The Weekly Round-Up #228 With Stray Bullets: Killers, American Vampire: Second Cycle, San Hannibal, X-O Manowar & More

Columns, Top Story

Best Comic of the Week:

Stray Bullets: Killers #2I really had forgotten just how good David Lapham can be.  This issue of Stray Bullets has Virgina Applejack, his teenage heroine, showing up at her aunt’s house after being out of touch with her family for the last six months.  Things seem happy and normal in her small community, and the aunt immediately tries to hook her up with the neighbourhood boy.  As time goes on, though, we learn that the aunt and her husband have been devastated by their own tragedy, and that things are always a little messier than they seem.  In typical Lapham fashion, just as he starts to set things up for a happy ending, he pulls the rug out from under the reader with a pretty brutal ending.  This book is brilliant.

Quick Takes:

Amazing X-Men #6 – The first time Jason Aaron and Cameron Stewart worked together in comics, they produced The Other Side, a thoughtful, novel, and beautiful study of the Vietnam War told through the perspectives of two soldiers on opposing sides.  The last time Aaron and Stewart worked together, they produced this issue of Amazing X-Men, which starts with a homecoming party for Nightcrawler, and leads to him fighting his mother Mystique and his father Azazel.  Guess which comic is better.  It’s not this one.  Reading this, I couldn’t help but wonder if Stewart was given about 48 hours to draw it, as were his name not listed in the credits, I would never have guessed that it was his work.  Everything looks rough and slightly unfinished, and the story moves from what could work very well, a nice X-Party that brings Scott Summer’s crew back into the fold momentarily, to the horror of acknowledging that giving Nightcrawler the parents he has was one of the worst decisions ever made in an X-Book.  This is Aaron’s last issue of any X-Book for now, and I’m not upset by that.  He’s a terrific writer (read Scalped), but he’s never clicked with me on a Marvel mutant book past his first run on Wolverine.

American Vampire: Second Cycle #2We get a much better idea of what the Gray Trader is in this issue, as that creature starts coming after Pearl and her band of refugee vampires.  Most interesting in this issue is the appearance of Cal, a fellow American vampire, who works with the new iteration of the Vassals of the Morning Star, which has gone underground (and awesomely communicates through the clothing choices of a country music singer – seriously).  Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque still have a way to go towards recapturing the excitement the first two years of the first cycle of this series created, but this issue is a move in the right direction.

The Auteur #2 – I didn’t love the first issue of Rick Spears’s new series about gonzo film production, but this issue was a lot funnier, as the film producer becomes a lawyer overnight to free a serial killer so he can use him as a consultant on his next movie.  There’s some pretty funny stuff in this book, but I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I’ll be back next month.

BPRD Hell on Earth #118 – Liz Sherman and the Black Flame face off in a massive battle that levels a lot of the parts of Manhattan that were still standing, while Iosif has a big moment or two of his own.  I’ve been loving this series lately, and there’s a lot of pay-off in this issue, ably depicted by the incredible James Harren.

GenesisNathan Edmondson and Alison Sampson kind of came out of left field with this prestige format one-shot this week.  It’s about a man who, frustrated after years of working as a pastor to try to improve the world, tries to commit suicide one day, only to find himself unharmed and suddenly able to turn his thoughts into actions.  He uses this ability to try to help the world, but it’s not long before his random thoughts, such as wishing that his wife had blonde hair also become realized, leading to more and more problems for him and everyone around him.  The book tries to explore the philosophical ramifications of superheroes in a new way, and I appreciate that, but I felt that the story kind of fizzled out towards the end.  Sampson’s art is interesting, especially where she has to try to depict things like a building that a man who doesn’t understand architecture would create using idle thoughts.  I think that the one-off format suits Edmondson, who has a long history of starting projects that don’t finish, like Where is Jake Ellis?, The Dream Merchant, and his excellent series The Activity.

