I got my comics last night, but didn't post reviews because...I just plain didn't feel like it. Yeah, sometimes I have those moods. Glad everyone else has posted some great thoughts about their picks! I'd better catch up and contribute.
As always, full spoilers aplenty.
Dread's Bought/Thought for 8/20/08:
CAPTAIN AMERICA #41: Promising the "payoff" to some 3 years of storyline, the Red Skull angle is seemingly winding down as James "Bucky" Barnes continues to embrace his role in the legacy of Captain America. What I like about the covers is while they may sometimes seem repetitive, they aren't nearly as stale and boring as a lot of other comic book covers (THOR or the first few years of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN being the poster children for boring covers).
Bucky and Falcon trail the weakest link in the Kronas chain, the newly revived Grand Director. Mad a hatter, he leads them right for the bad guys' latest base. The only caveat is that Bucky and Falcon have seemingly raided a dozen of these things now and the bad guys always find a way to escape, so convincing me that "this time, it is definitive" is not an easy task. Like convincing the viewer that, "This time, Dr. Kimble WILL stop the One-Armed Man" after a season or two of near-misses. Plus, while Brubaker may be tying off some plot points, he isn't one to discard every bolt of the engine. I am sure there will be plenty of cogs to play with here, which is as it should be. Still, I like the dynamic between Bucky and Falcon, the "old partner" and "newer partner" for Steve Rogers. While Bucky may be numerically older, Falcon in some ways has more experience (although not in all ways, and to a major degree), so it creates an interesting dynamic.
It is revealed that Dr. Doom's time platform is being used by Zola to seperate Lukin and Red Skull, as their union appears to be doing psychological and maybe biological harm. With Faustus' "Skull Cap" going off the rails and needing AIM to reclaim him, Faustus decides to flee before he gets executed and sets up the base's downfall via Sharon and SHIELD. While Sharon has survived, her fetus apparently wasn't so lucky. Which one could say is about the most violent way to prevent a hero being saddled with an unwanted baby in quite some time (the mother is impaled on a sai). As for why Red Skull was focused on her, it could be because of her position? SHIELD agent, close to both Steve and Bucky, and so on?
However, while Black Widow and Falcon lead SHIELD against the base and after Skull, Bucky isn't there. He is preventing a presidential debate from turning into a bloodbath by Sin on live TV. While a scene like that, especially with the ending splash page, is essential to start cementing James as a legitimate replacement for Steve, part of me would be very irritated if Captain America, ANY Captain America, didn't take down Red Skull personally at the end. That's like those episodes of SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS where Spider-Man didn't get in the final shot. You know you always hated that (as did most kids, which was why it rarely happened). After everything that has happened between Bucky, Lukin, and Skull, a showdown seems to be the best way to do it. Brubaker likes altering expectations, but he also knows how to frame explosive and iconic moments, so I do have faith that it all will be satisfying at the end. Especially as I doubt Skull, Lukin, Sin, Zola, AND Faustus are ALL going down in the next issue or two. I mean, Faustus just shaved his beard to go underground. Sin is defying her father more. And so on. For all we know, maybe Brubaker wants to expand on the legacy thing and move Crossbones from minion to master sometime soon. There's really no one else who could carry on for Skull.
As always, CA is a solid superhero espionage adventure. There is enough action and build-up every issue that even issues that set things up are rarely wasted. Buck, Falcon, and Widow make a good team and it is great reading their adventures every month. Issue #50 is only 9 months away but I hope Brubaker stays on much longer than that. This is a defining run and anyone who is handed the reigns will not have an easy task of running off riding.
GHOST RIDER #26: Aaron continues to truck onward and blaze some ground taking over from Way's launch, and I still contend the franchise would have been better had Aaron been tapped about two years sooner and launched this book. This issue all but confirms it, with him diving headfirst into GR continuity from the 90's (yes, during the Mackie years) which can be almost as much of a bear as Hawkman's, especially with the new angel revelation. Huat also appears to be the regular artist for a bit, which takes some getting used to. He has a style that reminds me of some former SAM AND TWITCH artists from the 90's who were still in the "inspired by Todd MacFarlane" mode. Some of his angles for panels need work as sometimes he uses a bit of an overhead angle that doesn't quite work.
This issue focuses on Dan Ketch leading a gathering of GR's rogues on an attack on a shack and an old man, who turns out to be the Caretaker, former protector of the "Medallion of Power" people. These consist of Blackout, Doghead, Death-Ninja, and The Ord. Aaron even seems to recall that the original Orb was killed in AVENGERS SPOTLIGHT #21, but apparently had a successor who showed up in DEADLINE #2 in the Bar-With-No-Name. Aside for Orb, all of them had major associations with Ketch. Danny at first doesn't want to kill Caretaker for Zadkiel, but when he confronts him about seemingly "lying" to them by with-holding information, things go to a head. Death-Ninja and Doghead are seemingly murdered, but believe it or not, Orb's "eyeball" is supposed to be a helmet (unless this "new" one literally has an eyeball for a head) so he may have survived off-panel (D-List or not, Ghost Rider only has so many rogues). In a way it did seem awkward for Danny and Blackout to be teaming up, considering all of the bad blood and combat between them, but I suppose Aaron did it for the same reason some writers had Wolverine and Sabretooth team up; tension. It works for the most part, although Huat struggles with Blackout's design and makes him almost look like a tween girl zombie with the braided hair locks.
