Some old fashioned Comic reviews

Haven't really talked about specific comics that I've been reading in a while, so...

The Faces of Evil at DC are a mixed bag in that it seems to have been left up to the various writers how to handle it. In the SECRET SIX, the cover spotlights Deadshot, and while the issue does focus on him a little bit in the beginning, the book really focuses on Bane if any single character. And, the story continues along organically as it would if there is no event whatsoever going on. If you use the cover to go by, you might be disappointed. The Vigilante cover features... the Vigilante. It doesn't even go for the effect of the villain's name overprinting the title. Whereas the JLA with Starbreaker is clearly focusing on the character and his "new" history and pretty much hijacks the title (though it does tie in to the ongoing storyline in the end).

The Amazing Spider-Girl #26: This book will be ending shortly as Spider-Girl will find a new home in the anthology Spider-man Family. Sad for me, as I have no interest in the other features of that book thus won't be picking it up. I can only hope that maybe her features will be collected.

The cover is very striking with a limited color scheme and painterly effects that don't overwhelm the fine lines. The story is nearing the end of what is a long plotline for this book. There are two Spider-Girls, one a clone the other not but which is which is unsure. The girl we've been following is just recently returned to her own body after Arana had hijacked it but she is still being aided mentally by a youngish Aunt May (who has long since died in this reality). Peter Parker has been taken over by the mind/spirit of Norman Osborn, while all of his and his daughter's friends and allies are trying to find him. Practically non-stop action and body-swapping all wonderfully rendered by Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema.

BPRD: The Black Goddess #1: On one hand, this is part of the larger ongoing plot as the world is going to heck and the BPRD are looking for Liz Sherman, mainly by trying to get some info on the Yellow Peril menace that kidnapped her and seems to have all the information. However, it is compellingly told by tying it in to the history of Lobster Johnson. One group is searching through his headquarters while another agent talks to the Lobster's last surviving aide. I love the bit as we see from Guy Davis' artwork that Lobster Johnson's headquarters has fallen into decay, metal is rusted and warped, debris and dust everywhere. Not just that, but it looks "real", leading to the comment by one of the BPRD team that they'd thought it would be "cooler looking". This has been one of the better monthly issues in a while that doesn't really leave you wishing you'd waited for the trade.

The Brave and the Bold #21: This has been an interesting storyline looking at an alien culture and we don't really see the Phantom Stranger much in sci-fi stories, especially on alien worlds though he works pretty well in that Doctor Who type way. The art team gives the book a wonderful painted look with a lush feel. However, part of the attraction of the B&B stories has long been the idea of single-issue stories and various team-ups. So, this story that seems to be a four parter with Green Lantern and Phantom Stranger teaming up, seems to be getting away from the point of the series, it could have been it's own mini. Waid had seemed to hit upon a good formula of being able to have smaller stories with different characters each month but tying into a larger storyarc. Another big flaw is the cover. While beautifully done, it tells you the team-up is between Green Lantern and Green Arrow. While GA is in the book, it isn't until near the end with him on Earth on a mission given by the Phantom Stranger.

Captain Britain and MI13 #9: The crew must fight their way out of a dream dimension. Various characters that I have no idea who they are and their abilities. Such as Pete Wisdom and Alistaire Stewart who seem to have magical abilities and knowledge when needed. Captain Midlands started out as a seemingly interesting low-budget Captain America for England riff, but ends up being a traitor and broken down old man, a scrawny one at that. Sadly, Blade seems to be there to stay despite his joining the team in order to kill one of them. The most interesting part of the whole story is the ending with Dracula on the moon and suggesting a team-up with Doctor Doom.

The Death-Defying 'Devil #2: This issue is a marked improvement in the Project: Superpowers books in that the story has a bit of pathos, a real reason for a hero-hero battle and the lurking menace of one of the biggest supervillains of the golden-age, the Claw. The Dragon is obviously one of the Little Wise Guys that hung around with Dare-devil in the past, only he has somehow been rejuvenated and given a costume and skills that are a reflection of Dare-Devil's. He thinks the returned hero is a fake usurping the hero's name and identity (as the returned heroes are framed by the government to be murderers and terrorists) and thus has set out to take him down. The 'Devil can't really set him straight because since his return he has been rendered mute. We also have the return of two other heroes that fought the Claw, Silver Streak who is as loquacious as 'Devil is quiet and the Ghost.

The art really doesn't seem to be up to par though, the work often looks more sketched than finished or solid and the colorist filling in big spaces with cool color blends further robs the book of vitality. The Silver Streak's original costumes were hardly iconic and had no silver (the name actually came from the race car he drove in his first appearance and referenced here), but this costume designed by Alex Ross is wretched. I don't know what the deal is with his fondness for the masks that go up the sides and back of the heads but leave the hair and most of the face visible are, but it is a terrible look. The artist does a better job with many of the quiet moments of the book and the appearance of the Ghost Plane.

