Don’t Call It A Comeback Or A Reboot, Just A Cynical Marketing Move – Review Of Iron Man #1

A fabulously charming, billionaire, genius playboy walks into a bar with a hot air-headed blonde and a cold drink. The playboy says, “I have a lust for life that, when viewed from a distance is almost indistinguishable from a death wish.” The punchline? The cold drink is water because the playboy is an alcoholic, so he has to tolerate the blonde while sober. Also: the scene is drawn by Greg Land.

Iron Man #1 is written by Kieron Gillen. He is a man who knows his way around a solid, nuanced story, as anyone who has his recent work on Journey Into Mystery can attest. However, Iron Man #1 – titled “Demons And Genies”- appears to be, at the outset, more concerned with reestablishing plot points from earlier stories, such as “Demon In A Bottle” and “Extremis”, than breaking any new ground. So, yup – not a reboot. If anything, it’s taking Warren Ellis’s “Extremis” story and reminding the readers, “Hey, remember when storylines were fresh, new, and exciting? This isn’t one of those times. But don’t sweat it reader! We’ve got an app to fix that. Just view the selected panels through your smartphone using our Augmented Reality program and you’ll forget that what you’re reading breaks absolutely no ground at all!”

Probably not a good thing, right?

More blasts from the past, and spoilers, after the jump.

Ensign Wesley Crusher Blues: Action Comics #14 Review

Editor’s Note: Well, I certainly hope this little incident hasn’t put you off spoilers, miss. Statistically speaking, of course, it’s still the safest way to review.

Before I forget: there’s one astronaut in Action Comics #14 who is the primary candidate to be that astronaut who’s pulled over by the state police with a bottle of pharmaceutical amphetamines, a box of Depends, a roll of duct tape and a switchblade. See if you can guess which one! But that’s not important right now.

Action Comics #14 is going to work for you, or not work, depending on how you feel about Silver Age Superman stories, because this is one. From unlikely astronauts on a truly improbable mission that has never been mentioned before (and probably never will be again) to unlikely pseudoscience that can only be accomplished because Superman’s there to accomplish it, to a familiar yet faintly ridiculous antagonist, to a Fifth-Dimensional Imp, the only difference between this and any Superman comic book from, say, 1965 is the actual danger the astronauts are put in an the big, goofy Curt Swan Superman smile… which artist Rags Morales actually apes in one panel.

So this is a tough issue to be objective about because it is ridiculous… but it is kinda supposed to be ridiculous. It features people in distress who can only be saved by Superman – including a kid who clearly idolizes Superman – even though it requires you to believe that these pussies (and children!) are the hardy sort who would be the first to terraform another planet. It needs you to be okay with the idea that ten thousand Christian angels would have a hard-on to tear Mars a new asshole, and that a human distress call from the surface of Mars would attract less attention from the citizens of Earth than the landing of a remote controlled Tonka truck that made this dude the jack fantasy for every female XKCD reader in the English speaking world.

So this story has some logical issue, but the logical issues seem to be there on purpose. So the overriding question is: does it work?

Lost In The Shadows: Shadowman #1 Review

Editor’s Note: My name is Spoiler, for we are many.

I’ve said a few times recently that the number of comic titles I was buying back in the early to mid-90s totalled about three or four, with most of them being Vertigo books. There was some reasons for that, one of them being that I was stone broke, and where the rubber hits the road, you can’t go out, drink a comic book and try to get laid.

But the primary reason was that, in the immediate post-Image Comics era, a lot of comics were simply and truly hammered shit. And they were crap for a lot of reasons, but most of them boiled down to the simultaneous rises of the Age of The Artist-Driven Comic, and the Swelling of The Speculator Who Didn’t Give A Shit About Comics Beyond Using Them To Pay For Little Austin’s College Education. So as far as I was concerned, I was seeing a fuckton of books with heavily-stylized covers, new publisher names I’d never heard of, a big ol’ “First Issue! Collector’s Item!” splashed in chromium… and, having read a bunch of these books before tuning out, no story inside whatsoever.

