Occasional Personal Discomfort: Powers: Bureau #2 Review

This is a hell of a thing to say, but Brian Michael Bendis’s creator-owned books remind me of having herpes.

Hear me out.

To get herpes, you have to get laid (or really enjoy the taste of toilet seats, but I’m going to assume that if that’s your thing, this isn’t the Web site you’re likely to be visiting, what with the lack of the words, “girl” or “cup” in the URL). And that’s good. But then after a while, there is an itch. And that itch lasts for a good, long while, and while you’re waiting for it to pass, it is maddening. And then one day the itch is satiated, and that is awesome… until the itch comes back. And the itch stays for an indeterminate period of time, until the next respite. Which is great… but the whole time, you’re hesitant to get laid again, because as weird and satisfying as the agony-and-the-ecstacy cycle might be for you, it would be a hell of a thing to pass it on to someone else.

[ED. – Rob – this is STUPID. Bendis’s books have nothing to do with herpes. You just seem to want to write about herpes. Get to the Goddamned point… unless there’s something you want to tell me… Amanda]

Okay, here’s the point: Powers: Bureau #2 is the middle of a story in a book that is known as much for being delayed as it is for it’s general excellence. And this issue delivers the best of Bendis’s dialogue, with delightfully perverse imagery and some well-executed suspense and action, albeit with some leaps in logic and mildly confusing story points along the way. However, this issue was a week late from its last solicitation in November, and while the next issue is currently set for two weeks from now, I’ll believe it when I see it. So even though it’s a good issue, it’s like walking in mid-boink… and not knowing when the itching is likely to stop.

Nearing The End – Review Of Glory #33

Ed. note – Ahead lies a blood soaked tale, rife with blood, sacrifice, and spoilers. You’ve been warned.

Glory #33 is the penultimate issue in Joe Keatinge and Ross Campbell’s sadly abbreviated relaunch. Why only 12 issues? Keatinge had this to say when asked about it by Comics Alliance back in December:

Sometimes, what you start off doing and what you end up doing are two different things. When I first came on, even before I had an artist, I wanted to have a massive story that went on for 70 issues, but the combination of actually working with Ross and, it’s so cliché to say it but it’s so true, the characters kind of take over sometimes. In this situation, it wasn’t really as grandiose a story as I initially thought as much as it was a story about the relationship between these two different people, Riley and Gloriana, and how they each affect these huge and small situations. When we really started re-plotting things out as it went along, after the 12th issue, without saying too much, it would become a totally different book. So maybe we should just leave the party early before our welcome’s worn out and tell this one story that seems to be what it’s about anyway.

Glory was shaping up to be an epic war story with a complex plot line spanning across the reaches of time, gorgeously drawn by Ross Campbell. Having now read issue 33 and seeing where the story is going, I get what he’s saying about the characters taking over. Riley and Glory’s relationship is the thread that ties the tale together, but I do still wonder, perhaps selfishly, if maybe Keatinge and Campbell are leaving the party a little too early.

Call Me Snakeeye: Age of Ultron #1 Review

Look, let’s get the obvious out of the way right out of the gate: Age of Ultron #1 is what happens when you take The Terminator and Escape From New York, throw in a dash of John Carpenter’s The Thing and mix in Alan Moore’s Captain Britain for comics flavor, and chuck in a couple of superheroes.

You have seen flying killer robots ruthlessly enforcing order over the ruins of New York City while the citizens scuttle under cover and sell each other out for the favor of authority. You have seen isolated and paranoid people willing to turn each other out because there is a chance that they have been possessed by an infiltrator wearing their faces. And you have seen superheroes working from the shadows against an incredibly powerful authority figure while the general populace either cowers or appeases the dictatorial force. Frankly, given artist Bryan Hitch’s penchant for photorealism in his faces, I kept expecting to turn the page and see Mel Gibson in the background, telling Hawkeye that he can drive that truck. Or maybe Linda Hamilton, circa 1984, getting soft-focused railed by some filthy animal from the far future. For which I am available for photo-reference, Bryan. But I digress.

The point is, Age of Ultron #1 is not the place to go is you’re looking for ground-breaking, perception-altering science fiction. But it also doesn’t make any bones about that fact; of any book I’ve read in the recent past, this is one that wears its influences on its sleeve. And the good news is, I like The Terminator, Escape From New York and The Thing, so a story that’s obviously influenced by them isn’t gonna be a deal breaker… provided the story is rock-solid and entertaining.