One of the problems of this line has been the changing of the characters abilities and such with nary an explanation that establishes who and what the characters were before their time in the urn. Such as 'Devil's muteness. He gets another change this month, a healing ability that apparently includes his costume. Most of the changes, I have been aware of because I've read some of the original comics featuring all the characters that have so far been involved. Not so with the Ghost and if it continues in the same vein as the others, I will be at a loss to know where the original character ends and the Superpowers one begins. I know he fought the Claw and he had a plane and his look was somewhat similar to what we see here, but that's it.

The muteness of the lead character is also problematic. While the plot hinges on it, it prevents us from really getting to know the character at all. He ultimately has zero characterization, he's defined by how others react and refer to him. Even with Man-Thing and the Heap, we got hints at the tortured souls due to solid storytelling and narration. But, there's no narrative here, no thought balloons to direct us. There's no real reason to like this character as a character.

Green Arrow and Black Canary #16: Not one of Ladronn's better covers, it veers a little too much into Scott Kolins territory in style which doesn't really impress me much. The story and art are passable, but there's not really much meat to the story. While the cover is a "Faces of Evil" cover spotlighting Merlyn and he's the chief villain of the piece, he remains a cypher for most of the comic, just a paid assassin good with a bow and arrow. Some of the shots are outrageous, even for a comic. The shot through the bus is along the lines of the bus jumping the gap in the bridge in the movie Speed, enough to throw you out of the story. Neither story nor art sell it as a scene: why does he shoot through a moving bus when an easier shot is available? The angle is all wrong as he's ontop of a multi-storied building and is shooting at an extremely downward angle. And then on top of all that, the arrow is able to not only go through the body, but through a telephone pole as well. And, a word of advice, Arrow? Villains lie. Even if he tells you that you have no more arrows in your quiver, you might want to check as the art clearly shows there is one (and no mention as to what happened to the almost dozen that were in the quiver just on the previous page and he hadn't shot any more).

And, after the final battle and it's revealed who hired Merlyn and all, nothing is done with that. Did he run away during the battle to get apprehended by the cops? Who knows. Of course, the reason behind this is the whole story is NOT really about Merlyn or the theft of a green engine for autos and such. It's a set-up encounter and not really meant to mean much despite the cover playing Merlyn up. It's really about a girl that Arrow had saved in an earlier issue who has developed a fixation on him and is to become his Poison Ivy only she's called Poison Arrow and will be in the next issue. It's all about the readers seeing just how creepy she is and to set up for her big debut next issue. In a sense, Faces of Evil just occurred a month too early for the book.

Justice League of America #29: In this case, the Faces of Evil event does mean something. The cover is particularly effective in showing off the JLA villain of Starbreaker. Starbreaker is one of those cases where DC creates a villain similar to one at Marvel but the character comes off as being pretty hokey and deserving of ambiguity, in this case Starbreaker is their version of Galactus. He talks himself up a good deal in this comic and gives the reader his "new" back story with the League thanks to all the reboots and such. The writer is Len Wein who wrote a good many of the JLA tales back in the day and the art by Chris Cross is wonderfully old school dynamic. There are a few scenes that made me think of a couple of Silver-Age Neal Adams covers. The art does have a few problems. This takes place very early in JLA history apparently as it is Batman without the yellow oval. However, it's Green Arrow in his Neal Adams designed look which was quite some time after the "new look" for Batman. However, it's great seeing classic Aquaman treated seriously and looking impressive. And, lest readers are wondering exactly what happened to the ongoing storyline, the final page ties into the final page of the last issue, to show that this isn't a complete aberration.

Phantom Annual: A full blown team-up with Mandrake and he gets a slightly updated look, though I could do without the soul patch. But, at least he's not going into the jungles in full formal dress. The storyline is decent as Mandrake and Lothar start off investigating the murder of Lothar's cousin and get involved in a bigger plot of a criminal trying to find the location of a plant that can be made into a drug that will give him complete mind control over the subject. The story ultimately falls in the details. No effort is made to explain Mandrake or his abilities for anyone not at all familiar with the character. Like the artist in The Death Defying 'Devil, the artist here is mostly capable but at times doesn't really seem ready for the big leagues. In this case it's in his storytelling that renders various scenes and scene changes confusing. All in all, enjoyable if you're already a fan but nothing to really recommend it to others.

Solomon Kane #4: Wonderfully done cover by John Cassaday, moody and spooky. The sketchy artwork continues to work for this title, giving the comic a pulpy look over all, with a feeling for texture and a slightly flayed look of anatomy dummies. The biggest drawbacks continue to be the dried dead fish look of the skin-tones, especially Kane himself.

