Metropolis Mysteries and Eye-Popping Body Horror: FUNNYBOOKSINREVEWAREGO!!

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Tales of Gods and Spacemen: FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!

Two weeks' worth of funnybooks to cover here, one with a decidedly mythological tone, the other with a decidedly science fictiony one. I have no deep point to make with that statement, mind you; I just think it's interesting that those two seemingly disparate approaches hit in such great numbers in such a short period of time, especially considering that the vast majority of the books I'll be talking about here are super hero books. Just goes to show what a weird genre mish-mash super heroes really are, I guess. At any rate... Without further ado... FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!
Fear Itself #7 (of 7)
by Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen

I'll most likely do a more in-depth look at Fear Itself a bit later, once I've had a chance to sit down and re-read the whole thing. Matt Fraction had a lot of balls in the air here, and this issue was his last chance to catch them all before this whole super-porn juggling act came crashing to its end. I think he managed to snag most of them, if not all, but time will tell. In the meantime, though, I can comment on the merits of this final issue in and of itself...

This series has suffered from an unfortunate lack of emotional immediacy along the way. In fact, I often missed the intended emotional impact of some of the big shocking events in previous issues until I went back over them for review. This final issue alleviates that somewhat, mostly thanks to Captain America. He reaches his point of apotheosis this issue, and it's the emotional tipping point of the series, Marvel's greatest hero rejuvenated by the bravery of his allies, and I'm a big enough sap that I was right there with him. It's a great super hero moment, aided by having this as the exclamation point at the end:

Pearls Amongst Swine: Funnybooksinreviewarego!!

The last couple of weeks haven't been great ones at the funnybook store, I'm afraid. There've been a couple of real gems in the batch, but for the most part I've found myself awash in a sea of mediocrity. Lots of books that I like okay, but very few that I love. But since it's always nice to start on a happy note, let's hit one of the high spots first...

Batwoman #2
by JH Williams III and W Haden Blackman

This issue sets aside most of my doubts about Williams and Blackman's ability to write a compelling Batwoman comic. They're continuing the main plot of the missing children and the drowning ghost who's preying upon them while still keeping tabs on the larger picture with Abbott and his were-creature Crime Cult. But they're also doing some very nice character work, and that's what impresses me the most. Not only are they doing a nice job on the damage done to the relationship between Kate Kane and her father, but they also wrote one of the better "first date" scenes I've read in a while for Kate and Maggie Sawyer. It's comfortable, real, and charming, and the fact that it's a lesbian first date doesn't really matter at all. That's nice. I guess we really have come a long way from this:
　

Say it loud! Say it proud!

Art-wise, the book is of course just as stunning as always, with Williams continuing to innovate on layout and mix styles with aplomb. The high point this time out is this stunning two-page spread in which Maggie Sawyer shows off her detective chops by recreating a crime scene:
　

Ah, man. That's the stuff.
Click to embiggen the awesomeness.

All in all, an excellent second issue. Looking forward to more.

Grade: A

Animal Man #2
by Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman

Two issues in, and Jeff Lemire's new horror reboot of Animal Man is picking up speed. He really is drawing on all the best stuff from the Vertigo series here, wedding the charming family drama of the Morrison era with the meaty body-shock horror of the stuff from Jamie Delano and Steve Pugh. Travel Foreman is channeling Pugh in particular on the art, with some genuinely disgusting biological anomalies popping up as we get deeper into things.

The book still feels like it's lacking something to me, though it's hard to put my finger on what, exactly. It may just be my reaction to Lemire's Midwestern stoicism at work. There's always a matter-of-fact coldness to his writing, and while that works for Sweet Tooth, I'm not feeling it as much here. I dunno. I may not be making any sense, even to myself, at this point. There's just something keeping me from loving this book, and I really kinda want to.

Grade: B

Super-Porn and Other Distractions: Funnybooksinreviewarego!!

Catch-up reviews part two, coming up... now!

Fear Itself #6 (of 7)
by Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen

Most of these big crossover series are, essentially, super hero porn. They're all money shots, big super-fights removed from their normal context of story, of anything with actual emotional resonance. That's why only a few of them in the genre's history really stand up in the long term. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two, in fact: Civil War and Final Crisis. And now, though it's too early to make the call for sure, Fear Itself seems to be shaping up as a third.

Like all super-porn, it's about death and destruction on a grand scale. But unlike most, it's also delivering on the character side. I've discussed the on-going Asgardian family saga before, Odin's grumpy kingly bluster and Thor's noble rage in response. And it's nice to have my reading of Odin confirmed: he's willing to burn a world to the ground just to save his only son from death, but in this issue, Odin's asshole front dissolves in the face of the badly-wounded Thor being brought home for healing. He's still gonna kill us all to stop the Serpent, mind you. But at least he finally explains himself to Thor before the end.

