FBP, Finals, Flex Mentallo

FBP 1-7

I bought the first issue of this when it was titled Collider.  Then it got renamed to FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics after encountering some copyright issues and I totally missed it under its new title.  The concept of a government agency investigating broken laws of physics is magnificent. It shares a lot of the same elements as Skyward - Gravity not working, a young protagonist with daddy issues, and an evil corporation looking to take advantage.  

Unfortunately, the execution by Simon Oliver and Robbi Rodriguez didn’t really impress me.  I just...didn’t care about it. I was hoping for something more episodic, like Planetary, where there’s a new anomaly to solve every issue.  Instead, Oliver immediately throws in a corrupt partner, the privatization of physics enforcement, and decades-old conspiracies. Not what I was looking for, and not well-written enough to convince me otherwise.  

Worth the five bucks to try out, but this trade’s heading back out the door.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Didn’t suck (Cutting)

Finals 1-4

Very very fun, but trips up on the ending.  Will Pfeifer has a hilariously twisted take on the college experience, and Jill Thompson matches, if not exceeds, his insanity with her inspired art and countless background easter eggs.  

Obvious tagline.  Don't care.

Yeah, the roofies sign hasn't aged well.

The senior theses of the protagonists form the backbone of the mini-series, and they are wonderful: Nancy starts a cult for her comparative religions major, and finds that being blindly served by fanatical zealots has pluses and minuses.  Dave commits armed robberies in the name of criminal justice. Gary devolves into a mindless cave man. (Anthropology.) Tim invents a time machine just in time to see his future self die in front of him. Wally plays the straight man with a boring film project to complete.  (It’s always a shame when the main character has the most boring story arc.)

And I’d be negligent if I didn’t mention the running gag where Randy manages to arm the entire Middle East and start a nuclear war.  “That bastard’s project is the reason gas prices are so high.”

Things slowly spiral out of control over the course of four issues, and it’s delight to read.  All the way up until the final issue, where just about everyone dies in blazes of various degrees of glory.  It ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly, but that isn’t enough to ruin a most entertaining comic.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

Flex Mentallo 1-4

I’d read so much good stuff about this series that I jumped at the chance to pick up the hardcover for half off.  If only I’d know that it was batshit crazy Grant Morrison instead of good Grant Morrison. It’s like Silver Age Superman on drugs that I can’t even conceive of.  

I love this, but my brain can only process so much before overheating.

Not sure if I'm for or against.

I slogged through the entire thing, wondering how long it would take before the pain would end.  (Sixty-two minutes.) A truly stultifying experience.

Still, I can’t cut it.  It’s so weird that I have to believe that I’m missing something.  It’s unlikely that I’ll ever want to read this again, but the challenge of making any sense of this feels like an Everest that I don’t want to completely dismiss.  

Also, Frank Quitely’s art is beautiful.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Stupid

Dreaming, Merv Pumpkinhead

Dreaming 17-19

The Corinthian deals with some unfinished business left over by his predecessor.  The original Corinthian left behind one survivor during his killing spree, Gabe, but not before taking his eyes.  The trauma leads Gabe to continue his assailant’s eye-plucking, murderous ways, which creates a breach between the dream world and the waking world.  The Corinthian and Matthew team up again after their adventures in The Kindly Ones to seal the hole.

It reads very much like a run-of-the-mill Vertigo book from the 90s - dark, kind of strange, somewhat meandering, mildly entertaining, and leaves you wondering if you’ve just wasted your time.  This teeters right on the edge of getting cut, but I’m keeping it around just in case. I miiiigght want to read it again in the future.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Didn’t suck

Dreaming 55, Merv Pumpkinhead

Bill Willingham was clearly getting ready for Fables with these issues.  (It would debut less than two years later.) He even teams up with Mark Buckingham for one of them.  Willingham nails the voices of Merv and Danny Nod, Danny in particular. His running one-sided dialog with Goldie (somehow back from guarding the Garden of Eden 52 issues ago) is charming in its self-importance and confidence, as the library assistant refers to his gargoyle partner by every sidekick name in the book:  Sergeant Harper, Gunga Din, Tonto, Little John, Igor, Friday, Squire Wamba, Renfield, Passepartout, Planchet, Jeeves, Tinkerbell, Samwise, Nkima, Watson, Sancho Panza, Chingachgook, and Kato. I don’t think I could name half of the heroes these people are attached to.