The Spirit #25: I'm looking forward to the creative change on this book. DC a month ago put out a comic with a few of Eisner's stories (even though at least one was originally written for a different character) but reading it and the regular monthly back to back illustrates where the book has gone wrong. Eisner had that cutesy way of naming his women that Kirby often had with characters, and his artwork and storytelling also had this kind of less than serious quality as well. But, it wasn't dated. He's a legend not because he did stuff in a nostalgic style but because he was cutting edge in his storytelling. His storytelling verged on satire and parody but it was also about life. His women were sexy, sultry and practically subversive. The Spirit was the equivalent of John McCain of DIE HARD only in a suit and mask. There should be this balance between the fairy tale of the character to the realness of crime and poverty, arbitrary nature of life and death.

In many ways, this book is more like a character DC already had access to and published off and on, Jack Cole's Midnight. Midnight WAS a parody and satire character of the masked man set. Midnight was all about poking fun at the juvenile nature of comics, he was the classic type to go into a bar and order milk and be gosh-wow earnest about it all despite the surreal nature of the rules of the world he operated in, that would make a talking monkey possible. Where the Spirit seemed to be trying to elevate the form, to write something that would on the surface seem juvenile but aimed at older readers, Midnight and Jack Cole was about taking the form to its extremes and bringing out the outrageous and ridiculous side of it.

So, the book looks good. I liked the cover and the suggestion of a villain and scene that unfortunately doesn't appear in the books. The insides are all well-done, an enjoyable all-ages type story. There are two artists which might explain the somewhat schizophrenic feel in the artwork or it could be just because of having to juggle some of the more caricaturistic styles of Dolan and the Spirit's lantern jaw with the depictions of the other characters. At times though the art seems to find its own pulpish style vs conforming to the pastiche style the book hews to.

Vigilante #2: It's great seeing Rick Leonardi doing a superhero comic again and Wolfman writing a character that he seems to naturally have an affinity for. I don't know anything about this incarnation of the character and the first two issues aren't really illuminating although this issue goes out of its way to say it's not Adrian Chase. Part of me just wishes Wolfman took advantage of all the reboots of the DCU and ignored all the issues after he left the character and just picked up where he left off. We have the current Vig going undercover as an inmate in a prison to uncover some information about the ordering of some bombings. Meanwhile, the Electrocutioner is on death row in this same prison and has been hired to take the man out. Great use of some minor league villains like Electrocutioner and Tobias Whale and yet making them capable and dangerous. Leonardi's artwork has bit of that John Romita Jr feel to it. He lacks JrJr's sense of weight and power and laying out a scene but there's more expression, atmosphere and detail. The insanity and evilness of the Electrocutioner when he survives his execution is palpable.

Some Comic Reviews

Comics

Been a busy couple of weeks including a trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Been some interesting comics, gave a few new ones a try.

Avengers/Invaders #5: A step in the right direction for the art. The cover is gorgeous and dynamic. Finally, the coloring on the interiors has stepped up to the plate, full of subtlety. While there are panels where Bucky and Captain America's blues are still purplish, at least this time out it's clear that those instances are in low lighting. Ross & Krueger's story is a lot more tighter than over in Superpowers, some great moments while Bucky/Cap doesn't pause to muck around with the ramifications of changing time by advising his younger self to not play hero and listen to Captain America in 1945. We also see the missing soldier pulling a scene from Saving Private Ryan and visits the graves of his fallen comrades and wonders about his surviving. We also learn that Dr. Strange has been holding back the ramifications of the Invaders traveling out of the time stream.

Sadly, there's a lot of other problems with the story that don't track. One, if the two teams of the Avengers are after the same thing (getting the Invaders back to the past), why are they fighting? Sure, there's bad blood and all, but it doesn't make any sense. Why launch an attack instead of just calling Stark up, especially since Strange already has a way to send them back. Also, if Strange is holding back the changes of the time if the Invaders don't go back, then how was the soldier able to look his older self up? He didn't die with his comrades because he time travelled.

The story really started going south when it focused on the Human Torch. Read the recap, it says they left the past in 1943. Yet, the Human Torch has memories from 1945! Worse, these memories are to serve as the whole motivation for everything he does and what leads into the next chapter, his comparing how SHIELD uses the LMD's and the Hitlers and the Jews.

Which of course makes no sense. Their very name implies that LMD's are nothing more than fancy CPR dummies crossed with Disney animatronics. AI is not the same as self-awareness. Indeed, if SHIELD could and did create androids with original thought and will, would they be using them as "Decoys" ie targets to fake deaths more often than not? And, the Human Torch of all beings would recognize this difference, that because it appears human does not mean that it is. What Krueger and Ross see and play up that his nature would cause him to see kinship in the LMD's is also what would cause him to see a big difference between himself and what amounts to automated puppets. Of course they confuse the issue further when the LMD's seem to come to life and see him as a leader or sign of the start of their liberation at the end. I don't read a lot of Marvel comics and I maybe missed a bunch over the years that suggested the LMD's had this kind of range of independent thought. Even so, it doesn't track. Until his most recent "death", the Human Torch had been in the present day for quite some time. So, why now for this trigger?

