Comic Book Dead: Secret Avengers # 26 Review

Editor’s Note: The Review Force is a cosmic entity capable of causing a planet-wide Spoiler event. 

Usually, when a more minor, lower circulation comic becomes part of a major summer crossover event, it is a book to avoid. Almost invariably books like that are where publishers stick filler while hoping that the crossover’s logo on the cover increases circulation enough to justify the printing costs and stave off cancellation for a couple of months. Everyone knows that an event’s important stuff occurs in the primary title and the related major titles, while the second tier books are where you get “major” revelations running the gamut from, “Some minor character is terrified of the ramifications of this major event!” to “Wow! It turns out I, the reader, don’t give a fuck about any of this shit!”

So imagine my surprise when Secret Avengers # 26, which is precisely the kind of book where you’d stick Captain Cannonfodder and his fear of Phoenix but need to (fatally) redeem some misdeed made in a 1974 issue of The Brave and The Give Us Your Quarter Kid, wound up not only being the scene of one of the more major (yet least hoopla’ed) comic book resurrections of the past several years, but of a reasonable examination of why a Captain Cannonfodder-level character is as minor a player as he is. All with some damned interesting and unconventional art to boot.

First off, despite what I just said, make no mistake: this is, in fact, the first totally unnecessary side story in the Avengers Vs. X-Men event. There is, after all, a reason the crossover is called Avengers Vs. X-Men, and if you are a superhero and you find yourself on an Avengers team, in outer space to stop the Phoenix Force, with no X-Men anywhere in sight? Welcome to the B-plot, pal. Look to your left, and look to your right. One of you is going to die. The other is probably Squirrel Girl.

Our America – Review Of Crossed: Badlands #4

What are the Crossed? Zombies? Infected, delusional maniacs? Cleveland Cavaliers fans? Who are these creatures and why do they want to violate various orifices in my body while they eat my face? The latest entry in Avatar’s own, never-ending man vs. monster in a post apocalyptic setting, Crossed: Badlands #4, kicks off a new story arc written by Jamie Delano with art by Leandro Rizzo.

Delano’s new arc follows a very brief one by series creator Garth Ennis. That one, set in Scotland, went in perhaps the most predictable direction of any story in Crossed thus far – after 3 issues, everyone was dead or turned Crossed. Pretty much what you’d figure would happen if the world was actually over run by contagious monsters. This new story moves the action back to the United States, somewhere in the swamp lands of the South. Delano showcases a new cast of characters, most of which illustrate the way some of us worry that we Americans come across to the rest of the world: the meth head trailer trash, the disgruntled, water boarding Islamophobe, the degenerate, bored offspring of cocaine cowboys. About the only broad stereotypes that seemed to be missing were The Situation and Snooki – but this is just the first issue. We may still have time to shoehorn them in, yet.

But, is it a worthwhile read? That and infectious spoilers, after the jump!

This Is About Fights: Versus #1 Review

Versus #1 takes the Avengers Vs. X-Men event, strips out the backstory, the plot contrivances and the other useless crap that is being pounded into this event to make it hang together as a story, and it leaves us with the core idea which is all that almost anyone gives a tin shit about in this event: superheroes kicking the shit out of each other.

Let me offer an analogy: let’s say that Avengers Vs. X-Men is a Grateful Dead show. If that’s the case, then Versus is the smelly guy in the parking lot selling hits of acid for five bucks a whack: in other words, it’s far more entertaining, and if you’re honest with yourself, it’s the real reason you decided to attend the main event in the first place.

This book is fucking fun. It is meant to be fun, and it knows that it’s fun; any comic that opens on its recap page (and interesting choice for a first issue) with…

This book is about AWESOME BRAWLING! You want PLOT? LOOK ELSEWHERE, CHUM. You want a KNOCK-DOWN, DRAG-OUT WHUPPIN’? WE GOT YOU COVERED.

…is a book whose only ambitions vis a vis obtaining an Eisner Award to to snatch one out of Joe Sacco’s hands and use it to beat Grant Morrisson about the head, neck and face.

