Hey: I’m back (well,I actually didn’t go anywhere, but after two years of reviews I welcomed a break). Let’s have a big round of applause for Dan, who agreed to provide all the June reviews, and did an outstanding job: funny, dead-on, and comprehensive: he reviewed 25 books last week (granted, it was a big week, but you’re lucky to get 12-15 out of me…). If you all liked his style, too, let us know — maybe we can talk him into a few more guest reviews sometime down the line. For now, though, let’s gear up and see what’s in the “put back” pile….
Chew #2 — Writer: John Layman; Art: Rob Guillory
The first issue of this series has become a superhot collector’s item, thanks partly to Rich Johnston, over at Bleedingcool.com, pointing out that it was selling for $30-$40 on eBay (and now it’s going for maybe $60). Readers were intrigued by the high-concept premise (a cop who’s a “cibopath,” meaning that he gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats; thus, if he’s investigating a murder, and takes a nibble of the victim…), and news of the increasing value sent more people looking for it, too — combine that demand with a low-ordered book (AABC got all of four copies), and the chase was on.
So, that first issue was hot, but was it any good? Just OK — the concept was interesting, the dialogue snappy (in a TV-detective show kind of way), and the art cartoony but serviceable; you could tell everyone involved put in their time on producing a solid product. However, the story, set in an alternate-timeline America where eating chicken is outlawed (bird flu worries), seemed unnecessarily confusing, and took the book too much out of the “real” world — in the end I read it, shrugged, put the comic back on the rack (I wonder which lucky customer picked it up?) and didn’t think any more of it until the “hot” business started.
This week’s second issue is a good next step– the setting doesn’t seem quite so bizarre, and the supporting cast is starting to round into shape — but it all still seems to be at the level of a decent TV cop show: beyond the cibopathic hook, it’s all just decent but not spectacular: it doesn’t have the jaw-dropping art, or the keen-edged sense of social satire, that would really make it pop. Props to the creative team for either their marketing skill or their luck at catching lightning in a bottle, but I’m putting this copy back, too, The book’s got potential, though, and is worth a look — and, since the store ordered 19 copies instead of four this time, they should be available for the curious.
Justice League: Cry for Justice #1 (of 7) — Writer: James Robinson; Art: Mauro Cascioli
This might have made the cut, despite the bad taste left by Dwayne McDuffie’s being forced off the regular JLA book for daring to mention the various corporate stupidities that hamstrung his attempts to tell a coherent story, because, hey, that isn’t this creative team’s fault, right? Unfortunately, what is their fault is the cookie-cutter core of this mini-series: the breakaway group that demands more grim-and-gritty “justice” that’s actually closer to “vengeance.” We’ve seen this before (Justice League Elite, most recently, and Extreme Justice before that), and it doesn’t help when characters’ personalities get conveniently wrenched around to make them fit the premise (OK, Hal Jordan makes a little sense — he has a good line about how he is the law in Earth’s space sector — but since when has test-pilot Hal acted like Judge Dredd? And Ray Palmer? Congorilla?) James Robinson always gets some slack, because Starman was a sustained, classic series, but that was a long time ago, and what’s being offered here — so far — seems too mediocre to care about.
Marvel Divas #1 (of 4) — Writer: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa; Art: Tonci Zonjic
Like Cry for Justice, this book starts from a high-concept idea: Sex and the City, done with Marvel superheroines — but stumbles at the gate partly because it has to do a lot of personality revamps to make it work: the Patsy Walker/Hellcat who was such a believable, quirky delight in her last mini-series has suddenly morphed into Sarah Jessica Parker, and the other women share similar fates. Thankfully, this first episode stays away from the T&A (although you couldn’t prove that from the book’s cover), in favor of friendship-inspired girltalk, but beyond that neither the art nor the story is inspired enough to make a reader come back for the next issue.
Greek Street #1 — Writer: Peter Milligan; Art: Davide Gianfelice
Another “concept”: characters living on a street in modern England, who are unknowingly reliving classic Greek myths and stories — so, you have a guy named Eddie (whose last name is presumably “Puss,”) who hooks up with a woman who turns out to be his long-unseen mother, and another guy named Carus who will, one assumes, eventually get too close to the sun, and so on and so forth. The Greek overlay, on top of Milligan’s already-dense style, makes for an almost-impenetrable comic; other than classical fans who want to play “spot the reference,” it’s hard to see what audience this book will attract. My prediction is that it will last 12 issues, by the end be selling fewer than 5,000 copies, and will have its plug pulled after the first trade collections don’t sell either. Fearless forecasting? Not really: that’s what happens to nine out of ten Vertigo titles, isn’t it?
Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels #1 (of 5) — Writer: Mike Mignola; Art: Ben Stenbeck
Typical Mignola Victorian horror, but not quirky or poetic enough to create much interest, and with the artist doing that pseudo-Mignola, ink-heavy thing that Duncan Fegredo can pull off, but here only works in a few panels. Not exactly a crucial brick in the Hellboy foundation, and easy to dismiss.
Irredeemable #4 — Writer: Mark Waid; Art: Peter Krause
Continuing in its “What if Superman — oh, wait, we mean ‘The Plutonian,’ wink-wink — went nuts?” idea, and while there’s a little bit of interest (Waid’s too good a creator to do a story without some redeeming qualities), it still smacks too much of fanfic porn — not in the sexual sense, but in the “watch the superhero kill tons of people” one — and, unlike, say, Miracleman #15, there’s not even the illicit thrill of ultra-detailed violence, but only eyebeams, charred corpses after the fact, and similar tasteful dodges. Like Chew, the first issue of this series has gotten some speculator interest, based on its concept and relatively low print run, but it’s so derivative that it’s hard to see it amounting to much after another few issues.
The Zombies That Ate the World #4 ( of 8 ) — Writer: Jerry Frisson; Art: Guy Davis
The Davis art continues to be the one redeeming quality, but it’s more caricatured than most of his work — none of the characters are at all attractive, either physically or emotionally — and the story just sits there, attempting occasional social satire that has no bite or resonance, and otherwise going nowhere. Trust one o’ them arty European writers to take a zombie story and make it boring….
Phil Mateer
