Starlight, Storming Paradise

One of those nice lazy days where I kept reaching for the next thing to read in the box.  The streak came to a crashing halt when I discovered Warren Ellis’ Supreme was coming up :)  That’s going to be a chore tomorrow…

Starlight 1-6

A wonderfully fun story with very little surprises.  An Air Force pilot flies through a wormhole and saves an alien civilization from the usual tyrant.  After his return to Earth, no one believes his story. Forty years later, recently widowed and purposeless, he’s once again called upon to reprise his heroics with the dominance of a new evil invader.  Said heroics ensue.

Aside from flexing his as-usual strong action scene muscles, Mark Millar shows a surprising tenderness showing the family side of Duke McQueen’s life.  

I was touched by the few scenes with his wife, and sympathized with him in the face of his adult sons’ casual thoughtlessness.  The realness of it heightened the emotions.

Goran Parlov does excellent work here.  It’s nice to see him tackling something more fantastical after all the dark realism of his Punisher pencils.

I love the old school X's to indicate getting knocked unconscious.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: Yes

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Good

Storming Paradise 1-6

The rare modern day war comic that isn’t written by Garth Ennis.  Storming Paradise is perfect for me: A alternative history about Operation Olympic, the Allied invasion of Japan that would have taken place if the atomic bombs had not been ready in time.  Things get off to a great start, but Chuck Dixon focuses a little too much on the micro and not enough on the macro details that I’m more interested in. By the end of the first issue, I realized that what I really wanted was to read a novel on the subject instead.  (A quick bit of research reveals that there are several, which have been added to my list.)

Be that as it may, I was still enjoying this until the abrupt ending with issue six.  Dixon appears to have just run out of space, and the series ends with no resolution. The Japanese develop the atomic bomb, President Truman asks the Soviets to enter the war, and...that’s it.  There’s plenty of story left to tell, and it’s horribly unsatisfying to be left hanging like this. Ah well, I’ll just have to read the book someday. Hardly a bad thing.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: Yes

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice

Rising Stars

Rising Stars 11-24

This is the kind of stuff that I’m looking for from today’s writers - A fully realized, self-contained story that’s engaging and occasionally surprising.  

The last two trades came in the mail today.  Continuing from where I left off, JM Straczynski finishes off the Chicago fight, revealing Critical Maas to be the mastermind behind the Special murders.  (She has mind control powers.) After a huge fight and a nuclear detonation, Maas dies, the remaining Specials unite, and the book enters the Squadron Supreme phase of the plot.  

Brent Anderson enters as penciller for the rest of the series, and replaces the regrettable Christian Zanier.  The poor guy was a bad choice for such a strong story.

Sigh.

For the most part, the Specials take a brute force approach to making the world a better place - Jason goes full Superman IV and starts ridding the world of all nuclear weapons.  Jerry torches all the cocaine fields in South America. Randy clears out every crack house in the northeast United States.  

Straczynski makes a nice little head fake when one of the Specials plans to solve the Israeli/Palestinian by destroying their holy sites - No icons, no conflict.  I was pleasantly surprised when she’s converts the arid Middle East to arable land instead.

The story continues to jump ahead in time.  We see the government’s attempt to kill all the Specials, and their violent response.  We see the brief golden age that results from Randy’s election to President of the United States.  We see the disgruntled military’s final shot at restoring the old status quo, and how their tragic failure brings about a startling moment of enlightenment.  It’s a bit too fairy godmother for my taste, but there’s still something commendably bold about Straczynski’s decision to bestow true world peace and understanding upon the world for 24 hours.  And then he brings the story around full circle as John brings the same meteor effect to another planet.

This was an ambitious project from start to finish, and it mostly succeeds.  I would have preferred a stronger artist across the whole thing, but any other quibbles I have are minor.  It took a number of well worn superhero devices and took them in unexpected directions. A really nice job by Straczynski.  

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: Yes

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Good

Spawn

Spawn Toys 1

Spawn 2, 3, 7-30

I didn’t read a lot of McFarlane’s Spider-Man when he was on it, so my interest in Spawn was only in a general “wow, this new Image thing is pretty exciting” kind of way.  Also, I was living in Hong Kong at the time, so getting the early issues was difficult.  Once I located the local comic shops, I dove right in. McFarlane’s unique style was certainly appealing, and the story was different enough that I stuck around for his entire run.  When Greg Capullo came along to spell him on pencils, McFarlane’s continued appearance in the art credits fooled no one. And while I’ve always been a Capullo fan, I quit the series a couple months after he showed up.  

