Green Arrow #37 — Writer: J. T. Krull; Artist: Federico Dallochio
I know this is “just” a comic, and applying strict literary standards to it is insane, but geez: Ollie has “killed” Prometheus, and everyone, including the cops, is now after him for “murder.” Of a genocidal terrorist? Really? Because if some soldier in Afghanistan ran into Bin Laden and killed him, we’d all call him a criminal? And why a trial in Star City: how, exactly, do they have jurisdiction over a murder of a non-resident of the city that was committed in a pocket dimension, with no body and no evidence? But no! The jury finds you innocent! I, the judge, won’t overrule the verdict — but now I banish you from the city! Even though, legally, you’ve committed no crime and I have no jurisdiction over you!
The low point has come earlier, though, when Green Arrow removes his mask, and they’re all dumbfounded that he’s really Oliver Queen. You know, their former mayor — the guy with the swashbuckly blond mustache and beard that nobody else in the city has, except for, well, Green Arrow, who also has the exact same build and voice. The city’s top cop, who’s seen them both up close for years, is astonished at this revelation. This book is like one of those April Fool’s issues where you have to find all the mistakes, except that it isn’t any fun; it’s just depressing. I’m not sure that Krull is to blame for this (the fine hand of DC Editorial looms over many of these moves), but, boy, is this a bad comic: a prime candidate for worst book of the year.
The Unwritten #17 — Writer: Mike Carey; Layouts: Peter Gross; Finishes: Kurt Higgins and Zelda Devon
Every so often, Carey pauses his sometimes-overly-complicated storylines to shoot out one of these self-contained, perfectly-polished little fables; he did it a couple of times during his Lucifer run, and they were good every time. This tale of a pissed-off guy from the “real” world trapped in a Winnie-the-Pooh via Beatrix Potter children’s book is both funny and chilling, if a little obvious, and is a worthy addition.
Iron Man: Legacy #1 — Writer: Fred Van Lente; Pencils: Steve Kurth; Inkers: Allan Martinez and Victor Olazaba
The first issue of an ongoing series, since, as you may have heard, there’s a movie coming out, and you can’t have too much product available. It’s OK for all of that, with an iconic cover, a few good visuals, a story that treads old ground (Starktech being used to oppress a foreign country’s (“Transia”? Really?) citizens), and a decent last-page reveal. The back-up is the Tales Of Suspense #39 origin, the one with the evil Red Commie Vietnamese warlord with the slanty eyes and the goatee who says Stan Lee Commie things like “Now let us plunder the town! For none can stop the victorious Wong-Chu.” Marvel’s been doing a great production job with these reprints lately: the computer coloring and crisp reproduction make an almost-50-years-old story all shiny and new, and Don Heck’s art has never looked better.
Amazing Spider-Man: Origin of the Hunter #1 (of 1) — (Framing Sequence): Writer: Marc Guggenheim; Art: Mike Mayhew
More very crisp reprints, from the first two Kraven appearances in Amazing Spider-Man #15 and #34, and again I’m a fan of the new coloring. Stan’s script actually wears less well than Ditko’s art (the soap-opera lather gets a trifle thick at times, although if you squint and call up your inner 12-year-old it’s still magical). That art, though, is just a revelation: anyone who doesn’t get Ditko’s importance needs to look at the action panels in both of these stories. At $3.99 for 45 pages, it’s a bargain.
Siege: Loki #1 (of 1) — Writer: Kieron Gillen; Art: Jamie McKelvie
Worth noting because Gillen and McKelvie were the team on Phonograph:The Singles Club, one of the best (if lowest-selling) series of the last year. Here, they’re doing corporate crossover stuff, but at least Gillen is the main writer on Thor now, so it feels like it’s canonical, and McKelvie has some nicely otherworldly panels of both Loki and Mephisto.
Star Trek: Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor #1 (of 4?) — Writer/Artist: John Byrne
The Byrne Trek books have all been fun, and this one, chronicling the adventures of the grumpy older Doc as he comes out of boring retirement and volunteers for the Federation’s Frontier Medics Program at the fringes of known space, is no exception. It’s the usual Byrne Heinleinian sf stories, with classic sf plots and situations, very solidly written and drawn by a creator whose career, attitude and skill levels are just about at the same point as the character he’s now chronicling.
The Light #1 (of 5) — Writer: Nathan Edmondson; Art: Brett Weldele
This is a techno-horror comic, very Stephen Kingish, about a small town whose citizens are caught in an experiment gone wrong, or something, wherein if they look at certain electrical lights the light gets inside them and makes them… burn, or explode, or blow up or whatever; it isn’t made very clear yet in this first issue. The main character, a drunk and wife-beater, just happens to be a welder, and so has glasses that protect him — but his late-teen daughter, who hates his guts, doesn’t. So he blindfolds her and tries to get out of town — but he doesn’t tell her what’s happening or why she’s blindfolded, and so of course she rips off the blindfold at precisely the wrong time. Yes, it’s the dreaded Idiot Plot Story, the kind that only works if all the characters are morons (it’s also a story that, in one panel, uses “your” when it means “you’re,” indicating that the writer and editors aren’t all that swift either).
Pantheon #1 — Writer: Marc Andreyko; Art: Stephen Molnar
Called, on the cover, “Michael Chiklis’ Pantheon,” although it looks like one of those deals where he and a couple of the writers sat down over lunch and scribbled out the plot on a napkin. It involves — stop me if you’ve heard this before, and you have, because it’s been the topic of like nine other books — the Greek Gods coming back to life, or at least revealing themselves, in the near-future modern world (Zeus, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, is drawn to look exactly like, you guessed it, Michael Chiklis). It reads like the script for the first episode of a TV series, and not a very good one, with wonky logic, a government agent in a skimpy bikini who, at one point, pulls a gun out of nowhere, and similar eye-rolling developments; The Shield, it’s not.
Phil Mateer
