Bar Gags And Animal Cruelty: I, Vampire #14 Review

I’ve honestly missed the last several issues of I, Vampire – not because it’s a bad book or one that I don’t like, but the ugly reality is that, when you spend the week writing 1,200 word reviews of comics, it is impossible to read one while you’re writing about another, sometimes because of the pure, inexorable nature of time, other times because it’s hard to type and read when you’re already holding a glass of whiskey.

However, after finishing yesterday’s vaguely frustrating read of this week’s Angel & Faith, I figured it was as good an opportunity as any to check back in with the book. Because after reading an vampire story that seemingly blithely chucked aside the plot that had been driving the story, I thought it might be comforting to revisit vampire Andrew Bennett and his eternal war against his darker nature, and against his girlfriend Mary’s efforts to turn vampires into the ascendant race on the planet Earth.

So yeah, funny story: at some point in the last few months? It seems Andrew lost.

So here we have yet another vampire comic that, at some point, has taken its status quo and turned it on its head, reversing pretty much everything you’d expect from the book. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad… but it does mean that I’m not entirely sure what in the hell is going on.

Alien Resurrection: Angel & Faith #16 Review

Editor’s Note: If I ever want to hear your spoilers Spike… come to think of it, I’ll never want to hear your spoilers.

Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming. I probably should have, given how similarly weighty events have recently played out in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but what the hell. We’ll get to that in a minute.

We’ve spent sixteen issues watching Angel and Faith off in England, trying to work out how to bring Giles back from the dead. And during that time we’ve met some interesting new characters and we’ve come across some old familiar ones, and some weird shit has gone down, but that first statement has been our core mission: Angel and Faith are trying to resurrect Giles. And that has made Angel and Faith, to me, more compelling than the core Buffy Season Nine title, because of what that mission entails: doing some dark shit, shit that the Buffy TV show, in Season Six, showed us was difficult on a good day, impossible on a bad one, and dangerous, ill-advised and rife with bad, bad unintended circumstances on every day. And this story has worked for me because if anyone knows the dangers behind raising the dead, it’s members of Buffy’s Scooby Gang, and yet they were doing it anyway. And the promise has been that we will eventually see them on the precipice of darkness, with Giles’s body and some magical McGuffins, and having to make the conscious decision as to whether to proceed or not, and face those consequences.

Well, that’s over now. While the conclusion of Angel & Faith #16 delivers one hell of a twist and teases a possible big bad for Faith and Angel that I didn’t really see coming and which could well wind up with an emotional and affecting climax. However, by taking that course, writer Christos Gage has let the air out of the story so far. He trades the weird, sick momentum of the story so far for a twist and an “oh shit!” moment. And while that moment has some promise, it doesn’t trade even in my ledger.

Under New Management: New Avengers #34 Review

Editor’s Note: Those spoilers are some bad mother – shut your mouth! I’m just talking about spoilers…

Well, that’s it. With New Avengers #34, Brian Michael Bendis is (for now) finished with the Avengers books. And, as he did in the core Avengers book, he uses this issue as an opportunity to repair all the toys he played with and damaged during his time on the floor, and clears the decks for Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting to give New Avengers its third first issue in less than ten years, making New Avengers only one comeback short of Lindsey Lohan in that same time period.

With multiple comic series, crossover events, and an Avengers movie under our belts since Bendis started on Avengers, it’s easy to forget that this all really started about a decade ago, when I walked into my local comic store where they know me by name and ask me to stop yanking at my belt and screeching, “Avengers Disassemble!”, and saw a book named Alias that I bought for Amanda, thinking it was a comic adaptation of the new Jennifer Garner ABC TV series. It most certainly was not. It was a crime story taking places on the dirty fringes of the Marvel Universe, involving B-Lister Scott Lang and the first real rehabilitation of Luke Cage since his introduction (we’re gonna claim convenient amnesia about Brian Azzarello’s attempt to turn Cage into a mix of 50 Cent and Leone’s Man With No Name).