So therein lies the question: is it entertaining?

Finish Him: Injustice: Gods Among Us #2 Review

Editor’s Note: These spoilers take place before the start of the video game.

Years and years of reading comics have taught me that, with almost no exceptions whatsoever, comic adaptations of other mediums are normally not very good. Sure, there’s Alien: The Illustrated Story, and there’s the original Star Wars adaptation by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin, but let’s face reality: in those heady, pre-VCR days of 1977, they could have had Amanda’s cousin Little Billy draw the damn thing and we’d have bought it.

Even worse are the comic book adaptations, which are generally even worse than the TV and movie ones, dating all the way back to Atari Force which, despite the obvious nostalgia for the book by Ernest Cline, might have been an awesome read for video game fans, but wasn’t all that great a shake for actual comic readers. Hell, in 1984 I was a 13-year-old comic book fan who owned the first Atari on our block (back when it was the Atari Video Computer System, before they renamed it the 2600) and I still thought that comic sucked. And the reason video game adaptations almost never work is for a very simple reason: in a comic book, you are a spectator, but it an video game, it is you. And no matter how good the story in the video game is, no comic book ever really captures that feeling of you being in the driver’s seat.

And while I’ll readily admit that I generally don’t seek out video game based comics because, well, I don’t usually like them, there has been one in the past couple of years that was pretty damn good, and that was an issue of DC Universe Online, written by Tom Taylor, that took the conceit of a Green Lantern expansion pack in the video game and used it to examine some of DC’s Lantern characters, and some real questions of moral ambiguity. It was successful because it while it was ostensibly about the video game, it instead used the game as an excuse to make it really about the characters, who just happened to be in this situation. By completely ignoring the first person element of video games, Taylor succeeded in making a pretty good comic book.And this continues in his second issue of the comic adaptation of the upcoming fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us. As a Mortal Kombat-style fighting game, most comic books about it would be wall-to-wall dudes in spandex smacking on each other. But instead, Taylor makes this book about the characters leading up to whatever causes the dudes in spandex to smack on each other in the game… and even though you will see more than a little of Mark Millar’s The Authority in this issue, it is still vastly better than a simple comic book adaptation has any right to be.

The Cat Is Dead: Dr. Manhattan #4 Review

Editor’s Note: The spoilers… the spoilers are taking me to pieces.

The final issue of Dr. Manhattan, written by J. Michael Straczynski with art by Adam Hughes, extends what is arguably the greatest comic book story of all time, provides additional perspective on one of that classic story’s great mysteries, and it does it with bold storytelling choices, both in the writing and in the art, that play on one of Watchmen‘s original themes of symmetry.

Or, to put it in plainer terms: Dr. Manhattan #4 is fucking awful.

Straczynski uses the framework of Before Watchmen – a book that was partially sold to a seriously skeptical public as a prequel that would not attempt to modify or circumvent Alan Moore’s original Watchmen – to completely blow away one of the key ambiguities of Dr. Manhattan’s story from the original. Further, halfway through the issue, he switches point of view to that of Ozymandias to show his motivations at a key point leading into Watchmen, but not only are they motivations that really have no real bearing on how that story turns out, but they are presented using a visual gimmick that makes the story difficult to read for no reason beyond either Straczynski, or Hughes, or both, making the decision to say, “Lookit me! I’m dicking around with the established language of comic storytelling! Why? Because fuck you, that’s why!”

There are baseball analogies that could be applied to Dr. Manhattan. “Swinging for the fences” is one, although it’s not really accurate. I’m thinking more along the lines of “Running onto the field and mooning the pressbox,” because Straczynski and Hughes are playing around in areas where they shouldn’t really be in the first place, and they’re sure as hell not playing the game by any of the rules that anyone wants them to.

Plus, there’s one panel where Hughes all but rubs our faces in Doc’s dangling blue wang.

It’s really not that good, guys.

Shark Infested Waters: The Legend of Luther Strode #3 Review

Editor’s Note: Did you know a young boy drowned the year before those two others were killed? The editors weren’t paying any attention… They were making spoilers while that young boy drowned.

Justin Jordan needs to stop, take a breath, and be very, very careful from here on out. Don’t worry, I will explain.

