quick takes: october 10

Over the course of the last 4-6 weeks, I have been slowly trying to increase the amount of writing I do when discussing the weekly loot, but after a long weekend in Vegas for a wedding, shuffling between friends and family, and coming back to work on a Tuesday to play catch-up basically meeeaaaans... that these will be on the briefer side of what they've been.

book of the week:

X-FACTOR #24
(w. Peter David, a. Pablo Ramiondi)
Not a great book this week, but a pretty good one gets the top spot. The final part in the latest X-Factor storyline ends with our heroes barely escaping (the crazy!) Isolationist and his slightly far-fetched plan to kill the Earth's remaining mutants. From here the series moves into the big Mutant Crossover: Messiah Complex. Then somewhere down the line will hopefully return to the character as series villain. Also, even though we got some teases over the course of the first 24 issues, I'm excited to see these X-Factor characters interact with the main teams again. Some nice Raimondi art once again.

other real good comics:

BLACK SUMMER #3: This is really going into old-school Authority territory here (although not as ground breaking), with basically, even better powers on the heroes. Some crazy action, with just enough character bits with politics and science thrown in to make it entertaining. Good issue, even if we spent a lot of time talking at the beginning.

PUNISHER #51: I really liked this issue, but I really can't help myself when Frank goes completely over-the-top bad ass. You know, biting people's faces, all the while, still wanting to protect the puny humans from the big bad Barracuda. Looking forward to their showdown, but I will be sad if the Garth Ennis rumors are true. PLEASE DON'T LEAVE GARTH! PLEEEEAAAASE!

three-star comics:

NEW AVENGERS #35: The cover was awesome! Too bad it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue! Why not put the Hood on the cover, and save this thing for next issue when it, you know, actually has Wolverine in it. I enjoyed the issue, but I can't help but feel that the Hood s being pushed too hard, too fast. I buy him as someone that is up-and-coming. Hell, I even buy him as someone that WILL be a future bad-ass. What I don't buy, is the Hood sa an A-level Super Villain. And NO, killing The Owl and beating the shit out of Tigra isn't going to change my mind.

STORMWATCH PHD #12: A good, if a bit of a ho-hum ending to a rather confusing series. For one, without a doubt, Gage is a talented writer. He has a good knack for character, and juggles a large team book (basically two teams) with great ease, letting most of the characters get their moment to shine. Its just too bad that I feel like this series slowly fell downhill, bottoming at the horrible Synergy murder attempt on her husband, and then meandered back up to pretty good in the final issues. If I can find time, I've really wanted to post something about Wildstorm as a whole because I have much more to say about this one.

NEW WARRIORS #5: I like the idea of this comic, the story and even the art, as I think Medina has "big star" in his future. And this was another perfectly good issue. My problem at this point, is that I don't feel like I know the New Warriors much at all besides for Sofia and what I already knew of Jubilee as a long time X-Fan. It looks like some of the characters are starting to get a little detail with this issue, but it took a meaningless death to kind of start that.

GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY #1: So I liked this. In fairness, Cliff Chiang is a big part of the reason, as the art is pretty much amazing. The rest of it was good fun, and a pretty good comic book. Nice moments with Green Lantern and Batman (the autopsy was hilarious) and a decent cliffhanger that wasn't really too much of a surprise. But yeah, Chiang is the shit.

RUNAWAYS #28: Another chapter in the Whedon Runaways. Still not reaching Vaughan levels, but I'm still having fun with the arc.

EXTERMINATORS #22: God damn this comic is crazy. No, seriously, its fucking crazy.

STORM SHADOW #4: So this book did continue with the goofy formula: bad, good, bad, good! The story was so-so, the art and that action were all pretty awesome. Zartan showing up was a nice surprise, and his confrontation with Storm Shadow was good times.

WONDER WOMAN #13: A pretty good filler issue, helping to set up and lead in to the much anticipated Simone run.

comics with problems:

SUPERMAN #668: Thought I'd check out this little three parter, but unfortunately it didn't do much for me. The villains seem lame and Busiek's writing was surprisingly eh. I'm not that big on Rick Leonardi's art, so that was just okay for me. The best part was definitely the exchanges between the young Kent and Robin.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #12: The main World War Hulk title has been a mostly entertaining slug fest, but the side books just continue to be ugh for me. The art was good though, and I could seriously get into the Punisher symbiote outfit as necessary gear every once in a while.

