Month: December 2007

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 21 November 2007.

Still catching up on recording my weekly haul. Two large weeks in a row didn’t make it easy to keep up, since it look quite a while just to read everything (which is sort of the point, right?). This is the haul for 21 November 2007, Thanksgiving week:

  • Action Comics #859, by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank & Jon Sibal (DC)
  • The Brave and the Bold #8, by Mark Waid, George Pérez & Bob Wiacek (DC)
  • Countdown to Final Crisis #23 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Keith Giffen, Tom Derenick & Wayne Faucher (DC)
  • Countdown to Mystery #3 of 8, by Steve Gerber, Justiniano & Walden Wong, and Matthew Sturges & Stephen Jorge Segovia (DC)
  • Ex Machina #32, by Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris & Jim Clark (DC/Wildstorm)
  • Annihilation Book 3 TPB by Keith Giffen, Andrea DiVito, Christos N. Gage, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Stephano Landini, Stuart Moore, Mike McKone, & Scott Kolins (Marvel)
  • The Incredible Hulk #111, by Greg Pak, Jeff Parker & Leonard Kirk (Marvel)
  • The Umbrella Academy #3 of 6, by Gerard Way & Gabriel Bá (Dark Horse)
  • Castle Waiting #9, by Linda Medley (Fantagraphics)
  • The Boys #12, by Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson (Dynamite)
  • Invincible #46, by Robert Kirkman & Ryan Ottley (Image)
Action Comics #859 “Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes” in Action Comics is turning out to be a pretty entertaining story: We find out why the Legion is persona non grata in the 31st century, and who their antagonists are. And it doesn’t look good so far, as several more Legionnaires fall to the enemy. How Superman figures into all this is probably the neatest part of this story, as the enemy has twisted Superman’s legacy to their own ends, and imagining how he feels about that – and knowing that no one other than the Legion believes the truth – is a compelling notion. What would be worse than finding out that you’ve been forgotten a thousand years in the future, than to learn that your name means something the opposite of what you worked to achieve?

So it’s a cool set-up. I hope Geoff Johns can avoid the clichéd ending to wrap it up. For instance, the “Some super-villain’s mind-controlled everyone” ending, or the “Superman beats the main antagonist into submission thereby winning the goodwill of the public” ending.

Annihilation Book 3 I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Annihilation, of which Volume 3 is the final volume. It’s even better than Annihilation Conquest, which is currently running and also entertaining.

The premise of Annihilation is that Annihilus – the extremely powerful armored insectoid who’s faced the Fantastic Four in the past – learns that our universe is gradually expanding into the Negative Zone where he rules, and he convinces virtually the entire Negative Zone to launch a massive attack on our universe. The emerge through the Crunch, the edge of the universe containing the energies of the universe’s creation, and in doing so destroy a high-security prison – the Kyln – and set a variety of nasty creatures free.

The first two volumes collect a number of mini-series spotlighting individual characters dealing with the “Annihilation Wave” – the influx of Annihilus’ forces, who begin by rampaging through the Skrull galaxy. The Nova Corps are destroyed and Richard Ryder is last as the last Nova centurion. The Super-Skrull tries to take the fight to the Negative Zone. The Silver Surfer learns that two creatures freed from the Kyln are nearly as old and as powerful as Galactus, and he returns to Galactus’ service to try to draw him away from the Annihilation Wave. And Ronan the Accuser returns from exile when he learns that the Wave is bearing down on Kree space.

This final volume resolves everything, as Nova leads the resistance against the Annihilation Wave and things go exceedingly poorly, even more so once Annihilus enlists the help of Thanos to tame the power of Galactus for himself.

I’ve always been a little skeptical of Keith Giffen as a writer. I was not a fan of his run with Paul Levitz on Legion of Super-Heroes, and I really hated his sense of humor that he applied to DC in the late 80s and early 90s, such as on Justice League and Ambush Bug. I thought it was, well, rather childish. But as the mastermind (it seems) behind Annihilation, I’m most impressed with his ability to write dark space adventure. Not only does he have real skill at slowly ratcheting up the tension of the story, but he does a great job of handling the myriad characters and making them all seem unique and driven in their own ways: Nova is a pure hero, the Silver Surfer is a tortured hero, Drax the Destroyer is a programmed killing machine who nonetheless does the right thing when not under the thumb of his programmed imperatives, Ronan is a true patriot who believes in doing whatever is best for his people no matter what the cost, and even the villains all have different shades of character and motivations. In short, Giffen is doing today what Jim Starlin did in his heyday on books like Captain Marvel, Warlock and Dreadstar.