I also don't buy that the LMD's don't have a "specific scent" per Wolverine. Everything has a scent and each would develop its own scent depending on where it has been, who it has had contact with. Just as your car starts off with that general "new car" smell that it eventually loses and is replaced with other smells depending on the individuals that use it, the upkeep and environments it resides in.

B.P.R.D.: The Warning #4: A gorgeous looking book from the moody Mignola cover (isn't that the symbol of Lobster Johnson by the title, what does that signify I wonder) and the Guy Davis art inside. A feeling of the FF's Mole Man crossed with War of the Worlds, I've generally given up on being able to follow the storyline, the logic or reasoning with any of it. As it has tried to go epic in the storyline, it has lost the really creepy and more horrific feel this line used to have.

span style="font-weight: bold;">Flash Gordon #1: I broke down and bought this comic. 'Course I broke down and watched the sci-fi series as well. Sigh. Both fall down in so many ways. Chief among them is this wretched need to re-invent the wheel. The trick is to do the same thing that people writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches have long done, keep what Doyle has written as Canon. Everything else doesn't really matter. You're not going to top what Raymond did. Heck, most cannot even top what the movie serials or even the 80's movie with Queen soundtrack. DC did a mini that managed a decent updating, but it still lacked any kind of staying power because at the end of the day, it's a new character calling himself Flash Gordon, it's not really about the character as invented.

They compound their problems with just bad writing. It starts off well-enough, by cleverly starting with a literal cliff-hanger. But, in addition to being a bit of a dare-devil rock climber we find out he's a carefree history professor at Yale!? Oh, get this, he was also a reckless agent/trainee with the CIA that Dale Arden used to works for. The writer is trying too hard to make Flash a compelling character by turning him into basically 3 different characters! Instead of humanizing him, it just serves to make him unbelievable. It also fails in that since they ARE reinventing the wheel, telling us a story we already basically know, we KNOW that Ming the Merciless is supposed to show up yet the comic never gets that far into the storyline. It's like the rage these days to spend 4 issues to tell an origin story and not have the character appear in costume anywhere in the first issue. Reassess the type of story you're telling here and what you are trying to achieve.

The artwork at first isn't as big a turnoff as you'd expect. It's heavily stylized but it could work to make the characters seem fresh and exciting. However, it sacrifices any kind of honesty in storytelling for all that glitz. Starting off with that cliffhanger scene, the splash page is done well, ably backed up by the colorist. However, on page 3, we discover Flash has somewhere hidden on his skin-tight t-shirt a parachute? Man, even the old movie serials didn't cheat at their cliffhangers that badly. Again, it just gets worse from there. Most artists excel at action or splash pages and suck at quiet moments. Here, we have an artist that is all about character posing and design, thus he fails when he's required to actually illustrate a story, the action scenes are often silhouettes or close ups on the leering faces. Maybe if he had a better story.

Green Arrow and Black Canary #13: As a new writer comes on board with #15, I guess I cannot really blame Winick for spending at least one issue trying to set up the two pet characters, the charming thief Dodger and Mia as Speedy, with a status quo as a happy dating young couple, thus letting the new writer the way he sees the characters. However, it just continues to show just how much Winick has really missed the boat in the last year with this title as the lead characters are barely guest stars in their own title. And, of course, the next issue is about Connor. One gets the feel that Winick wasn't really on board for the marriage of Ollie and Dinah considering how much he has gone out of his way to NOT show them together. Here's hoping that the next writer sends Connor off to a monastery and DC lets Chuck Dixon write a series of minis with his character and Mia and Dodger retire and run off to get married (because a HIV positive superhero is the height of irresponsibility).

Hellboy: The Crooked Man #3: This small mini is what B.P.R.D. has not been, a wonderfully creepy little tale, an old school horror story when horror meant more than strange and graphic ways of dying. I'm not normally a fan of Richard Corben's artwork, but with Hellboy, it works with great effect. While he's the hero of the story, the story is really about the other characters and their plight that brings them to his attention. I love how it touches on the battle over one man's soul who repents from selling it vs those whose sins and crimes were well enough hidden or glossed over to deserve burial in the church graveyard. This is a perfect story to read again over Halloween night.

Justice League of America #25: McDuffie continues to work hard at wrapping up the plotlines left over from his predecessor. He ties up the various threads of the Red Tornado's story and sends him off stage in a way that promises future stories while at the same time absolving McDuffie from having to address the character again. I am tired of Professor Ivo though. Other than his androids killing Vibe and Steel II, he just isn't that definitive of a character, he's a cardboard villain that seems to get more screen time than he ever deserved. Even then, he was played as being somewhat pathetic. Either do a story that really concentrates on his character or kill him off. When it comes to mad scientists, there are so many that are far more interesting, than this one trick pony (and maybe permanently disable Amazo while we're at it).

The Vixen segment is more interesting as her and Animal Man's origins are being re-written and examined. This seems to be a two-fer, both characters have had some strange turns with their powers and this storyline serves to return them both to a more serviceable and logical status quos. We also get some interesting alternate JLA's, which we'll see more of in the next issue.