Of course, before that breakdown of kingly resolve happens, we see a chink in the armor. Captain America gets all up in his grill, and Odin (if only for a moment) blinks. Seriously, check this shit out:

Ultimate Sci-Fi: Funnybooksinreviewarego!!

Funnybooks! Staaaale funnybooks! Get'cher weeks-old funnybook reviews right here!

That's right, folks! It's time to play catch-up with the books we didn't talk about during our coverage of the DC Reboot. We've got a whole bunch of funnybooks to cover, enough that it'll take two posts to deal with them all, and that kind of volume can only mean one thing: brevity. So now, once again... QUICKIESAREGO!!!

The Ultimates #1&2
by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic

Running right alongside DC's reboot is Marvel's uncharacteristically quieter response: rebooting their Ultimate Comics line. The new Ultimate Spider-Man is the big news-grabber here (and we'll get to it in a minute), but far more exciting for me is this reboot of The Ultimates. Ten years ago, this was the most cutting-edge super hero book on the market, a vision of the genre's future. But the series has since become... uninspired (to put it politely), and descended into wretched self-parody (to put it a bit less politely). It ceased to be cutting edge, and simply became neanderthalic crap (to put it truthfully).

Welcome back to the future. Jonathan Hickman's delivering his typical science fiction approach, with a city that encloses itself inside a sphere of accelerated time, emerging only hours later with a thousand years of social and technological growth, and a desire to reshape the rest of the world in its image. It's engaging stuff, and if Hickman's not the type of writer who's likely to deliver a "Hulk straight!" kind of moment, he does give us this great bit with Thor and the new Captain Britain:

Reboot Shmeboot! Funnybooksinreviewarego!!

Alright. Now it's time to start talking about funnybooks we actually like again.

Not that we didn't enjoy our two-month look at the DC Reboot. That's exciting, heady stuff for fans of super hero fiction, and they even managed to make as much as 10% of the line good enough to spend money on. But while we were focused on the shiny new thing, all kinds of amazing-ass funnybooks hit the stands, and it's time to turn our attention back to those. It'll take a few posts to work through it all, so I figured we might as well start with something current. Something really fantastic and not related at all to the Reboot. Something like... oh, shit...

Action Comics #2
by Grant Morrison and Rags Morales

Okay, so this book pretty much defines the Reboot as far as I'm concerned. Sue me.

I really will get to other stuff tonight. I'll be talking about my three favorite books of the week, and this is the only one that comes from DC. But it's also the only Grant Morrison we're getting right now, so I really can't help but lead with it. Plus, look at this cover:

　

That kills, man! That fucking kills! Has there EVER been a picture of Superman that bad-ass? If that cover doesn't make you want to read this comic, you hate everything good.

(Remember this over-statement. It'll come back again, and there will be a test.)

The End of the Line: The DC Reboot, Week Four

And here we are in the fourth and final week of the DC Reboot. I mean, all these books will continue along with their new status quo after this, don't get me wrong. But this was the final week that DC will be debuting new books en masse. So how'd they do? Patience, Grasshopper, patience. First, let me review the funnybooks of Week Four...

I, Vampire #1
Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov
Art by Andrea Sorrentino

I was really looking forward to this book, and for that reason I'm just the tiniest bit disappointed in it. It's not a bad comic at all, mind you. Far from it. It's just not quite as good as I'd hoped. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

For the uninitiated (which, I'd guess, would be the vast majority of you), I, Vampire was originally a strip that ran as the lead feature in DC horror series House of Mystery in the early 1980s. I read it and loved it as a kid, which is something I'm sure I'm pretty much alone in; of all the little-known franchises being given a new lease on life in the reboot, this has to be the most obscure. But because I loved it so much, I really wanted this relaunch to work. And, considering that it's written by Joshua Hale Fialkov, whose comic Tumor is one of my favorite indie books of recent vintage, I had high hopes that it would.

And for the most part, it does, offering up a nice slice of epic vampire fiction and in the process almost effortlessly quieting the Twilight jokes that abounded when that cover was released. I'm still not sure why Our Hero's shirtless up there, other than to appeal to the Twilight market, but hey. His girlfriend's nekkid except for some weird vampire body paint, so maybe it's just equal time.

The Point of Diminishing Returns: The DC Reboot, Week Three

Aaaannd we're back! Two posts in one night, bringing us up to date on the DC Reboot with a look at the funnybooks of Week Three, which came out just yesterday. That's ground-breaking speed for this blog, my friends, but I'm afraid it's come about as a result of some diminishing returns for the Reboot. In Week One, I bought five titles in all, three of which I'll be checking out again next month. In Week Two, I bought four, but only one of them will be getting a second look. And this week... Well... After getting burned so hard last time out... I only bought two comics.

