The Week In Ink: July 16, 2008

Man, you know what was awesome? Not doing reviews last week. But alas, the monocle can only get me so far, and as we all know, time and face-kicking wait for no man.

 

 

Or in this case, for no half-man half-rat sewer-dwelling ex-geneticist. Ah, comic books!

In any case, it’s probably just best to get right to it. Here’s what I picked up this week…

 

 

… and here’s what I thought of ’em!

 


 

Comics

 

Amazing Spider-Man #566: At this point, I think we’ve finally gotten to where I feel like I can talk about how much I like the “Brand New Day” Spider-Man without adding the caveat about how mind-numbingly horrible “One More Day” and the stories that led up to it were, which will in turn free up more time to focus on Kravenette and her fauxhawk. I’m sure you’re all relieved.

And it’s a good thing, too, because I might end up needing that extra space to explain why this particular story embodies both the best and worst aspects of the new direction. On the one hand, it’s a good comic: Phil Jiminez isn’t exactly a slouch in the art department, and while Mark Guggenheim’s scripts don’t have the same zing that you get from a Dan Slott story, I’m always surprised with how much I’m enjoying his work here, since the other stuff he’s done doesn’t really do it for me. On the other hand, there’s a lot of this story that we’ve seen before in other good comics, two or three times. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I’m not going to criticize Guggenheim and the rest of the Spider-Man “brain trust” for creating a villain who wants to follow in Kraven the Hunter’s footsteps by triumphing in the situation that brought about his greatest “failure”–and this is obviously meant to be a thematic sequel to Kraven’s Last Hunt, so that’s a perfectly logical plot to go with–but there are huge swaths of it that hew a little too closely, and it blurs the line between “homage” and “just doing the same damn stuff over again.”

Specifically, I’m thinking here about the inclusion of Vermin, who seems thrown in by pure coincidence, shoehorned into the plot because of his role in the original KLH. But I don’t like Vermin and I’ve always had trouble with the fact that a cannibalistic rat-man in torn jeans (which, now that I think of it, is a pretty trendy look amongst cannibalistic rat-men) poses a threat to a guy who punched out Firelord, even if he did have the alien costume backing him up. Really, though, this is just going off on even more of a tangent than it started as, so let’s just say that I place Vermin somewhere below Banjo in the grand hierarchy of Spider-Man villains and agree to take what I say about him with a grain of salt.

Speaking of villains, though, that’s another aspect of the BND stuff that goes either way. I like new villains a lot, and even if Mr. Negative, Menace and Freak are just Kingpin, the Green Goblin and the Lizard with a fresh coat of paint (and let’s be honest, they are, with only Paperdoll really sticking out as new), the slight twists to the established formula at least give the illusion of change and forward momentum. With Kravenette, though, things get a little more complicated. I’ll be the first to admit that she’s fun, and even the crazy fauxhawk, raver eyeshadow and leather bellbottoms that might as well just be a big stamp for future generations marked “THIS CHARACTER CREATED IN 2008” just kinda add to her charm. The problem is that if she’s the New Kraven, then what are we going to do with our Old New Kraven, the guy who just went into full-blown super-villain craziness over in Punisher War Journal? I guess there’s room for both, but for one to come right on the heels of the other with no established connection (and there might be one coming, we’re only two weeks into her existence, after all) seems a little odd.

Of course, none of those things change the fact of the matter, which is that for all its flaws, this is still a fun, well-done Spider-Man comic. And even Vermin can’t make it suck that much.

 

Batgirl #1: Long-time ISB readers might recall that I actually like the Cassandra Cain Batgirl a lot, despite the fact that my affection for the character has been a little strained as of late. It’s one of the few long-running series that I picked up monthly for its entire run, and Kelly Puckett’s scripts for the title–like a lot of his work, especially the first Batman Adventures run with the late, great Mike Parobeck–serve as great examples of pacing and the economy of the 22-page format.

What might surprise some of you, though, is that my recent difficulties with the character don’t come from the way she was shown at the end of her own title or when she showed up in Beechen’s run on Robin. That stuff, I have no problem with; it’s when she was retconned back into a good guy. Call me crazy, but character raised to be an assassin falling back on that training after a traumatic experience and the realization that not killing the Joker isn’t really helping anybody makes a hell of a lot more sense than “Oh, Deathstroke injected her with Liquid Evil.”