52 Problems But A Goon Ain’t One: The Goon #39 Review

The Goon #39 makes a savage mockery of just about every major superhero comic, and superhero comic creator, of the past five years. It skewers everything from DC Comics’s New 52, to Geoff Johns’s Blackest Night arc in Green Lantern, to Spider-Man’s constant sad-sack internal monologues, and it kicks the shit out of every major – and minor – comics artist that had put pencil to paper (or, apparently, mouse to pixel) since 1986. In short, it denigrates every trope of the superhero comics that I have loved since I was five years old.

And it is fucking awesome.

You might notice that this review doesn’t contain a spoiler warning. That’s because there is no story here to ruin. This is one of writer / artist Eric Powell’s one-off issues that serves no story nor history of The Goon. It is simply a brutal takedown of superhero universe reboots and the tricks that the Big Two Publishers use to whip fanboys like me into a frenzy, and to sleaze mainstream media interest in comics (Example: The Goon is killed, and brought back to like, three times in this issue. On one page. Your move, Matt Fraction).

Bald Hulk Is Not A Euphemism: The Incredible Hulk #7 Review

Editor’s Note: Time for one last review before the comic stores open… one chock full of profanity and spoilers. You are warned.

A couple of months ago, the Fox Movie Channel reran the 1990 TV movie The Death Of The Incredible Hulk, which I grabbed on the TiVo because I was a child in the 1970s / 1980s and therefore grew up with the Bill Bixby / Lou Ferrigno television show and have a sense of nostalgia for it. Plus, I possibly hate myself.

Anyway, at the end of the flick, the Hulk suffers some kind of great fall (and yes, that is as specific as I can get. What, you think I watched that pile of shit sober?) and caused the death of Bixby’s Banner. The intention was never to actually kill Banner / Hulk, but instead to set up a future TV movie where the Hulk had Banner’s brain, which was derailled due to Lou Ferrigno’s commitments to sign autographs at regional comic book conventions for nickels, and due to Bill Bixby’s unexpected opportunity to perform in a second banana role to a prostate tumor.

What’s my point? My point is that even ratings-crazy and cocaine “enthusiast” 80s TV executives never intended to kill Banner permanently. And I guarantee you, neither does The Incredible Hulk #7 writer Jason Aaron.

Yellow Peril: The Shadow: The Fire of Creation #1 Review

Garth Ennis’s The Shadow does many things effectively, including presenting an interesting “modern” characterization of the title character (considering, unlike Howard Chaykin’s 1980s reboot for DC Comics, Ennis writes this as a period piece), slowly introducing The Shadow’s “faithful companions” for people who aren’t necessarily already familiar with them, and, within 22 pages, setting the stage for a story that is international and possibly terrifying in scope.

However, the thing it does most effectively is to instill a deep and visceral unholy rage toward the government and military of the nation of Japan, circa 1939, to the point where when I was finished with the book, I wished that Oppenheimer and company had built a third nuke. A shit nuke. That caused a mushroom cloud made of feces. Which is a feeling that I personally found to be pretty damned disturbing. But I’ll come back to that.

Let’s move to an admission: I am not all that familiar with The Shadow, at least when it comes to the character’s Street And Smith pulp origins. Sure, I’ve read Chaykin’s miniseries, and I have a couple of issues of the Andy Helfer series that followed it, and I saw the 1994 movie starring Alec Baldwin and that 80s movie actress who isn’t what’s-her-face from Weeds. So what I knew about the character was based on those sources: that he carries two guns, and that he has some kind of power to “cloud men’s minds,” which, in the sources I’ve read, amounts to: “Hey! I have the ability to cloud men’s minds (shoots criminal in face)!”

Norbert Ebersol’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – Review Of Thunderbolts #173

I have this theory that if I, now firmly knocking on the door of my 40s, met myself anytime before I turned at least 30…I would hate myself. Not the “damn, I shouldn’t have gone back and messed with the past” kind of hate myself, but the “wow, I can’t believe I was ever like that. How did people ever stand to be around me?” hate myself. I call the period right after I got out of college the “terrible 22s”; I had big plans and no experience, but that’s ok, because I was convinced I knew everything. I’m convinced my mom started to charge me rent when I moved home after college less because she needed the money and more because she was trying to get me to move out. I don’t blame her.

