Comics Roundup
Jan. 28th, 2005 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingandyBecause I officially have too much free time.
First up: Fortnightly comic review.
Teen Titans. Grummett's back again, and he seems to be slowly bowing to pressure to make Starfire's hair more alike to the TV series. It's still a lot bustier, but you can see it's starting to be less "curls" and more "wavy". Still, it probably won't be much of an issue as Johns seems to have taken her entry into OUTSIDERS as a cue to have her slip, at least temporarily, out of this book. I have to wonder whether this was something he was consulted on, and given the option of sharing the character, or if it was just decreed from above. Or if they just took her without asking. It's hard to tell, because while it's true that her departure occurs some months after her arrival, that's for the very good reason that the Titans have been involved in a time travel adventure, and these little continuity changes - such as Tim's loss of a father, in Identity Crisis - have had to be rushed through in a very clumsy first few pages here.
On a related note, I'm trying to decide if Johns conferred at any point with Meltzer prior to Identity Crisis and asked him to insert some plot seeds. The alternative is that he's as annoyed as I am by all the loose ends that damned "EVENT" left flapping. (The text on the cover says "Identity Theft", so I'm theorising they've just stolen the plot threads and run with them. The sheer number of other titles doing the same, according to what passes for a letters page these days, suggests this is the case, thanks to some extensive post-event coordination on the part of the editors.) Specifically, in this instance: What was in the box that Bolt was trailing in the first issue, and who wanted it? and, What did Doctor Light do next? (Light, here, is once again using his silver age costume rather than the spunked up head-on-fire outfit that Marz gave him. I'm still annoyed that everyone's forgotten the change, but at least they're being consistent.) Johns is managing to twist everything bad about IC around into a new and interesting possibility, for which I give him credit. He's also handling the "secret identities vs superhero knitting circle" thing a lot better than Meltzer ever did; here Superboy knows in advance (because Superman wanted him to know Robin might take some time off) but Tim keeps everybody else in the dark. I'd like to say Robin's emotional state is presented better here than in his own comic, but to be honest I can't remember how it's being handled there as all the batbooks are blurring at the moment. Also I'm biased, being such a fan of Geoff Johns.
JLA Classified: A very nice round up to the first plot arc, but I hope the rest of them don't close with the JLA swanning in and clearing up the mess. Morrison once again shows off his favourite hyperbolic dialogue and inventive cosmic situations (I was not expecting the Guest Villain to be a micro-universe that the League pissed off at the start of Act I). I usually enjoy his juxtaposition of epic events and simple, resonant exclamations; he brings out the realism of people who do this for a living without resorting to flippant wisecracks. It's probably better in short doses, however - particularly when it's been shown that his stakes eventually get so cosmic that it's hard to care - so I'm not going to complain that it seems CLASSIFIED is going to be an anthology title, or something not unlike an ongoing series of miniseries. Next month a new creative team picks up the reins for their own short play in the sandbox, and I couldn't be happier - it's Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire taking us back to the situation set up in the "Formerly Known As The Justice League" mini, with a 6-issue story titled "I Can't Believe It's Not The Justice League". Featuring the long-awaited return of G'Nort. Huzzah!
JSA: Strange Adventures also wraps up this month, and unlike CLASSIFIED it's also the last issue. I won't miss it. It was pretty enough, and it passed the time - and I was interested to see echoes of later SPECTRE behaviour. But I can never really get excited about nostalgia tales. Probably worth it for the pulp overtones. If you're into that kind of thing.
Due to a recent heavy perusal of his weblog, I've realised how much I miss reading Peter David's work. With this in mind, this month I picked up The Incredible Hulk and Fallen Angel. The latter (#16 of the title) is perhaps not such a good issue for jumping on with, being part 2 of an arc and primarily intended to give backstory to one of the characters. That doesn't mean it's not immediately intriguing. It's engaging and teasing and all good things. The art's reasonably good, with only one or two really dodgy panels (mostly expression work), and the colouring (maybe the inking too?) heavily reminds me of Supergirl.
Hulk #77, on the other hand, is a much better jumping-on-point, being David's first issue on the title. (I know from the weblog that "Tempest Fugit" was going to be a 6-issue miniseries until somebody at Marvel realised they were cancelling the main Hulk serial the month before; it's still only a six-month commitment, but he's giving serious thought to staying on afterwards if he finds he enjoys it. Heck, Young Justice was only for six months initially, and that turned out to be three years and a number of big tie-ins...) The opening - Hulk walking through the ocean after what has clearly been a long time - actually ties in quite neatly with the previous issue's ending (I peeked), in which all Banner's plots are closed down, almost all his friends and family turned him away and he finished up staring at himself in a pool. It's not such a stretch to say he strode off into the sea, leaving all worldly concerns behind him.