Some of that is because this week didn't bring me many new talents to try out, or any indie comics faves graduating to books they can actually make money doing. No, Week Three seems to be all about Known Quantities. Writers and artists I already know I don't like, whose books I feel pretty safe skipping without fear that I'll be missing anything worth my time and money. Which doesn't explain why I bought this first book...

Wonder Woman #1
Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Cliff Chiang

I'm not a big fan of Brian Azzarello. I don't think he's a bad writer, really. He's just maybe one that doesn't appeal to me. He often has really intriguing ideas, but I usually walk away from his work feeling like I've seen the same things done better elsewhere. And that bothers me.

But his Wonder Woman, I'm incredibly pleased to say, does not bother me in the slightest. In fact, other than Grant Morrison's Action Comics, it's the Reboot book I've enjoyed the most thus far. It's a fresh new start for a character desperately in need of one, and you can see the facelift in action just from artist Cliff Chiang's cover alone:

　

click to embiggen ... or you just might piss her off!

That's nice work. An action shot that goes a long way toward getting across the tone of what's inside. The rain of arrows, the bloody sword, the sun setting behind dying trees... Yeah. That looks like something I wanna read. Even the new logo, with its boldly modern design and "weathered" finish, fairly screams at you that this is going to be something new.

Bats and Crap: The DC Reboot, Week Two

So we're still running a little behind schedule here on the Dork Forty. We went on vacation at the start of the month, and it's thrown our coverage of the DC Reboot off. But tonight we play catch-up, with not one, but two posts, covering both Weeks Two and Three. Once again, I'll only be looking at the books I actually bought. And once again, I'll be trying to take the wider audience into account at some point in each review. So without further ado, let's get going with Week Two...

Batwoman #1
by JH Williams III and W Haden Blackman

A fine launch, and a good follow-up to last year's ground-breaking Detective Comics run. The artwork of JH Williams is the real draw here, of course, and he does not disappoint, delivering another issue of pretty pretty pictures and innovative layouts. This is one of those rare occasions in funnybook history where you feel like you're reading something creatively historic, watching an artist create new rules of comics storytelling out of whole cloth.

Williams has, thus far, been accomplishing this through two main tricks: panel borders that become character motifs, and slightly altering his drawing style on different aspects of the story. Batwoman panels, for instance, are arranged in creative, fluid layouts, and often happen in the shape of lightning bolts, the better to herald the electricity of her arrival. And they're drawn in a style with a heightened sense of reality, where the ink lines soften and stark color does much of the work on defining shapes and figures. When she changes out to her everyday life as Kate Kane, however, everything snaps to a traditional panel grid, and everything in those panels is defined by hard, thick lines colored with more of a pastel pallet. The artwork is no less beautiful, mind you. It's just that everything is much more sharply defined (if a bit less "real").

Williams even has a sort of "in-between" style for the "in-between" pages with Kate training or doing detective work in her Bat-Tree-House. The layouts are still on the creative side, but they tend to be a bit more structured and squarish, and the artwork's done with a lighter line and a mix of the stark and pastel colors. There's a pretty stunning two-page spread done in this style featuring Gotham detective (and Batwoman love interest) Maggie Sawyer at a crime scene. It's a nice style choice, and an even nicer layout, built around the motifs of the opening arc's villain, La Llorna:

　

Please oh please click to embiggen

(Please excuse the red circle. It's got something to do with the Reboot's meta-mystery plot involving some mysterious woman who they keep inserting into crowd scenes. I don't really care about that, but my scanner's not big enough to handle a two-page spread, and I stole the best web image of this one I could find.)

Three Outta Five Ain't Bad: The DC Reboot, Week One

Say one thing for the DC reboot, it's got me buying more DC funnybooks in September than I've bought in many a moon. How many will I be buying in October? Well, that remains to be seen. We're two weeks in now, and even being selective, very little has blown me away. Of course, as I said when looking over the solicitations this summer, that may not be a bad thing in regards to the wider market.

Or, as Warren Ellis put it: The New DC comics stuff looks so much like stuff I would never read that it oddly fills me with hope that they are targeting the core audience they want. If a 43-year old man looks at most of this promo stuff and goes meh, then that’s very probably a good sign for them.

So there you go. With that in mind, I'll be reviewing each of the new books (the ones I bought, anyway) in two parts: my impressions, and my thoughts on how the book might do with an audience that's... not me. And, since I missed writing about week one in a timely manner due to a vacation, I've got lots of ground to cover. Today we'll deal with the first week's books, and try to get to week two before week three hits the stands this Wednesday. So let's get started with what many people are seeing as the real flagship of the reboot...

