily mean anything. Perez hasn't done a lot of continuous work in years. Maybe his health problems were acting up or maybe he just never intended to stick around for long. Giffen and Jurgens are a pretty solid team, so I'll probably stick with it through their run to see how it is.

That said, it's not the first time that sudden changes have happened. The Fury of Firestorm went from being written by Ethan Van Sciver in early solicitations to being written by Van Sciver and Gail Simone like a month before it released. J. T. Krul is off of Green Arrow pretty soon, to be replaced by Giffen. I think there were another one or two sudden changes too.

 

[Keyser Soze]

I, Vampire was a huge surprise. I actually stopped reading it halfway through because the first half focuses a lot on the Twilight-ification of DC's vampires. Sunlight only vaguely weakens them and cancels out their powers... except Andrew and the newborn vamp shapeshift in broad daylight like two panels after he says that. Inconsistency in the first issue isn't usually a good sign. Oh, and then there's the star-crossed (and utterly banal) romance between Andrew and Mary peppered throughout; two naked, eternal twenty-somethings waxing about their feelings doesn't really interest me at all. But I came back and decided to at least finish the issue after reading some other stuff, and I'm glad I did. The premise of the series--a vampire war going on in the shadows of the DC universe, superheroes and all--is compelling. I'm looking forward to the vamps' first tussle with a Green Lantern or Superman. Andrew's actually not too bad a protagonist when he's not being a romantic weenie, too. The art is also very good and does a lot to establish the dark, mysterious tone of the series. I'm more surprised than anyone to admit this, but I will be back for #2.

A fair review, and I'm glad the issue won you over, but one note: vampires who can walk around in sunlight isn't a Twilight innovation, it's actually part of Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel. It was the Nosferatu film that added the element with the sun making vampires go up in smoke.

 

[Keyser Soze]

I, VAMPIRE #1

And to think, at first I wasn’t even going to get I, Vampire. Amidst all the DC Dark titles unveiled as part of the DC Relaunch back in June, I, Vampire stood out as one comic I definitely had zero interest in getting. I didn’t like the cover, and the concept suggested in the solicit for the first issue just didn’t appeal to me at all. It seemed like another soppy vampire romance to appeal to the Twilight crowd, and I figured that so long as the excellent American Vampire was going strong, surely any other vampire comic would be utterly redundant. I know I’m not the only person who reacted that way at the time, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who still think that now, and as a result have decided not to pick up I, Vampire #1. That would be a terrible mistake.

Based on some stunning preview art from the book released a little while back, and the generally high standard of the other titles released under the Dark banner thus far, I decided I’d give I, Vampire a go, at least for an issue. It wasn’t a series I was particularly anticipating, with Justice League Dark being a title I was much more excited for amongst this week’s offerings. But, though Justice League Dark was also great, I was shocked to discover that I, Vampire trumped it. In fact, based on the disparity between where this title ranked on my personal hype list and its final standing among how I’d rank all the #1s I picked up this month after reading them, I, Vampire #1 might stand as my biggest sleeper hit of the New 52.

I had zero awareness of the previous incarnation of I, Vampire under the House of Mystery banner, as written by J.M. DeMatteis back in the 80s. As far as I was concerned, this was not a relaunch, but the launch of a brand new series, introducing new characters and mythology into the DCU. And, for someone coming into the comic with that perspective, I, Vampire #1 works very well. We are efficiently introduced to our two key players. Andrew Bennett, our hero, is a very old and powerful vampire who has retained his humanity, and so has devoted his eternal life to slaying his own kind. Mary Seward, our villain, is Andrew’s great love, and also his greatest enemy and weakness, a vampire who shares much of his power but none of his love for humanity. At this early stage in the narrative, we only get hints of their relationship and their shared history, but it’s a testament to the immense skill of writer Joshua Hale Fialkov that these both feel like rounded, real characters with their own nuanced personalities even without us having to immediately get exhaustive biographies explaining in detail exactly who they are.

