Let the monkey row: Douglas dips into some 12/17 Marvels

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on December 24, 2008

Categories: Reviews

THOR GOD-SIZE SPECIAL #1 is a very pretty-looking comic, and I don’t mind paying the $4 Marvel toll, even for a series I don’t normally read, to get a 38-page Matt Fraction story plus a Walt Simonson reprint. (A 22-page story, on the other hand… well, I suspect I won’t be buying certain titles much longer.) It’s a Fraction riff on a particularly charged scene from 1985′s THOR #362, which is the backup reprint, and it’s got fancy high-gloss artwork from Dan Brereton, Doug Braithwaite and the previously-unknown-to-me Miguelángel Sepulveda, as well as Mike and Laura Allred doing their Allred thing. But only the Allreds’ section looks anywhere near as interesting as the splintery power and scenery-chewing grandeur of the…  Read More…

And the chorus goes bang: Douglas briefly surfaces to gasp for air

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on November 26, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Yes, I’ve been gone for a bit–working on some stuff that’s top secret, yet boring! FIGHT OR RUN: SHADOW OF THE CHOPPER: This might be my favorite comics pamphlet of the year so far; it’s on this week’s Diamond list, and if your local store doesn’t carry it it’s available from Buenaventura Press. It’s a trifle of a thing, but so perfectly executed that I keep coming back to it with renewed pleasure. A bunch of “Fight or Run” shorts have appeared in Kevin Huizenga’s other comics over the last few years, although I don’t think this duplicates any of those. The premise couldn’t be simpler (Huizenga describes it as “an open source comics game”): two characters (from a stable…  Read More…

Spoken like a spoke: Douglas catches up on periodicals, quick-hit style

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on September 9, 2008

Categories: Reviews

I got to read two weeks’ worth of individual issues at once. Behind the times! Oh no! Under the cut: AMBUSH BUG, ROGUES’ REVENGE, JONAH HEX, AVENGERS both MIGHTY and NEW, SECRET SIX and some spoilers. AMBUSH BUG: YEAR NONE #2: The premise of this mini, as I understand it, is that each issue is Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming riffing on some project in recent DC history; the first one was a reasonably pointed take on Identity Crisis. This one seems to be about the run-up to Infinite Crisis, but there’s not much to say about that–a death-of-Ted-Kord scene, a couple of near-miss OMAC gags–so Giffen and Fleming spend most of the issue riffing without a theme, and…  Read More…

You swear you’ve been bitten: Douglas reads three new Spider-Man comics and more

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on August 9, 2008

Categories: Reviews

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN itself has had two skip weeks in a row, but we’ve gotten three other Spider-Man books instead–the new FAMILY series, a SUMMER SPECIAL, and a BRAND NEW DAY EXTRA. Reviews of all three, plus INVINCIBLE IRON MAN and FINAL CRISIS, under the cut. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #1: The final page explains that this is the new identity of SPIDER-MAN FAMILY–the fat bimonthly title that includes vintage Spider-Man reprints and done-in-one new stories–now that it’s been brought into the Stephen Wacker-edited Spider-Man group. Despite the Brand New Day banner on the cover, though, only one story here takes place in the current narrative–an 11-page Aunt May story. It’s billed as “Aunt May, Agent of F.E.A.S.T.,” which is a…  Read More…

Savage San Diego: A Quick List of Who’s Where & When

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on July 24, 2008

Categories: Site News

I don’t know which one of the thousands of exhibitors brought the ray that speeds up time, but they’ve got it cranked to eleven down here in San Diego: I had enough time to walk one-tenth of the giant exhibition floor last night, said hi to no more than three or four people (but they were awesome people, I assure you) before joining the nerd diaspora and staggering through the streets of San Diego in search of a place to rest my feet and a liquid that cost less than a dollar an ounce. So I’m posting this early Thursday morning instead of Wednesday, and I apologize for that. Nonetheless, if you’re immune to the effects of the Speed-Up-Ray and…  Read More…