FANTASTIC FOUR #550: The return of Gravity already? Blah. And it looks like we've already reached the end of the Black Panther/Storm era. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that we are, but it still is odd to me the progression that Sue/Reed go through from Civil War to here. I guess it really wasn't supposed to affect things for years to come.

FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #24: I'm obviously not the only one thinking this, but really? Two issues into the four parter that changes everything and nothing has really happened? The last page was at least promising. And I dug Quesada's art more.

WORLD WAR HULK FRONTLINE #5: This still isn't working for me. The best part of the issue was probably the Top Ten reasons to hate Sally Floyd.

um, no:

NONE

weekly loot: july 11

Unfortunately, I came home without Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen #1 this past week. I totally forgot it was coming out and never looked for it at the store. Its okay, nothing I was freaking out about, I'll grab it when I can.

On to the books:


100 BULLETS #84
(w. Brian Azzarello, a. Eduardo Risso)
Sigmar Rhone is one of the Trust. He is also someone that we haven’t seen all that much in 84 issues of this series. Why then is he the main character of this standalone 100 Bullets story? To prove the point that Graves is making his move against the Trust, and he is not being nice about it. We get to see Rhone at work and at home with the family he appears to love; as well as see him fucking a woman who is an emissary of the Medici house (bringing a warning), and in the end, watching his entire family be killed in front of him before being gunned down himself. The gunmen of course, were Graves' Minutemen: Victor and Ray, who are turning into quite the scary duo. A really good issue, highlighted always by the superhuman Eduardo Risso.


DMZ #21: Happy to have Burchielli back, but this may have been one issue too many for me, I'm ready for the verdict.


NEW AVENGERS #32
(w. Brian Bendis, Leinil Yu)
Brian Bendis and his Avengers run polarizes people on the internet. From "its brilliant" to "its a disaster" and "Bendis should never have touched the Avengers." 32-plus issues in, and I'm still having a good time with the book. This issue comes fresh after the discovery of Elektra as a Skrull, so being a Bendis book, everyone has to talk about it for an entire issue. And that's fine with me. These kind of conversations makes sense, even though there was a lot of time spent hammering home the point of "WHO CAN YOU TRUST?" that Marvel will put all over their comics next year, but still the point was made. The characters not only argue about who could be a Skrull, but what to do with Skrull-Elektra's body. Suddenly (and mysteriously), the Rand Jet is taken down, our heroes survive of course, but not before Spider-Woman owns Wolverine and leaves the scene of the accident with the body over her shoulder. Um, I guess we couldn't trust HER. Good issue, with moves towards the future.

FABLES #63
(w. Bill Willingham, a. Mark Buckingham)
This title is having one of its best arcs of the series, and that's mainly because of all the stories that have come before it. Willingham has created such a large and diverse cast, that there is so much for him to draw from. This issue continues the great arc, and it does that by checking in with everyone, but in a way that isn’t annoying. A lot of time passes here, but as the Fables and the Adversary prepare for war, we get to check in with Bigby, Snow and Mowgli amongst others. If these characters were not as well defined as they are, this might be an annoying issue (sorry new readers). The final sequence with Flycatcher recruiting the “Dead” Fables as his army was a surprise that didn’t completely work for me, but it was well done. I guess I was over Bluebeard when he was killed the first time. But still, its an interesting turn of events for sure, and this does not diminish my excitement for the rest of this arc (and beyond). Good issue.

X-FACTOR #21
(w. Peter David, a. Pablo Raimondi)
So apparently this Isolationist guy made a cameo in the very last issue of David’s previous X-Factor run, but I don’t remember it. I might need to get out the old run and see sometime, but until then we have him here. Being a creepy ass loner, which I guess is why he’s called The Isolationist. Or is he? The only real name we get is Josef Huber. He appears to be a bit crazy with voices in his head, and he left his seclusion to seek out Jamie Madrox. Everything else in this issue was kick-ass Peter David character work, which he excels at once his supporting cast has settled in. The scenes between Nicole and Layla are entertaining, but Layla always is. The temporary solution between Jamie, M and Siryn makes a lot of sense, and the scene with the entire team where he confronts them, and M asks who was better in bed was hilarious. Everyone’s reaction to what was going on was perfect, and none more than Rahne, which led perfectly into her scene with Rictor. And I never considered it before, but the two of them hooking up here is nice. All this AND we have Guido being offered Sheriff of Mutant Town, AND a new mystery (some twins stuck in a mutant hating cult) AAAAAND someone in the house appears to be pregnant—AND LAYLA DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT IT?!?! Awesome! This was cover-to-cover comic goodness. The ho-hum Endangered Species back-up aside, this was the BOOK OF THE WEEK.