Then again, I don’t have any fan-fiction to contradict, so I can probably take things a little easier than most of her fans.

That said, this comic is not very good.

It hurts to say that, too, because I like Beechen’s work a lot; the Batgirl stuff aside, his run on Robin was criminally underrated, and Hench is just a darn good graphic novel. Here, though, he’s already working from a disadvantage in that he has to bring everybody up to speed on the Life and Times of Cassandra Cain–which are way more convoluted than any character that’s only been around for nine years ought to be–and despite the fact that there’s a pretty good set piece for a fight scene, you eventually hit a point where it seems like he threw up his hands, said “fuck it,” and just decided to write everything out in one massive, terminally boring infodump.

Seriously, take a look at this bit of witchcraft:

 

 

There’s two pages where Batman, Robin and Nightwing just stand around frowning at each other and talking in five-paragraph essays, and while I realize that not everybody knows who Batgirl is and how she came to be, it all amounts to one of the dullest things I’ve ever read. And the entire book’s overwritten like that; I don’t think that Cassandra Cain needs to stay as the mute illiterate kung fu mistress, but there are vast sections that could be improved by just taking out her first-person narration and letting her actions speak for themselves.

Huh… a completely silent story about a black-clad mute ninja… Nah. It’d never work.

 

Conan the Cimmerian #1: For your convenience, I’ve done the research and broken down the relevant information in this issue by the numbers:

Conan stabs someone in the face with a spear on Page Four. As far as first issues go, this puts it about on par with Savage Tales of Conan the Barbarian #1 (off-panel stabbing, p. 5) and Savage Sword of Conan #1 (backhanded decapitation, p. 5), and well ahead of the original Marvel series, which doesn’t have its first major act of violence (Conan punching out a lion, p. 14) ’til its second issue, but still lags well behind the first Dark Horse Conan, which has a full-fledged bisection via broadsword on page two.

Still, it’s a pretty respectable showing, although I’d question the wisdom of launching a new series called Conan the Cimmerian with a story that only gives up seven pages of everyone’s favorite barbarian before shifting to Richard Corben and a flashback story about the Conan’s grandfather. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to read a story about Connacht, but contrary to what you might think, the adventures of one dark-haired sullen-eyed barbarian aren’t the same as the adventures of every other, and in THE FIRST ISSUE OF A NEW CONAN TITLE–even one that’s essentially preceded by fifty issues–there’s only one that I want to see.

It’s a good story, but using your main character as a framing sequence for a flashback that doesn’t even finish in this issue is just weird.

 

 

Helen Killer #3: This is exactly what I want from a comic book.

If you’ve been paying attention to the little chats we have every week, you’ll recall that I’ve been a fan of Kreisberg and Rice’s Helen Killer since Benito pointed out the solicitation to me, and while I’ve already talked about how it’s managed to meet every hopeful expectation I had for it, even I couldn’t have predicted how much crazier it was going to get with every issue.

Yes. You read that correctly. The book where Helen Keller becomes a super-ninja bodyguard because of a pair of glasses given to her by Alexander Graham Bell is actually getting crazier. At this point, it’s crossed into the kind of pure, beautiful madness where reviewing it is essentially just going to amount to me giving you a plot summary and assuring you that yes, it really is as awesome as it sounds, so we might as well get to it.

So, plot summary: This issue opens with fully nude Helen Keller (a phrase for which I now hope to be the top Google result) dealing with the manifestation of her berserker rages and then cuts to her kicking someone in the face while bashing in someone else’s head with a bedpan. One quick visit to Leon Czolgosz later, and we finally get the big reveal of the bad guy’s Sinster Master Planâ„¢, which is seriously the greatest thing ever: In order to get revenge for Bell patenting the telephone before him, real-life historical figure Elisha Gray is going to use Anti-Alchemy to turn all of the world’s gold into lead, which sharp-eyed readers might recall as the exact plot Cobra Commander tries in the episode “Money to Burn.”

One more time, that’s a man using ANTI-ALCHEMY to settle a dispute over the TELEPHONE PATENT, and the only one who can stop him is SUPER-NINJA HELEN KELLER.

And now the assurance: Yes. It really is as awesome as it sounds.

