Manic said:
You really should just swing by Border's or something and read through that, if not because it's pretty much Whedon's strongest comic work to date, then at least because this next arc is going to make a whole lot more sense if you do.
Final Crisis #2
The upside is that this is as intriguing and as rivetting a Morrison story as I'd expected it to be, chock full of the cerebral and atmospheric momentum that so few books out there have, and only getting better with each passing page.
The downside is that this has somehow managed to feel even
less like an epic DC universe event than the issue before it. Seriously, where
is the DC universe here? The JLA is not the DC universe. Not even the JLA combined with the JSA is even remotely the scope of the DC universe. This feels so woefully finite, which is pretty much the
opposite of what the DCU is, much less a Crisis.
I'm not sure how much I like Barry's return here. Him literally running out of some sort of wormhole, in the flesh, wasn't exactly the sort of awesome that I'd expected from the DCU#0 hints. A portal opens and...Barry's back. Okay. I mean there's some fun imagery there with the Black Racer and the bullet and everything but...Barry's just back. Because y'know, something. The next issue will probably make me feel better about it, but still.
There is some dispute about the accessibility of all this...we're getting a lot of the "I don't really follow DC, please help me understand WTF is going on!!" types of posts around here and elsewhere, and at first I was sympathetic -- if not exactly empathetic -- to this plight; this whole event came upon us so suddenly and with such a mangled lead-in that it's impossible to feel completely oriented. But by this second issue, I'm getting a bit tired of what has now become people making a big fuss over a little thing.
The plot is not that complicated, people. I get that it can get overwhelming to read, especially compared to most comics, but it's not exactly a
cluster**** or anything. Final Crisis is progressing linearly, about a thousands times more linearly than either of the first two Crises were. Things are explained. You don't need to know Countdown or Death of the New Gods (so for the love of Buffy, stop asking that), you don't need to know who Sonny Sumo or Shilo Norman or even Nix Uotan is; all
three of them might as well be new characters here for what little continuity they have. I see people getting all flustered over Alpha Lanterns and New Gods and time-travelling bullets and it's like, what, you mean the Alpha Lanterns and New Gods and time-travelling bullets that they
explicitly describe in the books? Come on.
Sidebar...one of my favorite works of all time would be Morrison's "Here Comes Tomorrow" X-Men arc, of which the nuances and scope -- forget two or three read-throughs -- would take a ninth or tenth read-through to fully grasp, and even then you see something new with every new glance at the story. So to say that Final Crisis doesn't daunt me in the least would be putting it lightly indeed. Relax, sit back, turn off the whine and turn on your brain. The moral of this story is that everyone should be more like me, thanks!
(8.2 out of 10)
Trinity #4 and 5
I'm satisfied. It no longer has the drive or oomph it had at the beginning, and could stand to be less decompressed, but I'm satisfied. Still, I'm getting a bit more and more disenfranchised with Busiek's portrayal of Diana; I swear to Xander, I love all her glibness and lack of pretense here, but on the other hand we're just getting more "hurr hurr I'm an AMAZON and Amazons love fightin' all the time, HURR!" to the point where I'm simply have no confidence that we're ever going to get anything else out of her here.
The problem here is that the whole half-issue story thing actually hurts the book more than I think anyone could have anticipated. Tarot is sort of interesting but not nearly enough to have her crowding up space in a book that's
supposed to be about DC's three biggest headliners.
That being said, I think people are being
far too critical of the momentum here, and of the fight with Konvict. If we consider the half-issue situation, what we have here isn't actually five issues of the story but rather
two and a half issues of story within the span of a little more than a month. That's actually getting a
lot of story in a very short amount of time. I agree that we could be compressing the timeframe here a bit, maybe even fast-forwarding the days like 52 did, instead of taking every...single...detail...of every hour in bit by bit by bit. But I don't think Busiek's pacing here is unrealistic at all, and I've enjoyed the story, art, and [most of the] characterization that we've gotten. Now if we're back here in another month and still screwing around with Konvict or whatever then yeah, I'd start getting a bit antsy.
(7.9 out of 10 for issue #4)
(8.3 out of 10 for issue #5)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #16
Ah, Kennedy. Don't help us.
On the other hand, yay for the return of hamnoo. I'm probably the only person who even remembers it, much less would celebrate it in any way, but I'm oddly comfortable with that.
Speaking of odd, the art is odd. Tolerable by most means, but odd. I've seen Moline draw SMG better before, so I'm not sure what's up with some oddnesses here and there, more with the poses than with the faces necessarily. It actually looks more like 2008 SMG than anything that Jeanty has drawn -- because of the thinness, it has to be said -- which is oddly pretty jarring anyway.
Of the good, banter is good. Seeing familiar faces is good. The dramedy is still great. Still, I wish Joss would explore the Slayer operations more. We've been knee-deep in this organization for many issues now and to date we still have no real coherent idea how it all actually works (I suspect Joss himself doesn't either, even now, which is a whole other topic). There's...
something like a chain of command, and there's
something like bases, and
something like patrols and weapons but...it's always
something and not
thing. We need things.
We need more FRAY. If I haven't told anyone yet how I jumped out of my seat and started pumping my fists in the air in a voiceless parody of an orgasm when I found out that Fray was going to be in this book, well, I'm telling everyone now. We need Fray. We
got Fray here, and what we got was awesome, but we need more.
