On with the it:
CAPTAIN AMERICA #29: This series is just rocking along. A dense political thriller with good characters: the individual dramas of Sharon Carter and Bucky have my utmost attention.
LOVELESS #19: I feel a bit duped. I've been talking about how the last couple of issues have been more straightforward reads, and then we get this issue, where the exact status of Wes Cutter is in question again (And yeah, where the hell is Marcelo Frusin?)
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #112(w. Brian Bendis, a. Stuart Immonen)
As much as I like Mark Bagley, for his professionalism (read: speed) and his great story telling, his actual line work sometimes was not always my favorite. Stuart Immonen has turned out to be a more dynamic artist without a doubt. The opening car chase sequence was pretty damn cool, and as much as I mean no disrespect to Bagley, Immonen has already raised the quality of art on this book five pages in. He has taken what he did with NEXTWAVE and added a little more detail, and it appears to be the best work of his career. Immonen has not only turned out to be a good artist, but a versatile one as well. His star rising has been a bit of a surprise for me, but with Nextwave and now this I'm finally on board. Immonen is the shit.
But what happened in the stoooory? Well, I love the hell out of the Kitty stuff. (Cool costume.) Bringing her into this title was a really good move, even though if they wouldn't have killed Gwen we might not have needed her here, but still, it looks like she is beginning to be integrated into the rest of the cast. And that's a good thing as it was starting to feel a little Fatal Attractions there. Staaaalker! The villain of the storyline is the Green Goblin again, and although that seems a little tiresome, I'm willing to see how it plays out. Good comic.
AQUAMAN: SWORD OF ATLANTIS #55(w. Tad Williams, a. Sean McManus)
So even though I'm unhealthily tapped into the pulse of the comic book world, I somehow just found out a couple of days ago that this book got canceled and will end with (I think) #57. Well, this is odd news indeed! As I've said the past few months, I've been having a really good time with Tad and Sean's take, even though at times I want to throw it across the room for its silliness. Couple this with the fact that I rather be reading about the real Aquaman, and its amazing that I'm actually enjoying the book at all. So bad news, Aquaman is cancelled and I won't have an Aquaman book to read. Good news, this should come back with some sort of new #1 again with (most likely) the real Aquaman, and that is something for me to look forward to. As for this issue, more of the same really. A fun comic with some guy posing as Aquaman.
TERROR INC #1: Well, this was... gory. Oddly enough, I was more into his back-history (the deer head was way cool) than seeing Terror in the present day.
RIPCLAW PILOT SEASON #1(w. Jason Aaron, a. Jorge Lucas)
I don't really like Top Cow. Like everyone else, I read Cyberforce at the start of Image, and like the many others at the time in their early teens, I enjoyed the hell out of those early issues. I stopped getting it in the middle of the run for some reason (which I have since filled in quarter bins) and have mostly stayed away from the Top Cow ever since. I missed their rise with the likes of Witchblade and the tits-all-over-the-place comics, and aside from Wanted, I didn't come back until just last year when they finally published Cyberforce again. That was not even remotely good and I was done in one. The Top Cow Taint even fell over to Dini's Madam Mirage, which I was excited for, but that too turned out to be a little too much, well, tits-all-over-the-place comics. Then I read about Top Cow Pilot Season and I'm suddenly interested. Why? Not for the characters of course, but for the creative teams they have tapped. It appears that for Pilot Season, Top Cow is more concerned about who is making their comics, than what sexy pose Aphrodite or Magdalena will have on the 4th Variant Cover. (Okay, I sometimes get bitter about the Top Cow Taint.) Not sure if I'm interested in all six Pilot Season books however. The thee Cyberforce character ones for sure, but the aforementioned Aphrodite and some of their less interesting horror characters loom. So we'll see.
What about this creative team then? Well, Mr. Jason Aaron is of course the writer of the excellent Other Side Vietnam mini-series over at Vertigo, as well as the best new ongoing comic to spring forth in the last year, Scalped. What is such a unique Vertigo voice going to do with RIpclaw? The often derided character for being a Wolverine rip-off couldn't be interesting or worth your time, could he? Well, yes, yes he can. Aaron gives us a Ripclaw that for unknown reasons is being haunted by spirits, spirits that have unfinished business that Ripclaw needs to take care of. For this issue, it leads us to Japan and a small odyssey as Ripclaw has to fight through various levels of the heavily guarded headquarters of Boss Yamamoto. Ripclaw is quiet, violent and basically an uber bad ass. There were some levels of this place that were only hinted at, leaving me really curious what exactly Ripclaw even fought! Jorge Lucas's art is detailed and gritty, and what really struck for me about this book was that as violent as it was, aside from the final showdowns, a lot of the fights happened off panel.