Fallen Angel has been added to my order; Hulk has not. That's no slight on Hulk - he's just as engaging, with a surprise appearance of Grey Hulk (not Banner!) at the end - I'm just not sure about the potential short-term of the Daviditude. And, it must be said, there is a subconscious DC brand loyalty coming through.
So, to close on the monthlies, we hop back over to the DCU with Waid & Kitson's Legion of Superheroes. Still no sign of Shikari, and the clean reboot is still bugging me. But it remains highly inventive and the quality of writing is annoyingly high. There's a little clumsy exposition, and the Naltorians keep having to remind us that they're precognitive, because the fact they're standing here discussing things (and that they have to wait until an emergency actually arises to call for help) suggests otherwise. But Brainiac 5's intelligence is effortlessly expressed, and his frustration with Dream Girl's powers ("Stop being so defiant! Cause, then effect.") is entertaining and believable, and the issue closes on a lab full of goats (fully justified by earlier dialogue, but without a word of actual explanation).
I can't stay mad at this.
I will make one final complaint though: If not for Shadow Lass's inclusion, the cover could easily have been labelled "Heroes Not Appearing In This Comic".
As well as the monthlies I also picked up the fourth book of Promethea, collecting issues #19-25 of the regular comic. The first five of these complete Moore's crash course in the Kabbalah, and while it's fascinating how far a lot of these concepts stretch I don't feel any more converted than I did before. I just wanted him to shut the fuck up and get on with the story. I'm probably catching more of his symbolism than I was before, but I was tired of two characters expositing at each other by about the end of book 2. The last two chapters of this book made up for it though, if only for the courtroom scene in the Immateria. Bla bla bla stunning art bla bla inventive storytelling makes even the "magic primer" scenes readable bla bla everything we've come to expect from Moore etc etc etc.
I was going to say something about the CDs I bought today too, but I've already gone on for far too long. It's time to but this post to bed.
Ta.
First up: Fortnightly comic review.
Teen Titans. Grummett's back again, and he seems to be slowly bowing to pressure to make Starfire's hair more alike to the TV series. It's still a lot bustier, but you can see it's starting to be less "curls" and more "wavy". Still, it probably won't be much of an issue as Johns seems to have taken her entry into OUTSIDERS as a cue to have her slip, at least temporarily, out of this book. I have to wonder whether this was something he was consulted on, and given the option of sharing the character, or if it was just decreed from above. Or if they just took her without asking. It's hard to tell, because while it's true that her departure occurs some months after her arrival, that's for the very good reason that the Titans have been involved in a time travel adventure, and these little continuity changes - such as Tim's loss of a father, in Identity Crisis - have had to be rushed through in a very clumsy first few pages here.
On a related note, I'm trying to decide if Johns conferred at any point with Meltzer prior to Identity Crisis and asked him to insert some plot seeds. The alternative is that he's as annoyed as I am by all the loose ends that damned "EVENT" left flapping. (The text on the cover says "Identity Theft", so I'm theorising they've just stolen the plot threads and run with them. The sheer number of other titles doing the same, according to what passes for a letters page these days, suggests this is the case, thanks to some extensive post-event coordination on the part of the editors.) Specifically, in this instance: What was in the box that Bolt was trailing in the first issue, and who wanted it? and, What did Doctor Light do next? (Light, here, is once again using his silver age costume rather than the spunked up head-on-fire outfit that Marz gave him. I'm still annoyed that everyone's forgotten the change, but at least they're being consistent.) Johns is managing to twist everything bad about IC around into a new and interesting possibility, for which I give him credit. He's also handling the "secret identities vs superhero knitting circle" thing a lot better than Meltzer ever did; here Superboy knows in advance (because Superman wanted him to know Robin might take some time off) but Tim keeps everybody else in the dark. I'd like to say Robin's emotional state is presented better here than in his own comic, but to be honest I can't remember how it's being handled there as all the batbooks are blurring at the moment. Also I'm biased, being such a fan of Geoff Johns.