Douglas’s tips for Comic-Con ’08

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on July 23, 2008

Categories: Retailing/Industry

For the next few days, I’ll be strapped into my carriage of the log-flume that is Comic-Con. When I’m not moderating panels (see below), I’ll be wandering all over the show floor. But if you asked me to show you “the good stuff,” here’s what I would probably take you to first, and what I would probably advise you to flip through. (And by “here” I mean under the cut.) 1335 – Dumbrella: Scott McCloud is signing the excellent Zot! anthology there Friday at 3–at the same time as the Lynda Barry spotlight panel. Aaugh. Dumbrella’s also got Zot! T-shirts; if I didn’t already own, like, 800 T-shirts, I’d buy one, and I might anyway. 1514/1515 – Comic Relief: I…  Read More…

The agile ones with legal means: Douglas flips through periodicals from 7/2

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on July 3, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Actually what I thought was the funniest thing about the 85 (!) responses to my last post here was that nobody had anything to say about the Art Spiegelman book! BATMAN #678: So there’s this concept, the “Magical Negro”–this essay by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu is a pretty solid overview of it. Essentially, it’s a plot device in the form of a character of color (in a story that’s mostly about white characters) who is at some kind of severe personal disadvantage, has a mystical connection to the earth or magic powers of some kind, helps the white protagonist accomplish a goal or achieve a new perspective, and then dies or disappears. It’s one of the soggiest clichés in fiction, and this…  Read More…

Crashing through: Douglas looks at some periodicals from 6/25, etc.

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on June 29, 2008

Categories: Reviews

FINAL CRISIS #2: I don’t think people are claiming in bad faith that the reason they’re not enjoying this series is that they can’t understand what’s going on in it–it takes some careful attention to figure out how everything fits together–but I’m enjoying it so much that I keep having the impulse to say “okay, what exactly don’t you understand? I’ll try to explain it with reference only to stuff in this series itself!” As far as I can tell, all the information that’s being withheld from the reader is being withheld in the interest of suspense. But it’s also true that making readers fill in the blanks is Morrison’s big narrative strategy here. The best bottom-dropping-out moment in this…  Read More…

Batman Eats Beignets!: Douglas stares blankly at TRINITY #1 for a while

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on June 9, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Well, this is frustrating. Kurt Busiek usually pulls off really good opening sequences–the first issue of Thunderbolts (his previous extended collaboration with Mark Bagley) was a deceptively straightforward-looking story with a killer revelation/cliffhanger at the end, and after he noted that JLA: Syndicate Rules would provide some backstory for Trinity, I read it and enjoyed the opening chapter’s everything-bad-is-good mayhem a lot. And I know (from having interviewed him for PW Comics Week about it) that Trinity is meant to be pretty formally ambitious; I really like his idea that it’s constructed as “a hybrid between a traditional comic book and a classic continuity Sunday page.” So it’s strange to see this 1000-plus-page story begin with an issue this bland…  Read More…

Swiss time running out: Douglas quick-hits some pamphlets of 5/29

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on June 2, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Once again, the SavCrit hive-mind has failed to cohere. I tried to avoid spoilers this time, so no cut… FINAL CRISIS #1: No, it’s not a slam-bang opener like the first World War Hulk or Infinite Crisis or Secret Invasion; nobody punches anybody through a building. The tone is more of a slow slide into hell, the tipping point where the whole system becomes too badly screwed up to salvage. Morrison’s described FINAL CRISIS as a take on the eschatology of this cultural moment, which seems about right. It’s also true that the character who gets killed doesn’t get a heroic exit, or much dramatic context for it: this is about a world where all it takes is some stupid…  Read More…