Meanwhile, both Blaze and a mysterious nun appear to converge on one spot.
Obviously, the "return of Dan Ketch" angle has added a bit of juice to the storyline, especially as he and Blaze are enemies. Enought that a spin-off is coming just for Ketch. It makes sense since for many in the 90's, he WAS Ghost Rider. Sure, sure, you could say that both WINTER SOLDIER and the Red Hood stories from Marvel & DC made bringing back "sidekicks" in vogue again. It also could be a way of explaining the continuity (Dan Ketch may be bound to the demon Zarathos, and Blaze being empowered by dark angelic power). Aaron at least shows a willingness to try without remaking the wheel (or trying to), and that is the kind of writer every comic should have.
Hopefully he dusts off some more of Ghost Rider's old rogues. The beauty of old cast-off's is you can revive them and sometimes even remake them easier than more "used" characters with defined milage. Huat's art isn't terrible but he is among the worst artists on this volume so far. Still, he can tell the story well enough and is decent with action sequences, so it gets things done.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #4: This issue was sold out of my LCS and I had to go to a second a few miles away to find this, and this was THAT shop's LAST copy. GOTG appears to have some amount of buzz for a "small" book. It is outselling NOVA after all. The fact that it is an almost obligatory SECRET INVASION tie-in also likely has something to do with it.
Abnett & Lanning, like most good writers try to do, use the tie-in elements to add to their own storyline. With new recruit Major Victory trashing Knowhere with a battle with a revived Starhawk, many on the station and even on the team don't appear to trust him; nor does Rocket Raccon appear to like Cosmo (and vice versa). When an explosion on the station knocks out teleport machines and reveals three Skrull corpses, everyone is on edge and wondering if everyone is who they say they are. Especially since so many of them have undergone "changes". Gorani and Synosure, two members of the counsel that organizes things at Knowhere, also have issues with the new "vigilante team".
Frankly, the SECRET INVASION tie-in is not a welcome one on this title for me. Some may argue, "it makes sense for Skrulls to do stuff in space". Under normal circumstances, true. But SECRET INVASION is about the Skrulls going at Earth en masse' for both their new cult and revenge for past failures. They have little purpose to be bothering a Celestial head that is LITERALLY at the edge of the universe. That is like if the United States wanted to aid their war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan by...attacking New Zealand. It makes absolutely zero tactical sense on any level. The Guardians are not involved in Earth affairs and haven't in a good, long while. Even if they were, it is debatable if they would help when they are off to defend the entire universe, much less one planet on it. The other major reason it that it invites the risk of one character on the team being offered up as a Skrull agent to provide a "shock" and whatnot, and that would be annoying because I like all of the cast members here and don't want to abandon anyone.
Plus, part of what makes GOTG fun is that it was free of a lot of the self-hating angst and infighting of a lot of superhero books and focused on high adventure and some amusing (and bickering) one-liner interaction. Now we have, sigh, yet ANOTHER team at each other's throats before issue #6. It seems no team, in Heaven, Earth, or space, can organize without everyone wanting to murder each other. It is a wonder Civil War ended at all, considering the almost psychotic mistrust each and every Marvel superhero appears to have for each other. Not even Batman was that paranoid (he at least could team with the JLA and not assume they were all immediately plotting evil behind his cape). While I know Abnett & Lanning are hardly the inventors of this kind of team dynamic (some would argue it has always lingered, and simply was brought into the forefront by Bendis, and then imitated by everyone else since), I liked GOTG as one bastion against that, and now it appears to be gone. Especially since tie-in sales NEVER linger long and this book already has developed a steady audience.
That isn't to say I disliked the issue. Far from it. As always, Pelletier's artwork is masterful. DnA get in some good interaction with their characters and use the story to play on the character's insecurities. They also reveal the tidbit that Peter Quill had Mantis "teep" into the minds of some if not all of them to get them to "gell" as a team faster. While part of me understands that, again, we simply are back to the tired cliche of, "team formed under evil circumstances" that has been beaten into the ground a billion times with Professor Xavier these days. True, "slightly altering people's emotions to get them to work together to save the universe" isn't all that nefarious, which is why I am iffy about it. I simply am tired, so ****ing tired, of reading team books where we can't even get a year without going through the "team discovers a mole, overreacts, pummels each other" type of story. Some Marvel fans would say, "hey, Stan Lee wrote that kind of stuff in the 60's," but that is my point, it is CLICHE, it is STOCK, move the **** on already! It is even MORE predictable than the "heroes save the day" ending because it reeks of artificial drama and angst half the time. It was old when Homer was writing epic poems. I really like GOTG and saw it as a return to another era of comic book writing, a better, less pretentious era, and the fact that SI is essentially forcing the book into the same basic storyarc that Bendis appears to write in every single issue of New Avengers (everyone hates each other) disturbs me. It is like seeing a steady A+ student suddenly turn in a B+. It still is far above the norm, but a cause for concern.