The point is that, when Shadowman debuted back in 1992, I had already begun my early 20s snobbish migration away from stylized superhero comics, and probably turned up my nose at it. Throw on top of that that I didn’t ever have the money for a videogame console until the first XBox came out, it means that I never played the Shadowman videogames by Acclaim, the company that bought Valiant to mine their intellectual properties for games and promptly ran the comics division into the ground. So I have no background whatsoever in the character of Shadowman.

This is kind of a problem when it comes to reading Shadowman #1

Spoonful of Sugar: The Tick #101 Review

It takes a bold man to introduce any form of pathos to The Tick, a character that two generations of comic readers automatically associate with the battle cry of “Spoon!” or perhaps with being trapped in a dinosaur’s wild moustache hair.

The concept of introducing any kind of sorrow to a character who has battled a man-eating cow and a dude with a chair for a face takes a lot of balls, because if you do it wrong, you’re running the risk of seriously fucking up a character that has worked for a quarter century on a very simple level: be a goofy, naive superhero parody who says silly shit while battling ridiculous villains with his fat, incompetent sidekick. Get your giggles, get out, and hope that some kind television suit forgets that underrated live action TV show so The Tick gets another chance on television somewhere.

The Tick #101 opens with Arthur having been killed. The issue deals, in large part, with how The Tick deals with that loss. And we get emotional internal monologue of how the loss affects The Tick, including how, without Arthur or someone to help guide him, he is simply muscle pointed in no particular direction. These are issues and character points that could go wrong on a light-hearted character like The Tick in a real fucking hurry; watching The Tick contemplate mortality and is own shortcomings could very quickly go the way of watching Honey Boo Boo try to redefine Pi while her mother’s held at gunpoint: morbidly entertaining, but out of place and uncomfortable if done incorrectly.

Well, not to worry, because writer Benito Cerino strikes one hell of a balance between addressing the relationship between The Tick and Arthur, while still commenting on the innate ephemeral nature of any superhero’s death in comics these days, and chucking in plenty of jokes about mimes. Douchebag, douchebag mimes. And he uses the guest appearance of Mike Allred’s Madman as a catalyst to get into the more emotional, touching elements of the story, while never forgetting that this is a Tick story, which means that we get plenty of bombastic catchphrases and liberal use of words like “dink.”

Quiet, Boy! You Wanna Get Sued? Lot 13 #1 Review

If you have any questions about the kind of story you’re about to read when you open up the first issue of Lot 13, written by Steve Niles and drawn by Glenn Fabry (in a rare turn on interior art), you’ll get an inkling once you see the first panel after the prologue, which features a helicopter shot of a vehicle being used by a family in the process of moving. And you’ll damn well know what kind of story it is when you see that family enter a mysterious, empty hotel. Cue ominous synth music. Press the button to summon the blood elevator. All work and no play make Jack yell here’s Johnny! Slow zoom to an old-timey television showing oh God that’s Steve Niles walking with Nicholson through the hedge maze – smash cut to black. Fin.

So yes: this comic book is – shall we say an homage – to Kubrick’s The Shining. If it wore its influences any more obviously on its sleeve, it would come packed in a “REDRUM” polybag. But that isn’t inherently a bad thing; after all, The Shining itself is an homage to The Haunting of Hill House and that turned out okay except for Danny Lloyd’s career. What matters in any haunted house story – and to be fair, it’s too early to tell if the hotel will be the primary setting, or if things will move sometime in the next four issues – is whether or not you care about the characters and their predicament. After all, what made The Shining so effective was watching Jack struggle against the power of the hotel, while if, say, Justin Bieber walked into the Overlook Hotel, I’d roll a Molotov Cocktail in after him, bar the door and pop some corn.

So that’s the overriding question: does Niles do a good enough job making characters that inspire enough emotion to do the heavy lifting to make readers forget that they’re a pair of twins and a phantom bartender away from conversing with their finger? Well, kinda… in the sense that while I found I really didn’t give much of a fuck one way or the other about four of the characters, at least one of them engaged me enough to make me want to kill them with an axe.