STORMWATCH PHD #9
(w. Christos Gage, a. Andy Smith)
This two parter has clearly been the first misstep of this series. When I talked about #8, I mentioned that it had some really good character moments and I ranted about my distaste for SON OF HENRY BENDIX being in the series. This issue, everything else goes wrong. Jackson King and his wife Christine, two of the more important characters in the Wildstorm universe take a shit. Or more accurately, Christine was shit on. Are we really supposed to believe, after everything these characters have been through, that she suddenly decides that she is going to laser part of Jackson's brain away so that he doesn't have powers anymore? Wow. For as good as this series has been, this was bad. Not only was it a lame plot point, but-- entitled reviewer attack: it had no respect for its characters at all. To be honest, the issue wasn't ALL bad however, as the character work Gage does everywhere else mostly works. The Malcolm King stuff was good, as was the scenes with Hellstrike and Diva. SON OF HENRY BENDIX was lame UH-GEN though. Anyway, just some bad plot decisions in a mostly good run here. I think Christine, Jackson and everybody else should forget this ever happened as quickly as possible and return to the status quo. I mean, hell, they reset it by the end anyway: Battalion alive and with super powers. Disappointing issue.
[Side bar: I haven't mentioned it before, because I keep forgetting, but of all the dead characters come back to life, do we get an explanation for Cannon too? If I remember correctly, he was in the cryo-prison thing that Bendix had created at the tail end of Volume 1 and was amongst the dead when Skywatch lost power in #50. Right? Whatever, I guess Captain Atom explains that away too...]


GREEN ARROW: YEAR ONE #1
(w. Andy Diggle, a. Jock)
The only Green Arrow books I own/read are the Kevin Smith ones, and the Brad Meltzer story that followed it a few years back. He’s a fun enough character whenever he shows up, in whatever incarnation, albeit the JLA cartoon or the JLA comic book. But still, normally I would have stayed away from this kind of thing if it wasn’t for the truly brilliant idea of giving the young Oliver Queen to Diggle and Jock. I’m a big fan of their Losers series, and although there wasn’t that much action in this issue, they do a damn good job. The Howard Hill stuff was a little silly, but other than that, this was a good opening issue and I can’t wait until some ass-kicking starts. Jock does the usual amazing job on cover duty. Cover of the week for sure.


GEN 13 #10: Was Burnout ever this interesting in the previous series? The Bob Marley thing was a bit silly, but it kept with the spirit of the series.


PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #9: Still not completely on board this series, but it was okay.


MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #3
(w/a. Mike Allred)
I read a lot of comics. So I get a lot of #1’s. And usually I know at that point whether or not I want to keep going, but not always. Issue #3 is another big marker for me where a series can be dropped. Madman Atomic Comics was under that very microscope this week. How did it fare? Well, not sure. As far as the plot goes, Madman runs around trying to get to reality, which is not very interesting in itself, but this was a really-really fun comic book to read. Mike Allred recreated tens of different art styles so that every panel was an homage to someone else’s style. Brilliant fun. There was too many that I didn’t know, and there were a ton that I recognized but couldn’t name. Still, the ones that I did know made it fun enough for me. I bet Allred had a blast making this issue because it shows. So what’s the verdict? I guess I’m back for at least a little more. I mean, nothing has happened in three issues, but this was an experimental issue so I’d like to see where more of the real story will go. Someone online will break this down by artist, right? Please?


ULTIMATE X-MEN #84: Hints of the old Ultimate Wolverine here. That, in the fog of another boring issue, was nice.


GRIFTER/MIDNIGHTER #5: I'll check in with this after the last issue.