 

Trades

 

Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes HC: I’ll be honest with you, folks: I pretty much gave up on Geoff Johns about the time of the almost-unreadable clusterfuck that was Infinite Crisis, and with the exception of his co-written Booster Gold, I’ve been pretty comfortable not looking back since.

Still, as a guy who’s a pretty big fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes, I was curious about this one. I’d heard some good things about it, and even if it was lousy, I’ve got a long box with a full run from 1984 up, twelve Archives, two Showcases that reprint things I already have in the Archives, and an upcoming essay in Teenagers From the Future, available soon from classier booksellers everywhere. As much as I rail against buying stuff out of habit, it’s a little late to stop now.

In any case, I knocked the hardcover out over lunch today, and I’ve gotta say: It’s not bad.

It’s actually kinda good, although reading it in hardcover does make it a lot easier to forget that when it was coming out, there were four completely different Legions floating around that had absolutely nothing to do with each other. That aside, though, the script is one that really plays to Johns’s strengths, in that it gives him free reign to make stuff exactly like it was twenty years ago, and to my surprise, he didn’t immediately go to the old standby of having characters rip off each other’s limbs to make a point. Even his dialogue, which can skew towards the maudlin at times, seems more natural coming from the Legionnaires.

I’m probably being a little harsh here, but that’s the kind of skepticism I went into the book with, and I still came out pleasantly surprised. The Dystopian Legion is the one that I’ve read the least of–not because the stories are bad, but because I just prefer the stories that are rooted in a hopeful optimism that shows Everythings Going To Be Okay If We All Just Work Together–but Johns makes it easy to jump right in, and while Gary Frank’s faces are a little odd in parts, his design sense is as great as usual and he sells the visuals perfectly, and there are plenty of entertaining tricks thrown in along the way. Plus, it’s got pretty heavy involvement from the Legion of Substitute Heroes, or as I like to call them, The Greatest Non-Jimmy Olsen Characters of the Entire Silver Age.

It’s a good Legion story, although I’ll have to admit that it’s a little light on Superman himself, what with the McGuffin of the Red Sun permeating the whole thing until the last eight pages or so. This is probably for the best, though, as Superman’s parts are mostly built around how he knows what it’s like to be an outsider, and when you’re a godlike omnipotent being who is universally accepted and your parents loved you and supported you to the point where it made you a guy so gosh-darn decent that he has X-Ray vision but doesn’t use it to check out girls, the idea that he feels isolated and alone is even more ludicrous than believing he can fly.

All in all, though, it’s good stuff, and if you like the Legion–especially of that era–then it’s well worth reading.

 


 

And that’s the week. As always, if you have any questions or comments on anything I read this week, or if you want to talk about how great the Spider-Man/Ultimate Nullifier scene in Marvel Adventures Avengers was, or if you just want to talk about how Screamland showed us that monsters are people too, but really, they’re still monsters after all, then leave a comment in the section below.

As for me, I’m gonna hit the sack. I feel like getting up early and seeing a movie tomorrow. Hopefully, something good comes out.

33 thoughts on “The Week In Ink: July 16, 2008

  1. Hey, you might want to check out Batman. If you’re into that kind of thing.

  2. i hope the batgirl title manages to remain complete crap, yet grabs a large enough audience to stay afloat.

    i mean, i hate to throw the lady cain under a bus, but if it keeps califore off other books then so be it. and its her fault for getting hooked on the Liquid Evil.

  3. So yeah, I haven’t seen Batman yet – going on Sunday – but how about that Watchmen trailer? I mean, I was skeptical as hell, but… that thing looks GOOD. And boy did they ever get Doc Manhatten right.

  4. “Huh… a completely silent story about a black-clad mute ninja… Nah. It’d never work.”

    Best. Comic. Ever.

  5. There was also a white-clad ninja, a crashed satellite and a tiger, if I recall correctly.

    I picked up MA Avengers on a whim and it made me happy. I finally know what the Ultimate Nullifier does! Galactus was right, though- nobody would have missed those guys.

  6. Gah! Thanks for reminding me that now I’m going to have to avoid the comics internet until Wednesday when I finally get to see DK. Grr!