Man Of Steel, Supporting Characters Of Kleenex: Superman: Earth One, Volume Two Review

Superman: Earth One, Volume One, when it was released in October, 2010, was a damn exciting development in Superman’s history, albeit alternative history. It was the first modern reimagining of Superman’s origin since John Byrne’s The Man of Steel in post-Crisis 1986, and it was the first version to posit Clark Kent as a somewhat modern 20-something – a modern 20-something circa about 1996, but still, better than a young man fresh out of college in a pristine blue suit, dress fedora and no stench of alcohol. Sure, it had some story issues – for example, if I could somehow finagle an interview for a job for which I was, on paper, grossly unqualified, and I then said I wanted to fuck around with their infrastructure, I would be less likely to be offered six figures than 60,000 volts from a stun gun – but I generally found it to be a refreshing take on Superman’s origin, especially considering that the alternate universe conceit allowed writer J. Michael Straczynski to be bold with things without needing to come up with some outlandish, what-if-Superman-landed-on-a-cocaine-farm Elseworlds scenario to tell it. It was a recognizable Superman story, non-beholden to continuity, and thus it felt fresh.

That, however, was two years ago. Superman: Earth One, Volume Two was released yesterday, and between the two volumes was a small event in the DC Universe called the New 52 Reboot. Which means that, for good or ill, Straczynski’s alternate universe early Superman stories are no longer going to be automatically compared to a miniseries written when newspapers were viable, homeland security involved a deadbolt and a shotgun, and “blog” was a regional reference to a particular consistency of bowel movement.

So the question here not only is whether or not Superman: Earth One, Volume Two is a good story and worth the 23-buck cover price, but how well it holds up now that it’s presenting itself as an alternative to an in-continuity Superman with an origin that’s more modern than the one presented in Volume One. And the answer? Well, like the first volume, it presents a pretty entertaining and generally emotionally engaging story, with a bunch of logical problems and character choices that seem to be made more based on convenience than realism… but it is definitely affected not only by comparison with the recent DC reboot of Superman, but with some older, near-classic comics that tackle similar themes.

However, Straczynski clearly knows that he is writing a comic for the Internet age, because there is also a cute kitty and underboob shots. So it’s got that going for it.

New Kid In Town: Talon #1 Review

I don’t know a lot about magic beyond getting hammered and watching my Penn & Teller: Bullshit DVDs, but even with my limited background, I question whether or not Talon #1 writer James Tynion IV knows exactly what an escape artist actually does. If Harry Houdini could do the things that title character Calvin Rose is capable of, we would never have had a Second World War because the first time they drew the curtain on him in the Chinese Water Torture in New York, they would have reopened it three minutes later to discover Houdini in a dry tuxedo, standing outside a tank containing an adolescent Adolf Hitler, clawing frantically at the glass.

Seriously, if any magician could do what Talon does, they would not be performing for screeching children at rotten birthday parties except maybe as a front for their lucrative paid assassination careers. Penn and Teller would not be doing a residency at the Rio Casino in Vegas, as they would be too busy robbing its vault empty on a nightly fucking basis. This, however is not a bad thing, for a few reasons, the first being that a comic book about a guy tensing his wrists to provide slack to eventually escape handcuffs would be boring, particularly after he was shot in the face as soon as the handcuffs were locked. And second, because Tynion is using the escape artist / magician hook to show some action presented in a real clever way, and to present a protagonist who, at least so far, isn’t concerned with beating the bad guy, but beating the bad guy so he can get away.

So we’ve got a clearly unrealistic escape artist protagonist who fights only to escape, but still, one who acts in a kinda cool and interesting way, and has a tendency to mouth off and sometimes panic and run while he’s fighting. So does that make for a good and entertaining comic book?

…In The Machine: Ghost #1 Review

Editor’s Note: But you’re not fooling me, ’cause I can see, the way you shake and spoiler.

I have never read Ghost before – when it debuted in the 90s, I was busy being a snob, snorting at every comic with a twin set of boobs and guns as a rotten Image knockoff, and buying only Preacher, Shade: The Changing Man and Transmetropolitan – so it turns out that I was at a distinct disadvantage when I opened the first issue of the Ghost miniseries, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and drawn by Phil Noto. Who would’ve known that being dropped into the middle of an ongoing story – even though it’s labelled with a “#1” on the cover – would make it difficult to know who’s who and what the hell is going on?