Instead of starting with an origin story or exposition, Fialkov throws us right into the thick of things, juxtaposing the horror and piled corpses of the morning after with the battle of wills and sexual chess games of the night before. Both prove equally engrossing. The former shows Andrew’s power, but also the compassion and humanity that Mary intends to cruelly exploit, while the latter shows Catwoman #1 how to portray intense sexual chemistry between two adversaries without it feeling overblown and tacky. I’m currently reading Tumor, an earlier work by Fialkov, and that too plays with chronology, jumping back and forth. But while in Tumor there is an in-built, character-driven justification for these time shifts, here it feels largely like a stylistic choice, and while the unusual structure does make for a slick narrative, it did create the odd moment of confusion about what was going on, or when it was going on.

As I touched on above, one of the big questions for me going in is what a new vampire comic would do to stand apart from American Vampire. And the niche that I, Vampire finds is that this isn’t a Vertigo title: it’s a vampire mythology entrenched in the DCU. Though none of the famous superheroes actually show up here, they are mentioned, and how a vampire mythology might match up against them creates an interesting dynamic. Andrew fears vampires declaring war on humanity because it might result in the superhumans wiping them out. This is a world where vampires aren’t the heaviest hitters, so the question becomes, “How can they still pose a threat?” The answer Fialkov comes up with to present vampires as terrorists: waging war on a human race they view as their oppressors, with Mary as their fanatic leader fighting for vampire supremacy.

Another thing I think Fialkov handles very well is the depiction of the vampires and their power sets. Ironically enough, he is able to make Andrew, Mary and the rest feel different from a lot of the other vampires permeating pop culture nowadays by going back to the classic Bram Stoker breed: they can survive in sunlight, but are stronger at night, they can shapeshift into not just bats, but wolves and other creatures, and to kill them you have to not only put a stake through their heart, but also decapitate them. With how oversaturated vampires have become in all forms of pop culture these days, it’s hard for vampires to capture an enigmatic allure or a sense of menace anymore, but I, Vampire just about pulls it off.

I have a lot of admiration for the work Fialkov did in this issue, and it makes me keen to not just read the rest of Tumor, but pick up Echoes as well. But I have to say, the true star of this comic is artist Andrea Sorrentino. I mentioned earlier that I disliked the cover to this first issue when I first saw it, and I still don’t love it. The Barbie doll figures with their pretty, pouting faces calls up that Twilight imagery that Fialkov’s storytelling inside does so much to dispel. Also, as an interesting aside, it’s funny how I, Vampire managed to put a naked woman on its front cover (I don’t think tattoos count as clothing) without getting any of the sexism bad press other DC releases of recent weeks have got. I think this demonstrates that the criticisms aren’t about readers being prudes, as some have suggested, but rather that sexuality and even scantily clad women is fine, but it’s the cheesecake fan-service depiction of it that’s tiresome.

But moving past the cover, the interior art is on a whole other level. I described the preview pages released a while back as “stunning”, and “stunning” is the word that keeps on coming back to me whenever I try to describe the moody visuals crafted by Sorrentino. Reminiscent of the work of Jae Lee or Tim Broadstreet, Sorrentino’s grounded, lifelike depictions of characters makes the monstrosities they turn into all the more creepy. It’s also useful that he is his own inker, with the shadows around Andrew’s eyes seeming to become a seamless aspect of his base design, and some skillful use of full and partial silhouette at various key points in the comic.

Sorrentino is ably complimented by the colors of Marcelo Maiolo. As mentioned above, this issue is very much a story of two halves: day and night. And, appropriate for a tale where a vampire is the protagonist, the cool blue tone gives the night sequences a soothing, serene quality, while the stark orange glow of Maiolo’s sunlight makes the day feel harsh and threatening. Elsewhere, Maiolo operates with a faded, washed-out pallette that brings out the deep blacks of Sorrentino’s inks, and together they manage to create one of the most intensely atmospheric comics of the New 52.