This was only one of the many things that amused me with these issues.  And there’s far better to come with Fables. Can’t wait to get to it.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

DMZ, Dreaming

DMV 29-34

With this trade, DMZ firmly cements itself into “I want to know how this ends, but not enough that I’ll pay for it” territory.  My local library has the next two trades, so at least I’ll find out how the next 12 issues or so play out.

Matty Roth finally tosses aside journalistic objectivity to support Parco Delgado in the upcoming DMZ leadership elections.  (Which is fine, because Parco tells him that media impartiality is a crock anyway.) I understand and even empathize with Matty’s point of view, but even more fascinating is Brian Wood’s decision to have him go so far as to actively take part in the campaign.  It’s not like Matty’s just writing op eds, he’s out there defending the guy with a gun.

It’s yet another demonstration of how life in the DMZ can come in conflict with idealistic principles.  Wholly believable, and it makes for a good if not fun reading experience.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Dreaming 1-3

This series was clearly created to fill the vacuum left by the ending of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.  And like an astronaut desperate for oxygen in the void of space, I greedily sucked in whatever gas was available.  

It’s hard to replace Neil Gaiman.

The Dreaming led off with a Cain/Abel/Goldie story.  Bad decision. The dynamic between the original brothers only works in tiny installments.  Terry LaBan gives us three full issues of it without adding any new wrinkles to the relationship.  (We discover that Abel has a whole other life whenever he’s dead. (Not a contradiction, really!) He’s a lot more confident and has a bunch of dead friends.  But it’s not enough to make him more interesting.) Cutting.

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Didn’t suck (Cutting)

Dreaming 6-7

I don’t know why I took a two month hiatus, only to come back and buy the final two issues of a four-parter.  I’m not sad that I did, though. An elderly professor meets a young man who somehow jumped forward forty years in time.  She works with Mad Hettie to restore him to his proper time, and in so doing, creates a changes her past for the better. It’s the happy romantic ending that lifted this story to the Keep level.  It wouldn’t have survived otherwise, but I’m a sucker for that kind of hopeful twist.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Dreaming 8

I like this issue because the Michael Zulli art makes it feel closer to Sandman than anything before it in the series.  Also, I like Seth. He’s so well adjusted compared to his completely dysfunctional older brothers. Also, I love the suggestion that there are much darker stories that were omitted from the Bible.  Gaiman touches on it with Lilith in Sandman. Alisa Kwitney does it here with Cain and Abel’s twin sisters. Delicious.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

Dreaming 15

A rollercoaster of emotion.  Here’s a look at the highs and lows of Jeff Nicholson’s story:

Depressed: Bob hates his job as the head of his law firm.  He’s trapped in the mundane horrors of white-collar suburbia, and longs for a life where he can work with his hands and do something where he can see the fruits of his labor.

Happy: Bob falls asleep in his car and wakes up on Merv Pumpkinhead’s crew in the Dreaming.  It’s everything Bob could have wished for, and can’t imagine anything more perfect.

Sad: Bob wakes up, and has no way back until he dies.  There had been hints that he was dead and not sleeping when he had arrived in the Dreaming, so I was honestly surprised by this.  

Hopeful:  Eager to get back to his dream job, Bob commits suicide by leaving the engine running in his closed garage.  It’s a twisted testament to Nicholson’s writing that I thought this was Bob’s best chance at a happy ending.

Depressed: Bob does indeed gain a permanent role on Merv’s crew, but severely mentally impaired because his choice of self-termination left him with too many dead brain cells.  It’s completely cruel, yet perfect for the story. Kudos to Nicholson. I’ve rarely been yanked around this much on the emotional spectrum in so few pages.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

Dreaming 16

Peter Hogan and Gary Amaro tell us what Nuala and the Cluracan have been up to since the end of Sandman.  It’s a nice little story of only minor importance, but it’s very comforting to know that these characters will be in a good place after we turn the page on them.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

DMZ

DMZ 18-28

I’m definitely commending past me for the decision to stop buying this comic.  (Though I still have one trade left to read.) Once again, there’s nothing wrong with either the writing or the art.  Given the premise, Brian Wood executes it about as finely as anyone could. I completely buy this broken America of his.  The juxtaposition of New Yorkers living in their new normal and the possibility of random death at any moment creates a very real tension.  The government’s compulsion and ability to whitewash the reality of the situation requires no stretch of the imagination. The sheer fucked-upness of the entire scenario comes across loud and clear.  

