Promethea

Promethea 13-18

Oh my god.  Why is it that Alan Moore, by all accounts (including mine) one of the best comic book writers ever, also the only person over the course of this project of mine whose material I have actually given up on?  I couldn’t make it through League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century and I’m in skim mode for chunks of Promethea.  

It’s so so dull.  I don’t care about the 10 spheres and the 22 paths connecting them.  I don’t want to read a treatise on love, judgment, truth, death, beauty, or any other abstract concept.  Slogging through some of these pages puts me back in college, reading a textbook or listening to a lecture for a mandatory class that I have no interest in taking.

Also, Stacia is so effing annoying.

I would be so ready to dump these books if J.H. Williams III wasn’t so frickin’ good at his job.  The art is as beautiful as the writing is stultifying. (That’s not fair. The plot is interesting whenever Moore reluctantly returns to it.  He clearly wants to keep speechifying all day long, but throws in some story progression as a sidebar every once in a while to to give people like me hope.  Cruel, evil man.)

Back to Williams (JH, not Robin).  This must have been a dream project for him.  Moore gives him so much to do, in so many styles, and he executes on all of it so amazingly well.  Every issue is a whole new exploration of color and layouts. And let’s not forget the rest of the art team - Mick Gray on inks and Jeromy Cox on coloring. So much credit is due to the lot of them.  

If only it wasn’t all in service of a dreary god with a boring doctrine.  Two more trades to go, I’m going to focus a lot more on the art.

New Avengers, Promethea

New Avengers 55-64

Free Comic Book Day 2009 (Avengers)

Dark Reign: The List - Avengers

New Avengers Annual 3

New Avengers Finale

The fifth Bendis New Avengers trade.  It finishes up the Dark Reign arc and the Siege event.  Thoughts as I flip through it:

Bendis really likes telling stories about C-list street level criminals with grandiose plans for glory.  They’re overconfident in their abilities to win, because this time, they have a plan that’ll succeed.  In New Avengers, it’s the Hood.  He’s doing it with Red Cloud right now in Action Comics.  Silke was the punk in Daredevil who tried to take down the Kingpin.  It’s a device that Bendis goes back to time and again.  He does it well, but they all talk with the same voice, and it starts to feel repetitive after a while.  

This whole TPB was very slight.  The Avengers fight Hood’s gang. Then they fight the Dark Avengers.  Luke gets captured and they rescue him. Clint gets captured and they rescue him.  Steve Rogers comes back and the Avengers fight Hood’s gang again. Siege starts and they fight the Dark Avengers and Hood’s gang one last time.  Spidey says it best in issue 61: “I promise, Norman Osborn will overstep and he will fall on his tushy and everyone will see what a maniac he is.  He always does. Always.”

The whole book is on a holding pattern while the Avengers wait for Osborn to screw up.  If they stayed hidden the whole time and didn’t fight anyone until the assault on Asgard, things would have ended exactly the same.  Sure, they stood up for what they believed in and fought against tyranny, but none of it really made a difference. Makes for tough reading.  

Stuart Immonen draws a great shot of Iron Fist clearing the Helicarrier deck:

Issue 63 - Another nice Luke/Jessica conversation.

Not sure what it says that I can recognize Bryan Hitch art from just a pair of clasped hands.  

It's the cross hatching, I think.

(Watch Leverage if you haven't.)

He’s usually great, but this is an ass-ugly drawing of Wolverine:

This comes in as slightly below average on the Bendis scale.  It’s fine and entertaining, but ultimately forgettable.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: Yes

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice

Promethea 1-12

This is my third time starting this comic.  When it first came out, I got three issues in before tapping out.  Then my local comic shop had all five hardcovers on sale for thirty bucks.  That’s amazing value for any series, especially an Alan Moore-written series.  I barely got past the first book before running out of steam. Now that I’m at the P’s in my Image box, time to give it one last shot.  

This one skirts the line between Alan Moore as great storyteller and Alan Moore as pretentious blowhard.  On the one hand, it’s a fun, creative story about discovery and imagination. On the other, it’s a platform for Moore to write essays about whatever mystical concept he’s in the mood to talk about for the month.  Issue twelve, for example - I just can’t read a full issue of rhymes showing the connection between the tarot cards and the history of humanity. It’s smacks of Moore showing off, and while I laud the craft, the content leaves me unimpressed and uninterested.  

It’s in the little things that Moore shines.  He cracks me up with Weeping Gorilla’s melancholy Lichtenstein-esque moaning.  

