Putting The Band Back Together: Powers #10 Review

Brian Michael Bendis’s and Michael Avon Oeming’s Powers has been a dicey read for me for a long time now. A comic that started as a unique take on the superhero book, where some regular cops worked regular cases that just happened to involve superhumans and included some of the coolest dialogue you could find in a comic book, it eventually… evolved. Or devolved. Into a book where the regular cops got powers and secret identities, and the compelling partners at the core of the book split up, all while Bendis and Oeming started putting out, say, an issue a year, whether we needed one or not.

If the original Powers arc, Who Killed Retro Girl?, was the comics equivalent of Twin Peaks season one, the more recent arcs have been more like Laverne & Shirley after they went to Hollywood… assuming Garry Marshal had had the brainwave to replace Shirley with The Great Gazoo. Which is somewhat of an unkind comparison, because I always kept Powers on my pull list, because even while the characters shuffled and I lost track of the plot between issues, it still offered some of the best dialogue in comics, and there was always something interesting going on, even if some issues felt less like seeing Muhammed Ali in his prime in 1979 than it did watching Muhammed Ali trying to eat prime rib in 2009.

You get all that? Good. Now forget it all. Because Powers #10 is flat-out the best issue of Powers since the early, early Image Comics days. It has it all: the crackling dialogue, Walker and Pilgrim back together doing interrogations in the box, and real, human stakes behind the superpowers. It is awesome, and one of the best single issues of not just Powers, but of any comic book I’ve read in weeks.

Finally Forward Thinking: Avengers Assemble #3 Review

Editor’s Note: There was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people, so when we needed them, they could spoil the comics that we never could.

Put as mildly as a foul-mouthed, cynical, long-time drunken comic reader can put it, comic publishers almost never handle the release of a movie based on one of their properties well. Put less mildly and more baldly accurately, they generally seem to take the opportunity such a cross-media exposure provides for attracting new, enthusiastic readers to their comic books to grimly set their jaws, strap on their cleats, and stomp hard on their own dicks.

It happens over and over, so predictably that it might was well be a Cylon plot. The Dark Knight is poised to become the biggest movie of 2008, you say? What a perfect time for DC to kill Batman and put a new guy in the suit! Thor looking to open large? Awesome! Kill him! Iron Man breaking bigger than anyone thought in 2008? Sweet, let’s make him a government bureaucrat! It’s like the front offices of the Big Two, prior to the release of a comic book movie, go days without sleep, subsisting on amphetamines, trying to figure out how to convey to potential new readers, who wander into a comic store to learn more about the character they just fell in love with, that it would be in their best interests to fuck off and just keep right on walking.

So imagine my surprise when Marvel, not five days after the release of Avengers in American theaters, put out an issue of a comic book written and drawn by one of their A-list talent teams that looks like the movie, has the same characters as the movie, that is not only action-packed and imminently accessible to anyone who saw the movie, but also goes about answering one of the key unanswered questions from the movie that I have been asked repeatedly since last Friday: “So, that guy in the scene in the credits… who was that guy, exactly?”

One-Eyed Wonder Worm: Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Children of The Pixel. Feared and hated by those they have sworn to protect. These are the strangest spoilers of all!

Cyclops is a fucking dick.

– Crisis On Infinite Midlives Editor Amanda, every New Comics Wednesday since I’ve known her

So Cyclops, like Han, shot first. Except, unlike Cyclops, people actually like Han. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Avengers Vs. X-Men, Marvel’s tentpole summer crossover event, is finally here, and now that it is, it’s hard for me to really know what to think of it. It has a lot of action, although almost none of it is the aforementioned Avengers Vs. X-Men action (Note to self: remember the “Vs.” “Avengers on X-Men” action is an entirely different animal), and loaded with character moments, which is important in the opening chapter of a story that requires one character to act like he’s simultaneously on the upswing of a bipolar cycle and the downswing of a complete psychotic breakdown to make his behavior believable in the slightest.