The stones have forgotten them: Douglas complains about two 5/7 Marvels

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on May 13, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Actually, an announcement first: Because I have discovered the secret extra six hours in every day, I’ve revised and expanded my annotations for DC Universe 0, and posted them at Final Crisis Annotations, where I’ll be making notes on FC-related stuff as it appears. So now the complaints, both about comics I more or less enjoyed, under the cut: THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #1 and SECRET INVASION #2. THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #1: I liked pretty much the same things everyone else liked about this issue–the clever ways it jumps off from the Iron Man movie (the dial-style chest implants, Pepper’s Girl Friday relationship with Tony), the return to Iron Man’s roots as a guilty arms merchant, the computer-modeled artwork…  Read More…

Wait, didn’t some other comics come out this week too?: Douglas reads some more 4/30/08 stuff

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on May 6, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Weekly comics, therefore spoilers, therefore under the cut. Specifically Action Comics and New Avengers. And glamourpuss, which is sort of impossible to spoil. Plus Whatever, which is not a weekly comic but a collection of weekly comic strips. GLAMOURPUSS #1: I see that Dave Sim, God bless him, is now requiring anybody who wants to talk to him to indicate in writing that they don’t believe he’s a misogynist. Well, that’ll cut down on the amount of time he’ll have to spend doing interviews, I suppose. I posted here about how excited I was that Dave would be doing a regular series again when he announced glamourpuss, and it’s good to see him doing a kind of drawing he obviously…  Read More…

All Systems Intact, the Red and the Black: Douglas Looks at DC Universe Zero

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on May 1, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Yeah, this one’s spoilery. Not that everything hasn’t been spoiled elsewhere, but I’m still putting this under the cut. Not a review, really, but annotations; if you want a rating, I thought it was Excellent as a teaser and value-for-money–I want to read what happens next–and n/a as a story. Pg. 1: It’s somehow fitting that, on the first page of a multi-title arc that will apparently draw on Jack Kirby’s multi-title arc very heavily (and by the way, Jeff, that’s a fantastic post right there), we get a tribute to one of his signature artistic techniques, the extreme long shot. This page seems to have been a last-second rewrite: in the version included in the New York Comic-Con program,…  Read More…

Week 103: One More Year Later

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on April 29, 2008

Categories: Reviews

It’s almost a year after 52 ended–as of this Wednesday and DCU Zero, the next cycle of DCU stuff is about to begin, and I’m a lot more curious about that than I was about virtually anything in the Countdown era. (The line in this week’s DC Nation column about how Countdown‘s goals “met with various levels of success” is a delicate way of putting it.) But before that starts, I thought I’d take one more look at the afterlife of the series I spent a year writing about. 52 opened up a bunch of possibilities, opportunities and resources for the DCU setting, and the last year has not been kind to many of them. Here’s what’s happened with each…  Read More…

Does the Fish Have Chips?: Douglas meets Glenn, Kal & Peter

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on April 1, 2008

Categories: Reviews

This has been an incredibly good week for comics, I have to say. Under the cut: GANGES, ALL STAR SUPERMAN and MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN. I have no idea why two of the biggest comics stores in NYC didn’t get Kevin Huizenga’s GANGES #2 (they weren’t sold out, it wasn’t even on their new-arrival lists)–I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope there was something wrong with the shipment. But this is a thoroughly Excellent issue, the kind of thing I want to hand to people who ask “what kind of comics do you like?” It starts with another of the wonderful “Fight or Run” abstract-combat stories Huizenga was doing in Or Else–they’re totally idiomatic to Huizenga…  Read More…

Spy vs. Spy, Spy vs. Nature, Spy vs. Himself: Douglas on Kindt and Bendis/Mack

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on March 26, 2008

Categories: Reviews

SUPER SPY and NEW AVENGERS #39. Below the cut lurk spoilers (well, a plot summary, really) for the latter. Hence, the cut. For those who care about such things. Tom Spurgon wrote the other day in his you-must-go-read-it best-of-2007 roundup that ” I have a selfish reason for wanting to bring more people to the conversation on [Matt Kindt's] Super Spy: I think the book is good, but I can’t figure out how good, and I’d love to see a range of writers and thinkers muse on it in public to help me along. It’s the most confusing book of 2007 to me, and for that one of the most compelling.” I read it at last yesterday, after it had…  Read More…

All will be well if if if if if: Douglas on two 3/12 Marvels.