What does this have to do with Thunderbolts #173, written by Jeff Parker with art from Declan Shalvey? Well, the Thunderbolts team has been bouncing around through time for the past several issues. As they get closer and closer to the present, it was inevitable that they’d run into a younger version of themselves eventually. I mean, they’re a super team comprised of super villains; they get around.

So, what do you do when you are a narcissistic megalomaniac and you’ve run into a much younger you? And, enough about me, what do the Thunderbolts do?

Failed dreams, shattered ambitions and spoilers, after the jump.

An Asskicking By Any Other Name: Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 Review

Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 is a big old action movie of a comic book, where the first punch gets thrown by the second page and the hits keep on coming until we’re reminded by the last page that all this hot, sweet superhero-on-superhero action (wait, I think that came out wrong) is in service of a plot related to the Phoenix Force coming to destroy the world before the Avengers movie even has a chance to come out.

This book is filled with satisfying, balls-to-the-wall action… but it is also filled with overblown, florid and somewhat pretentious captions that read like a sixteen-year-old either trying to use his comics addiction for an easy C in Intro to Poetry, or to charm the Drama Club skank into turning a backrub into a front rub. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

If you’re looking for any kind of story advancement in this issue, you’re not gonna find much. The issue opens with the X-Men and The Avengers beating the unholy shit out of each other, and pretty much ends the same, with only the minor plot points of, “Yup, Phoenix Force… still coming,” and “Yeah, Hope… still getting jacked up on the Phoenix Force,” being advanced. If this was a modern Grandmasters’ chess game, this issue would be the equivalent of Bobby Fischer darkly muttering about Jews while some scabrous geek flips on the opposing IBM supercomputer.

Gotham State: Batman #8 Review

I have said before that the Court of Owls storyline in Batman has followed a familiar and well-trod path that was previously laid down in stories like The Cult: Batman is overwhelmed by an implacable foe and imprisoned. Batman is psychologically broken down. Batman escapes and returns to his cave to cower for a while. The villain that broke Batman begins to run amok in Gotham City. Batman mopes around and listens to The Shins until Natalie Portman teaches him what it’s like to really feel. Wait, something there’s not quite right… I meant Batman returns to his cave and snivels. I think. Maybe. Whatever.

Anyway, Batman #8 continues following that classic old chestnut of an arc by starting the part of the story where Batman locates and reattachs his balls, and begins his counterattack against the villain who broke him. Based on what has come before, both in this story arc and in the similar stories that preceeded and clearly inspired it, this is expected and as predictable as night following day or Natalie Portman being introduced in a meet cute in any movie in which she appears that doesn’t include ballet or lightsabers.

Just because it is predictable, however, does not mean that it is boring. Because Jesus Christ, this is an intense and fun comic book… provided you can stop yourself from saying with every page turn, “I read this when it was written by Jim Starlin, drawn by Bernie Wrightson, and Natalie Portman was meeting cute with French assassins and posssibly the occasional delighted sweaty ‘fan’  in a stained raincoat.”

Unctous Sodomites And Vain, Pampered Whores: The Shade #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And one last brief review of one of last week’s comics before the comic stores open…

Looking back over this past week’s reviews, it seems like there wasn’t very much I actually liked. Which is a bummer, but just the way things go sometimes; some weeks you get journeymen turning in inspired craftsmanship, others you get dillitanates who are fucking around in the medium for the sheer, lunatic thrill of it.

Thankfully, The Shade is no dillitante… and neither is writer James Robinson, who is continuing via The Shade miniseries to channel the closest to a Jack Knight Starman story that we are every likely to see again.

Robinson is just over halfway through this 12-issue miniseries with this issue, and yet amazingly, it is not a bad place to jump on if you haven’t been reading from the beginning. Yes, it is mid story – even mid ministory within the series, which recalls adventures from the title character’s past – but Robinson gives the reader a three page recap at the start of the book, in the middle of a fight, to bring us up to speed. Which is valuable, and the kind of thing that I like to see in comics – I prefer a book that I can pick up and follow without having to hunt up back issues or old trades – although I’ll admit that the sequence is dialogue-heavy exposition.