If 2011’s The Strange Talent of Luther Strode was inspired by a 1980 horror movie, then its sequel, The Legend of Luther Strode, is clearly shaping up to be at least somewhat inspired by a 1980s sequel to a horror movie: Aliens. I say this in the sense that, where Alien was a moody, claustrophobic story about an unstoppable monster picking people off one by one, Aliens instead was a big damn action movie that used the trappings of the original movie, like facehuggers, soldier aliens and acid blood, as a plot device to allow people to blow a bunch of shit the fuck up.

And for most of the first three issues of The Legend of Luther Strode, writer Justin Jordan has delivered a very similar experience. He has taken the details set up in the original series – superhuman strength and speed, the ability to see and foretell the physical effects of pending violence, and being pretty much all but bulletproof – and used them to set up not only big action setpieces of Luther stomping the crap out of gangs of criminals who are a motion tracker and a “Game over, man!” away from being Colonial Marine cannon fodder, but long battle sequences between Luther and similarly-powered Binder. Throw in Luther’s friend Petra – a regular woman with a surfeit of cojones running around this superpowered mayhem with just a gun – and Jordan even has his Ripley, albeit in a supporting role. All we’re missing is the damn ship’s cat and Lance Hendriksen… and based on his current filmography, he’d probably show up if Jordan asked nicely and offered a hot meal.

But if this latest Luther Strode series is, in fact, Aliens, then there must be an alien queen. And in The Legend of Luther Strode #3, we meet a contender – I say “contender” because halfway through the series is a little early to be really meeting the final Big Bad – and this contender is… shall we say, problematic. Problematic in the sense that his identity is such a bold move that it can really only elicit one of two responses.

Those responses being either, “Wow!”, or “…are you fucking kidding me?

This Would Be A Good Death: Batman Incorporated #8 Review

Editor’s Note: Holy Spoilers, Batman! …yeah, that’s all I got.

And with that, our long national nightmare is over. Maybe.

For the second time in my life, Robin has been murdered, only this time I didn’t get the perverse satisfaction of dialing a 900 number to strike one of the killing blows myself. Back in the late 80s, I called to kill Jason Todd because he had become a petulant, impulsive little snot who had slowly drifted into becoming a murderer. Conversely, Damian Wayne was introduced as a petulant, impulsive snot, who was a trained assassin before he even made an appearance on the page. Damian Wayne was hateful, an entitled, imperious little prince who, if you found yourself sitting in front of him on a crowded airplane, would make you willing to gladly do time in Guantanamo for attempting to rush the cockpit and crash the plane just to make the self-important yammering just fucking stop.

In the six and a half years since Damian was introduced (not counting his appearance as an infant in Mike W. Barr’s 1987 Son of The Demon, which also included the Batman / Talia al Ghul fuck scene I used in high school to stop the abuse I took claiming Batman was gay. It didn’t work.), Grant Morrison and other writers like Scott Snyder and Peter Tomasi have been somewhat successful in rehabilitating Damian, slowly edging him away from a kid you would happily pepper spray just to see the superior light in his eyes go out, and more toward a hero with a tragic upbringing that he is trying to overcome. Which is a long road to travel for a character who was designed to initially cause intense dislike toward him, but one that must be traveled to make his death, in Batman Incorporated #8, anything but a blessed, bloodthirsty relief.

Well, that road’s over, because the kid’s dead now – for the moment, anyway; after all, this is a comic book. So the immediate question is: does Morrison make Damian’s death poignant because it is the death of a hero? Or because you realize you’re reveling in the death of a 10-year-old boy?

Southern Trespass: Captain America #4 Review

The unique thing about comic books, at least comic books from the Big Two that are owned by the publisher and have been around for a while (of course, whether those kind of comic books are the best thing for the industry or for readers is a whole different argument) is that writers and artists come and go, while the character remains. This dichotomy brings comic fans one of their favorite things – a continuity across years that can give some characters and titles an epic, historic feeling that supercedes the often simple adventure stories at their core – and one of their least favorite things – a continuity across years that the new douchebag creative team on a book are clearly fucking with with no regard for the character’s epic history and they’ve ruined the character and now I will Tweet a death threat and hello, Officer, no handcuffs are necessary, if you’d just read this issue, you’d see that I was right to threaten to set fire to the writer’s cat, and is that a Taser, and…

…well, you get the point.