If anything marred this issue, it's that somehow this comic took a team of artists to finish with changes every so many pages. And this is after Benes makes a conversation between Black Lightning and Hawkgirl take 4 pages with extreme closeups on characters mouths and body parts.


Secret Six #2: Catman and Batman have a heart-to-heart talk while duking it out on the roof-tops of Gotham. Isn't it funny how characters who would normally hardly be in a hero's league seem to get very better at the hand-to-hand stuff when they become a more central character (normal cops and mercs becoming heroes and going after super-villains, villains turning "good" etc)? Then again, Batman was probably hardly really trying to take Catman down this time out, and Catman is only trying to delay Batman while the rest of his team complete their mission at springing the Tarantula from prison. A little more of the mystery of Junior is revealed, the set-up seems to suggest he's an alien and he drafts an army of villains. This seems to be a recurring theme of the Secret Six as well, to find themselves at odds with the whole supervillain community. Yet with all these psychopaths and Deadshot on the Six team, there are always a surprising lack of deaths that you would expect. Wonder how Catman is going to fare against the Cheetah? Like last time, the art is completely perfect and no too darkly colored pages this time out even though certain pages take place under the cover of darkness. The only discordant note this time out is that special effect plaid pattern still evident on the clothes of Junior's henchmen.

Solomon Kane #1: As in the previews, the coloring really falls down on the job on the characters in this, painting everyone in shades of gray and brown, making the characters seem to have skin tones and warmth of dead fish. Otherwise, it's a great start to a story, setting the character and his ability up as well as laying a groundwork of feeling of impending dread and menace. This is no doubt because while the credits list Scott Allie as the writer and Robert E. Howard as the creator of Solomon Kane, this story is actually by Howard and Allie is adapting it. Don't want to dismiss Allie's talent, he may be a fine writer. I've not read anything by him nor the original Howard story for comparison, but fair and accurate credits would be a plus. And what a cool name is "John Silent" though he looks a bit ordinary here.

Superpowers #6: We find out why Bruce Carter's ancestor is a "cursed" ghost. Sort of. Like everything else by Krueger, it's so underwhelming to be pointless and feels forced. If anything it makes Carter seem petty. He was given powers at a time when the country needed them with nary a cost beyond his own choices. Yet somehow, for all the ghost has done, he's resented and painted blackly. We've yet to actually see anything that the ghost did was for malicious or self-serving reasons, that at worst, he's been as much a dupe of whatever the urn was as the Fighting Yank. And, he keeps trying to do the right thing while the American Spirit seems to be the true manipulator, knowing many of the answers but keeps everyone in the dark. I'd say it was a sign of Krueger's great writing skill, but instead it all just seems inconsistant as if each character is in a different story and refusing to adapt to the one they are in.

This colorist seems to have found the purples and magentas that had been switched for blues and reds that were being used for Avengers/Invaders.

We find out that Miss Masque/Masquerade has disguise powers and that they were somehow supposed to be evident earlier.

Think Kruger knows that F-Troop is liable to make people chuckle because of associations to a slapstick comedy series? Kinda takes away any sense of threat and power from the army of Frankenstein monsters.

The plot at least seems to finally being moved forward. We get an origin of the Scarab and plays it off the origins of many superheroes only taking a page from JMS and turns it around to give one that is far more mundane. Dynamic Man reports to a council, possibly the one that was responsible for training Amazing Man and that the Great Question was part of. One of the hooded men may be A-Man himself.

The character sketches in the back, pretty much all characters that have not been in this story at all. Most telling is probably Doc Strange considering the prominence of the other Nedor characters in the story: Fighting Yank, Black Terror, and Pyroman.

Top Ten: Season Two #1: A gorgeous book. Gene Ha has changed art-styles, this one being a more full-colored painted look (for awhile, he was doing some realistic washed out painted work in addition to his more standard comic book work). However, don't know if it takes much longer or if Alan Moore was the one suggesting all of the various easter egg jokes because the suddenly their world looks a whole lot less populated. Even without Moore at the helm of this one though, we still get a book that's a quality piece of work that keeps much of the sensibilities of the what he had set forth. Zander Cannon seems to be able to get at the meat of what makes Moore's stories interesting and why they work and not just the superficialities and excesses that bog so many of the wannabes.

The Twelve #8: As I remarked last time, we get a gorgeous painted cover that is very pulpish or at least evokes 1950's lurid paperback covers. Poor JMS just cannot restrain himself from changing the backstories of the characters, we get a different look at the Black Widow though the most important details are kept. Meanwhile, the Fiery Mask's origin seems to be cast in doubt as well. Whereas he had a pretty interesting origin story and a great unexplored master villain, it looks as if he too is going to have the wonder stripped from his story and we get one more geared to make him tragic and pathetic. The Fiery Mask also gets a power change. While he on occassion exhibited the ability to radiate heat, he had the superstrength and invulnerability needed to commit these crimes which is ignored here. Meanwhile, the Blue Blade does something that isn't geared to make him look merely pathetic though maybe overly enthusiastic, Mastermind Excello posts bail for the Laughing Mask and there seems to be ominous foreboding on the ultimate fate of Rockman. The story finally seems to be progressing towards something. What we don't get to see is how Captain Wonder reacts to the suicide of his sidekick in the last issue or anything with Mr. E. The final page suggests there may even be a turn in the events as to who the suspect behind everything really is as the Blue Blade knows some secrets and takes them to Dynamic Man, something he'd hardly do if what he found out was that Electro was being controlled by him. But, if he found out that Electro was used to set Dynamic Man up for the murders...