Bendis brought Jessica Jones and Luke Cage with him into The New Avengers, and it is somewhat fitting that he closes out his run with them here… with a pretty exciting and well-drawn mystical battle thrown in to boot.

New Beginnings And Selective Amnesia: FF #1 Review

The biggest problem I have with FF #1 isn’t the characterizations or the ideas behind the story or the dialogue, all of which are, frankly, realistic enough to engage and sometimes even delightful (although I have no idea who Darla Deering – Ms. Thing – is, and I really thought that Scott Lang was dead). No, the biggest problem here is the invisible hand of Marvel Editorial. Because they are the reason that, all while reading this issue, I kept thinking, “Yeah, but Spider-Man really should be here.”

But let’s forget about that right now and talk about what is here. And what is here is pretty damned entertaining, if little but a giant wad of exposition wrapped up in fun dialogue and pretty pop art.

FF #1, written by Matt Fraction with pencils by Mike Allred, spins directly out of Fraction’s recent Fantastic Four #1, where the team decided to go on an exploration mission for a year that, in relativistic terms, should keep them away from Earth for four minutes. So this issue involves each member of the Fantastic Four picking a surrogate to lead the Future Foundation in their stead. For four minutes. Because of course they’ll only be gone for four minutes! This is, after all, a mission planned by Reed Richards! You know, the genius who once said, “Hey, why don’t we just steal the rocket? What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?”

Bait And Switch: Batwoman #14 Review

Despite the fact that the book has been on my pull list at my local comic store, where they know me by name and threaten to ban me if I even remotely try to imply that some douchebags might use “Batwoman” as a verb, I came into Batwoman #14 nearly blind, since I rarely actually read the book anymore.

Oh sure, I always look at the book, at least when J. H. Williams III draws it, because it is one of the most beautifully drawn and laid-out monthly books you can find on the shelves these days. Williams has a unique panel layout, ways of tying panels together, and often uses small panels for storytelling that, when you rack focus backwards, hides truly gorgeous backgrounds hiding in the bleed, that you’ll just not see elsewhere. It’s an awesome looking book… problem is, I just don’t find Williams to be all that compelling a writer. His opening arc from last September was actually the long-solicited and often-delayed Batwoman mini-series that was originally solicited for February, 2011, which meant that by the time it actually debuted, it was set in the pre-New 52 universe, and just didn’t quite fit.

Further, the stories just didn’t grab me; a Bat-family hero working almost completely separately from the main Bat titles, with stories weighted heavily toward the supernatural, simply didn’t hook me in. You might notice that we’ve never reviewed an issue of Batwoman here, mostly because none of them were good – or bad – enough to really whip any of us up enough to sit down and write several hundred words about them. In general, they looked great, with stories that didn’t stick to the brain, and while there was almost always a visual in each issue to make you stop and go, “Wow!”, those visuals weren’t enough to make the stories any more memorable.

However, I decided to make an extra effort to get into Batwoman #14, mostly because of that cover, which, to someone only initiated enough into the series to know that the protagonist often battles with the supernatural, implied the promise that perhaps Batwoman and guest-star Wonder Woman might be dealing with, or perhaps fighting, Jonah Hex.

Yeah, that’s not what happened. Not that there isn’t some good stuff here, but the cover writes a promise that the story doesn’t cash.

The Neverending Reboot: Indestructible Hulk #1 Review

One thing I have learned over 36 years of reading comic book is that, for a character who has been a linchpin of Marvel Comics and who has had some of the greatest crossover success of any comic book character, appearing in cartoons, a prime time television show and three major motion pictures just in my lifetime… nobody ever seems to like The Hulk all that much at any given time.