(8.1 out of 10)
Angel: After the Fall #9 and 10
Now that we're finished with that flashback arc which started fine but went to a boring place, the story barrels forward and I'm loving where it's going. That's the good news. The bad news is that I really feel like smacking Lynch upside the head a lot. His dialogue is basically
incomprehensible, requiring two or three reads before you get the gist of even one word balloon. Not all of Whedon's work flows that naturally in written format either, I'll grant, but this is pretty ****ing
ridiculous. Is it supposed to mirror the way that real people talk? Sort of awkward and bumpy, and people change thoughts in mid-sentence and go off on unrelated tangents? I mean, it kind of sounds like that, but what it sounds
more like is that someone took the actual dialogue, ran it through Google's translator into, I dunno, Portugese or something...and then translated back into English with Babelfish. On top of which, I don't really think it's a good idea to have these character try to sound unscripted or whatever because this world is based off a TV show for Buffy's sake, and trying to make it sound unscripted just makes it feel further
less like it used to be than it already is...which just feels unnatural. We loved these guys because they sounded like they did. It's not a mistake to be corrected.
Or I dunno, maybe Lynch just writes oddly. I don't think so, though, because -- and this is frustrating as well -- every once in a while we'd get a really coherent, beautifully-dialogued sequence such as Wesley's interaction with Illyria, so it's not that Lynch isn't capable of writing like a normal person...it's just that he doesn't. And, admittedly, #10 is a lot better about it than #9 was, but it's far from perfect.
Oh and the art is pooptastically wonky.
(7 out of 10 for issue #9)
(7.7 out of 10 for issue #10)
Runaways #30
And so it ends, and probably my interest in the Runaways with it. I love these guys, but not quite so much that I'm willing to follow them to the ends of the Earth regardless of writer, though of course I'll give him a chance. Again, the running theme of my reviews today appears to be "wait and see."
Both the best and worst parts of this arc are very enhanced in this issue. Worst parts first: too many characters. Well, let me clarify: far too many characters that are
boring. We're getting all these drawn-out dramatic "death" scenes of all these casualties of irrational gang warfare inflicted upon for the love of Willow, no one ****ing cares. There were
so many other things we could have spent our panels on, I mean, couldn't there have been a better way to show the pointlessness and stupidity of adult conflicts without actually writing it pointless and stupid?
And the good? Whedon's grasp of these characters is such that they could be shopping at Safeway for a whole issue and I'd still pick it up. No one character really gets to be the spotlightiest, though I'm quite fond of what's been done with Nico and Chase here, slightly moreso on the part of Nico. She's still the same Nico, but she's growing up a bit. Yes, I said the Runaways blasphemy. But it's not really a Runaways blasphemy when you think about it because, from the Runaways lens, grown-ups aren't actually the ones that are grown up.
Looking back on this arc, the one thing I truly wish was that we had spent less time with characters that only have...let's be kind and call it "peripheral" interest to the overall story and more on the people like, say, Lillie for instance. We've always known that she was the old woman from the beginning, but the slight twist at the end here was a very good slight twist, and could have been better. That about sums it up, I suppose: very good, and could have been better.
(7.2 out of 10)
(7.8 out of 10 for the arc)
Astonishing X-Men #25
Okay, I never thought I'd say
this about a comic, but we're going to have to do something about these nipples. Either stop
showing them or draw them smaller than tennis balls.
A lot of people seem to dislike Ellis, but I'm pretty very in his corner. What I've read of his DC work has been superb and, on the Marvel side, I'm seriously considering picking up his Thunderbolts in trade. Yes that's right; so help me Giles, I'm actually thinking about paying actual money for a book about SHRA *******s being SHRA *******s because of how awesome Ellis has made them.
And what about this book? It's a decent start, I suppose. Let's be frank: I couldn't possibly care less about the current X-Men direction even if it managed to take corporeal form and stab me in the face. So there's that going against it. And, also to be frank, the storyline we've started off with here is pretty boring as well. If this whole cops and murder mystery story featured any other cast but the one we've got, I probably would have just read this in the store.
But what can I say? I've grown attached to these guys, this tight core that Morrison and Whedon have fostered, and am not quite ready to give them up. What really helps is that, following in the vein of Morrison/Whedon, this book very rightly feels like its own corner of the universe and only gives the most sparing mentions regarding the rest of the X-world. Again, considering that I hate the rest of the X-world, this is a very good thing. And likewise, I very much enjoy this rendition of Cyclops -- the sort of approachable, self-aware half-dork of M/W -- and I'm glad Ellis is taking their cues instead of, again, every single other X-book right now. Same with Emma, smug and snarky here but with a lot of self-deprecating humor as well, not nearly the monumental vaginal wart that every other writer seems
compelled to write her as. Storm as a cast member is interesting; she's fared better than Scott and Emma as far as recent depictions go, and yet it wasn't that long ago that Hudlin's vapid incarnation reared its mischaracterized head over in Black Panther; will Ellis recover her as well? Time will tell and so I'm on board, for the time being.
The art is...well, I do like how the characters look here, and I don't have so much a problem with it that I'd want for a different artist, but maybe we ought to look into getting a different
colorist. With the one we got at the moment, it's like we're seeing everything here through a filter of smog; everything's just so damn
gray. And you want San Jose or LA for the smog, not San Francisco. It should be early morning for most of these scenes, but hell if you could tell that from the colors.
And I'm not supercrazy about how Bianchi draws the costumes; there's this one shot of Logan's eyes near the end and you can literally see the outline of
wrinkles around his eyes...through a costume. That's...I mean, unstable molecules notwithstanding, that just rockets me completely out of the story. And then there's one panel of Storm holding a solid metallic cup...and when she raises it to her lips in the next panel, it's completely transparent. It's little things like that, like Bianchi's trying just that tiny bit too hard to be abstract.
(8.5 out of 10)