The Mercenary Sea #3 – One of my favourite new Image series continues wonderfully.  The Venure, a submarine, has been hired by a British spy to help rescue another spy from Japanese forces occupying China in the days leading up to the Second World War.  On the way, they run into some trouble from a Japanese vessel, leading to some exciting scenes involving depth charges reminiscent of Hunt For Red October, and then the story moves to the mainland, where a simple extraction is looking a lot more complicated.  Writer Kel Symons keeps this book moving along nicely, with small moments set aside to help build some of the characters, and artist Mathew Reynolds works his digital wizardry to make the book look truly unique.  The best news in this issue is the reference in the letters page to upcoming story arcs – I was worried that this was going to be a mini-series.

Morning Glories #38I wasn’t overly surprised to be confused by the new issue of Morning Glories; this comic has been pretty confusing for a while now, but amid all the chaos, Nick Spencer still makes the book interesting and entertaining.  The focus is on Ike, who is still at the school, and his father, Abraham, who has escaped.  Gribbs awakes from his coma and has the nurse use some kind of injection to get Ike to reveal his father’s whereabouts.  Abraham, meanwhile, is in Morocco being assisted by some former students of his, including one whose appearance was a genuine surprise.  Nick Spencer is at his best with this book when Ike is talking, especially when he’s talking to someone who doesn’t much like him.  His interactions with Jade and with Gribbs make this book work.

Ms. Marvel #3 – G. Willow Wilson is continuing to update and adapt the classic Peter Parker/Spider-Man of the Stan Lee and Steve Ditko era into the story of Kamala Khan, a young South Asian girl living in Jersey City who has developed strange powers.  Kamala is trying to go through her life as normally as possible, dealing with strict parents, restrictive clerics, oblivious teachers, and the usual collection of teenage angsts and problems, while also trying to come to grips with the new and unusual powers she’s been given.  Wilson just lets Kamala’s personality fuel this book, leading up to a bizarre run-in with a supposed robber at the store where her friend works.  I’ve really developed a liking for this character, and the way Wilson has built her world.  Adrian Alphona’s art is fantastic – he’s the perfect artist to display the wonkiness of Kamala’s size-changing abilities (which so far seems to centre itself on her hand), and also the subtleties of her character.  The book looks a little washed out at times, but it otherwise just about perfect.

San Hannibal #1I picked this comic up as an impulse buy, because it looked kind of interesting.  It’s self-published (I assume) by Pop! Goes the Icon, and is a private eye comic set in the fictional city of San Hannibal.  The detective main character is hired by a woman to look into the disappearance of her friend, a noted photojournalist who lives one step above squalor.  Searching her apartment leads the PI to a bar, her last known location, where he gets attacked by the man he thinks might be her boyfriend, only to be rescued by a small woman who knocks the bruiser out.  Writer Dan Schkade does a good job of creating interest in this story, dropping some slight hints that the reporter’s disappearance may be connected to an upcoming mayoral election.  His ‘hardboiled’ dialogue and narration can come off as a little forced in places, but he’s interested me enough in the story to get me to come back for the next issue.  Artist JD Faith has an interesting indie style, and has coloured almost the entire comic in a bright neon pink that makes things look very interesting, and is what caused the book to grab my attention when I thumbed through it at the comic store.  I realize that I was too late to preorder the second issue, which is solicited for June, so I’m hoping the store where I shop will be getting it in.

Uncanny X-Men #20 – I find this series much more enjoyable than the All-New version of the X-Men, mostly because I care more about the characters, and because this series keeps being drawn by Chris Bachalo (who usually only sticks around for a single arc).  Scott Summers accuses SHIELD of attacking them with Sentinels, but after getting Maria Hill’s mind read, decides that it’s actually Hank McCoy that is attacking him.  I don’t know if Brian Michael Bendis is trying to slowly suggest that Summers is losing his mind, or if he is actually pursuing this as a possibility, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Anyway, the book is lovely, and gives as much space to Mystique as it does the X-Men, and that’s never a bad thing.