But With A Whimper: Avengers #24 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And there came a day, a day unlike any other, when Crisis On Infinite Midlives douchiest editors found themselves united against a common threat. Spoilers Assemble!

I am perhaps not the best person to review Avengers #24 objectively, since I have gone on record as not being the biggest proponent of the whole Dark Reign 2 / Return of Norman Osborn / Dark Avengers Redux storyline. Based on particular individual issues in this crossover, I had somewhat softened my original opinion about the story arc, but considering my original prejudices, I perhaps cannot be trusted to be impartial in my opinions about this semi-ending to the story.

However, considering that you have made it this far after being spoiler and prejudice-warned on a Web site where the tagline on every page proclaims me to be a grumpy drunkard, I now feel safe in telling you that the ending of this story is so Goddamned wretchedly and horrifyingly bad it cheapens the entire arc, which I didn’t hold in particularly high value in the first place. In terms of excitement, this ending ranks with “And then I woke up.” In terms of a climax, this is on par with “I’m sorry; this has never happened to me before.” And in terms of pacing, it can only feel like writer Brian Michael Bendis said, “Avengers Vs. X-Men starts when? Oh shit.”

In addition, this story, as did the first Dark Reign storyline a couple years back, violates what should be an obvious and cardinal rule of resolving a Norman Osborn Ascendant story that should be Goddamned obvious on its face… but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Innocence By Association: New Avengers #22 Review

UPDATE, 3/3/2012, 9 a.m.: Via Twitter exchange with Mike Deodato on the division of art labor between him and Will Conrad:

@mikedeodato – FYI: @willconrad didn’t ink me on NA#22. He drew these awesome pages: 5,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 and I did the rest. Thanks, buddy!:)

@InfiniteMidlife – Thanks, @mikedeodato. I’m curious: did @willconrad pencil those pages with a common inker for the book? I couldn’t see a difference in style

@mikedeodato –@InfiniteMidlife We ink our own stuff.

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Here’s the ugly and sad truth that DC Comics will not want to hear and will ignore even if they do: when it comes to superhero team books, The New Avengers is, bar none, the most consistently good one you can currently put your hands on. From the plot to the characters to the dialogue to the art, this book blows Justice League out of the water… and I say this despite the fact that New Avengers #22 continues the Dark Avengers 2 storyline, which just by existing makes me so crazy with rage that I want to catch a flight so I can chloroform writer Brian Michael Bendis and draw a misshapen Norman Osborn wavy haircut on his lumpy bald noggin.

This issue continues the aftermath of Osborn’s and his Dark Avengers’ public relations assault on our heroes, which has led to a bunch of very expensive power-armored New York SWAT cops (Hey, it’s New York in the 616; let’s assume Mayor Jameson’s reduction of the Moustache Tax hit the sweet spot on the Laffer Curve) waiting outside Avengers Mansion to arrest the crew. Luke Cage, however, has some obvious and understandable issues with police authority, so fisticuffs ensue. Meanwhile, various members of the Dark Avengers are engaged in a race to see who can sneakfuck Osborn the fastest, and some members of the New Avengers have realized that S.H.I.E.L.D. liason Victoria Hand – former right-hand woman for Osborn in the Dark Reign days – might have been giving the team a Victoria Job. Wait, that’s not right…

Bendis On Powers TV Series – “Still Has Some Life In It”

Bleeding Cool is passing along Deadline‘s news that Lucy Punch has dropped out of the much delayed Powers television. Punch was cast as Deena Pilgrim, partner to secretly super powered cop, Christian Walker (Jason Patric). However, according to Facebook, Brian Michael Bendis says:

lucy punch has moved on, powers tv is not dead. if it was i would tell you honest & true. new scripts have been ordered for more episodes & there will be news in may about how we are going forward. the network is behind us all the way. its quite nice. its going to be a long haul but its all about quality. i desperately want the best show we can make.

Fans are apparently pushing for Katee Sackhoff to pick up the role, which I think would be brilliant casting, personally. How do we get a petition going to make this happen?