  7. MA: Avengers just… missed for me this week. Wolverine: First Class hit perfectly, though. Chris, are you getting that? I don’t see it on the list, but sometimes your deliveries are a week behind ours. Probably due to time zones. Or tides.

    Also, since Chris is skipping it – Trinity is very, very good. I know the rationale – that there are plenty of books for these three, even books where they are together, etc. This is still a good book, best of the weekly DCs so far by a healthy margin, and is worth the time and dollars.

  8. You are indeed the top hit for “fully nude Helen Keller” on Google. Now I’ve got to erase my internet history before my wife asks why the fuck I’m googling “fully nude Helen Keller.”

  9. “I’ve always had trouble with the fact that a cannibalistic rat-man in torn jeans … poses a threat to a guy who punched out Firelord, even if he did have the alien costume backing him up.”

    Unless they’ve ret-conned something I’m unaware about (which is entirely possible), Spidey punched out Firelord a whole year/12 issues after he lost the alien costume.

  10. Don’t like Vermin, eh? Hrmph. Time to defend the honor of the original rat-man nevernude…

    Have a look at Spectacular Spider-Man # 178 – 184: “The Child Within”, by J.M. DeMatteis & Sal Buscema. Chiefly, it’s Vermin’s origin story. (Likely the first thematic sequel to “Kraven’s Last Hunt”). Really sick and sad, disturbing work, as DeMatteis probes the psychological makeup of a man remade as a rat. He was a boy, first, and we see the scars of his childhood, along with Peter’s and Harry Osborn’s. Some scars run deeper than others. It knocked me dead when I was twelve.

    How does it hold up today? It suffers a little as a collection; the repetition of the framing device for each issue works better when read over the course of six months. And the symbolism is heavy-handed (Dr. Kafka? Yeesh). But the symbolism is powerful. Sal’s pencils are clean, and his storytelling is clear in a series of gut-wrenching stories.

    You can find these issues in the quarter bin at a local con, as I did recently. You should also pick up the comic relief issue that follows. DeMatteis acknowledges that too much doom & gloom is no good for anybody, least of all Spider-Man. Frog Men, the Walrus, and the White Rabbit make the scene, and Bwah-Ha-Ha ensues.

  11. “One more time, that’s a man using ANTI-ALCHEMY to settle a dispute over the TELEPHONE PATENT, and the only one who can stop him is SUPER-NINJA HELEN KELLER.”

    FULLY NUDE super-ninja Helen Keller.

    (BTW, typo in the title of that review, though it’s an easy one to make.)

    Also, Tiny Titans Big Barda may be the cutest thing ever. Though now that Gail Simone went there during her run on Birds of Prey, it might be weird if she starts talking about her Mega Rod.

  12. Re: Helen Killer

    I managed to find the first two issues, but issue three is nowhere to be found in town. I need my monthly dose of awesome.

  13. I had two things to say.

    First, is what Bryan already mentioned. Spidey took out a Herald in a black costume, but NOT the alien one. Which is even *more* badass, and makes your point about Vermin all the stronger.

    Second, more of a question, four Legions? As far as I knew, we only had two active right now – the one Waid rebooted, and the one Johns loves so dearly (which is also, obviously, the one Starman in Justice Society is from). What are the other two, then? I thought the reboot got wiped away by..oh wait, Geoff Johns! In his Teen Titans run about 3 or 4 years ago.

  14. That would be the Cartoon Legion which currently has a comic out RIGHT NOW called Superman and the Legion of Superheroes, and arguably the Zero Hour Legion, (aka, the Third World in the “Legion of Three Worlds”).

  15. GameJudge – I only started getting Trinity because I love both Busiek and Bagley, and I’m about to drop it. I think it’s terribly boring. Neither one of them is doing anything near their best work.

    My impression has always been that Mr. Sims is ambivalent about Busiek, and not a fan of Bagley, so there would really be nothing there to hook him.

  16. I don’t understand how Spiderman beating up Firelord one time invalidates Vermin. I mean, how is he any less of a threat than The Lizard or The Vulture?

  17. So yeah, I haven’t seen Batman yet – going on Sunday – but how about that Watchmen trailer?

    I’m certainly glad it made you happy.

    Also, since Chris is skipping it – Trinity is very, very good.

    Sure it is.