Wasteland #53This issue marks the first of the last story arc of Wasteland, a series I’ve been following for a number of years now.  Michael, Abi, and Thomas complete their journey to A-Ree-Yass-I, a place that has been talked about since the first issue, but that has remained a mystery.  Of course, it’s going to remain a mystery for a little while longer, as Antony Johnston is not giving a whole lot away just yet.  Our heroes do find a whole lot of Sand-Eaters, and a bunch of skeletons that they’ve been looking after.  I really like seeing so many long-standing plotlines converge at this point, and enjoy getting the pay-off for years of reading.  I’m especially happy to see original series artist Christopher Mitten back on the book for its grand finale.  Mitten’s unique art style is what defined this series, and things just feel right again with him drawing it.

Westward #7 – Ken Krekeler’s steampunk mystery series continues to impress.  He’s really put Victor, the manifold (read robot) with the memories and personality of a scion of a powerful industrialist family through his paces, as he gets deputized by the police to help search for his abducted niece.  Krekeler blends prose pages with comic pages very well, and makes each page of this series interesting.

The White Suits #3 – I want to enjoy this series a lot more than I actually am, as writer J. Frank Barbiere has the FBI agent team up with the gangsters to try to stop the White Suits.  Toby Cypress’s art is great; it’s minimalist ultraviolence at its best, but when an artist like Cypress is being used, the writing needs to do a lot of the heavy lifting, especially with supplying characters with personality and motive, and those things are lacking.

Winter Soldier: The Bitter March #3In the third issue of his mini-series, Bucky finally gets a little bit of time to be a character instead of just a killing machine, and I think that it’s placed in just the right part of the story.  The real hero of this series, set in 1966, is SHIELD agent Ran Shen (who is currently the antagonist in Captain America), and he is working to protect a former Nazi scientist from the double threat posed by the Winter Soldier and Hydra.  There is something to be said for setting stories like this on moving trains; it adds a lot to the level of excitement that Rick Remender and Roland Boschi launched this mini-series with.

Wolverine and the X-Men #3 – I really want to like this new iteration of the school-focused X-Men book, but writer Jason Latour is kind of letting me down.  I really like that there is more focus on characters like Quentin Quire and Genesis, but the plot of this series, which involves an Askani priest from the future trying to kill Evan while a corporation from the future staffed by sexy battle nuns tries to recruit Quire, is not very clear.  Mahmud Asrar is a talented artist, but he is not very consistent – Idie changes hair styles from one page to the next (the costume change can be accepted, even though the other people she was with didn’t change, but the hair?).  I’ll give this series to the start of the next arc, but it’s on notice.

Wonder Woman #30 – Goran Sudzuka steps in to draw this issue, which reunites Diana with her Amazon sisters, although not in the happiest of ways.  Diana and her strange crew need the Amazons to help them if they are going to retake Olympus from the First Born, but the Amazons are not happy to learn that Diana is working with Hera, the goddess who turned them into snakes, that Diana is now their queen (and goddess of war), and that she is bringing males onto the island.  Brian Azzarello’s long story is getting closer and closer to its big conclusion, and this issue worked well to remind everyone what all is at stake, while also returning nicely to the comic’s beginnings.  I’m going to be really sad when Azzarello leaves this title (I’m not sticking around for the Finches to take over), as this is the best Wonder Woman has ever been.

X-Men #13When issues read like this one, I question why I need to buy any of the other X-books.  Brian Wood brings the father of Shogo, the baby that Jubilee has adopted, to the Jean Grey School, where he starts picking off students one at a time.  More importantly, Psylocke and Storm have a little chat about leadership and the role that Ororo is playing at the school, which makes me hope that we will see a return to the Storm I’ve always had a bit of a crush on.  In the backup (I love that there are backups in this series, as too many X-Men don’t get their due these days), Hellion recruits Rockslide, Broo, and Anole to form a new X-Men team, which in a nod to the all-female lineup of the main story, is referred to Bromo-Superior.  Fun stuff.

