The Weekly Round-Up #304 With From Under Mountains #1, Book of Death: The Fall of Harbinger #1, Grayson Annual #2, Secret Wars: Hail Hydra #3 & More

Columns, Top Story

Best Comic of the Week:

From Under Mountains #1While leaving me with almost no idea of what’s happening in it, the first issue of From Under Mountains made an impressive debut this week.  This series is set in the same world as the 8House anthology series (at least, according to an ad I saw in another comic it is – that’s never made clear here), and is co-written by Claire Gibson and 8House creator Marian Churchland.  The story is set in Akhar, and we meet some nobility, a woman performing some witchcraft, and a thief.  We don’t know their stories yet, aside from learning that the noble son likes to irritate his father, while his sister longs to travel and have a purpose beyond her eventual marriage to a more powerful family.  There’s a lot going on here, but the connective threads are not being shown yet.  What we do get is a lot of lovely art by Sloane Leong, whose work is reminiscent of Churchland’s own art, which I love.  I’m very intrigued by this book, and looking forward to reading the next issue.

Quick Takes:

Book of Death: The Fall of Harbinger #1 – Joshua Dysart takes us to the future of the Harbinger Foundation, and the long history of animus between Peter Stanchek and Toyo Harada.  As is the norm with comics like this, we find out how a number of current characters die over the years, although the final confrontation between these two Omega Psiots is not what you would expect.  I always enjoy Dysart’s writing, and Kano does a good job on art.

Crossed Plus One Hundred #9 I continue to be very impressed with the way Simon Spurrier is expanding on Alan Moore’s original concept for this series.  Future is chafing under the direction the Ima’am is taking Murfreesboro, and is itching to do some recon on the Crossed that destroyed her settlement.  Spurrier is building these characters and adding new cast members to the book, as well as continuing to have the smart, trained Crossed act in new and surprising ways.  This is a solid, engaging read.

Drifter #8 – Drifter is an interesting and entertaining book, but Ivan Brandon is really writing for the trades, making this frequently a confusing read.  The best thing about this comic remains Nic Klein’s stunning visuals, which make this alien world a fascinating place.

Grayson Annual #2 – Dick meets up with Superman in this Annual, and they rather randomly get into a spot of trouble with the Fist of Cain, a group of murderous weirdoes.  This issue is a little disappointing when placed alongside the rest of the Grayson series, which has excelled at last minute surprises and hidden agendas, but as a study of the relationship between two central DC characters, it works.

Hail Hydra #3 – This Secret Wars tie-in (which is the only Marvel book I bought this week – this is becoming a habit) is getting a little tired now.  I liked the way Rick Remender first wrote Ian (Captain America’s adopted son from Dimension Z) but he was never given enough space to become his own character before getting sucked down the event rabbit hole, and so we are still getting soliloquies and speeches about being the son of Steve Rogers on almost every page.  

Morning Glories #48This might be the most momentous issue of Morning Glories we’ve seen in quite some time, as Casey debates her rival for class president (there are some great moments in this debate), and a few other characters put their own plans in motion.  This book has been pretty slow this ‘season’, but it’s now building towards a pretty big conclusion, making it more exciting and unpredictable.  Now, if it would only be more regular as well…

Providence #5 – I’m increasingly conflicted in my thoughts about this series.  On the one hand, I’ve enjoyed the main story, wherein Alan Moore has a journalist, Robert Black, travel around New England researching secret societies and arcane nonsense for a novel he wants to write, but on the other, I’m finding the way that Moore revisits every event in the comic through Black’s journal in the back pages, to be incredibly tedious.  Sure, it would be easy to skip over that stuff, but there are often clues to what’s going on in the comic that are likely important, plus it clarifies things that Jacen Burrows’s art leaves ambiguous.  An example of this is the way in which a rented room Black stays in is supposed to have an uneven ceiling.  In the comics pages, it looks like a spacious, level room, but the journal pages describe it as buckling in places, and riddled with rat holes.  Now, it’s possible that Black’s mind is going, and Burrows is showing us the reality, but another character makes reference to the uneven ceiling, leaving me to suspect that the problem lies in Burrows’s art.  Either way, it’s becoming more clear that the story is building to something interesting, and if I knew anything about HP Lovecraft, I’d probably have a sense of what that is.  