I also want to point out some cool work done by letterer Pat Brosseau, seeing that letterers don’t often get as much love as they should. Notice how, in the space of a single issue, Brosseau establishes four different kinds of vampire voices through his fonts and bubbles? In regular human form, the vampires speak in normal word balloons. When Mary takes her glowing red “Queen of Blood” form, her dialogue boldens. When a vampire is stakes, the font within the white balloon grows larger, turning red. And when a vampire shapeshifts, their dialogue as a creature is spoken in a red balloon with white font. Little touches like this further enhance the shifting identity of the vampires, so kudos to Brosseau too.

So, in closing, let’s cast aside the myths and the bad press. No, this is not soppy, angsty teen love piffle like Twilight. Yes, there is room for another vampire comic, even after American Vampire. The Dark stable of comics have been among the biggest winners of the New 52, and I, Vampire is the perfect closing note to that trend. I was initially hesitant about picking up issue #1, but there’ll be no such doubt about coming back for issue #2.


THE FURY OF FIRESTORM: THE NUCLEAR MEN #1

Of all the comics in the New 52, there has been none that has jumped on and off and on and off and on and off and on my buy list more than The Fury of Firestorm. The key conflict at the core of this indecision was between my excitement over the excellent creative team – Gail Simone’s one of the most dependably great writers in comics, Ethan Van Sciver is known as a top-notch idea man, and his work on Nothingface with Kel Nuttall made me a fan of Yildiray Cinar – and the fact that I just don’t give a crap about Firestorm. Right up to the point where I picked up this first issue off the shelf, I was unsure whether or not the former could overcome the latter. In the end, however, I don’t think it could.

Gail Simone is a writer I always enjoy. But even she couldn’t get me to care about Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch. While I appreciate in theory the conflict between the two that her and co-plotter Van Sciver were trying to set up, in execution each one just came across as unreasonable in their dislike of the other, Jason moreso than Ronnie. And as a result, neither character was really able to win our sympathies as human beings before they got turned into Firestorms. Furthermore, as someone who has never given the Firestorm mythos so much as a sideways glance, I don’t think this issue did much to introduce the concept of the characters or the nature of their powers to me. Maybe the idea is to set up a mystery that will be explained over the course of the story, though, so I’ll be a bit lenient on that front.

Where Gail seems much more comfortable is in the depiction of the villains hunting for prospective Firestorms. I’ve mentioned before that Gail Simone excels at quickly establishing truly loathsome, despicable villains, and that trend continues here with some shady government types taking a “by any means necessary” approach to tracking down the Firestorm Protocols, ruthlessly killing all they come into contact with. The most horrible thing about it is how impersonal the acts of murder and torture are to them, as the agents joke around with each other and make small talk about stuff outside of work while engaging in acts of brutality. It’s little touches like this where Gail gets to impose more of her own distinctive voice onto the work.

Once again, Yildiray Cinar’s pencils are great, Crisp, clean, complimented by the lush, textured colors of Flash colorist Brian Buccellato, the best compliment I can give to the visuals of the comic is that the interiors aren’t a disappointment upon following a typically stylish Ethan Van Sciver cover.

As for Van Sciver’s injection of ideas, you do get a sense of a great twist on the Firestorm concept here, and it’s the most interesting part of the issue. But it doesn’t happen until the last page, by which point it may be too late to make an impact for this first issue.

So, after reading The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #1, I’m much in the same position as I was before. My admiration for Gail Simone, Ethan Van Sciver, Yildiray Cinar, and Brian Buccellatto too (I didn’t even know it was him working on the book until I checked the credits for this review, he displayed some real diversity from his trademark style on The Flash) remains as strong as ever, and each showcased their stuff effectively in this comic. But at the end of it all, I still just don’t give a crap about Firestorm. The creative team didn’t really do anything wrong. Maybe the character just isn’t for me.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

You've never read much about the character Firestorm. I don't know what this week's comic bearing his name was, but it sure as hell wasn't a proper Firestorm comic.