Granted, there is an easy way out of this. None of the team turns out to be Skrulls. The only Skrull(s) turn out to be the two "counsel" people who started sowing the seeds of mistrust, or at least helped it along. The team comes together despite (or due to) Quill & Mantis' tampering and the Skrulls are toast. And that will and would be fine. I just am not ready to bid farewell to, say, Drax or Cosmo or whoever because of a silly tie-in that, in NO way, will improve sales beyond the 1-2 issues it is in. GOTG is a cult book and it's trying to be mainstream, and that always brings some issues with it.
I liked the mystery surrounding Victory and Starhawk, and as always the characters have very distinct ways of speaking to each other and play off each other very well (the animal rivalry between Rocket and Cosmo actually makes sense, and seeing the still-regenerating Gamora is almost painful). Even with my concerns, this is an excellent team book. It just is a team book that, frankly, has chosen to wander near a team storyline that I usually dislike or have seen botched simply to suckle at Bendis' sales teat for a few months. Here's hoping that DnA can buck the trend and make a good story out of, frankly, the most overused and overdone team storyline in the history of fiction. While they are usually masters at their craft, ANNIHILATION CONQUEST did have some hiccups. Still, no SI tie-in that I have read has been bad or even worse than the SI mini itself, so I do have some faith. I just fear a character being wasted is all.
IMMORTAL IRON FIST: THE ORIGIN OF DANNY RAND #1: Basically a reprint of MARVEL PREMIERE #15 and #16 with new digital era coloring that detail Danny's origin story from the 70's, with classic art & writing by Len Wein, Gil Kane, Roy Thomas and Larry Hama. The only new material is a 2 page "framing" sequence by Fraction & Kano, which naturally seems a bit tacked on as you would imagine after some 20+ years of being a couple, Misty would know Danny's complete origin. But it still is a workable way to present the material. It also offers a more complete and updated Marvel Handbook bio for Iron Fist, who hasn't gotten one in 3 years and had a SLEW of updates since. The 70's stories read a bit dated (especially in MS #16 when the bad guy keeps calling Danny "Joker"), but in a way it helps to cement how Iron Fist can appeal to both the mystical martial arts genre and the superhero genre and why he has endured all these years. Plus, if you haven't read the material or don't have the ESSENTIALS volume, it isn't bad. The 2008 era coloring for 70's stories is a bit of a novelty, and it doesn't hamper them at all. I don't regret the purchase and look forward to the new Handbook Bio. I'm a dork like that.
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #15: Now, THIS is how a lot of team books should be. The characters aren't at each other's throats every few pages, no one hates anyone, there are deep familiar ties and a lot of amusing banter. And there isn't a drop of pretentiousness in these tales. The book exists to offer straightforward adventure stories with fun puns and nothing more, and it isn't ashamed of itself for being so. I'm hardly saying XM:FC is the model of team books, as it is also quite fluffy, but I would prefer to see more teams as how Jeff Parker writes these guys, and less, well, Bendisization (where under the slightest misunderstanding, the teammates reveal deep seeded hatreds and seek to murder).
Still without Angel on the roster and having lost Machine Man, the X-Men run across an odd UFO. It turns out to house Madame Medusa, on the run from the authorities and her old team, the Frightful Four. At first apprehensive of the stoic heroine with follicles of steel, the X-Men come to welcome her. Her aid is needed when the Wizard returns to reclaim both her and his ship. The banter is light and fun, the artwork by Kesel is energetic and great for the action, and in the end everything is sorted out. The fact that stories like this are almost a sideshow attraction rather than the norm either means that comics have matured, or simply entered an adolescent phase, depending on your view.
Even the return of Angel is handled without life-or-death angst. He didn't return because someone died. Or because Xavier was brainwashing him since infancy. Or because Magneto is his brother. Or because he is returning from a post-apocalyptic future reality as a cyborg. Or he is now the Angel of Death with "Call me cool, Please!" metal wings. Or because he is a Skrull. Nope. The jungle woman he had the hots for was part of a tribal marriage ceremony, and Angel isn't ready to commit to marriage as a teenager (more than reasonable). So he comes back. He stays at a hotel out of embarrassment and Xavier just helps it be more dramatic. There, that wasn't so hard. Coover's art for that sequence is naturally as quirky as always.
As for the next issue, I am simply surprised this book actually made it 2 whole years before having Spider-Man show up. Even Thor guest starred before him. That's withstraint.