Action Comics #1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Rags Morales

I joked that I'd only be truly satisfied with Grant Morrison's "back to the beginning" take on Action Comics if Superman went after corrupt landlords and threw wifebeaters out windows the way he did in his early adventures. Well consider me truly satisfied, then, because damn if that's not exactly what he does in this issue! Okay, so the wifebeater thing happens off-camera. But I didn't expect it to happen at all, so it counts.

But I'll get to all that. First impressions first. On the surface, this book is a pleasing action-oriented thrill ride that establishes some surprising things about its star. It opens with Superman going after a rich developer named Glen Glenmorgan (the afore-mentioned corrupt landlord), bullying a confession of wrong-doing out of the man, and declaring in no uncertain terms that he has no faith in the criminal justice system. It's quite an introduction, and quite a far cry from the bastion of the status quo we've been conditioned to expect.

Same Shit, Different Universe: The DC Reboot Goes Live

Justice League #1
by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee

I wasn't going to buy this comic. In fact, when I was in the funnybook store last Wednesday, I gave it a quick flip-through and put it back on the rack. Sure, I'm curious about the DC Reboot (of which this is the very first comic), but not curious enough to buy books I don't think I'm going to enjoy. I'm not generally a fan of either Geoff Johns or Jim Lee, and nothing I saw in my once-over convinced me that I needed to give it a shot. So back on the rack it went.

But then... Then I got into a discussion of the book on-line, started spouting opinions about it, and decided that, if I was gonna do all that, I should buy the damn thing and actually read it. As it turns out, my flip-through gave me a pretty accurate picture of the issue, but since I went and spent four bucks on the thing, I figure I might as well give it a more thorough working-over here.

Not that I hated the book once I read it. To be honest, I thought it was a perfectly okay (but only okay) example of 21st Century super-heroics. It's not something I'd normally spend money on, but in concept, if not execution, I found it to be a good start for a longer, more in-depth look at the Justice League's origins. Which is to say, I had my usual problems with Johns' script and Lee's art, but I liked the ideas quite a bit. This is a raw, new world we're dealing with here, one with lots of room to grow, and that's pretty exciting. In fact... The first page tells us that this story is set "five years ago," but I really wish all the books were going to be set in this era. There's more conflict, and the young heroes have interesting character flaws their more experienced selves will no doubt have shed.

Which brings us to the first DC fanboy bone of contention with the issue. It mostly focuses on the first meeting between Batman and Green Lantern, and they don't get along all that well. Batman is stand-offish, very much the seasoned pro annoyed by an enthusiastic amateur, while Green Lantern is an over-confident jock. This page pretty much sums the relationship up:

And that seems pretty much right on the money to me for these guys at this point in their careers. I mean, my one complaint about this aspect of the issue is that it's too tame. To my eye, it plays out a little too much like a PG-rated version of Frank Miller's All-Star Batman and Robin. PG-rated, and more boring. In comparison to Miller's tongue-planted-firmly-in-the-goddamn-bat-cheek approach, Justice League #1 reads kinda like your dad's super hero comic. Which is something I'd assume that DC would really rather avoid with this youth-oriented reboot. But maybe they made a wise choice there in terms of their current core audience; based on the reviews I've been reading, conflict and character flaws don't fly in the Fanboy Nation.

Bats, Gods, and Other Assorted Freaks: FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!!

Lots of really fascinating comics material has come out in the last little bit: Grant Morrison's Supergods, Ray Fawkes' One Soul, Dave McKean's Celluloid, Jim Woodring's Congress of the Animals, the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... All great books deserving of in-depth reviews. But honestly? I'm a little too tired from my day job right now to discuss them with the sort of intelligence they deserve. So instead, I think I'll just engage in something we haven't seen too much of around the nerd farm lately: straight-up reviews. That's right. It's that time again: FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!!

Batman Incorporated #7
by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham

You knew I had to start with Batman, right?

With all the over-arching plot and mysteries in this book, surrounding not only the evil bad guys' schemes but also Batman's own, it's easy to forget that, really, Batman Incorporated is all about Grant Morrison having fun with some of the goofier aspects of the Bat-Myth. Nowhere is that more clear than in this issue, which is a low-rent re-working of RIP, on the rez, starring Chief Man-of-Bats. It's touching and funny, and embraces the ridiculousness of the character...

Riding. A. Buffalo.

...while still acknowledging the very real problems facing the Native American population. I came away from the issue feeling like Man-of-Bats, for all his limitations, might just help more people on a real, personal level than Batman himself ever has. As Bats himself says, "It doesn't have to take millions... The idea just works."