Would I want to read an ongoing? Not sure. If its written by Jason Aaron I'd be checking it out no matter what, but a noble bad-ass that is on missions dictated by the spirits that haunt him, although simple and vaguely familiar, could be really cool. The reasons for the hauntings is yet to be explained, as is the reason he feels like this is a penance. Good things for Aaron to play off of, but are they good enough to sustain an ongoing series? Not sure. One problem I have, is that in one issue Ripclaw is set up to as such an almighty badass that I'm not sure where the threat will ever come from unless the book's villains go more into the supernatural. If he has to flex muscle every mission in this manner, it could become repetitive quickly. Still, with all that being said, for one issue, it ALL worked. In fact, it all REALLY REALLY worked. My BOOK OF THE WEEK.
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #12(w. Brad Meltzer, a. Ed Benes)
The Brad Meltzer era comes to an end, and I'm yet to read something by someone that has loved the run, make a convincing argument as to why. I chock it up to long time JLA fans getting something out of it that I am not. I mean, this was a very average and spotty run. Lets break it down:
I really liked the #0 book, as well as #1 where they start to choose the team. Good fun JLA comics. I was really excited at this point, even though the multiple narration was a bit much at times. Still, it worked for the story. The rest of the first arc was a bit clunky, over-written and mired by knowledge of past DC continuity, but it had some fun moments as the team came together in front of our eyes. I remember thinking at this point, that it misfired a bit, but hopefully it will get better from here. And it did! For an issue. With #7 we finally get the final team roster, complete with new headquarters (two), names (Red Arrow) and some nice character moments between the team. I was all set for the rest of the run. Then we get the intrusive, 500 characters in one story crossover with JSA (and LOSH) that just ran the momentum the book had into the ground. Its funny, compared to this thing, the clunky opening arc now appears to be the best multi-issue story of Meltzer's run. Something wrong with that I think. #11 was the gimmicky Gene Ha issue, that was pretty good. Then it all came to an end with this issue, "Monitor Duty." We get another quieter issue, with the appearance of any real villains taking the back seat to character work. Which is fine, it was well done. I feel like the stronger issues were #0, 1, 7 and this one, which means that Meltzer's run ends up being uneven, where he excelled at moments where characters were talking to each other and the bigger storylines failed to reach their potential. All of that is fine, I would like for more of the "action" issues to stand out in a Justice League comic.
Now my dilemma comes, what to do with this title. I really wanted to like JLA. I was fresh off of watching the cartoons beginning to end and I really wanted some JLA action. But what I got was an average run, drowning in DC continuity that this novice DC reader doesn't understand. And OH YEAH, incoming writer McDuffie is driving me a bit nuts with his not very good run on Fantastic Four. Funny, seeing as how McDuffie was so heavily involved with the cartoon, right? For that reason, I'm going to keep collecting for a bit. I feel like a guy that was partly responsible for me wanting to pick up the comic in the first place (regardless of how I feel about his FF run) deserves a shot. So I'm on board until one of two things happens: 1) Dwyane McDuffie writes more bad comics. 2) It gets bogged down in Final Crisis continuity hell.
THE PROGRAMME #2: This book left me a little confused, but I'm definitely interested. It was hard for me to remember names and motivations from the first issue. I think I'll need to read these together.
STORM SHADOW #3: Based on the following pattern so far in this series: Not good, Good, not good, the final part to this storyline should be kick-ass.
GRIFTER/MIDNIGHTER #6(w. Chuck Dixon, a. Ryan Benjamin)
Well, THAT'S over. This six issue mini-series was completely forgettable, really. If both the Authority and Wildcats were being published regularly, I probably wouldn't have picked this up. On a whole, I think Dixon got Grifter a little better than he did Midnighter, but it was too bad he didn't give either of them something interesting to do. The alien antagonist was just kind of lame when all is said and done, and that's never a good thing. I'll give Dixon this, his use of the post Worldstorm Grifter's powers was pretty good. Ryan Benjamin, one of the better Jim Lee clones to come out of the 90's does good work, but as I said, there was just not much for him to work with. Avoid, unless you are a Wildstorm completest.
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #16: Not really sure what the point of echoing the Claremont/Lee story was, but perhaps that will come out in parts 2-5.
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