The point being that creative teams change, and each new set of people has their own stamp that they want to put on these long-running books. And a lot of times these creators want to pay homage to a particular era from the character, which can be pretty damned varied; keep in mind that, at various times, Spider-Man has been a high school student battling street-level crime, a college student fighting more mid-level threats, an Avenger, a widely-reviled public menace, a member of the Fantastic Four, and a fucking clone… and now he’s Doctor Octopus. So if a writer wants to revisit any particular era, the story could be almost any kind, and if they want to do something new with the character, they’d need to make him a gay cowboy eating pudding or something (and I’m pretty sure if I dug far enough into the Marvel Team-Up back catalogue, I might even find that’s already been done).

All of which brings up to Rick Remender, and his reboot of Captain America following Ed Brubaker’s long run on the title. Brubaker’s reign on the title was categorized by S.H.I.E.L.D.-based espionage stories, and while God knows that he took his share of chances on the title – he killed Cap and brought Bucky back to life, for Christ’s sake – they were generally grounded, somewhat realistic stories with a classic Steranko-era feel. However, that’s not the only kind of Captain America story there is; Cap has a legacy of science fiction-style stories in his history, written and drawn by no less than Jack Kirby and Gene Colan – let’s remember that before MODOK became a comic reader’s punchline, he was created to fuck around with Cap.

Remender has clearly chosen to focus on the science fiction history of Captain America in his initial reboot story, which continues through this weeks issue #4. This is a full-blast sci-fi story, including alternate universes, alien races, spaceships, and one of the classic Captain America sci-fi villains: the Kirby-created Armin Zola. The question is: how does all this weirdness – weirdness supported by various eras in Captain America’s history, mind you – go down immediately following years and years of cold war-style spy stories?

Honestly? It’s going down hard.

Pulling The Pin: Justice League of America #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe – here in this great Hall of Justice – are the most powerful forces of spoilers ever assembled.

This isn’t like The Suicide Squad.

– Steve Trevor

Actually, Justice League of America #1, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by David Finch, is a lot like Suicide Squad, in that it’s got Amanda Waller making unique and intriguing personal offers to fringe people with super powers to join a team controlled by the government to perform missions for the government’s purposes. It’s also a lot like Keith Giffen’s and J. M. DeMatteis’s early issues of their late 80’s Justice League, in that it is attempting to lay the groundwork for and justify a Justice League packed with second-stringers and also-rans. It’s also a lot like Brad Meltzer’s post-Identity Crisis run on Justice League of America, in that it’s got as many sequences of people looking at pictures of, and talking about, superheroes as it does sequences of people actually, you know, doing stuff.

Two of these similarities are good things.

Look, as an opening issue of a book trying to justify the creation of a second Justice League when there’s a perfectly good one that’s only a year and a half old, this is a perfectly acceptable story that delivers the necessary exposition required to justify the concept and to introduce characters who are either relatively new since the New 52 reboot, or who have been around in their own titles, albeit with sales numbers low enough to warrant a whole new introduction (I’m looking at you, Hawkman). And it does it with enough mysterious teases and interesting secrets to justify their willingness to join this team to keep things intriguing… with one exception. In one case, using a single word balloon, Johns shows himself to be playing with some serious fire. Fire that, if he handles it well, will thrill anyone who read comics through the 1990… and that conversely, if he screws it up, will make a fairly significant niche fanbase turn on him like he insulted their mothers, and make the attempted rehabilitation of Vibe seem like a low-risk venture.

Elegy For A Bastard – Review Of Hellblazer #300

Yesterday, I bemoaned the fate of Hellblazer and the title’s termination at issue 300 before going on to say mostly nice things about a character that had been generally known as a cliche, prior to being brought back from the dead. Today, I will talk to you about a character who has also turned into a cliche prior to becoming dead: John Constantine.

I think my “wailing and gnashing of teeth” yesterday was primarily mourning for a character who has really been dying and on his way to dead from about issue 251 on. I’m sure Peter Milligan meant well, but this series – which managed to survive the literal dicking Brian Azzarello gave it back in the year 2000 – has been dead man walking for some time. Sure, there’s been some glimmers of good story, but this is not the John Constantine we all signed up for. This is a sad shell of a John Constantine, a Constantine that, had he been anticipated as a likelihood by former writers like Garth Ennis, would have eaten a bullet sometime back around 1994. Issue 300 does not serve so much as closure for John Constantine as make you wonder about the Constantine that might have been in other hands.

And, I think I’ve figured out why.

Join me as I spoil my way through problem solving, after the jump.