…and then there was this time that I bought even MORE comics at WonderCon.
WonderCon? Yeah, it was over a month ago now and I’m still working on the last few volumes of “Appleseed” that I picked up there. This has been going on for about a week now. Long story short: My opinion of Masamune Shirow’s pre-”Ghost in the Shell” cyberpunk series hasn’t improved much over the years. It’s filled with plenty of the mangaka’s trademark technobabble and musings on the nature of humanity, which aren’t articulated as clearly as they should be. The intricately detailed art is still impressive to take in, as are the action scenes. However, I’m really not that impressed with how co-protagonist Deunan Knute is characterized. She’s either a hyper-competent combat specialist, or a simpering, confident-less fool who needs to fall back on her cyborg partner Briareos for the tough decisions. It’s a portrayal that does nothing but remind me of how Samus Aran was made to look in “Metroid: Other M.” I’m only part of the way through three of the four volumes I got, but I keep getting distracted by other better comics.
More like this after the break…
Joe Casey: Still doing things differently in “Catalyst Comix.” Here, the writer takes the characters from Dark Horse’s old “Comics Greatest World” line and recasts them in a new light. Superman-alike Frank “Titan” Wells thinks he just saved the world, and is plagued with indecision about what to do next in his life. Superheroine Amazing Grace actually saved the world and now has to step up and save everyone from what comes next. The Agents of Change are a dysfunctional superhero team who find themselves reunited as part of an experiment to give the One Percent the world they dreamed of. Casey’s approach to these characters does make them interesting, if not exactly compelling. There’s a whole lot of talk here and not as much “shock of the new” as the writer would like to think he’s giving us. Still, the art from Dan McDaid, Paul Maybury, and Ulisses Farinas impresses, with Farinas taking home the gold with his clean psychedelic style.
As for regular corporate-owned comics that are just plain weird, there’s “All-New Doop” from the character’s creator, Peter Milligan, and David Lafuente illustrating (most of) it. Subtitled, “The Real Battle of the Atom,” we find out that Doop had a rather large behind-the-scenes role to play in that crossover event. Mainly involving his attempts to strike up an actual relationship with Kitty Pryde and how that affected her decision to leave the Jean Grey School. In the beginning, this is all delightfully weird and so much better than “Battle of the Atom” simply by virtue of how strange it is. Then Milligan keeps piling the strangeness on, in the form of a mystery regarding Doop’s parents, and I was hard-pressed to care about any of it by the end of the story. Call it an ambitious failure.
“Grindhouse: Doors Open at Midnight” collects the first half of Alex De Campi’s original exploitation series in a novel flipbook format for the two stories being told within. Problem is that only one of them felt like it was worth my time. That would be the “Prison Ship Antares” half which is basically a women in prison movie that happens to be set on a spaceship! De Campi creates a vibrant cast of characters in the space of two issues with a number of scenarios to show how badass the prisoners are and how despicable their warden is. It may be exploitation, but I’d still pay to see this movie! Unlike “Bee Vixens From Mars” which is just a cheeseball horror movie in comparison. There’s one memorable character in the form of Deputy Garcia, and even she’s not cool enough to make the fight against the title creatures all that interesting.
I wanted to pick up David Lapham’s “Young Liars” when I was doing my podcast on him last year. Regrettably, it has since gone out of print and I wasn’t sure I’d get it in time if I ordered it from third-party sellers. Reading it now, I’m actually disappointed I didn’t get the chance to talk about it then. It’s about a loser, Danny Noonan, whose life is turned upside down when he meets crazed heiress Sadie and her circle of friends. The ostensible focus of the story is that they’re off on a trip to Europe to get their hands on a priceless painting that will allow them all to be set for life. In actuality, it’s more like Lapham is creating a story that allows him to indulge the kind of crazy impulses that would be out of place in “Stray Bullets.” For the first three-quarters of this first volume, that works really well. Then the action starts going over-the-top in an off-putting way with castration, rape, and characters getting murdered at the drop of a hat. I’ll admit to being morbidly curious to see where the creator takes the story next, but I think I can wait until I find the next volume at another convention.
Even though I followed Greg Rucka’s development of Renee Montoya from detective to Question, I never picked up his last major story with her, “Final Crisis: Revelations,” until now. Mainly because it was never impressed upon me that this was the culmination of everything he was doing with her, and new Specter Crispus Allen as well. This was a tie-in to Grant Morrison’s event series and features Montoya, Allen, and friends pitted against the Cult of Crime and its new leader Vandal Savage, revealed as Cain of the Bible story. Rucka and artist Phillip Tan work up a suitably apocalyptic fervor with the narrative while keeping the drama reserved for the Big Questions about God’s role in life, as well as that of his minions in the DC Universe. It’s good reading, but mainly of interest to people who have been following Rucka’s take on the characters in question (which also includes Batwoman as well).
The first volume of writer David Hine and artist Shaky Kane’s “The Bulletproof Coffin” was a bravura work of metafiction that offered interesting takes on old genres while weaving a complex story around them. With that as a start, I was really looking forward to the second volume, “Disinterred,” only to find that there wasn’t any kind of overarching story between the issues. While the individual stories themselves are quite strong — save for the “cut up this issue and make your own story” which makes even less sense after being collected here — the loss of the feeling that they’re part of something larger is palpable.
There were also two volumes of “Crossed: Wish You Were Here,” writer Si Suprrier’s take on the Garth Ennis horror concept. While other writers (I’m looking at YOU, Lapham!) have missed the mark, Spurrier is one who knows that the real focus of the series is meant to be on the human cost of surviving in this post-apocalyptic world. That Spurrier is taking over for Alan Moore on the “Crossed +100” series seems like a good thing after having read these volumes. I’d say more, but I’ll be saving those words for a podcast after I’ve picked up the fourth and final volume of this title.