Strange Tales #1 (of 3) — Creators: Paul Pope, Nick Bertozzi, John Leavitt, Molly Crabapple, Junko Mizuno, Dash Shaw, James Kochalka, Johnny Ryan, M. Kupperman, Peter Bagge, Nicholas Gurewitch and Jason
Pope does an Inhumans/Lockjaw story (plus the cover); Bagge and Kochalka each contribute Hulk tales; Ryan does the Punisher (plus a rundown of “Marvel’s Most Embarrassing Moments”); Shaw does Doctor Strange; Kupperman offers a Namor story; Bertozzi does Modok; Mizuno and Jason contribute Spider-Man bits. For $5, you couldn’t possibly have this much fun anywhere else; some of it’s just weird, but much of it is laugh-out-loud funny, and it’s a tribute to Marvel’s editors that they’ve gathered the absolute best of the indy comics universe for this romp — and provided creator bios in the back, so all the exclusively-superhero readers can track down more work by these people.
Ultimate Spider-Man #2 — Writer: Brian Michael Bendis; Artist: David Lafuente
Lafuente’s mangafied art and small-proportioned Spidey are starting to grow on me (the style works well for the high-school stuff, and the kalaidascopic cover is a well-designed treat). Too, the art makes the book’s tone lighter, even when serious stuff is happening, and the Ultimate books need that after all the angst and destruction visited on them by Ultimatum; as Bendis and company work to reestablish their cast and clean up the mess imposed on them by that ill-considered mini-series, it’s a welcome asset.
Incognito #6 (of 6) — Writer: Ed Brubaker; Art: Sean Phillips
Brubaker doesn’t do “flashy” very much; there’s seldom a “Did you see that?” moment in his work for the reader to describe to friends. What he does offer are multidimensional characters, complicated but well-constructed plots (because all those characters are frequently working at cross purposes), and a very high level of professionalism throughout; particularly when he’s working with an old partner like Phillips, these qualities lead to good comics. This tale of a super-powered villain in a witness-protection program had a number of places where it could have veered off the rails, but it never did, and here at the end has revealed itself as a solid, satisfying story, one that ought to make a good-looking trade for years to come.
Starr the Slayer #1 (of 4) — Writer: Daniel Way; Art: Richard Corben
A Robert E. Howardesque pulp writer creates a popular barbarian character, leaves him for the world of highbrow novel-writing, and eventually returns, a chastened failure, to try to get his mojo back by writing the barbarian’s origin; we get to watch both the writer’s own world and the fictional world he’s struggling to create, and eventually they start to merge. Way uses a singing-minstrel narrative device that quickly becomes annoying, and since this is a Max title there’s a lot of gratuitous swearing (just on the first two pages, there’s the f-word (twice), the s-word, and the m-f-word, not to mention a p-word and t-word; keep this book away from those new Disney execs), which comes off as juvenile. The saving grace is the Corben art, which is just made for this stuff; everything from the barbarian to the cigar-smoking publisher to the minstrel look uniquely themselves, and just right. This is the kind of thing that would have made a great serial in an old issue of Creepy or Eerie, and it looks just as good here, too.
The Invincible Iron Man #17 — Writer: Matt Fraction; Artist: Salvador Larroca
Continuing the “World’s Most Wanted” arc (Part 10, in fact), and we’re at one of those valleys where it looks bad for all three of our heroes: Maria captured, Pepper reported dead, and Stark, quite literally, losing his mind. Fraction gets a little too Flowers for Algernon with that last development, as Tony writes a bathetic email full of misspellings and despair, but he’s also left himself a clear path to solve all three problems; assuming that this doesn’t stretch out too long (given that everything’s written for the trades today, and so tends toward six-issue chunks, I’m hoping for just two more episodes), this continues to show the potential to be one of the better Iron Man stories of the last few years.
Wednesday Comics #9 (of 12) — Creators: Various
Heading into the last quarter: in my book, the Batman strip has gone down a notch (too many 100 Bullets-y cliches), but the Superman one has gone up (its cliches turned out to be a plot point, not a flaw), while Metamorpho tries the hardest (only Allred and Gaiman would attempt, last week and here, to turn the panels into an entire periodic table, while simultaneously using the elemental abbreviations to advance the plot; it doesn’t quite work, but it’s an impressive try), Flash gets all trippy as an excuse to offer comic-strip parodies, Supergirl and Wonder Woman get by on the strength of their looks (literally; it’s the art that carries them), and Hawkman continues to take it’s end-of-the-package position seriously by offering jaw-dropping visuals like this issue’s man-plus-mace vs. T. rex.
Stuff I read and liked enough to buy, but don’t have much to say about, so read previous reviews in the archives if you’re interested:
Grimjack: The Manx Cat #2 (of 6) — Writer: John Ostrander; Art: Timothy Truman
The Boys #34 — Writer: Garth Ennis; Pencils: Carlos Ezquerra; Inks: Hector Ezquerra
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight #28 — Writer: Jane Espenson; Pencils: Georges Jeanty; Inks: Andy Owens
Phil Mateer