Rereading it now, a couple of things stand out:

Tom Orzechowski, famed Uncanny X-Men letterer, is the unquestioned star of this title, outshining even McFarlane’s art.  My notes call out his lettering more times than anything else. He plays with colors, sizes, sound effects, and layouts like no one else.  Along with Todd Klein, he’s the undisputed letter master.

McFarlane really can draw.  I love his clean, detailed lines.

His design for Violator remains one of my favorite monster looks across all of comics.  The massive jaw, the spindly limbs - I love it all.

I had forgotten about the issue order fiasco - They were originally published in the following order: 1-18, 21-24, 19, 25, 20.  

I really like how Spawn lives with a bunch of homeless people in the back alleys of the city.  They’re a support network that I’ve never seen in comics before, an erstwhile family that brings a different perspective from other stories.  

Issue 29, which I’ve already remembered as the child abuse issue, remains as disturbing as ever.  A painful issue to read. I’m still not sure what McFarlane was going for with the ending. That Spawn is woefully bad at measuring his ability to affect change for the better?  That violence is the only solution to child abuse? I can’t tell.

Issue 30, the Klan issue, is slightly more satisfying, though again, Spawn’s Old Testament answer only provides the briefest moment of catharsis before things revert to the status quo.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice to Fine across the run.  Spawn Toys 1 is Boring, and I’m cutting it.  

And that’s the end of Image Box 2!

Box Summary:

Time spent reading: 29 hours, 21 minutes

Issues read: 261
Issues cut: 32

Highlights (Good or better): Alex + Ada 1-15, Princeless 1-4, The Bridge, Saga 1-12

Project Summary:

Time spent reading: 13 days, 13 hours, 54 minutes

Issues read: 2652
Issues cut: 335

Sidekick, Silent Dragon, Point Blank, Sleeper

Sidekick 1-12

I own the first five issues, read the rest of the miniseries online.  The first half of this JM Straczynski title is the more interesting by far - I hope that isn’t a sign of how Rising Stars is going to end.  (The final two trades of which are in the mail, and I don’t want them to be a wasted purchase.)  

Sidekick tells of Flyboy’s fall from grace after the death of his mentor, the Red Cowl.  He’s unable to attach himself to another hero, and can’t make the jump to headliner either.  Caught up in a string of PR disasters, he spirals down until he hits rock bottom and easily falls prey to the seductions of Moonglow.  

The quality of the story is inversely proportional to Flyboy’s fortunes.  As he embraces his inner evil and begins to enact his revenge upon his perceived antagonists, gaining both confidence and power, the story gets less and less interesting.  Upon discovering that Red Cowl faked his own death, Flyboy goes insane, kills his former partner, the majority of the superhero population, and the entire population of the city that disowned him.  Reading the previous sentence back, it actually sounds really cool. But Straczynski handles it so carelessly and casually that my reaction was one of disbelieving “did that just really happen?” And not in a good way.  

Tom Mandrake’s art doesn’t help either.  I’ve never been a big fan of his, and his work here is an example of why.  Troy Peteri contributes to the mess with a hilarious typo:

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice for 1-5, Fine for 6-12

Silent Dragon 1-6

A bonkers story by Andy Diggle: in 2063, Renjiro the samurai is killed by his crimelord boss for being a traitor, then resurrected Robocop-style by the government.  Renjiro wreaks havoc upon his old yakuza clan, the lackeys who try to control him, and anyone else who gets in his way. It’s a mess of a story, but the art by Leinil Yu is pretty sweet.  That’s enough to keep it on my shelf.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Fine

Point Blank 1-5

Ed Brubaker writes another one of his film noir (comic noir?) stories, this one starring Cole Cash from the Wildcats.  Reading this one again made me realize why I stopped bothering with Brubaker and this genre. They’re all well constructed with reasonably engaging mysteries and final reveals.  Brubaker nails the world-weary anti-hero protagonist and the grim & gritty bars and alleyways in which they do their sleuthing and fighting. But there’s such a futility to their actions that I’m just as tired of it all as the detectives are.  Even if they solve this conspiracy (it’s always a conspiracy), there’s either a deeper one behind it or the hero realizes how powerless they are to do anything about it.

It’s really no less cyclical than a superhero comic, but the inherently dark nature of noir comics makes it so much more depressing and a slog to read.  And as good as Brubaker is, this kind of thing needs to be stellar in order to stand out. (Think Darwyn Cooke’s Parker books.)  Point Blank doesn’t meet that standard.  Hence the Nice but Wouldn’t Read Again ratings.