Grade: A-

Detective Comics # 879
by Scott Snyder and Francesco Francavilla

Decided to give Snyder's Detective run another try, and was impressed. The story, about Jim Gordon looking into the supposed rehabilitation of his son, James Jr, was a tense, low-key little mystery story with a sad and kind of terrifying ending. I did spend much of the story kind of confused, since I was under the impression that James Jr was dead, when he's instead, apparently, a psychopath. The Wikipedia didn't entirely clear things up for me, either; it confirmed his not-deadness, but said nothing about him being crazy. Of course, the same entry (for Commissioner Gordon himself) also fed me some kind of convoluted bullshit about Barbara Gordon not being the Commissioner's biological daughter, which made me want to take this whole weird Gordon family history and chuck it out a window from a very great height. 

At Last! A Long, Rambling Discussion of Batman!

So the nerd wranglers have been givin’ me funny, kinda worried, looks lately. Askin’ me if I was feelin’ okay. They were obviously hintin‘ at somethin‘, but I couldn‘t figure out what. But then, just last night, I found an autographed photo of Adam West on the door to the bunkhouse, and it all fell into place. Nerd wranglers are a superstitious lot, afraid of angerin’ the Funnybook Gods. None of ’em wanna work for a man who forgets what’s really important. And well… I guess it HAS been awhile since our last serious discussion of Batman.

There’s lots of reasons for that, and you could probably track them if you went back and ferreted out all the reviews I’ve done on the run of Grant Morrison’s Batman Inc. to date. But even I can’t see taking the time to do that, and lord knows I love the sound of my own voice. So just let me boil it down for you now: the book’s seemed a little too… obvious thus far for me to really feel the need to dig in and write about whatever deeper meanings and complexities are folded into it. Now, I’ve been trusting that this obviousness is surface only, and that eventually some keystone issue will drop, shedding new light on all these preliminaries and making them much more than the sum of their parts. And, hey presto, it seems that issue dropped just recently, with…

Batman Inc #6
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Chris Burnham

(And it’s all SPOILER, all the time, from here on out, so… you know… You have been warned.)

Entitled “Niktomorph,” this story really is the capstone for the series’ first arc, the issue that defines the whole Batman Incorporated concept, and what it’s supposed to accomplish. Niktomorph translates roughly as “nightshape,” which is ultimately what Bruce Wayne is building here: an ever-shifting and difficult-to-trace global bat-presence, multiple agents acting as one to fight evil wherever it rears its head. In becoming ubiquitous, he’s also becoming more legendary, spreading the new world-wide Bat-Myth amongst the underworld, using his various agents to generate even more confusion as to who and what the Batman is.

Or, as Bruce himself puts it in the story: “Wayne arrived in Paris, Batmen sprung up … Batman’s in Hong Kong. Batman’s a girl. Batman‘s in Australia … Batman is everything you fear.” He even goes so far as to fabricate (I think?) extreme actions, spreading a story that he tattooed ‘child molester’ onto the forehead of a slave-purchasing celebrity pedophile in Australia. The terror campaign against crime has gone global. Welcome to Planet Gotham.

Hey, I Was Reading That!

DC Comics Presents Night Force 100-Page Spectacular #1
by Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, and Bob Smith

So DC recently put out this reprint book of one of my favorite early-80s funnybook series. The team behind Tomb of Dracula, reunited on a new horror series? That was like getting a new Sex Pistols album or something! My young mind reeled! I HAD to have that, and I bought all 14 issues of the series, hanging on right through to the bitter (bitter!) end. Fast-forward 29 years, and this thing comes out. And, since I can't re-read the original comics anymore due to an unfortunate allergy to decaying newsprint, I picked it up.

The story holds up pretty well. Far better than I expected, in fact, especially after reading Wolfman's really kind of dreadful early Tomb of Dracula work last year. Sure. There's still some achingly bad dialogue here and there, and the story's emphasis on the Soviet occult/parapsychology program does make it a bit dated. But Gene Colan's artwork is (as always) just gorgeous. And on the whole, it's a neat little supernatural mystery with interestingly flawed heroes. And it stars maybe my favorite of the corporate spandex magical mystery men: Baron Winters. Part Phantom Stranger, part Barnabas Collins, and part con man, Baron Winters has a pet leopard and a house with doors that open onto other times and places. He's mysterious and cool and just sleazy enough to keep him relatable.

The story concerns an attempt to summon up and harness Evil itself, at the cost of the sanity of a young woman who's serving as an unwitting psychic conduit to the experiments. But a pair of Soviet spies want her, too, and lead Our Heroes (the doctor conducting the experiments, and a washed-up alcoholic hack reporter) on a merry chase back to Russia, where...