There is no other major comic character that I can think of that has been rebooted, retrofitted and overhauled more often than The Hulk. Just off the top of my head, Hulk has been green and stupid, grey and stupid, grey and smart, grey and smart and a mafia enforcer, green again and a genius, green and stupid again, green and a gladiator, green and a world conqueror, and one time, green in white clown makeup getting his ass kicked by Batman. And when it comes to Bruce Banner, he has been Bruce Banner, David Banner, a wimpy genius, a tactical master, an abused child, a mad scientist, an itinerant wandering hobo, and the leader of government agencies. If a creator came into, say, Superman and said, “You know what would make Superman better? If Clark Kent was a street hustler, and if Superman wore doilies and shit napalm,” there would be nerd riots in the streets around every comic store… but when it comes to The Hulk, the attitude seems to be, “Fuck it. Can’t be any worse than what the last guy did.”

It seems that every time a new creator gets his hands on The Hulk, his or her first action is to look at what came before, boldly state, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and start slapping together a new current status quo. Just a month or so ago, Jason Aaron finished a run where Banner had been separated from Hulk, Banner went nuts and spent a while doing fruitless genetic experiments, a reasonably intelligent Hulk boned Red She-Hulk, Banner and Hulk reunited to fight Dr. Doom, all in a storyline that was packed with big, goofy action and fun. But that was a month and a creator ago, which in Hulk terms means it might as well have never happened.

So yes, the new creative team on Indestructible Hulk #1 has, indeed, looked at Aaron’s run and seemingly said, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and is taking Banner and Hulk in a different direction. Normally, this would be so much the norm it almost wouldn’t register; just another case of a new guy fucking around until he gets bored or sales tank and the next guy comes into to fuck around. However, this time around the writer is Mark Waid – you know, the guy who looked at 25 years of noir stories in Daredevil and said, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and turned the book in a direction that has generally been as entertaining as any Daredevil story since Frank Miller made Daredevil a noir character.

So while this is yet another reboot for Hulk, whether we needed it or not, Waid gives us an interesting new start, with a fresh take on Banner and some of his motivations, a good take on the tension that being around Banner can cause straight out of the Avengers movie, and a fresh “relationship” between Banner and The Hulk… not that it doesn’t have some problems.

Raising Wyoming: Ultimate Spider-Man #17 Review

You ever get a shit assignment at work? Someone pulls you off of your normal duties and you get asked to work on some bullshit project that was someone else’s bonehead idea, and maybe you try to argue that maybe this thing isn’t something that you should be spending your time on, and that maybe it will totally fuck up what you were trying to accomplish on your primary project, but you get told that this is the way it is, and it’s their way or the highway. So you grind your teeth, you take on the assignment, and since you are a fucking professional, you do the best you can with what you’ve been given to work with, while trying your best to keep your original work from dying on the vine.

Welcome to Ultimate Spider-Man #17, a continuation and integral part of the Ultimate Universe’s United We Stand crossover, a story where Captain America has been elected President of The United States in a write-in campaign, where Hydra has taken over big parts of the country, terrorists roam the streets of New York, and Wyoming is some kind of dead zone / no man’s land where anyone who chooses to go there is taking a dangerous, useless risk. Actually, that’s pretty much how Wyoming is in the real world, but that’s not the point.

The point is that United We Stand is a big, goofy, nonsensical shoot-em-up that has made a bunch of schoolyard, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we $WILDEST_THIRD_GRADE_IDEA?” choices along the way. And it has occurred smack in the middle of writer Brian Michael Bendis’s efforts to create and nurture a new Spider-Man, one who attends a private school, who has a loving, if complicated, family, and is learning about what it means to be not only a hero, but to be a decent person. And smack in the middle of those efforts, now he needs to fight War Machines over Wyoming with Giant Woman and Falcon under direct orders of the President of The United States. You know, Captain America. Which flies in the face of the slow paced (admittedly, sometimes seemingly glacially paced), character-driven story that Bendis has been building since last year.

And it is to Bendis’s credit that even though he has to deal with this big, goofy situation, he keeps a tight focus on the characters of Miles and his family, while delivering enough big thrills to make it arguably the most effective issue of this crossover to date.

Nerd Rage: Amazing Spider-Man #698 Review

Editor’s Note: With Great Spoilers, Comes Great… Spoilers. Yeah, there’s no way around it, this review is loaded with spoilers. Proceed accordingly.