Vixen #1: A new mini-series focusing on JLA member and longtime background character of the DCU despite some rather formidible abilities. The cover is gorgeous, full of color and warmth and. And, the interior artwork is lush as well, the coloring carrying a bulk of the weight of providing details and atmosphere while the linework provides mostly just the bare minimum of outlines. Often this doesn't work, but it does here, a perfect blending of talent and skill. The only places it really doesn't work is with Superman. His body and face lack definition as if he's more of an inflated balloon than a person. He doesn't look as if his clothes were painted on as is the case with most superhero art nobut neither does the costume have any realistic touches, wrinkles around the joints and belt and such. There's no substance to him at all. DC's sense of timing strikes again, as this is a Vixen in full control of her powers, kinda robbing the JLA storyline of its power as it broadcasts what happens at least in regards to her and her standing with the League.

Off with the top of their heads!

It's been awhile since I've actually looked forward to checking out a bunch of shows on tv. While some of my off-season USA shows are done with their cycle (Psych, Monk, and Burn Notice), the new season has started with Smallville, Supernatural, House (and Criminal Minds and CSI in the background to catch when I can). Fringe has debuted, I hope to catch My Own Worst Enemy and 11th Hour (the latter a definite re-working of a British mini, while the former sounds similar to BBC's Jekyll while I will pass on America's version of Worst Week of My Life... it was painful the first time around).

As I had planned to talk to my gal Monday, we taped Heroes, and I watched it on Tuesday along with House and Fringe. Which made for an odd day of television watching as each show featured a bit of brain surgery/probing. It was a wise move to kick off the season of Heroes with a recap special as the show is so continuity heavy and it has been a long while thanks to the extended hiatus due to the writer's strike. Plus, I had apparently missed the final episode as much of what they covered from the end of the series was unfamiliar to me.

The continuity is going to kill this show though. Much as J.J. Abrams realized when watching a random episode of his own Alias, the show is so dense in its own story, it is impenetrable to a casual or new viewer. The show is too much about its own insular mega story, that everyone is part of one big story. It's sorta like how the X-Files tended to get bogged down at the end in trying to tie everything together as part of one tapestry of conspiracies. It starts feeding on itself instead of realizing that there are thousands of stories out there. This gelled for me when we see Hiro adrift because after saving the world, he has no quest and no destiny until it comes looking for him. There are still crimes and all out there, lives to be saved and helped. However, the writers have lost sight of the fact that there are hundreds and thousands of stories out there that can be told with these people with superpowers, because they are too focused on the One story to be told that the various characters share.

Just as they missed the boat with Sylar. He should have been killed off and stayed dead or at the very least, put away for a long time. By not actually resolving his storyline satisfactorily, it wears on viewers' patience. Most great villains are used sparingly. And, by writing him out of the storyline, it frees up the characters for a really new story. Instead, there is a feeling that it keeps going back to the same well for its inspirations, until its creatively dry. Thus, we have a shocking ending that is more tiring than anything else, it's so deliberate and contrived for shock value.

Mohinder's transformation was an interesting choice. One of the things I like about the show is the balance between those with powers against those without. Ando is my favorite character and I wished they had kept the female detective. I thought earlier scenes, it looked as if Mohinder wasn't quite as scrawny looking as before, it appears as if he's been hitting the gym in preparation for his "Fly" transformations. Kristen Bell's character was growing on me as well.

Although, doesn't Adrian Pasdar look like he'd be perfect as Lamont Cranston/the Shadow?

With the surprising death of a character last season and what looks like the departure of Dr. Wilson this season, House is interesting in that it seems to be forcing a little more inspection and possibly introspection with Dr. House and his misanthropy. The Wilson character was a nice guy and as such, I feel sorry for what he went through and will miss him when he's gone. However, from a story angle, it's needed. For his friendship with House really was one-sided and his personality wasn't strong enough to really stand up against House's. In a sense, it's the story of his leaving that we finally get a sense of what House really gets from the relationship beyond an enabler. Although, it's not as if House would admit this, so we get it from the point of view and exposition by a private detective that House has hired.

What's really cool that struck me at the episode's end where it's revealed the p.i. will be back for at least another show, we have gotten a truer skewed reflection of the Holmes-Watson relationship: that of the doctor and the private detective.