A fair review, and I'm glad the issue won you over, but one note: vampires who can walk around in sunlight isn't a Twilight innovation, it's actually part of Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel. It was the Nosferatu film that added the element with the sun making vampires go up in smoke.

Fair enough, but it's Twilight that basically removes all of their weaknesses and neuters them into lovesick wusses, which is what it seemed Andrew and Mary were for the first half of the issue. But the comic, unlike those books/movies, balances the portrayal out later on.

 

[Dread]

This has been a very hefty week for me; a mix of indie creations and Marvel stuff. Spoilers ahoy!

DREAD'S BOUGHT/THOUGHT FOR 9/28/11: The Independent Duo

DREAM REAVERS #1: While APE ENTERTAINMENT likely makes much of their bread and butter from licensed material such as several DREAMWORKS franchises along with RICHIE RICH and STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE (whose comics are literally scented), they also are branching out into publishing creator owned material. Enter writer Raphael Moran (or Lord Blackbolt) and artists Marc Bortel, and Atul Bakshi with their series which revolves around four teenagers who have psychic powers and enters a dream world - so, so goes the premise blurb on the back cover. The comic itself is several centimeters taller than a typical comic and for $3.99, there are 28 pages of story - a far better deal than many comics by Marvel, DC, and even Image. The only dilemma is that it will already fall behind schedule, with Moran announcing that issue three may run a bit behind. However, this issue focuses entirely on introducing it's four characters as well as their powers, to a degree. Marcus Randal is a former drug addict who has been put into the Ravenwood Institute who uses his psychic powers to discover the sins and secrets of those around him, while seeking to rebel against the strictness of his dominating father. The blind Sophia Santos, or "Saint Sophie" as she is often dubbed by those around her, uses her psychic powers to perform miracles and find missing children in Bolivia, which naturally is hardly the most stable of settings. Nyla Deardon, meanwhile, is a "poor little rich girl" who can psychically command anyone to do her bidding, but has become incredibly bored with life since it now offers her no challenges or surprises. Aaron Pierce is the last of the four to be introduced, although he quickly meets with two of the aforementioned psychics; all of whom entered comas at the same time over vast differences. He has a connection to Marcus, which manifests in an extended dream sequence which is partly drawn by Bakshi which invokes an homage to Jack Kirby's over-the-top superhero style. Pierce becomes the reader's point of view character as the transition to the world of Astral begins. It's a realm in which the laws of physics and gravity don't apply, monsters lurk in the shadows, and in which what one can do and even how they appear to others depends on imagination and willpower. Pierce actually has a connection to one of these four in the "real world", which is the last page shocker.

Moran is wise to devote 90% of this issue to introducing his main characters over exposition about the realm of Astral, which will presumably start to be seen or observed by the characters in subsequent issues. The only hiccup is that it is a narration box and not any character which names Astral, which can seem a bit obligatory - but since promotions online and on the back cover have already named Astral, it isn't a big deal. The four characters provide an even split between the sexes and to a degree with archetypes. You have a helper (Sophie), a spoiled princess (Nyla), a trouble-maker (Marcus) and the lead (Aaron). They're not exactly characters as deep as the ocean yet, but for a first issue enough is known about them to start off. Aaron's introduction is the most bizarre of them since it begins in a dream sequence, which helps to break with the normalcy of the previous three; his issues and insecurities are also immediately laid bare. That could be a dilemma - knowing the neurotic tics of your hero before much else - but it at least prevents Aaron from being boring, as many "leaders" often are accused of being. While this is clearly part one of four, and 25% of the DREAM REAVERS saga, enough is set up to build anticipation for the second issue, which promises more action in Astral and thus more of a chance to learn more about it all. The artwork and colors by Bortel are exceptional, which a lot of attention to detail and color as well as a sense of flow. Astral as well as the dream sequences give him and Bakshi more chance to shine. While some elements of the premise may remind some of "A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET III - THE DREAM WARRIORS" only without a slasher villain (yet), this is at it's heart a psychic dream fantasy tale featuring a cast who to varying degrees are all manipulated, sheltered, and/or defined by the adults around them journeying to a realm where they have far more power and latitude. But as with the entire teenage experience, gaining more independence and power is wrought with challenges and threats. Overall, a solid introduction to a psychic teenager adventure series, even if Diamond's strict printing limit may require one to pre-order it from their shop, or via online circles.