So you should be aware coming into Ghost #1 that if you haven’t read any Ghost stories (ha!) before, you’re likely to be somewhat confused. I’m sure there are a ton of comic readers who know who Ghost is, and why she doesn’t seem to know who she is after 19 years of publishing history, and who these two dingbats she’s traveling with are and what this box they’re talking about is, why Ghost seems to be shoveling donuts down her maw every few minutes, who the spaz with the taste for needles and ball gags is, and whether or not the Mayor Bobby guy we meet mid-issue is the same guy with, shall we say, a skin problem, at the end of the issue.

I, however, am not one of them, so I was forced to dive in and swim. So the question about this book, for me, was: would I be able to overcome my ignorance about these characters and their backstory, and figure out just what the hell was going on?

Well, kinda.

The War At Home: Avengers #32 Review

When I was but a lad, back in the dark and mystical age modern man knows only as the mysterious “Me Decade“, when collars were wide, all toys were choking hazards, and “flame retardant” was but a French phrase for, “If your moronic child lights a match, his polyester pants will go up like Nagasaki,” a four-year war took place in New England. It was a brutal, nonsensical conflict that pitted not only brother against brother but universe against universe. It featured bloody battles such as Superheroes versus Shogun Warriors. Imperial Stormtroopers against Micronauts. Cylon Centurions battling The Six Million Dollar Man. And one time, the entire Rebel Alliance X-Wing fleet versus Barbie, when General Debbie Stinkypants from the Nation State of Three Doors Down refused to respect hostilities and maintain neutrality, leading not only to Barbie’s summary decapitation under the accepted Rules of Engagement, to a brutal and crippling outbreak of incurable cooties to all combatants.

This war, known only as the Battle Of Every Action Figure In My Toy Box Against Every Action Figure In Every Other Neighborhood Kid’s Toy Box, waged continuously from about 1975 until Janine Wilson started sprouting boobs and my fellow combatants and I started focusing on diplomacy and foreign affairs. But in the intervening years, I have learned that this war was waged in every neighborhood in America during that time. It is a war that left many scars – for me, the worst was when Janine said, “Why would I care what an Acroyear is? Anyway, you smell like an armpit. C’mon Debbie; let’s go listen to the Flashdance soundtrack again and moon over older, Junior High School boys!” – but at least my war is over. For some poor bastards, the fighting has never stopped, leaving them broken, unable to maintain standard, acceptable gainful employment, and looking for the enemy around every corner.

Brian Michael Bendis is one of those shattered warriors, still fighting battles in a long-forgotten war. His latest conflict? The Avengers Vs. The Micronauts. He’s put the action figures on the battlefield in Avengers #32, and while it’s too early to tell if it will be good, the fact that he’s fighting the battle is exciting to someone who served on the same army in the 70s (I was with the 77th Awesome Division out of Massachusetts. Motto: “No, you wet the bed!”).

Snap Bad Decisions: X-Factor #245 Review

With God as my witness, I will never understand what possessed writer Peter David and artist Leonard Kirk to open an issue of purely talking head non-action with a giant splash page, complete with Kirby Krackle, of Jamie Madrox heroically calling Havok a fuckup douchebag. It is a big, overblown, bombastic start to an issue that focuses itself on human moments rather than action – even if some of those moments are particularly heated – and on running far more than action.

This issue is all about running. Most of the primary characters of X-Factor’s current incarnation are in the process of trying to run in this book, be it trying to run toward something or away from something. The book eschews basic action in favor of characterization, but that characterization shows characters in real pain, trying to find a way to alleviate the pain of the aftermaths of the X-Factor Breaking Points event that this issue concludes, as well as the Avengers Vs. X-Men event, and it shows it a way that is almost more satisfying than seeing Cyclops clapped in irons and abused and denigrated by all comers… and if you know how I feel about that sanctimonious ruby-lensed hipster shaded douchenozzle, you’d realize what high praise it is indeed to call X-Factor #245 as satisfying as seeing Cyclops beaten, chewed and fucked by prison gangs.

Even if the issue does open with an image that implies that the most important thing in the book is Madrox’s hippocampus apparently violently exploding from the back of his head.