Yes, we probably do.

In Margie, a clear Little Nemo analog, right down to the lettering, Moore’s created the next in a long line of Wesley Crushers.

It’s interesting that for all the putdowns the other Prometheas inflict on Margie, this whole comic is nothing more than one long Little Nemo adventure.  No where is it more obvious than Margaret’s tour of the Cups world, where Sophie even tumbles out of frame in homage to Windsor McCay.

As with the running gag of Bob’s fruitless pursuits of the sex-changed Roger, I wonder if Margie is destined for a much larger payoff down the road.  Similar to Kite Man in Tom King’s Batman.  

Bob's a well-meaning idiot.

I’m okay with J.H. Williams III showing off all he wants.  I initially noticed this spread in particular, really liking the use of the stairs along the borders:

Before I noticed that it’s a visual framing device that he returns to over and over.

I wonder how much of the layout comes from Moore; He’s famous for his detailed, spelled out scripts.

More on Promethea later as I continue with the series over the next couple days.

The Bridge, Doomsday Clock, Prodigy

Only two new comics this week.

Prodigy 1

Mark Millar gets started on another Netflix proposal.  It’s remarkable how he’s able to write something that’s completely predictable and utterly entertaining at the same time.  Ah. Millarworld stories are the Fast and Furious movies of the comic world.  A catchy hook, some entertaining action scenes, and you’ve got yourself a hit.

In this case, the hook is the self-satisfied genius with complete confidence in his abilities, the kind of character that Millar writes in his sleep, the one who’s always a step ahead of everyone else.  He spends this issue establishing Edison Crane’s bonafides and setting up the rest of the story (an invasion from a parallel world). It’s not groundbreaking in any way, but that’s not a reason for me to not be thoroughly hooked and looking forward to the next issue.  I used ‘not’ three times in the same sentence. I’m tired.

Doomsday Clock 8

I can’t say for sure without looking at the past issues, but I think this is the first one that focuses entirely on the DC side of the story.  Two-thirds of the way through the series and things finally get moving. Geoff Johns crafts a flashpoint that’s absolutely breathtaking. Things spiral out of control at a breakneck pace, and it’s horrifying to read.  A writing tour de force, bravo to Johns.

(Part of the horror also comes from the fact that the situation could have been avoided in any number of ways.  The easiest one: Superman and Firestorm could have changed everyone back when there wasn’t a huge crowd. Mission accomplished.)

In the words of Dr Strange, we’re in the endgame now.  Four issues to go, and as entertaining as it is, Johns doesn’t have a lot of time remaining to find his point.

The Bridge

Borrowed from the library.  I loved this. Peter Tomasi and Sara Duvall tell the story of the Roebling family and how they built the Brooklyn Bridge.  It’s a piece of history that I knew nothing about, and I was riveted by both the details of the actual construction of the bridge and the people who sacrificed so much to make it happen.  It inspired me to immediately add David McCullough’s The Great Bridge to my to-read list.  This could be worth a buy in the future.  

Pax Romana

Pax Romana 1-4

Jonathan Hickman, why do you always tease me so?  I went into this expecting a story, and ended up getting an interesting ‘history’ lesson with an abrupt ending and no satisfying conclusion.  Typical Hickman.

I’ll give him this much: He’s a lot better at interspersing his comics with walls of text than Alan Moore.  (Thinking about post-volume 2 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)  He’s clearly put a ton of thought into this alternate history, and he’s eager to share as much of it as he can.  It really is fascinating - Given access to time travel in 2053, the pope elects to send a group of 5000 people back to the reign of Emperor Constantine in order to correct past mistakes and strengthen a decaying Catholic institution.  However, plans change from the start when the military faction of the cadre assassinates the cardinal in charge of the expedition and institute their own strategy for more drastic world change.

Hickman spends three and a half issues methodically walking the readers through every step of this new society that’s being built.  Then he just decides with two pages to go that he’s done, skips a thousand years into the future and says, “This is how it turned out”  It’s as if you’re watching Hamilton, enjoying every beat of this magnificent story that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s crafted, get to the end of “Say No to This,” and are then told, “then a lot of things happened and here we are today with Trump as our president!  The end.” The pacing is absolutely perplexing and maddening. The timeline at the end hints at a grand, sweeping story that I would have loved to read. It’s similar to the appendices at the end of Lord of the Rings, but at least there, Tolkien had already told a complete story.

Hickman’s a lot like Brian Michael Bendis in that he started out as both a writer and artist before focusing on writing only.  As with Bendis, that’s a shame, since his mad graphic design skills create some beautiful, original looking comics.