Well, this collection doesn't reveal what happens once the story gets to Russia. Because for some reason, DC decided to only collect the first four issues here, and it leaves off with everyone packing off for Commieland, the story an issue or two away from its conclusion. That's right. They collected the first Night Force arc, and didn't reprint the whole thing!

What the fuck, man?! Who thought THAT was a good idea?! If I thought that this was the first of a series of these "100-Page Spectaculars" collecting the series, I'd be fine with it. But the big "One-Shot" logo on the cover says pretty decisively that it's not gonna happen. So again... What the fuck?! I paid eight bucks for this shit, and you're not even gonna give me the whole story?! I can't decide if this is a case of gross editorial incompetence or very poorly thought-out corporate hucksterism. But whatever's going on... I don't cotton to it! Not one damn bit!

Grade for the Story: B
Grade for the Publication: F. Minus.

Back in the Saddle: Funnybooksinreviewarego!!

So it's been a busy coupla weeks 'round here on the nerd farm, and I'm not gonna lie to you: it's still pretty damn busy. But not so busy that I can't strap in for some quick reviews this week...

Invincible Iron Man #503
by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca

Fraction delivers a really nice wrap-up to his battle of wills between Tony Stark and Otto Octavius this time around, with Stark finally giving in and begging Doc Ock to stop the timer on the nuclear device he's holding over New York's head. Which, as it turns out, isn't acually a bomb at all. Ock lied, and Stark fell for it. But in a situation eerily similar to the dark future we saw in issue 500, Stark caved. He caved, and called Octavius "master" to save lives. Which is, of course, the real difference between Stark and the other arrogant geniuses Fraction's compared and contrasted him with over his long tenure on the title. He may have sat back and laughed at the ignorant masses with Madame Masque in his younger days, but when the chips are down, Stark will do anything, including debase himself, to save them.

On the flip side, Fraction does cheat on the conclusion of his Pepper vs Electro and Sandman battle, allowing the bad guys to slip away without any real explanation to make room for a few pages of "Fear Itself" crossover. But the character work that precedes that spandex plot cop-out far outweighs any disappointment I might have felt. This was good work, made better in light of the long-term writing. Or, in other words, it's exactly what I look for in franchise work-for-hire super hero comics.

Grade: A-

Fables #104
by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, and Steve Leialoha

Oy. My happiness with the current Super Team arc lessens with each passing issue. Any time this book goes "meta" and starts discussing the fictional underpinnings of the magic that connects the Fable Homelands with the Mundy World, my eyes glaze over. So this continual discussion of super hero tropes, and how they have to balance the team correctly to make the magic work properly, just makes me want to stop reading. And that's not even mentioning how much I despise fucking Brock Blueheart, the talking animal Boy Blue cultist that also makes me want to stop reading, every time he walks on-screen. It's all far too cute for my taste, and the promise of it being followed by another saccharine story about Bufkin the talking monkey in Oz does very little to make me want to keep buying.

Super-Spies, Thunder Gods and Gender Benders: FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!

So here we are, another week older, another week wiser, another week heavier with new funnybooks to discuss…

Journey Into Mystery #622
by Kieron Gillen, Dougie Braithwaite, and Ulises Arreola

I have to like Marvel’s marketing strategy here. They’re giving Thor a new number one to better-capitalize on the upcoming movie (which I don’t think ever works, but whatever). But rather than completely abandon the original numbering they just returned to less than two years ago, they’re treating the new Thor as a separate series and restoring this series to its original title: Journey Into Mystery. Which is one of the better monster/suspense series titles ever, and one I‘m finding myself surprisingly happy to have back on the racks.

Series writer Kieron Gillen is embracing his title in earnest, too. It’s still a Thor comic, of course, but more of a Thor spin-off starring the young Loki, recently reborn and as-yet-unformed. Gillen is sending his young god of mischief off on a literal “journey into mystery,” a quest that will decide exactly what sort of Loki he will be. I’m finding it pretty compelling so far. Gillen’s Loki is clever and sharp-tongued, and driven by a refreshing mix of curiosity and enlightened self-interest. This first issue plays a little like a children’s fantasy novel, with Our Hero following a trail of bread crumbs left behind by his former self and realizing that it’s part of a larger scheme that he’s going to walk into anyway, if he wants to be his own man.

It’s a nice take on the character, and one more in line with how he was often depicted in the myths. “God of Mischief” too often morphs over into “God of Evil” in modern depictions of the Norse gods, but he’s a much more complex figure than that. There’s every indication that the Vikings admired Loki’s cleverness, even though it was of a type they also believed you couldn’t entirely trust. He exists in a queasy sort of grey area, one that I hope Gillen exploits to the fullest.