Riccardo Burchielli and the backup artists play just as big a role in selling the story.  The grime, the dilapidated streets and buildings, residents who haven’t showered in weeks, brutal violence - It all comes across perfectly.   Burchielli has a lot of Goran Parlov in his style, who’s art would have fit in just fine here.

Hey look, Barracuda is in DMZ!

Nope, never mind.  This is the actual Barracuda.

The problem is that I just don’t enjoy reading DMZ.  It’s too close to the truth in its grimness. It’s similar to how entertainment violence gets harder to stomach the more realistic it gets.  And like the previous trade, today’s batch ends with no real victories for Matty and his friends. Also, the six issues Wood uses to focus on individual characters tell truncated, unsatisfying stories that don’t really do much more than reinforce the lack of hope in this world.  

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine for 18-22, Didn’t suck for 23-28

DMZ, World of Tanks, Superman

Small week for new comics.

World of Tanks: Citadel 3

I’m not a fan of how Garth Ennis is jumping between his Soviet and German tank crews.  It’s not that I’m having trouble following the transitions, but by having one every three pages or so, he robs both threads of any narrative momentum, making each scene feel more like a vignette than part of a proper story.  Perhaps that’s his intention, but it’s a lot less satisfying than most of his other war stories.

Superman 1

I don’t know why Man of Steel 1-6 needed to be a miniseries instead of the first six issues of the proper title.  Perhaps DC didn’t want a regular title to have a weekly release schedule or multiple artists. Whatever the reason, this is very much a continuation of that story.  Quick summary: Clark misses his family. He relocates the Fortress of Solitude to the Bermuda Triangle. J’onn suggests that Superman take over the world and rule it benevolently and with hope, sounding very scary in the process.  Superman discovers that Earth is trapped in the Phantom Zone. Fine but unexciting.

Like the story, Ivan Reis is just as serviceable.  He’s a great artist, but also blandly generic. Kind of like David Finch.  

Finch.

Reis.

But the cover by David Mack...yum.

MACK!

DMV 13-17

Extended storyline where Matty Roth infiltrates Treadwell, the evil government contractor.  It’s not bad, but I have not been in the mood to read about morally bankrupt leaders and their equally corrupt underlings for quite some time, unless they get their richly deserved comeuppance at the end.  Right now, the victories for the common folk have been temporary at best, pyrrhic at worst. Escapist me is looking for something more emotionally satisfying.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice  

Caper, Django Unchained, DMZ

Caper 1-12

Judd Winick writes a multi-generational epic, telling three stories of the Weiss clan over the course of a hundred years.  The last name is the only thing that the protagonists have in common, so the connective thread is tenuous at best.

The opening arc tells the tale of Jacob and Isadore Weiss, hitman brothers in San Francisco during the early 1900s.  It’s a nicely told story about their struggle to survive amidst the local gang politics and violence. It all ends very abruptly when the big quake of 1906 reminds everyone that nature doesn’t give a crap about man-made violence.  Isadore dies and Jacob heads down to LA to become a film mogul. I would have liked to read about that journey very much.

Instead, we jump ahead to learn about his granddaughter Annie, lawyer for the biggest movie stars in Hollywood.  She finds herself defending her next-door movie star neighbor against a spousal murder charge. As with the previous arc, Winick does an amazing job crafting the environment in which these characters live.  I want to spend more time in the 1970s Tinseltown he’s created, just as I did the streets of San Francisco. There’s a depth and texture to his settings that is compelling and remarkable.

But just like the story of Jacob, Annie’s plot finishes on an awkward note.  It comes out of left field, and not in a satisfying way. But it’s not enough to ruin a good bit of storytelling.