Lots of text, but Hickman makes it work.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice

Princeless, Paper Girls

Princeless 1-4

After raving about Jeremy Whitely’s inspiring work on Unstoppable Wasp, I borrowed his first collection of Princeless from the local library.  (Use your library! It’s a great resource.)  As with Wasp, this is utterly delightful.  Princess Adrienne starts the comic locked in a tower that’s guarded by a dragon, ostensibly waiting for a prince to come rescue her.  As she had spent her childhood poking holes in the absurdity of such a premise (“That’s ludicrous! The cost of the tower alone would more than cover a dowry!”), it isn’t long before she rejects her situation and finds her own way out of the prison, and sets off with her dragon (their relationship is hardly one of captor/captive) to rescue her other sisters.  Along the way, she befriends a young blacksmith who’s also looking for something more out of her life.

It’s all wonderful.  This was nominated for two Eisners, including Best Comic for Ages 8-12.  But this 40-year old is just as hooked. Seriously considering buy the whole run, currently seven TPBs worth of story.  It’s certainly more refreshing than Deadly Class (which I came really close to buying at the store this week).  I’m definitely going to give this to one of my cousin’s kids for Christmas.  

Paper Girls 1-9

Sigh. How many times can I start a Brian K Vaughan series and not finish it?  (I’m going to ask this again when I get to Saga in a few days/weeks.)  Actually, Paper Girls is better than a lot of Vaughan’s other series on reread, even though I quit buying it earlier than most.  (I lasted longer with Ex Machina, Saga, Y the Last Man, and Runaways.  Though Runaways was good the whole time.)  I read through these issues in one sitting with no desire to stop reading.  It’s definitely better than monthly installments. Too much is lost to memory with the 30-day pause between issues.  

In summary, four 12-year old paper delivery girls from 1988 find themselves mixed up in a war between an older group of people from the future who believe time travel shouldn’t be used and a younger generation who have no qualms about jumping around the time stream.  It’s really dense, with no time for them to really think. Just look at a sample of what happens to them in the first nine issues:

Erin, KJ, Mac, and Tiffany find a time machine.  Erin gets shot by Mac’s stepmother. She gets saved by some time travellers.  They encounter flying dinosaurs. They get thrown into the future and meet a 40-year old Erin.  Giant tardigrades (Godzilla-size) fight each other in the city. Mac learns she dies of cancer in four years.  They meet a clone of Erin from waaaay in the future. A message from KJ tells them not to trust the other Erin.  But which other Erin?

All of this appears to happen in the span of around 4 hours.  No wonder I lost track of what was going on. Want to know what happen next, don’t want to buy more, yadda yadda.  It goes on that list.

Two more points: Cliff Chiang’s art is as wonderful as always.  There’s nothing flashy about it, it’s just beautiful and perfect.

So much goodness in the details of the room and the facial expressions.

And Mac’s reaction to the news thirty years in her future is hilarious.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice

Strangers in Paradise, Action Comics, Ironheart, Heroes in Crisis

New comics!

Action Comics 1005

I need to go back and look at Sook’s art from last month, because it feels like a major regression this week....Yep, it’s way off this time around.  I think it’s the thicker inks, heavier blacks. It’s a lot grittier, and doesn’t work nearly as well on this title.

Action Comics isn’t all that interesting when Lois, Melody, or Batman aren’t interacting with Clark.  Those are the moments that I love, but as this issue shows, they aren’t enough to sustain a story arc.  Watching gangsters try to run an empire while avoiding Superman’s super senses? Meh. Red Cloud? Generic villain.  Revealed to be one of the new annoying reporters? Not a shock.

After complaining about Superman’s last issue, I’m starting to feel the same about Action as well.  Things aren’t looking good in the world of Bendis’ Superman.

Heroes in Crisis 3

Tom King reveals a little bit more about how Sanctuary works.  Basically, people go into a holodeck, call up whatever they’re thinking about, and use that receive their therapy.  We see the last moments of Lagoon Boy, Wally West, and Booster Gold before the massacre. And we learn that Harley Quinn did indeed beat the brains out of Wally.  With a giant hammer. Okayyyyy.

This doesn’t feel like it belongs in the miniseries.  It reads more like one of Bendis’ crossover issues in the middle of his Avengers-run for Dark Reign or Siege or Civil War or House of M - a supplementary issue that reveals some background, but is ultimately unnecessary to enjoy the main storyline.  