Writer Dan Slott has been promising for months that Dying Wish, the final story arc of The Amazing Spider-Man before it closes up shop with issue #700 and is reborn as something called The Superior Spider-Man, would be so incendiary that he would have to go into hiding, and that he would, as he said on Twitter a few days ago, “Ruin your childhood.”

Well, that “final” story line opens in The Amazing Spider-Man #698. And while I don’t want to kill Slott because of the opening to this story (I want him dead for completely different reasons. He knows what he did), I will go on record that he’d better follow this up with one Goddamned good explanation and iron-clad timelines… and I still think it might end up going the way I originally predicted a month and a half ago.

Another Editor’s Note: Seriously, there are spoilers pouring out of this thing after the jump. I have the Bolivian Viral Tourettes Flu, am loaded with antihistamines and anti-diarrhetics, and therefore my self-control is compromised. By the way, the chick in The Crying Game had a dick. See? I am NOT to be trusted.

Quite A Pair: Saga #7 Review

Saga, by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples, is awesome. It is a space opera on a massive scale, spanning planets, including interstellar war, magic, technology, and strange races of aliens, from the primary warring races of ram-horned magic users and their pixie-winged opponents, to the charming triclopsed giant with man-tits and a scrotum that looks like it’s where the testicles of steroid-users go when they die, who we meet in Saga #7.

It has enough good guys, bad guys, androids and bounty hunters to populate ten Star Wars movies, with enough foul language and robot-fucking to make Disney put away its checkbook in gagging horror. And it does it with the kind of special effects budget you can only get with a pen and paper.

And yet, that is not what makes Saga awesome. It is awesome because, while this massive conflict is happening, this is not a story about those things, but one that happens during them, or perhaps in spite of them. Despite the aliens and robots and magic and technology, this is a human story, and Saga #7 is a perfect example of that. This issue contains magic and starships and the Scrotum That Ate Pittsburgh, but it is about a couple visiting their in-laws for the first time, when those in-laws don’t approve of the relationship. And as a guy who has been in situations where his girlfriend’s parents have treated him in a way ranging from aloof politeness to barely-restrained contempt, it is damn effective.

Plus, it has that splash page that I Goddamned guarantee you was shipped back to Staples with a note from Vaughan reading: “More scrote.”

That’s The Power of Love: All-New X-Men #1 Review

As I have stated repeatedly throughout this history of this Web site, I am not the world’s biggest X-Men fan, despite my long time reading comic books. I’m not sure why they never hooked me in, but my guess is that it’s because those titles were the poster child for extensive, convoluted continuity that thrills longtime readers but is simply impenetrable to new ones.

Go ahead and pick a random issue of any X-Men title from, say, the late 1990s. You’ll see Wolverine; okay, everyone knows Wolverine. Then there will also be some dude from the future with a bionic arm, a gun as big as a Buick Skylark, and no feet – he’s the elderly son of one of the other 20-something X-Men. From the future. Yeah.

And then there will be seven guys you’ve never seen in any other Marvel comic, with names that sound like discarded names from failed 80s Sunset Strip hair metal bands (Shatterstar? Tracy X? Fucking X-Treme?). There might also be an alien, and a couple of coin tosses will tell you if Professor X can walk, or if Magento is a bad guy. And each one of them is fucking, once fucked, or is trying to fuck, each of the others. It’s an inscrutable mess that makes General Hospital look like Dick and Jane.

Besides: through it all, Cyclops was a real dick.

But thanks to Avengers Vs. X-Men, even people who aggressively don’t follow the X-Men have been exposed to the characters, and there is no doubt that that event has seriously mucked around with the mutant status quo. So when you combine that with the fact that Brian Michael Bendis has left the Avengers books he did such a good job rebooting and renovating over the past several years by shaking up the status quo and introducing new characters, and started a new book, All-New X-Men, it would seem that this would be a perfect time to jump into the mutants’ story without being bogged down in years of history and relationships. Right?

Yeah, not so much. However, that doesn’t mean it’s bad.