Fringe is still a new show, exploring its niche. By J.J. Abrams, it sets out to mimic X-Files in that while there is an over-arcing story, the individual episodes are to be largely self contained. Well, that's the desire anyway. In actuality, while the plots of the episodes center around different cases, they still all tie together. Federal agent Olivia Dunham investigates bizarre events that make use of impossible science that higher ups and others have deemed the pattern. Each of these events make so far make use of science and experiments that Dr. Walter Bishop came up with years ago before he was committed to an insane asylum. With the aide of his son Peter (who my brother and I surmise is his clone) who helps keep ole Dad focused, Dunham tries to find those who are behind it all and the ties they have to a super mega company founded by Dr. Bishop's one time partner. A decent show, but things haven't really come together yet, the show is still trying to find its grounding. I'm reminded of the first season of Smallville with each episode being about some hapless person of the week with powers due to kryptonite. It took a little while for the show to get comfortable with expanding the scope of its storytelling. Hopefully, we'll see that soon here too. For it is a well-done show with air of menace as well as some humorous dialogue between Dr. Walter and his son. Like Heroes, it just needs to realize it can be about more than it's One Story.

Comic News


Have you seen the new previews for Solomon Kane? Kane is an interesting Howard creation. He's intense and fanatical in ways that would make Batman take notice. A soldier, swordsman, monster-killer, and yet a devout puritan. Interesting contradictions there (there are contradictions in everybody, some just keep them better hidden than others). One cannot say he's insane, because the monsters and all do exist, his violence is a logical and possibly even noble response. A little girl is kidnapped by pirates, he will do all in his power to rescue her, even if he must go Old Testament. He's Ditko's Question placed in a barbaric and horrific world.

The pencils are great in their sketchiness, give off some kind of weird Kaluta/BWS vibe. The backgrounds with the coloring tend to look as if they are from a Renaissance painting. It all falls apart when it comes to the inking and coloring of the characters, least in the scenes revealed so far. The figures have no weight and they are all colored with the same pastel density and no variation. The skin tones are all pale with tinges of purple like day-old dead grubs. Kane looks more like Dracula than someone flesh and blood.

Dynamite has announced it's releasing both a Black Terror and The Death-Defying Devil comic. I want to be excited. Really, I do. Superpowers has been such a let-down with the arbitrary changes, it's hard to muster interest. We have gotten precious little in the main series to even give us a reason to want the individual comics. The ' Devil is to bridge the stories between the current Superpowers book and the next one and explore a little more about the urn that kept them in suspended animation and corrupted them (and the Fighting Yank spiritually). Except, shouldn't that really have been a big part of the plot of the first Superpowers mini? After all, the whole plot and mystery of it is set up there. And, yet, the scope of the comic has been so far beyond Krueger that it's been all but ignored. The fact that Joe Casey off the pointlessly out of focus The Last Defenders is writing it doesn't really bode well either. Lastly, someone should point out the fact to them that as a superhero name and comicbook title "the Death-Defying Devil" sucks eggs. It's a moniker for a circus acrobat but not an actual code name. Do what DC has done for ages with Captain Marvel. They didn't rename him just because Marvel had locked up the trademark, they just came up with an appropriate name for the book. Since, most GA characters appeared in books under names not their own, it'd even be in keeping with the spirit. The one positive, Daredevil's costume is such a classic and so iconic, it's great to just see him in print again regardless.

Comics:

I enjoy the Harry Dresden books (along with Salvatore's fantasy novels, the Harry Potter books, various and sundry pulp books) and television shows like Buffy, Angel and the original Nightstalker. Like Heroes, they are very much comicbook/super-character stories with some different window dressing. And, as comics, they almost uniformly don't live up to the potential of their original medium.

We are seeing an explosion of comics based on works from other media. Roy Thomas has a whole classics line at Marvel, various sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers are seeing their works adapted. And, I cannot say I try them all or even interested in it. Direct adaptations don't interest me much because the pacing and all is all wrong, even for books that were written to be action stories. Horror is hard to pull off because so much is dependent on playing with the mind whether it's the author's skill with language or the tv/movie having the extra range to play with to control the viewer through sound and pacing of the film (it's why horror movies don't work as well on tv, especially with commercials, that pacing and immersion into the environment is lost outside a darkened theatre). The other problem with the adaptations is one can be reasonably sure the status quo will be maintained. Not much significant is going to happen to Dresden in the comic because he still is appearing in books. The few Buffy and Angel comics I've tried have been ok, but they don't capture the creativity of the shows which is strange considering they have the original writer overseeing it all and there's the benefit of no special effects budget.

I've been getting Moonstone's Kolchak comics, based on the original tv series not the new one that turned him into a young-good looking type. It was Kolchak that got me into journalism in the first place. The plotting has been decent and some good old-fashioned styled horror stories in there. The art is largely uneven, partly with the struggle to maintain character likenesses. The most recent issue, the artist spends a good amount of time putting the character into shadows. I imagine the writer must look a bit like Darrin McGavin as each story that comes along has him being somehow oddly attracting the attention of a beautiful young woman and usually bedding them. Now, Kolchak did have a kind of crusty charm about him, but he wasn't a ladies man by a long shot. The books are decent enough though and have lasted longer than I would have expected.