(Incidentally, I think that Starlin brought to Marvel in the 70s what Jack Kirby tried to bring to DC in the 70s, except that Starlin actually succeeded in creating a compelling little mythology within the Marvel Universe, whereas all Kirby did was create a surreal and silly little pocket of colorful costumes within the DC Universe.)

Perhaps most importantly, Giffen delivers the true payoff in this concluding volume with both triumphant character moments and dramatic battles. Perhaps the best single moment is when Nova and Ronan talk when things seem darkest, and Ronan the Kree patriot says to Nova the human hero, “Were you Kree, I would call you brother.” Ronan, Drax, the Silver Surfer and Nova all get their moment of triumph (Ronan’s is the best, while the Surfer has to wait for one of the epilogues), and it’s all a lot of fun.

Andrea DiVito has a solid, dynamic art style which serves the story well. There are plenty of full-page and two-page spreads to keep the action moving, and he handles the large cast with their various eccentric designs quite well. The guy must be a machine to have pencilled and inked this whole story himself, although I imagine he had plenty of lead time, too.

Overall, Annihilation is one of the best things Marvel’s published in years. It once again proves the theory that comics are best when they involve assembling great creators when letting them produce great stories, a lesson that Marvel seemed to have learned with “Heroes Reborn” back in 1999, but seems to have forgotten again these days given stuff like Civil War and its aftermath. I’m glad Giffen was able to play with this corner of the Marvel Universe, though, because this was well worth the time it took to read it.

(If you want to read more without reading the story, the whole series is summarized in the Wikipedia entry.)

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 14 November 2007.

Due to my vacation over Thanksgiving week, I’m running behind on these. This entry is for comic books I bought the week of 14 November 2007:

  • All-Star Superman #9, by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely (DC)
  • Booster Gold #4, by Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC)
  • Countdown to Final Crisis #24 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Tom Derenick & Wayne Faucher (DC)
  • Fables #67, by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham & Steve Leialoha (DC)
  • Salvation Run #1 of 7, by Bill Willingham, Sean Chen & Waldon Wong (DC)
  • Suicide Squad: Raise the Flag #3 of 8, by John Ostrander, Javier Pina & Robin Riggs (DC)
  • Welcome to Tranquility #12, by Gail Simone & Neil Googe (DC/Wildstorm)
  • Nova #8, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning Wellington Alves & Scott Hanna (Marvel)
  • Thor #4, by J. Michael Straczynski, Oliver Coipel & Mark Morales (Marvel)
  • World War Hulk #5 of 5, by Greg Pak, John Romita Jr. & Klaus Janson (Marvel)
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier HC, by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill (America’s Best)
  • B.P.R.D.: Killing Ground #4 of 5, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi & Guy Davis (Dark Horse)
  • Atomic Robo #2 of 6, by Brian Clevinger & Scott Wegener (Red 5)
Salvation Run #1 Salvation Run is yet another Countdown tie-in – sort of. These days it’s hard to tell what’s a Countdown tie-in (like this) and what’s not (like Countdown to Adventure and Countdown to Mystery, whose lead stories both have nothing to do with Countdown). Score another one for DC editorial in the ongoing fiasco that is Countdown.

Anyway, Salvation Run is loosely based on a decade-old idea by George R. R. Martin, which – believe it or not – has nothing to do with my decision to pick it up. No, instead I was mainly interested in the artwork of Sean Chen (who’s art is the reason I started picking up Nova), and I figured the sardonic writing of Bill Willingham (Fables) might work well with the book’s premise, that being that the United States gets tired of all the super-villains stealing, killing, and generally disrupting society, so it decides to start shipping the repeat offenders out to an alien world, to fend for themselves. A world full of super-villains is sure to be a powderkeg – especially since most villains tend to be men – and the moral question of exiling villains to another world seems worth exploring. Anyway, there seems to be a lot of promise here.

The first issue is okay. Chen’s artwork is dynamic but not as detailed as I think it’s been in the past. The story mainly focuses on the Flash’s rogues gallery surviving on the world for some weeks – it’s a pretty hostile and bizarre place – before meeting up with a large number of second-string villains who have just arrived (plus the Joker). The issue ends with the hint that someone’s been tricked in this whole setup, but leaves open the question of why.

So it seems worth following for a 7-issue run, but I hope they do something worthwhile with it. I suspect it would have worked better in Martin’s original Elseworlds configuration.

Nova #8 Man, does Nova have some of the blandest covers in comics these days? I mean, the renderings by Adi Granov are pretty good, but the designs are bo-ring! (I assume these are designs created by editorial and not by Granov.) If they actually reflected the contents of the book, I think they could really help sales.