Odd contrast between the bearded face and hairless chest.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: No

Rating: Nice

Sleeper 1-6

The sequel to Point Blank, this is a little bit more of what I’m looking for.  Why? I think it’s because Holden Carver isn’t as in the dark here as Cole Cash was in the prequel.  He’s working undercover, and so has more visibility into the machinations of Tao. By the way, it’s awesome to read more of Tao after he was used to such amazing effect in Alan Moore’s Wildcats.  

This falls into the “would read more if I don’t have to buy it” column.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Pretty good

Aquaman

Aquaman

What is this movie???  I watched it hours ago, and my brain still doesn’t know what to do with it.  On the one hand, it may be the stupidest movie that I’ve ever seen. The dialogue is truly cringe-worthily terrible.  The story elements are trite and unoriginal. There are plot holes and leaps of logic in practically every scene, which constantly yanked me out of the moment.  

On the other, there’s an overwhelming sense of fun on display throughout the entire movie.  There are some beautifully filmed scenes and genuine emotion. I can’t think of the last time I had such a good time watching a movie with so many caveats.  Here are few of my thoughts:

Jason Momoa is not who I would ever have pictured to play Arthur Curry, but I’m a huge fan of his portrayal.  He tones down the bro-ness from Justice League and makes him a little more relatable with his emotional vulnerabilities, while maintaining the oversized confidence that makes this whole enterprise so enjoyable.  He’s Volstagg from Marvel’s Thor, thoroughly enjoying his adventures and the knowledge that he’s going to be successful.

Amber Heard is this mix of Scarlett Johansson and Kiera Knightly, a visually generic actress I have always had trouble recognizing.  But she does a fine job as Mera, displaying strength and an awesome power set. She’s as integral to this movie as Wasp is to the second Ant-Man.  

I don’t care how much of it is CG, I loved watching Nicole Kidman kick ass at the beginning of the movie.  I hope to see Michelle Pfeiffer do the same if there’s another Ant-Man.  (Why all the Ant-Man references in this?)

I literally face-palmed so many times in reaction to the script.  So. Freaking. Bad - Mera’s speech at the end proclaiming Arthur king.  There was an actual dun-dun-DUN in the score when Orm said something particularly villainous and cheesy.  None of it was funny, it was just all painful.

So much of this world doesn’t make sense.  How can whales and turtles be beasts of burden in Atlantis if they need to surface for air all the times?  Why does Aquaman need to desperately cling to a rooftop, if he can easily survive a fall from an airplane? How did they get to Sicily from the wastes of the Sahara?  Atlantis can’t be all that old if King Atlan used a statue of Romulus as part of his treasure hunt, clearly not old enough to have evolved from humans to crustacean or merfolk.  If Atlan’s trident was so mythical and impossible to find, how did so many people make it to the Julie Andrews kaiju for her to kill?

There’s an octopus playing the drums.  Like Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid.  No.  Just no.  

The Baz Luhrmann kiss at the end, complete with 360-degree camera spin and fireworks all around.  I...don’t know. Maybe?

I love the chase scene through Sicily, which blew me away with the smooth, grand tracking shots transitioning between Mera and Aquaman.  Also love how all the projectiles in the final battle traced to a vanishing point. It created a visual effect that I hadn’t seen before, and really liked.

Black Mantis: Lame.

That final superhero pose: Lame, but Momoa almost pulls it off.  

The reunion between Arthur’s parents: Very very sweet.  I squeed.

The Indiana Jones-style quest for the trident: A throwback to an earlier time, complete with random leaps of logic.  “Yes, a drop of sweat will totally activate this ancient mechanism and lead us to the next step in this elaborate search.”  This whole movie feels like James Wan hadn’t gotten the memo about how comic book movies have evolved in the last fifteen years.  He’s made a movie with unapologetically 1980’s sensibilities, for better and worse.

Half of this movie gets a legit Stupid rating.  The other half, the part that I thrilled to, is Pretty good.  Splitting the difference for the final score doesn’t feel right.  In fact, all my ratings for this movie are immensely conflicted. But it’s got me thinking, which is more than most movies.  It’s more entertaining than Wonder Woman, which I would never have expected going into this.  

Regret watching: No

Would buy on DVD: Yes (?)

Would watch again: Yes

Rating: Pretty good/Stupid.

Saga, Savage Dragon, Sex Criminals

Saga 1-12

I’ve always remembered this series as another Brian K Vaughan disappointment.  I gave it a year, and must have stopped for the usual Vaughan reasons, right?

