Whatever Happened to the Rundown?

Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these.  That’s been down to the fact that I’ve been picking up enough stuff to write about that nothing winds up slipping by.  Then I realized I was about to put a bunch of titles that I did have some thoughts on straight onto my bookshelf to make way for the stuff I really wanted to discuss.  So it’s time for some small talk about many different titles.

Starting with Batman/Superman:  World’s Finest vol. 6:  IMPossible which picks up on the teaser from the previous volume involving something bad happening to all of the imps in the DC Universe, leaving only Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite to cajole the title characters into helping.  The result is a story that features lots of inspired craziness from writer Mark Waid, and challenges artist Dan Mora to draw it all that Travis Mercer has to help out by drawing the parts of the story which take place in other dimensions.  It’s only let down by a villain that’s surprisingly bland given where he came from and surprisingly (shockingly) drab colors from Tamra Bonvillain.  The final Gleb Melnikov-illustrated issue in the collection isn’t on the same level, but it’s still an engaging murder mystery set on Paradise Island.

Poison Ivy  thinks she’s found a little bit of paradise herself after finally defeating Jason Woodrue, only to be framed as the leader of an ecoterrorist organization bombing Gotham in Poison Ivy vol. 5:  Human Botany.  This winds up leading her out of the city and into the midst of the Order of the Green Knight and it’s all-too-familiar leader.  Meanwhile, Janet From HR continues acclimating to her new lifestyle in surprising ways, while also having an encounter that may fracture whatever relationship she has with Ivy.  While writer G. Willow Wilson is setting up a lot of things here, there are also minor bits of payoff from previous plot threads and a lot of interesting developments along the way.  The quality of this current storyline won’t be clear until things wrap up in the next volume, but what’s here is still entertaining on its own terms.

We know that the Phantom Zone is where Krypton put its worst criminals, but where did it come from?  Mark Waid has an answer in Superman:  Action Comics – Phantoms and it involves one of Superman’s oldest friends, the worst criminal still in the Zone, time travel, and more (along with some enjoyable sci-fi silliness from Superboy and Kong Kenan the Superman of China).  For the majority of this story’s run, the answer is a good one as Superman faces challenges that test his empathy, compassion, and smarts more than his brawn, and even goes to some surprising places.  Unfortunately things falter in the story’s final act as it goes big in a way that the story, and Clayton Henry’s otherwise solid art, aren’t really equipped to handle, weighing down the whole package in the process.

Can a comedian and a musician who’ve co-written comics before combine their powers to write a comic all on their own?  Rifters shows that Brian Posehn and Joe Trohman, previously responsible for co-writing “Deadpool” and “The Holy Roller,” respectively, could do just that.  Can they write a good comic about a couple of wiseass timecops who stumble onto a conspiracy to control all of time?  Kinda, sorta, yeah.  This is so long as you really don’t think too hard about all of the paradoxes being generated and can tolerate an ill-advised subplot about one of the timecops killing a bad kid and then angsting about it.  You’d also need to be able to be on the writer’s wavelength where irreverence rules above everything else and the more juvenile the joke the better.  Not only was I able to do that, but I finished this comic thinking that Trohman’s previous one could’ve used a lot of it.  Chris Johnson’s lively art certainly helped me do that too.

The best part of Maria Llovet’s previous series, “Crave,” was how it turned the “Well, That Escalated Quickly” nature of the plot from a bug into a feature.  There’s nothing as clever going on in Violent Flowers which introduces us to a group of modern-day vampires who are being hunted by one of their own with a grudge.  Llovet’s sexy and detailed art is always enjoyable and she handles the worldbuilding and characterization of the cast well enough here.  Unfortunately there’s very little surprise to be had in seeing how the story plays out and it leaves off setting up a storyline for the next volume.  Which the creator swears in her afterword that will be coming eventually; but, she’s already serializing her next miniseries so your guess is as good as mine when that’ll be.

The members of Breakpoint 10 may have accomplished their role in ending the inter-dimensional war against Eskandir the Argive, but now they face their greatest challenge:  Moving on with their lives.  That’s the premise behind Free Agents vol. 1:  After the War Was Over and it’s a setup I thought I could get behind coming from veteran co-writers Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza.  Then I read through the first issue and was greeted with trying to wrap my head around an abnormally large cast, lots of poorly-deployed exposition, and unappealingly chunky art from Stephen Mooney.  The story does pick up a bit as it goes along as you get to know the cast and the narrative becomes more focused, but I was left feeling like I’d put in more work than was necessary just to see things get to the point of “okay” by the end.

Kuro finds out that there’s going to be an attack on Kodan High School tomorrow, which is why he lets his ninja comrades know about it.  Why isn’t he doing anything?  Because he’s already signed up to take part in a brawl at a school full of delinquents across town.  It’s just another day in the world of Under Ninja vol. 6 as the manga continues to demonstrate the oddball charm that made the anime enjoyable for what it was.  This still means that I’m reliving character and plot points I’m already familiar with, so there’s not really any surprise to be had, what with the anime following the manga as closely as it did.  Had I not watched the anime beforehand, I’d like to think that a lot of things in this volume – the reveal of the identity of one of NIN’s leaders, Kuro sneaking into a girl’s room with pure intentions, finding out that one of the cast isn’t who we thought she was – would’ve surprised me had I read them here first.