CITY OF WALLS: VOLUME ONE: FIGHT OR FLIGHT: This isn't exactly a new release; the content in this volume was originally sold in 2009. This volume collects three issues of what is intended to be a six issue tale, although according to the website and Google, the rest of the series has not been released (besides issue four). CITY OF WALLS was created by writer Shaun Noel and artist Abede Lovelace (who also had a hand in the plotting), and offers a tale outside of the capes and superheroes that dominate many comics. It is set in the Asian city of Kowloon, a walled city in which the streets are too narrow for cars and in which there are only the nobles, who live in a far off section with towers and advanced technology, and the slums, which are ruled by the Triads gang. The series focuses on three youths who live in the slums of Kowloon; Daniel, Jin, and Ariana. All three of them share interconnected lives, tragedies, and ultimately dreams in a walled city which may as well be a prison. Daniel is a brilliant and scrappy boy with a flair for drawings and stories, whose father has been pressuring him to ace a standardized test that the nobles hold for their elite school, which usually offers the only chance out of the slums for many. Jin is a junkyard rat who is often timid but has a flair for building and engineering, whose father died in one of the frequent motorcycle races that are held in one of the rougher neighborhoods. Ariana helps run a small grocery store with her father, who struggles to keep heirlooms of her murdered mother, while her father seeks to forget her. Daniel's ability to make up stories inspires Jin to seek to build a functioning airplane in a bunker beneath the junkyard, which becomes their passion. Ariana and Daniel begin to grow closer, and the girl proves to be a valuable asset not only as an extra set of hands, but as a method of gaining materials from other countries like maps or books that her store comes across. While there are months to go until Daniel's test results are in, he is hesitant to leave his friends, who all envision escaping Kowloon in their plane and flying to California. Unfortunately, when Jin ventures into that rough racing section for a vital engine part, the kids become separated and under attack.

Much of the appeal of the story comes from Lovelace's atmospheric black and white artwork. While there are occasional anatomy hiccups or some rare text errors in the lettering, Lovelace does a great job of displaying the city of Kowloon as a character unto itself, and on the emotions of the characters. The story offers a mix of childhood innocence mingled with the often blunt and violent realities of an impoverished, isolated area. Daniel's imaginative stories offer a mix of fantasy elements which help alter the flow at times, but the colorless art allows the inks to really shine and set the mood. The story offers a clash between kids who dare to dream and the oppressive reality that imprisons them and seeks to shatter it. The fact that the kids envision flying a plane all the way to California - ignorant of a lot of the realities and difficulties of such a feat - showcases the ambition and innocence of youth, even in a place as gritty and hopeless as Kowloon. This is a story in which if one wanted to summarize what happened over three issues, it wouldn't take long - but it is the art of getting there which makes the story. Thus, to a degree, it is a story that is easier to read than review. Published by STAND ALONE PRODUCTIONS and COMIXPRESS, hopefully the second half of the story is released in the near future, so we can see if the "three dreamers" make it. The story focuses heavily on the characters to the point where when the violent climax emerges, one genuinely cares about their fate. All three kids have their own possible routes out of Kowloon; Daniel via his smarts, Jin via his relative in California, and Ariana via her connections. They all choose to unite in their quest, which may prove more of a sacrifice for Daniel since he's the one who has a shot at the elite noble school. While not offering the high powered fantasy of DREAM REAVERS, CITY OF WALLS is simple and effective at what it does.

Chasing dreams is a theme that many "indie" creators in the industry share, whether literally or metaphorically, and thus these two comics proved to be an ironic and entertaining.