On the artistic side of things, the book is apparently being colored and reproduced directly from Dougie Braithwaite’s pencils, which gives the work an illustrative texture that’s difficult to attain with ink. I wouldn’t call the artwork beautiful or anything, but I like the feel of it. It suits the book, I think, and that’s what’s really important in the end.

Grade: B+

Casanova: Gula IV
by Matt Fraction, Fabio Moon, and Gabriel Ba

The reprints of Gula wrap up this issue, and the cat’s out of the bag on what I still consider the best twist ending ever. I have to admit, though, that I’d forgotten how Fraction cheats on it a little here at the end. [SPOILER] The way I remembered it, Seychelle’s artificial life tech had been behind the transformation of Casanova into Zephyr, but he’s just as shocked as the rest of Our Heroes to realize the truth. Which means that Fraction doesn’t actually explain how they did it at all. I’m okay with it, don’t get me wrong; in a world of weird-ass super-science and Life Model Decoys, a little gender-bending DNA manipulation is far from outside the realm of possibility. But an explanation, even one as glib and incomplete as the one I just tossed out there, would have been nice. [/SPOILER]

He makes up for that, though, with the fascinating manifestation of guilt we get from Cas. Faced with Newman Xeno’s choice to fire the gun or re-write history and die, Casanova chooses to go back to his own timeline and die, leaving his friends and family where they were if he’d never made the dimensional jump that started the series. Of course, he’s not really making that choice out of altruism; he thinks he’s really messed things up, and would rather die than face the guilt. Fortunately for us, though, the decision to fire the gun’s really not up to him, and so we get to watch the juicy aftermath. Speaking of which…

The Big Round-Up: FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!!

So we just can’t seem to keep the funnybooks cleared out here on the Dork Forty. Every time we make some headway into the storehouse, somethin’ comes along and keeps us from reviewin’ everything the way we oughtta. Well, that ends now. We’re drawin’ a line in the freakin’ sand, and today I’m gettin’ this mess cleared out one way or another. Which, of course, means that it’s time for a whole mess of quickies…

Osborn #4 (of 5)
by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios

A few pacing problems surface this issue. As the story nears its conclusion, there’s still a good number of plot points to cover, and DeConnick is dutifully cramming them in. Unfortunately, there’s so much ground to cover that a major character reveal toward the end of the issue isn’t afforded the visual space needed to give it the proper impact. But Emma Rios continues to knock it out of the park on the art front, with the dynamic storytelling and convincing character acting that have distinguished her in my mind as an artist to watch.

Grade: B

The Sixth Gun #9 & 10
by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt

I missed a couple of issues of this book between the first trade and the monthly, but the handy-dandy inside-cover plot synopsis has gotten me up to date: Our Heroes are laying low in New Orleans, and have (of course) attracted the attention of the local supernatural community, as well as that of foreign powers who know more about the guns than they do. So it’s voodoo and swamp ghosts and a posse of gun slinging Italian priests for the weird western this time around. Bunn’s started fleshing out Becky Montcrief a bit, as well; she’s still the innocent in all of this, but she’s not so innocent that she won’t take a lover and keep it from her jealous partner. This book still isn’t great, but the pulpy mix of voodoo, Vatican hit squads, and compromised morality are enough to keep me happy for now.

Grade: B

A Hideous Naughty Strangeness: Alan Moore's Neonomicon, and the Doom That Came to Lovecraft

Neonomicon
by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows

So Alan Moore’s farewell “fuck you” to the comics industry wrapped up recently, and… This unrelentingly dark and unpleasant book didn‘t exactly go where I expected it to, though perhaps I should have. He played fair with his literary mystery, after all, planting clues and images that pretty much told you where it was headed if you chose to view them in the right way. But I wasn’t exactly trying to solve the mystery anyway. I was more concerned with the commentary he was making on the works of HP Lovecraft, which is how I want to look at Neonomicon tonight.

Part of the agenda here seems to have been to give some teeth back to the incredible nihilism, the sheer hopeless existential horror that makes Lovecraft’s work so compelling, and that too often gets glossed over in the modern popular fan interpretations of the work. I mean, in a world where you can buy cute stuffed effigies of Cthulhu (I own one myself), it’s easy to forget how terrifying that fucker’s supposed to be. He’s an avatar of nameless, uncaring evil from beyond, a vast alien intellect that will devour all, and that we have no hope of defeating. He is nihilism made flesh, not a toyetic cartoon mascot.

