Phil's Reviews — Stuff I Read and Put Back #58

Green Arrow and Black Canary #5 — Writer: Judd Winick;  Art: Andre Coelho
Ollie sits around angsting about the fact that he’s been a lousy father and his kid has no brain. He swears to give up being Green Arrow. Cue the shocking twist ending, after which he says, grimly, “Get me my damn bow.” Presumably, next issue something will actually happen. For now, I’ve just saved you all $3 and five minutes of your lives.

Dead of Night #1 (of 4) — Writer: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa;  Art: Kano (framing sequences by Nick Percival)
Man-Thing’s origin retold. Unfortunately, everything just seems a little… off, from the art, which attempts to do sexy and horrific but can’t quite deliver on either, to the script, which makes all the characters unattractive and leaves us with no one to, um, root for, to the book’s price: $3.99, an extra buck, even though it’s the same old 20 pages of story, with no extras. Take the $16 this mini-series would cost you, and go buy The Essential Man-Thing instead; Steve Gerber, Val Mayerick and Mike Ploog run rings around this modern crap.

Nova Annual #1 — Writers: Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning;  Pencillers: Mahmud A. Asrar, Klebs and Wellinton Alves;  Inkers: Juan Vlasco and Nelson Pereira
A retelling of the origin from the first Nova, with some updating that works (Ginger’s a goth chick) and doesn’t (Rich’s high-school tormentor is a jock? Wasn’t the original point that he was a mean nerd, to keep him from being just another Flash Thompson?). There’s also a lot of tie-in with the current Phalanx continuity, and it’s by that book’s regular writers, so it’s probably worth buying if you’ve been following the series, or all of the Annihilation stuff.

X-Force #1 — Writers: Craig Kyle and Christ Yost;  Artist: Clayton Crain
Wolverine, X-23, Warpath and Wolfsbane make up a covert-action, pro-active team who go out and, well, kill people;  in this case, they’re after the Purifiers from that whole “Messiah CompleX” crossover, who’re trying to revive Nimrod/Bastion. Confused? Don’t be; it looks like it’s mostly going to scenes like this:  Wolverine: “If we kill these bad guys, you can never go back to the way you were before. You’ll be killers.” Others: “OK.”  Wolverine: “All righty, then.”  … followed by lots of slashing and gore, as various henchmen get eviscerated.  Crain’s art, shadowy and hard to follow, is appropriate for the dark goings-on (although he throws in occasional cool shots, like a photoshopped sunset effect), but the overall impression is of a high-concept idea that just doesn’t fit the characters (Cyclops orders this? And when Wolverine says “What’s Frost say about all this?” he says “Emma… doesn’t need to know.”?  Um, is that supposed to not make any sense?  Never mind: let’s go kill something!

Spider-Man Family #7 — Writers: Todd Dezago, Mark Waid and Karl Kesel;  Art: Karl Kesel
The new story’s a nice enough Looter/Meteor Man romp, but then the reprints offer Venom (from Lethal Protector #1, a book that’s not exactly hard to find or expensive), the first issue of the Spidey mini Death and Destiny (a little harder to find) and a Manga-Spidey reprint (even harder to find, but then no one’s looking for it). That’s just not enough good stuff for the $5 price.

Booster Gold #0 — Writers: Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz;  Pencils: Dan Jurgens;  Finishes: Norm Rapmund
It’s “#0” because it’s a Zero Hour crossover this time (they even have it like that in the indicia, just to mess with obsessive collectors and their filing habits).  More of the Blue and Gold team-up, and it’s actually a nice package and a fun read, both in art and story: if you’re a DC fan-person, especially of the ’80s, give it a try.  Points for working hard to clear up any lingering bad karma from the events that kicked off Infinite Crisis, although I still have a nagging feeling that none of it’s going to stick, and that’s keeping me from getting too excited, or actually buying the book.

Salvation Run #4 (of 7) — Writer: Matthew Sturges;  Penciller: Sean Chen;  Inker: Waldon Wong
The cover, with its gorilla warfare, gives away the one “shocking” scene in the book (let’s just say fans of Monsieur Mallah and The Brain, and their doomed inter-species, inter-organ love, aren’t going to be happy); otherwise, it’s more of the same old super-villain political jockeying on the doomed death planet, much less interesting than it sounds.

Wolverine #62 — Writer: Jason Aaron;  Artist: Ron Garney
Logan goes after Mystique, with some flashbacks of their first meeting thrown in. Marred by confusing storytelling (it’s hard to tell whether it’s the writer’s or the artist’s fault), which makes figuring out who’s killing whom too hard, and screws up what could have been an effective “gotcha” ending.

Phil Mateer

About Phil

With 40 years of experience in comic reading, collecting and reviewing, English Professor Phil Mateer has an encyclopedic mind for comics. Feel free to ask Phil about storylines, characters, artists or for that matter, any comic book trivia. He will post your questions and answers on the AABC blog. His knowledge is unparalleled! He is also our warehouse manager, so if you are looking for that hard to find comic book, ask Phil!
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One Response to Phil's Reviews — Stuff I Read and Put Back #58

  1. Really enjoyed Booster Gold… the series as a whole, so far.

    Totally agree on X-Force #1, I wonder how long they plan to continue this “killer” X-Men team… hopefully not TOO long.

    Thank you for saving me three bucks on the latest Winick angst-fest.

    -Chris