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on March 15, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Two ’70s throwbacks, of different kinds. Short version: the new Mighty Avengers is a very nice execution of a badly flawed premise, and The Last Defenders struggles with the idea behind what it’s building on. More under the cut. MIGHTY AVENGERS #10: I’m still really enjoying Brian Michael Bendis’s attempts to give every issue of this series (and of New Avengers) its own plot and tone–it helps prevent the sense a lot of other series have that they’re written for the trade and broken up wherever the plot allows–and I’m glad he’s still doing the info-overload tricks (the thought balloons, the constant internal chatter from Tony’s armor) that make this series read differently from its sibling. This issue: Iron Man…  Read More…

Let me break their jaws: Douglas’s quick takes on 3/5

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on March 8, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Pamphlets! Under the cut: LOGAN, NEW FRONTIER and YOUNG LIARS. LOGAN #1: I realized after I’d bought this issue that it’s cover-priced at $3.99, and for that money I expect more than 22 pages of story. And in fact I got more: it’s 23 pages of story. (And a glossy cover; so what?) Eduardo Risso’s in good form, but I expected much better from Brian K. Vaughan. The story is once again sending Wolverine to Japan (which was a really clever and refreshing idea when Claremont and Miller did it twenty-five years ago–yes, I am of the Paul O’Brien “oh Christ, not Japan again” school), and once again exploring a bit of his adventuring past so deeply forgotten it’s never…  Read More…

It’s true, it’s real, it’s pretty: Douglas on "Little Nothings: The Curse of the Umbrella"

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on March 2, 2008

Categories: Reviews

Lewis Trondheim’s diary comics are so good I’m actually posting a puke joke here. My first exposure to Lewis Trondheim was Mister O, which is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read–the first time I looked at it, there were at least two or three pages that made me laugh so hard I was lying on the floor gasping–and I’ve been skimming bits of his enormous catalogue ever since, trying to find something I like as much. (The sequel Mister I wasn’t anywhere near as good, and I’m sort of mystified by A.L.I.E.E.E.N.) Most of his hundred-plus books aren’t available in English; if you’re reading this and you know which of his books are worth seeking out in French,…  Read More…

Game got switched: Douglas on "Incognegro"

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on March 1, 2008

Categories: Reviews

I had reasonably high hopes for this one, but the result is pretty much the definition of a bad movie pitch in the form of a graphic novel. The premise of Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece’s Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery is very loosely based on the experiences of Walter Francis White, the executive secretary of the NAACP from 1931 to 1955, who passed for Caucasian–he was blond and blue-eyed–which meant that he could collect information on the KKK and lynchings, at a great deal of personal risk. (White wrote what sounds like a fascinating book of reportage about lynching, with the hasn’t-aged-well title Rope and Faggot; it’s worth reading both some horrifying letters from Time readers about a review of…  Read More…

Outside the circle of fire: Douglas on three 2/27 floppies

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on February 29, 2008

Categories: Reviews

A handful of of pamphlets this week, two of which allude obliquely to Ant-Man. Two different Ant-Men, actually. After the jump: BATMAN #674, NEXUS #100 and WORLD WAR HULK: AFTERSMASH!: DAMAGE CONTROL #2. BATMAN #674: Couldn’t make head or tail of this the first time through; fortunately, Timothy Callahan has helpfully pointed out the connections between this story and “Robin Dies at Dawn” from Batman #156, which I found reprinted in Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, and which includes a reference to an Ant-Man. (Note that this issue is called “Batman Dies at Dawn.”) It’s still a little confused by Morrison’s occasional habit of selecting random fragments of a complicated story and leaving out the ones that would explain…  Read More…