My first thought after finishing issue twelve: “Well shit shit shit, I need to buy more Saga.”  This is so much better than my memory. Unlike Rising Stars in the previous entry, I didn’t actually go out and buy the rest of the trades.  My library has all of the volumes, I’ve put the next three on hold. If they’re as good as the issues I’ve read, I’ll pick them up.  (I got a couple of Amazon gift cards for Christmas…)

None of the other Vaughan titles got better with age.  What makes it different this time around? First of all, it reads better in large chunks.   With a cast this large, it’s easy to forget individual storylines with thirty days in between issues, even longer if a particular character doesn’t make an appearance.  Issue nine, as a random example, only follows The Will and Gwendolyn. Issue ten returns to our heroes, but by the time issue eleven’s come and gone, it’s been at least three months since we’ve seen the Robot guy.  (No, I don’t remember his name.)

It’s no surprise that I lost both the threads and interest.  But man! Things zip along so quickly and entertainingly that I really want to know what happens next.  And not just in an “I need to know so that the OCD side of me has a conclusion to this story” kind of way (like DMZ or Unwritten, which I still have to get back to).  

I intellectually knew that the character designs by Vaughan and Fiona Staples were ridiculously creative the first time around, but they really flew of the page and smacked me the face the second.  Highlights:

Lying Cat.  I was horrified when he died at the end of issue ten.  Thank God it was just a head fake.

The Stalk.  Horribly beautiful.

The Midwives.  Completely terrifying.

An anthropomorphic harp seal.  Too cute.

Fantastic beasts indeed.  Saga is chock full of them.

I haven’t even gotten to the main plot yet.  Vaughan has said Saga’s just a parenting story with a science fiction wrapper to get people to read it.  I’m sure I’ll get to it when I review the later issues.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: Yes

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Really good

Savage Dragon 13

As a marketing gimmick early on in its history, Image Comics’ creators swapped titles for a month.  So Erik Larsen drew Wildcats and Jim Lee moved over to Savage Dragon.  That’s why I have this issue.  Unfortunately, Lee brought Brandon Choi along with him, and the story is appropriately generic.  It also showcases Grifter far more than Dragon. Reading the letters column, I get the sense that Larsen was just as unhappy with the intrusion.  Looking through the comic database, it seems like he went so far as to publish a separate issue thirteen that replaces the Lee version. Hilarious.  

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: No

Rating: Fine

Savage Dragon 17

High school me most likely bought this because of the sex scene in it.  (More a single splash page than a scene.)

My wife got the first two volumes of the Savage Dragon compendiums for really cheap from her workplace last year, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them.  I’ll review this issue as part of that run when I do.

Sex Criminals 1

A woman has the power to freeze time when she orgasms.  Matt Fraction uses this hook to emphasize the confusing, often scary journey every adolescent goes on when discovering and exploring their sexuality.  It’s a sad statement on the taboo nature of sex education that it felt all too real that Suzanne had no way of knowing her experiences were out of the ordinary.  She simply had no one to safely talk to.

As good as this was, it was still too out there for me to keep buying.  Another candidate to read in the bookstore.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice

Rising Stars, Runaways

One more new comic for the week:

Runaways 16

The kids share a Christmas dinner magicked up by Nico’s new bloodless powers.  Still a horrible idea!  Doombot steals the show, with a multitude of perfect one-liners.

Rising Stars 1-10

I’m pretty sure this was my first exposure to J. Michael Straczynski’s work.  Before that, I knew him as the Babylon 5 guy, and I only recognized that show because it was “the show that Neil Gaiman wrote an episode of.”  

113 kids from the same town are born with superpowers.  They discover that if one of them dies, their power is distributed to the survivors.  Things go south. It’s an idea that’s been done before and since. (Unfollow is the one that springs to mind, but with money instead of superpowers.)

Straczynski approaches the story through the “how would this happen in real life” lens, which basically involves a lot of government interference.  It’s a focus that he’ll use again with Supreme Power.

I like how he takes his time developing the story.  He uses the first act, the initial eight issues, to present a wide cross section of the 113 stars - their childhoods, their interpersonal dynamics, and how they developed and used their powers.  He ends it with a flashpoint, setting up for a jump ten years into the future.

It’s an effective start, and I couldn’t help but think about how he’s giving his story the time to develop and finish.  It’s the opposite of all the writers I’ve been complaining about in previous posts.  Past me quit reading after 10 issues, and I don’t know why. I immediately bought the two remaining trades after I put the last issue down.  Looking forward to seeing how this unfolds.

Oh, and I’ve never forgotten the final two pages of issue five, illustrating the powers of a guy who can talk with the dead.  Such a fun use of the comic book medium.

Printed on the same page back to back.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: Yes

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Pretty good