Lee Weeks pencils the majority of this issue, and his Kubert School-training really shines through.  (Not a bad thing.)

Strangers in Paradise XXV 8

I have not yet read any of Terry Moore’s other titles.  Echo, Rachel Rising, and Motor Girl just haven’t made their way on to my read list (though I picked up the Echo omnibus for 10 bucks a couple of weeks ago, so that’ll be happening at some point).  

So I’m sure I’m missing a lot here, as Moore adds characters from all three titles to SiP.  Even without an understanding of the history, this feels as big as a major Marvel crossover.  It’s pretty neat, and it’ll resonate more after I introduce myself to the rest of Moore’s universe.

Ironheart 1

As with Jessica Jones, I wasn’t planning to read a Riri comic without Brian Michael Bendis at the helm.  But the reviews I read were overwhelmingly positive, so why not give it try?

I’m really glad I did.  Eve L. Ewing nails Riri’s character and voice, and gets her run off to a top-notch start.  And the reveal of what looks to be her AI’s personification is brilliant in its obviousness.  Can’t wait to read the next issue! With this and Jessica Jones off to surprisingly solid starts, all I need now is an awesome Miles Morales.  (I can not wait for the upcoming Spider-Man movie.)

Monster World, Monstress, Nonplayer

Monster World 1-4

Regret Buying: No.  This was worth picking up for Carlos Meglia’s art.  It’s exaggerated in a way that calls Humberto Ramos to mind, but with a style all its own.  

Like Ramos, he’s great at drawing kids.  He’s got a penchant for huge feet and huge mouths.  And his monsters are wonderfully unique.

He’s also the only artist I know who draws out arm hair as discrete rectangles.  After all these years, I still don’t know if I like it or not. But it’s the most distinctive thing about his art.

Part of me likes it, part of me thinks they look like maggots.  Ew.

Sadly, Meglia also shares Ramos’ occasional struggle with coherent story telling.  All the style can obscure the substance, making it hard to tell what’s going on.

On this page, there’s just too much going on, especially on the bottom half.  The tight zoom in on the faces in the first and third panels, overlapped by a zoomed out shot of the pair, bisected by a tower of text - It’s really hard for the eye to follow.  The coloring doesn’t help either. There are no hints for what to focus on, so the whole page blurs into a mishmash.

But overall, I had a blast looking at Meglia’s art.  His depiction of the kid crew is top notch, they have so much attitude and personality.

Would Buy Again: No.  Scott Lobdell’s story is pretty weak.  It’s an excuse for Meglia to draw kids and monsters, which I respect, but there’s not much else to it.  

Would Read Again: Yes.  I’d flip through this again to look at the art.  BTW, Meglia passed away in 2008. Sadness.

Rating: Fine.  The crap story drags down the awesome art.

Monstress 1

Regret Buying: No.  THE ART!!! Sana Takeda is phenomenal.  This is gorgeous, gorgeous work. I mean, look at this!!

Would Buy Again: No.  My wife tells me that Marjorie Liu is a popular novel writer, and that she does good work.  That may be, but Monstress is a mess of fantasy elements that failed to hold me attention on any level.  I didn’t care about the characters or the enigmatic references to past events. I needed something, anything to give me a reason to keep buying, and it just didn’t deliver.  Not even the art was sufficient - If I wanted to see that, a quick Google search would scratch that it.

Would Read Again: No.  Words get in the way of the pictures.  

Rating: Boring.  I’m only keeping this one around because my wife asked me to.  

Nonplayer 1-2

This one reminds me a lot of Alex+Ada.  It’s set in a future world where the illegal use of AI threatens to upend society’s status quo.  This time, the AI is emerging in Warriors of Jarvath, an immersive MMO in the vein of Ready Player One.  The NPCs are gaining sentience.  

That’s the backdrop for the main character, Dana Stevens.  She’s the Wade Watts of the story, an everyday person who spends a lot of time in the game world.  

That’s about all we get, since the title’s only had two issues published in seven years.  Nate Simpson, the creator, does this on his free time, so I’m not holding my breath. (Though it’s currently on its second film option, so we may be seeing it in other media in the future.)

It’s on my pull list, so I’ll keep getting it if it comes out.  Otherwise, it joins the pile of promising comics that never got off the ground.

Ending with some of Simpson’s art.  If he’s going this only in his off hours, I can see why it takes so long.  It’s stunning. (And has the same clean lines as Jonathan Luna in Alex+Ada.)

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: Yes

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Fine