I can understand how it came to this, of course. One of the ways people deal with scary things is to codify them, make them understandable, and (in the end) make jokes about them. And Cthulhu strikes the perfect balance between the bizarre and the relatable in Lovecraft’s pantheon of evil cosmic god-things. “Big flabby oceanic monster with an octopus for head” is way easier to grasp than, say, “formless boiling madness that sits gibbering at the center of the universe.” But it’s also more pleasingly strange than “black goat of the woods with a thousand young.” But still. Codifying Lovecraftian horrors is pretty much antithetical to the point of them. They are the unknown, the unclassifiable things that terrify us because we have problems wrapping our heads around them. That’s why it’s so difficult to do the man’s work justice on film, or in comics: visual mediums demand that you provide visuals for things best left to the imagination.

Jacen Burrows does supply visuals here, of course, and his Deep One (though a very cool monster) isn’t particularly horrifying in and of itself. But it doesn’t need to be, because of the kind of horror Moore has chosen to focus on. Which brings us back on-point, and into the realm of SPOILERS...

FFWTFFTW: FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!

FF #1
by Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting

So what, I’ve been asked by more than one straight (that is, non-dork) friend, does “FF” even stand for now? I mean, the Human Torch is dead, right? So they’re not the Fantastic Four anymore, but… FF? More like WTF?

Well, one of the things I really kinda like about this relaunch of my all-time favorite super hero franchise is that “FF” stands for more than one thing. Officially, it stands for “Future Foundation,” the organization of brilliant young minds that Reed Richards has put together under the raw genius of his daughter Valeria. But it also stands for “First Family,” which is what the team really is for the Marvel Universe. And that family has now expanded: Reed’s father Nathaniel, long lost in time, has returned to the fold. And Valeria has [SPOILER] made a rather questionable deal that further expands the clan in an altogether more horrifying direction: the brain-damaged Doctor Doom now calls the Baxter Building home, too.

I’m not entirely clear on the connection between Valeria and Doom, to be honest. I never read the issues that introduced the character, and the Grand Source of All Funnybook Knowledge (that is, the Wikipedia) unveils a story so convoluted that it could only have sprung from the pens of Chris Claremont and Jeph Loeb, who together are responsible for so many unnecessarily complicated continuity clusterfucks that it beggars the imagination (and the patience). I’ll just get pissed off again if I try to explain it, so let’s just say that Val considers Doom to be her “uncle,” and that’s enough to bring him into the fold. [/SPOILER]

All of which is neat stuff with deep roots in the team’s history, and opens up all kinds of new dramatic doors. But I haven’t gotten to the elephant in the room yet. The obvious sales ploy. The real WTF thing about this new status quo: Spider-Man. Yes, Spider-Man has joined the team. Or family. Or… whatever. Which makes sense primarily from a meta-fictional perspective. I mean, Spidey DID try to join the team in the very first issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and actually went ahead with it in the first issue of What If? back in the 70s. And since that latter issue was the most exciting comic I never got to read when I was a kid, the move kind of resonates for me.

Something New, Something Different: BATREVIEWSAREGO!!

So I think it’s high time we got back to what’s really important here on the Dork Forty. Our core values. The things we hold most dear, and which really define us as we make our way through this complicated funnybook world. By which of course I mean… Batman.

Batman Inc. #3&4
by Grant Morrison, Yanick Paquette, and Chris Burnham

I must admit, I was a trifle worried after the first two issues of this new series. They seemed so… straightforward, after all. I mean, they pretty much made sense on first reading, and barely rewarded a second with new insights at all. They were fun, certainly, and packed to bursting with cool concepts and rapid-fire action, ala the Mark Millar formula. That would be enough for me on most books. But honestly? For a Morrison comic? Written in his new hyper-condensed super hero style? I felt a little let down.

But as it turns out, I needn’t have worried. Because issues three and four renewed that just-slightly-queasy “Wait, what?!” feeling I’ve come to love so much. This has been a story packed with mythological references, excavated and reclaimed Bat-History, and the opening feint of the first major threat to the Bat-Buddha: Dr. Dedalus, Oroboro, and Leviathan.

Bat-Buddha? Well, yeah. The spiritual journey Bruce Wayne went on through the first two acts of Morrison’s Batman run (the Thogal ritual) mirrors the Buddha’s journey to enlightenment. It mirrors it pretty closely, in fact, and he’s come out the other side with a similar synthesis of identity and purpose. At least I think so. There are also indications that the Thogal may still be going on (“Thogal never ends,” as the monk told him). Issue three’s “Tango of Death” certainly has echoes of it, though I haven’t taken the time yet to go back and see if it corresponds to anything in the actual Thogal ritual. But Bruce is certainly taking actions similar to the ones the Buddha did upon his enlightenment: expounding his personal belief system, gathering supporters, and spreading the good word about the Bat. So until I figure out otherwise, I’m thinking of Bruce as the Bat-Buddha for now. Which amuses me to no end.

SPOILERiffic SPOILERS that SPOIL things... after the jump!