Anyway, I still have hope we’ll see this series. It will probably hit the airwaves about the next time Brian Michael Bendis sees fit to actually send another issue of Powers out for sale.

Never Judge A Book: Ultimate Spider-Man #7 Review

We’re now seven issues into Brian Michael Bendis’s new Ultimate Spider-Man, and Miles Morales is in his costume, Peter Parker is in his heaven, and there is finally superhero action in this superhero action comic book. Man, I’m liking this book a lot more now that something’s actually happening in it. Who woulda thunk it?

However, the book gets a rough start thanks to Kaare Andrews cover. Sure, it’s beautifully rendered with pseudo 3D / photorealistic backgrounds, and unlike the cover in the last issue we reviewed here, it doesn’t look like Spider-Man’s so excited to have superpowers that he’s double-ejaculating like some kind of pornographic Chow Yun Fat while busily sucking his own dick. No, in this cover, Spider-Man is overlooking the city, demurely and quietly squatting… and apparently crapping a giant golden dook. Right on top of the American flag. Look, I really like Kaare Andrews work – his stuff on Spider-Man: Reign was excellent – but the man draws these Ultimate Spider-Man covers like he’s trying to see what weird shit he can sneak into them. I’m guessing that either we’re two issues away from a cover where Spider-Man sprays webs onto Black Cat’s upper lip, or that I just have a filthy, dirty (sanchez) mind and should stop reading perversion into these covers.

Things, however, are a little more plain vanilla between the covers (Ha! Get it?).

Interruptus: Powers #8 Review

I like Brian Michael Bendis’s Powers a lot. It has been on my pull list at my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop acting out the term “pull list” in front of the paying customers, for more than ten years. I have all the individual issues that follow the first “Who Killed Retro Girl?” arc back when the book was published by Image Comics. And I even like this individual issue of Powers. But I’m not going to recommend that you buy it.

It is, in fact, all but pointless to buy this book, because it doesn’t matter whether it’s good or not, or if you like it or not. Falling in love with an individual issue of Powers is more pointless than falling in love at summer camp. It’s more pointless than falling in love with a hooker. It’s roughly akin to falling in love with a hooker in a city that isnt your own, that you might come back to in a few years, and as you’re zipping your pants you realize that all you remember is that her name is P-something.

Because this comic book simply. Does not. Come out. Ever.

Action Figure: Moon Knight #9 Review

Not for nothin’ my man, but why do you want a Captain America shield?

Because it’s cool.

What are you, six years old?

That exchange between Moon Knight and his weapons procurer, Buck, describes Moon Knight #9 in a nutshell. It’s like little pre-adolescent Brian Michael Bendis trumpeted, “Y’know what would be fuckin’ cool? If Batman had Wolverine’s claws! And, and Spider-Man’s web shooters! And fuckin’ Captain America’s shield! Snikt! Thwip! Whooooosh!” Just before lil’ Brian’s mom Adderalled him into dullness. Blessed, quiet dullness.

The hell of it is, he’s right. Is is kinda fucking cool.

Y’know, provided you can forget the reasonably tight little story of a lone superhero on the edge of sanity that came before this issue and put yourself in the mindset of when you were seven, and you stuck your Luke Skywalker action figure in your G.I. Joe Skystriker jet and sent it to attack your little brother’s Castle Grayskull… or if you’re me, like you did when you were on Tuesday.

Back In Thine Saddle: Simonson Returns to Marvel for Avengers

There was big news yesterday afternon from Marvel via their Next Big Thing liveblog with Brian Michael Bendis: starting with issue 25, the main Avengers title is gonna tie into the Avengers Vs. X-Men event for six issues! Wait, that’s not news… after Fear Itself and Avengers: X-Sanction so far, a Marvel event tie-in unfortunately sounds less like news than it does a diagnosis.

Then again, maybe not. Because Walt Simonson is returning to Marvel for the first time in around a decade to draw it. Not that image above; that’s a sketch for the Hero Initiative from a couple years ago, but I figured it’d be a nice taste of what we’re in for.