Anyway, in the wake of his ill-considered Annihilation Conquest storyline, Nova has ended up at the edge of the universe – literally. Unable to escape, he ends up being stranded on a giant space station, which seems nearly deserted except for a few extremely powerful – and somewhat crazed – super-beings, and a talking Russian dog, Cosmo. Cosmo gets the best line of the series so far: “You have seen end of universe and met space zombies, and talkink dog is what freaks you out? Bozshe moi.”

So there’s something nasty going on on this space station, the station itself has a surprising nature, besides being outside the edge of the universe, and Nova’s powers are significantly diminished because the Worldmind that powers him is still spending most of its energy fighting off the Phalanx’s techno-virus. Our hero looks to be in for a rough time – which means this book ought to be back on track now that Nova’s not dealing with the conquest, which he wasn’t really participating in meaningfully anyway.

Thor #4 Thor is now officially combining the world elements of J. Michael Straczynski’s comic book writing: Not only is the story moving at a glacial pace, as Thor gradually tries to reconstruct Asgard, but it’s got Straczynski’s tedious tendency to try to highlight real-world problems through a brief encounter by his larger-than-life protagonist. In this case, Donald Blake goes to a war-torn African nation and ends up in the middle of a civil war. Ya-a-awn. This book went horribly wrong when it became a “visit a problem area somewhere in the world” travelogue, and I’m rapidly running out of confidence that Straczynski can salvage it. Honestly, there’s just not much story here. Coipel’s art is still pretty, though.
World War Hulk #5 Well, I was a little off in my prediction of how World War Hulk would end, but it’s still be a fun ride – a big smash-fest. There was a nifty little surprise regarding what exactly happened to send the Hulk back to Earth looking for revenge, and the Hulk comes to a certain closure at the end of the story. It basically ended the way it had to, but of course this being a superhero comic it’s not really the end. We’ll get back to the status quo sometime.

I do wish that this book had been used to show Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic how wrong they’d been in their treatment of the Hulk and that they were on the wrong end of the Civil War, but Marvel is inexplicably committed to casting two of their long-standing heroes in the roles of villains, so that was clearly too much to hope for. Oh well.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier The Black Dossier is the third volume in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, and it’s easily the worst one to date. The problem is that there’s not much story in it, and what there is is both dull and not much fun.

Volume 1 was the best volume to date, because it seemed primarily inspired by the Justice League, assembling a group of 19th century heroes to tackle a threat. The characters and setting made it very different from a Justice League story, but it still had a solid narrative with a lot of tension and a concrete resolution. It also had a lot of little asides referring to other Victoriana, but they were just bonuses and not central to the story.

Volume 2 was enjoyable, but was a big step down from Volume 1. The core idea of the League dealing with H.G. Wells’ Martian invasion was nifty, but it took a turn into the no-fun zone with its rather explicit sex and its brutal resolution. Plus, while the first volume had a text backup story featuring Alan Quatermain, Wells’ time machine, and some H.P. Lovecraft creatures, this volume had a very self-indulgent and tedious travelogue of the League’s world, filled with lots of references to extremely obscure people and places. Little bits of it were entertaining, but mostly it didn’t really add anything.

The Black Dossier goes for the clever references in spades, with extended text sequences featuring characters like Orlando, Fanny Hill, and various other historical background for the League. And most of that stuff is very, very boring, not least because this is supposed to be a graphic novel, and nothing takes the edge off a graphic novel like throwing big blocks of text into it. Honestly, I didn’t even read the bulk of the text sections for that very reason. Snooze. I agree with Johanna Carlson’s observation that the book feels too much like homework much of the time, and that’s no fun. It feels very self-indulgent.

The core story involved Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray – who have both become young again – capturing the Black Dossier from post-Big Brother Britain (the 1950s) so they can learn just how much their government knows about what they’ve been up to for the last decade or two. The Dossier contains the backstory of the League dating back for centuries, and it is reproduced within the main story and accounts for the text segments of the book. The main story has its moments mainly as our heroes are pursued by James Bond, Hugo Drummond and Emma Peel as they try to escape from Britain, but the end of the book is extremely disappointing, making the whole thing feel rather pointless.

I wonder whether this will be the last LoeG book. It’s hard to imagine the series getting much worse from here, though another festival of clever references would probably do the trick. The series has fallen an awful long way from its promising beginnings, so I can’t say it would be a great loss if this is the last installment. This was pretty mediocre stuff.

Anyway, if unlike me you really enjoy all the references – obscure or otherwise – Jess Nevins has posted his annotations for the book so that should keep you busy for a while. I think the joke is long past its sell-by date, personally.