X-O Manowar #24 – Aric continues to fight the creature that is half wearing armor like his in space.  There are not a lot of answers given in this issue, as writer Robert Venditti starts to set things up for the upcoming Armor Hunters event.  The best scenes in this comic involve Aric being at home in his people’s new camp, and learning about the wonders of running water (which, I would have thought, he’d have seen by now).

Comics I Would Have Bought if They Weren’t $4 (or More):

Batman #30

Hulk #1

Nova #16

Rover Red Charlie #5

Solar Man of the Atom #1

The Star Wars #7

Superior Spider-Man #31

Thor God of Thunder #21

Ultimate FF #1

The Unwritten Apocalypse #4

Wolverine #4

X-Force #3

Bargain Comics:

Batgirl #27 & 28The Gothtopia tie-in was pretty much useless (I wasn’t surprised to learn that), but issue 28 introduces Silver, a vampire hunter who believes that Batman and his crew are all vampires.  It’s not that much of a stretch, and a bit of a surprise that the idea hasn’t been used before.  He interferes with Batgirl and Strix’s investigation into a missing girl.  This is one of those issues that Gail Simone writes pretty well.

Detective Comics #27 – I don’t know what it is with anniversary issues that it’s become mandatory to have stories set where the character is the actual age that he has existed in the real world, so that Daredevil is 50, and Batman is 75.  This big, originally $8 issue is full of stories like that, where Bruce is reflecting on how his life would have been if he didn’t become Batman, or having him suit up one last time.  I guess they’re fun, but there’s so little actual substance to them, I have a hard time remembering what I was reading just minutes after finishing them.  The main story here, strangely buried towards the back of the book, is the beginning of John Layman’s Gothtopia, a story where Bruce is hallucinating a perfect world, as is everyone else in Gotham.  It’s not bad, but it’s not the best thing Layman did with his run.

Fables #135-137 – I enjoy Fables when I read it in small chunks like this, because it helps hide how little is really going on in this book these days.  Rose Red is gathering her knights, Snow is shunning her, and Bill Willingham continues to write some of the worst childrens’ dialogue I’ve ever read.  I want to enjoy this book, and it has moments that feel like it used to, but they are too few and far between.

Fantomex MAX #3This is an entertaining enough comic, but when Fantomex’s mutant background and external nervous system are taken away, what makes it a Fantomex story?  And if you’re going to make a book a MAX book, shouldn’t there be more adult content than one f-bomb?  It doesn’t surprise me that sales are not better than this…

Thor God of Thunder #20 – Old Future Thor gets into a fight with Galactus on a battered and ruined Earth while Present Thor starts working as an environmental crusader, and targeting corporations that pollute.  Of course the current President of Roxxon can turn into some Minotaur-like creature, so that’s probably not going to end well.  Jason Aaron’s Thor is fun to read, but it is Esad Ribic’s art that really makes this comic work.

The Week in Manga:

20th Century Boys Vol. 9 – There have been a few times where I’ve wondered how Naoki Urasawa would be able to stretch his epic manga series across 23+ volumes, but then I read another volume of the series, and am reminded of his ability to introduce new story elements into his plot that will fuel things for another volume or two.  In this book, Kanna appears to be following expectations laid out in the New Book of Prophecy, which we discover was found a few years before.  Kanna is revealed to have psychic abilities, which she uses to win big at an illegal casino, and then to gather herself an army of Chinese and Thai gangsters, and Tokyo’s homeless population.  This attracts the attention of the Friends, but it also brings a couple of other important characters together.  This book is always an exciting read, and as always, Urasawa’s art is fantastic.

 

What did you read this week in comics?  Let us know in the comments section!

Get in touch and share your thoughts on what I've written: jfulton@insidepulse.com