    My impression has always been that Mr. Sims is ambivalent about Busiek, and not a fan of Bagley, so there would really be nothing there to hook him.

    I actually like Kurt Busiek a lot when he’s doing stuff like Astro City or Arrowsmith or his run on Avengers with Perez, but let’s be honest here: Everything he’s done for DC except Power Company in the past few years has been absolute shit, and even that wasn’t all that good, the fact that it’s a team with both Firestorm and the Haunted Tank notwithstanding. Maybe it’s just that he’s not a DC type of writer, or maybe it’s just that anything he writes that doesn’t start with an A is no good, but that’s how it goes.

    As for Bagley, well, I like him just fine, but I respect his work a lot more than I actually like it, as he’s a guy who’s managed to keep the stylistic attributes that he developed in the ’90s while refining his technical skills throughout his career. For as fast as he is, he’s very good, and I think it’s a shame that he always gets stuck drawing comics that suck.

    Oh wait, Marvels. That was a good one.

    I don’t understand how Spiderman beating up Firelord one time invalidates Vermin. I mean, how is he any less of a threat than The Lizard or The Vulture?

    Because he’s stupid, he sucks and I hate him.

  18. “I actually like Kurt Busiek a lot when he’s doing stuff like Astro City or Arrowsmith or his run on Avengers with Perez, but let’s be honest here: Everything he’s done for DC except Power Company in the past few years has been absolute shit, and even that wasn’t all that good, the fact that it’s a team with both Firestorm and the Haunted Tank notwithstanding. Maybe it’s just that he’s not a DC type of writer, or maybe it’s just that anything he writes that doesn’t start with an A is no good, but that’s how it goes.”

    Power Company wasn’t all that good? Bite your tongue, sir!

    “I pretty much gave up on Geoff Johns about the time of the almost-unreadable clusterfuck that was Infinite Crisis, and with the exception of his co-written Booster Gold, I’ve been pretty comfortable not looking back since.”

    Not even the Sinestro Corps War?

    Or this? http://stars-and-garters.blogspot.com/2008/07/flash-fact-johns-kolins-rogues-buy-me.html

  19. I liked Busiek and Guice on Aquaman

    Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. I like that, too, and I obviously like his run on Conan a lot, so maybe it’s a combination of being either a non-DC title or something that starts with A that makes Busiek really good, because Superman and Justice League sure weren’t.

    Not even the Sinestro Corps War?

    The Sinestro Corps War, despite popular opinion, is resoundingly stupid.

  20. I hope by watching something you mean Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.

    http://www.drhorrible.com/index.html

    It stars Neil Patrick Harris as a supervillian who’s competing with his nemesis, Nathan Fillon, for a girl, played by Felicia Day. It’s written by Josh Wheldon. And did I mention it’s a musical too?

    Better hurry though, the Master Plan says it’s going to be taken down on Sunday.

  21. So, JLA – Avengers. Busiek gets a pass because it was also Starts-with-an-“A” Avengers – JLA? Or is it in the absolute crap column?

    I end every issue of Trinity surprised that I enjoyed it and am really eager to get the next one, considering that my wife had to drag me into buying all of both 52 and Countdown.

  22. The Sinestro Corps War, despite popular opinion, is resoundingly stupid.

    You make me fall in love with you all over again Mr. Sims. In a non-creepy, non-stalker way of co..no I take that back. Its totally in a creepy, stalker way. Would it kill you to trim your hedges and clean those windows Mr. Sims?

  23. “Trim your hedges and clean those windows” sounds really, really dirty.

    Just saying.

  24. “Trim your hedges and clean those windows” sounds really, really dirty.

    Just saying.

    Only if you say it slowly and in an out-of-breath voice. Not that it matters since SOMEONE changed to an unlisted number…

  25. Really late, but that Ultimate Nullifier scene was pretty great. This Parker’s last issue, right? Not sure he could top that either way. I really like his sitcomy take on the Avengers, and that comes from someone who generally finds the Avengers superflous in the grand scheme of superhero teams. They’re just kind of there unless they’re played the way Parker does. Well, I’d probably love Bendis’s Outlaw New Avengers if they were, you know, written well (or in stories I found palpable, at least).

  26. The Legion trade: It was fucking excellent – The reviewers should have their fingers cut off so they never review again, how about that?