JLA Classified: A very nice round up to the first plot arc, but I hope the rest of them don't close with the JLA swanning in and clearing up the mess. Morrison once again shows off his favourite hyperbolic dialogue and inventive cosmic situations (I was not expecting the Guest Villain to be a micro-universe that the League pissed off at the start of Act I). I usually enjoy his juxtaposition of epic events and simple, resonant exclamations; he brings out the realism of people who do this for a living without resorting to flippant wisecracks. It's probably better in short doses, however - particularly when it's been shown that his stakes eventually get so cosmic that it's hard to care - so I'm not going to complain that it seems CLASSIFIED is going to be an anthology title, or something not unlike an ongoing series of miniseries. Next month a new creative team picks up the reins for their own short play in the sandbox, and I couldn't be happier - it's Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire taking us back to the situation set up in the "Formerly Known As The Justice League" mini, with a 6-issue story titled "I Can't Believe It's Not The Justice League". Featuring the long-awaited return of G'Nort. Huzzah!
JSA: Strange Adventures also wraps up this month, and unlike CLASSIFIED it's also the last issue. I won't miss it. It was pretty enough, and it passed the time - and I was interested to see echoes of later SPECTRE behaviour. But I can never really get excited about nostalgia tales. Probably worth it for the pulp overtones. If you're into that kind of thing.
Due to a recent heavy perusal of his weblog, I've realised how much I miss reading Peter David's work. With this in mind, this month I picked up The Incredible Hulk and Fallen Angel. The latter (#16 of the title) is perhaps not such a good issue for jumping on with, being part 2 of an arc and primarily intended to give backstory to one of the characters. That doesn't mean it's not immediately intriguing. It's engaging and teasing and all good things. The art's reasonably good, with only one or two really dodgy panels (mostly expression work), and the colouring (maybe the inking too?) heavily reminds me of Supergirl.
Hulk #77, on the other hand, is a much better jumping-on-point, being David's first issue on the title. (I know from the weblog that "Tempest Fugit" was going to be a 6-issue miniseries until somebody at Marvel realised they were cancelling the main Hulk serial the month before; it's still only a six-month commitment, but he's giving serious thought to staying on afterwards if he finds he enjoys it. Heck, Young Justice was only for six months initially, and that turned out to be three years and a number of big tie-ins...) The opening - Hulk walking through the ocean after what has clearly been a long time - actually ties in quite neatly with the previous issue's ending (I peeked), in which all Banner's plots are closed down, almost all his friends and family turned him away and he finished up staring at himself in a pool. It's not such a stretch to say he strode off into the sea, leaving all worldly concerns behind him.
Fallen Angel has been added to my order; Hulk has not. That's no slight on Hulk - he's just as engaging, with a surprise appearance of Grey Hulk (not Banner!) at the end - I'm just not sure about the potential short-term of the Daviditude. And, it must be said, there is a subconscious DC brand loyalty coming through.
So, to close on the monthlies, we hop back over to the DCU with Waid & Kitson's Legion of Superheroes. Still no sign of Shikari, and the clean reboot is still bugging me. But it remains highly inventive and the quality of writing is annoyingly high. There's a little clumsy exposition, and the Naltorians keep having to remind us that they're precognitive, because the fact they're standing here discussing things (and that they have to wait until an emergency actually arises to call for help) suggests otherwise. But Brainiac 5's intelligence is effortlessly expressed, and his frustration with Dream Girl's powers ("Stop being so defiant! Cause, then effect.") is entertaining and believable, and the issue closes on a lab full of goats (fully justified by earlier dialogue, but without a word of actual explanation).
I can't stay mad at this.
I will make one final complaint though: If not for Shadow Lass's inclusion, the cover could easily have been labelled "Heroes Not Appearing In This Comic".
As well as the monthlies I also picked up the fourth book of Promethea, collecting issues #19-25 of the regular comic. The first five of these complete Moore's crash course in the Kabbalah, and while it's fascinating how far a lot of these concepts stretch I don't feel any more converted than I did before. I just wanted him to shut the fuck up and get on with the story. I'm probably catching more of his symbolism than I was before, but I was tired of two characters expositing at each other by about the end of book 2. The last two chapters of this book made up for it though, if only for the courtroom scene in the Immateria. Bla bla bla stunning art bla bla inventive storytelling makes even the "magic primer" scenes readable bla bla everything we've come to expect from Moore etc etc etc.
I was going to say something about the CDs I bought today too, but I've already gone on for far too long. It's time to but this post to bed.
Ta.
