Avengers Academy #1 — Writer: Christos Gage; Art: Mike McKone
Young Allies #1 — Writer: Sean McKeever; Pencils: David Baldeon; Inks: N. Bowling
Marvel’s launching two new kid-group books this week, probably not the smartest marketing move — especially since Academy, with its Avengers-franchise tie-in, threatens to suck away any potential sales from the less-advertised and unaffiliated Young Allies. Too bad, since they’re both decent-enough efforts, with both Gage and McKeever good at assembling their casts, giving them distinct personalities, and throwing in enough plot twists and conflict to get readers to come back for more (artwise, McKone’s a little more traditionally superhero, while Baldeon tends toward the cartoony/manga side a tad, but both are middle-of-the-road enough to be both easy to read and commercial). You know, if Marvel wanted a good candidate for a same-day digital-comic release (they announced this week that they’re going to make the new Iron Man Annual available that way in a few weeks, although it’ll cost more to download than to buy in a store), a book like Young Allies would be the perfect candidate — it would be less less likely to get lost in the shuffle that way, and readers who read a low-cost (or free) first issue online would be more likely to get hooked on the characters, and be willing to pick up subsequent issues in the stores. But maybe that’s too logical a marketing development to actually work….
Justice League: Generation Next #2 — Writer: Judd Winick; Breakdowns: Keith Giffen; Pencils: Fernando Dagnino; Inks: BIT and Raul Fernendez
Booster Gold #33 — Writers: Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis; Pencils: Chris Batista; Inks: Rich Perrotta and Prentis Rollins
Doom Patrol #11 — Writer: Keith Giffen; Pencils: Matthew Clark and Ron Randall; Inks: John Livesay
These three books are linked by Giffen, and by nostalgia — the first two, especially, since they’re callbacks to the 1980s bwah-ha-ha JLI. Gen Next continues the Max Lord against the world plot, and is OK, if a trifle by the numbers — what happens is pretty much what you’d expect at this juncture, although it’s nice to see the current Blue Beetle, and having his mechanical Scarab unaffected by Max’s mindgames makes sense. Booster, now closely tied to Gen Next, is by the Giffen/DeMatteis team, and involves Our Hero time-traveling back to the old-days JLI; it’s intriguing partly because it shows a past Max who doesn’t seem like a monster, which suggests a couple of plot doors that might rehabilitate (or un-Didio) him; I’m still leaning toward the evil-twin-from-another-dimension theory, myself…). Doom Patrol is Giffen writing by himself, which means his trademark ultra-packed, hard-for-non-fans-to-follow dialogue, but it also features a major appearance by another Giffen co-creation, Ambush Bug, which for some fans may make it worth checking out.
Meta 4 #1(of 5) — Writer/Artist: Ted McKeever
The big attraction here is the art — McKeever’s always been known for his quirky character designs and compositions, but his actual illustration skills have increased over the years; look at the ferris-wheel splash on page five here, for example, or the last-page helmet closeup. However, his stories tend to run together, and this one’s no exception (Near-future anti-utopia? Check. Innocent, confused hero? Check. Androgynous, large/strong female? Check. Grotesque-looking antagonists? Check…). Plus, his writing can be a little too overblown — there’s the subtitle: “A 5-issue Allegorical Series in Black and White,” and the title pun with “metaphor,” plus lines like this: “The existential stench of stale air and mouth-tainted coffee affronts my senses.” Yeah, don’t you just hate when that happens…?
Chip #2 — Writer/Artist: Richard Moore
I’m a Moore fan, from Boneyard back to Far West, but this isn’t a particularly stirring effort; there’s only 18 pages of story (for $4!), and while the art’s as cool as ever, with some nicely spooky shots, the characters — a tiny gargoyle and a standard-issue pixie/fairy sidekick — just don’t seem worth caring about. This guy deserves at some point to have a huge, commercial hit, but this ain’t going to be it.
Star Trek: Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor #3 — Writer/Artist: John Byrne
Byrne having Trekkie fun, and his grizzled, grumpy McCoy continues to be a hoot, but this suffers from too much continuity: all the references to previous Trek characters and events are to be expected, but when Gary Seven, of all people, shows up and becomes a major supporting character, the book threatens to become more about the in-breeding than the story, and starts to collapse under its own weight.
Heralds #2 (of 5) — Writer: Kathryn Immonen; Artists: Tonci Zonjic and James Harren
As with Richard Moore and Chip, I’m an Immonen fan, but this book isn’t working for me. It’s partly because it’s just too confusing as a single-issue comic; there’s too much going on, and it isn’t set up or explained enough. That problem will, presumably, go away in the trade version, but a less-fixable complaint is the art: the characters often are too sketchily-drawn, don’t have enough weight on the page, and have expressions that just make them look ugly. In a book with an all-female cast, that’s a fatal flaw, and Immonen’s decent characterization and dialogue aren’t enough to counter it.
Phil Mateer