Captain Britain and MI:13: Pat Oliffe does a fine job on the pencils; it's good to see him on a title after the end of The All-New Atom. He doesn't have to stretch himself as much as an artist as he did there, but he is capable of drawing almost anything well that a writer throws at him with a good command of storytelling. You don't have to backtrack to try and interpret what he's trying to get across.

Wish the writer was as clear. Last issue we saw the formation of the team to be similar to the Avengers or Thomas' WWII All-Star Squadron, a calling together of all of the UK heroes to come under one banner with Government clearance and resources to fight incredible threats but with no killing says ole Captain Britain. The Skrulls were a special case because it was War but that war is now over as far as Britain is concerned.

That was last issue. This issue we have all of that amended somewhat. We get the an obligatory appearance by Union Jack explaining why he is NOT a member of this team, he works for a different branch of the government (though one would imagine if this was an order...). We get a different mission statement saying that the team comprises public heroes because England needs to see them, it's good for morale, but the public wouldn't be aware of just how nasty the buggers are they are going up against, including all those mystical threats that have been released on England which takes precedence over the global war against the Skrulls. And, somehow, despite the statement against killing (which frankly, Captain Britain may not have had the authority to make anyway), the whole thing about public heroes in costumes and their first real recruit is NOT Union Jack who was part the Knights of the Pendragon, has been fighting vampires for some time AND is a patriotic costumed hero with a history with the government BUT Blade. Blade who has been in America so long that only the hardest core fans would know he's not from there. Blade who doesn't wear a costume, whose SOLE mission is to kill his opponents.

I'm not against the character or even against the character appearing in the comic. What I'm against is the shoddy ill-thought out way it's done. The comic reads as if the writer is making things up as he goes along without really thinking anything through. It's full of incongruities and contradictions, but it's not written in a way that suggests these are deliberate and setting up story conflicts and character tensions but that the writer doesn't really know what this team is supposed to be about and keeps changing it from issue to issue (to be honest, this could also be due to editorial interference, but unless we know otherwise, the blame falls mainly on the person said to be responsible for the story. The editor is to be blamed for not holding the writer's feet to the fire and have it make better sense).

If the team is a government op, then Captain Britain doesn't have the authority to call for "no-kill" clauses before the team even meets, there should be all sorts of ramifications for the Black Knight joining. After all, the point of Civil War was that all American heroes had to register and be accountable to the laws and government. Furthermore, Dane Whitman was a member of the Avengers and thus privy to all sorts of cutting edge technology and state secrets. It's inconceivable that all of the characters treat his joining a foreign government's spy organization as such a simple matter of him just happening to be there already fighting the Skrulls.

The one thing the story does handle well is the meeting between Faiza, Dane Whitman and her parents. While one might wonder just how much of Dane's history and backstory is such common knowledge, it makes for some great exchanges between the characters.

Sadly, the coloring falls down on the job. Dane, Faiza and her parents are a colored with the same skin tones, and all the midtones from their faces to the backgrounds are too rich intense and dark. This is so common it seems, I wonder how much of the coloring is done for what looks good on the computer but not taking into account what happens when it prints?

Guardians of the Galaxy: The issues have been getting better. Thankfully, none of the interviews with Counsellor Troi, excuse me, Mantis this issue. The main plots are skyjacked by crossover-itis but still some nice moments as we see the Guardians are not completely trusted on their floating Celestial head and we see a bit of the inner political workings. There could be a lot of interesting stuff played up. We see a different Starhawk this time out, a female version. She makes cryptic remarks about time anomalies and vanishes. And, we learn just who the Skrull traitor is. But, given the nature of this book, there might be a little more to it than what's readily apparent. After all, the Guardians don't have much to do with Earth right now and the station is full of aliens from other worlds. Drax starts off as going John McClane on the space station but his solution to rooting out the Skrulls is a little more final than any would like.

Not sure if I'll continue with this as the previews of upcoming issues have the book tying into yet another crossover event. Part of the reason I dropped so many books.

Secret Invasion: Thor: Yet I'm getting another crossover book. Remember what I said about us all having our inconsistancies up above? The one good thing with this book and Guardians is that you really don't have to be getting any of the other Secret Invasion books. Plus, this is a really good Thor story. It's a story that would really be hard to do with another character. It is the type of story that JMS wishes he could write. There are great character moments all the way around from the epic heroes to the very humans on the outskirts of the war. The art manages to capture the chaotic epic scope of the battles and the quiet more human dramas and have it all work well together. Forget the SI tag, if you like Thor, you should enjoy this book. The cover is slightly misleading as the Thor in action of this comic is Beta Ray Bill, Thor is busy being somewhat heroic in his Don Blake identity. Still, fun stuff.