The final four issues, on the other hand, are a total mess.  Winick opts to go for straight up slapstick humor. The newest generation of Weiss is a complete idiot, as is his partner-in-crime.  After the well-executed gravitas of the previous two arcs, this is an unwelcome, tonally discordant ending to the series. I’d cut it, but I can’t bring myself to break up the set…

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes (No for 9-12)

Rating: Nice (Stupid for 9-12)

Django Unchained 1-7

I don’t have the nerve to watch most Quentin Tarantino films.  I don’t have the stomach for the exquisite tension that he so effortlessly crafts.  “Who’s going to die out of nowhere? I can’t take it!!!” is usually my inner monologue.  That fact notwithstanding, I’m a huge fan of Tarantino’s ability. His dialogue, his technical craftsmanship, and his unparalleled ability to get the most out of a soundtrack entrance me, and I wish I was able to watch more of his work.

A comic adaptation of his screenplay is the next best thing.  And yeah, there are some things in here that I’m glad I didn’t have to watch in movie form.  But it’s a masterpiece of storytelling, and an awful lot of fun to read.

It loses some points with the art.  The collective group of pencillers, led mostly by RM Guera, do a fine job, but I would have liked to see something just a touch better.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

DMV 1-12

I got the first couple of trades really cheap at a used bookstore, and really liked what Brian Wood was doing with it.  But as I kept buying the volumes as they came out, I gradually lost interest. Will the same hold true this time around?

So far, yes.  Wood and artist Riccardo Burchielli create a thought out, richly populated, war-torn New York City.  It’s entertaining enough to learn about this world, but unless a larger plot starts manifesting itself soon, I’m going to congratulate past me for stopping before Wood did.  I like war stories, but I’m not as much a fan of reading about the civilian side of it. Like the general public that Zee justifiably despises, I just don’t find it as sexy. None of this is on Wood, and I recognize the quality of what he’s doing here.  

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

Ant-Man and the Wasp, Books of Magic, Beware the Creeper, Brother Lono

Ant-Man and the Wasp

So much fun.  I immediately wanted to watch it again.  A bunch of laugh out loud moments, a straightforward “Let’s bring mom home” goal, imaginative action scenes - this movie has it all.  The villains are (yet again) a little lackluster, but the heroes more than make up for it. Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, and Michael Pena up their game from the previous movie in all aspects.  And I love Michelle Pfeiffer as much as I did in the 80s. Which was a ton. More of her in future Marvel movies, please.

Batman Returns (1992)

Stardust (2007)

2018.  Will always love her.

Regret watching?  No

Would watch again?  Yes

Would buy on DVD?  Yes

Rating: Good

Brother Lono 1-8

Brian Azzarello reveals that Lono didn’t die at the end of 100 Bullets.  He found God and assists at an orphanage in Mexico, repressing his natural instinct and knack for violence.  When a DEA agent shows up and entangles herself with the local drug lords, Lono’s forced to revert to his former self.  

The miniseries reads a lot more clearly than its parent title, but there’s something missing from it.  100 Bullets was largely a creature of cities and modernity. In transplanting its sensibilities to the open spaces of Mexico, Azzarello retains the darkness but loses the noir, if that makes any sense.  It doesn’t help that Lono was one of the less interesting characters from 100 Bullets. It’s entertaining enough, but feels like a superfluous coda.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Beware the Creeper 1-5

I love how my comic shop packages single issue runs of series and sells them at a massive discount.  That’s how I acquired this, based on the low price tag and Cliff Chiang’s name on the cover. I knew nothing else about this title.  On the reread, I remembered almost nothing about my first time through, only a vague recollection of the Creeper’s secret identity.

For some reason, I thought that this would be a candidate for cutting, but I was happy to find that not to be the case.  Jason Hall crafts a wonderful story that’s different from anything else I’ve ever read. Set in post-WWI Paris, twin sisters search for their individual identities amidst the rise of the Surrealist artistic movement and the emergence of the mysterious Creeper.  It’s paced very differently from most comics, without the traditional fight scenes or antagonists. This is one of those pleasant forgotten surprises that makes me happy to be going through my entire collection.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

Books of Magic 1-4

I’m not really sure why I still hang on to this.  There’s not much to it - Four of DC’s occult characters take Tim Hunter on a journey through the worlds of magic.  It’s really a travelogue with some beautifully painted art. The words by Neil Gaiman are fine, but this is not some of his better work.  The final issue, in particular, is as bad I remember it, a jumbled, chaotic mess. Why am I keeping it? Nostalgia? It’s not good enough to even deserve a Major Feels rating, but it’s sticking around.  

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Didn’t Suck