Rasputin #9Every month, I hope that the new issue of Rasputin will be more substantial than the last, and every month, I’m disappointed.  I like this series a lot, but so little happens in each issue that it’s very frustrating.  This one shows us how one of Rasputin’s friends became immortal, and then shows us fighting him on the night on which Rasputin’s friends tried to murder him.  None of the issue takes place in the present, which has been the most interesting part of this series.

Revival #33 – Most of this issue focuses on the Revivers that are being held in a government-run detention, including Martha, and this gives us readers a chance to better understand what is really going on with them.  The General in charge of the facility gets a lot of the spotlight this month too, making her a more complete character.  I love this series, because Tim Seeley and Mike Norton continue to move it in unexpected directions, and to make their story richer and more nuanced.  This is a series more people should be reading and talking about.

Sex #24 – Sex continues to be the best series Joe Casey has ever written, as he has Simon Cooke decide to tackle head on the issue of the government operative (if that’s what he is) who has been stalking him, while Keenan’s undercover work with the street gang The Breaks becomes more complicated.  This issue’s cover is an homage to the old character pages of Marvel Universe, and therefore serves as a good way to bring new readers up to speed.  If you are completely bored with what DC has done with Batman, you might really enjoy Sex (man that sentence sounds funny, but you know what I mean).

Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses #8One thing that David Lapham has not made clear in this arc of his wonderful crime series, is just why anyone would feel loyalty towards Beth.  This issue focuses on Kretchmeyer, who is brought into Orson and Beth’s plans, but not all the way in.  This leaves him suspicious that there is more going on (which there is), and so he sets out to discover the truth of things.  This series has always been very strong in terms of character, and I like the way this arc has branched into fleshing out secondary characters while keeping the main story moving forward.

They’re Not Like Us #8 – Heasley, the guy who trained The Voice, has shown up at Tabitha’s door, and they spend most of the issue talking about their abilities, Tabitha’s plans, and what they could accomplish (as well as about the value and power of true love).  The guys in the group get into a bar fight.  Reading this summary makes the comic sound a little boring, but Neal Stephenson’s writing on this book is so good that it stays gripping throughout.  Simon Gane is doing great work with the art here, and I’m very interested in seeing where this book is headed.  The X-Men vibe on this issue is huge.

Comics I Would Have Bought if Comics Weren’t So Expensive:

American Vampire Second Cycle #10

Batman Annual #4

Crossed Badlands #86

Mercury Heat #4

Mutafukaz Vol. 1

Sandman Overture #6

SHIELD #10

Stringers #2

Bargain Comics:

Inhumans: Attilan Rising #3&4 – I guess one way that we can prove that Marvel is really elevating the Inhumans above most of their other properties would be to look at the treatment they receive during this Secret Wars tie-in miniseries.  The characters we associate with the group are split between two factions, and they actually interact with the rest of Battleworld, engaging with other domains.  Black Bolt even goes so far as to question Doctor Doom’s legitimacy as a ruler and God, which makes this a lot more interesting (even if it is still completely inconsequential to what is happening in the actual event).  Charles Soule’s star continues to rise at Marvel.

Master of Kung Fu #1-4 – This four-issue miniseries that ostensibly ties in to Secret Wars is a very good read.  Sure, the characters have little to know relation to how they’ve ever been portrayed in the Marvel Universe (including Shang-Chi, the main character), and the story is just an Elseworlds Kung Fu take on the Marvel Universe, but it’s a very solid comic.  Writer W. Haden Blackman has some fun with the structure of the story, and artists Dalibor Talajic and Goran Sudzuka do an amazing job.  I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to, and I’d consider it one of my favourite Secret Wars comics.

Mercury Heat #1I liked the Free Comic Book Day preview of this series, and find this first issue to be just as interesting.  Kieron Gillen is writing this series, about a young woman desperate to work as a police despite the fact that her personality profile suggests that she would not be good for the job.  She moves to a human colony on Mercury to live this dream, and immediately finds herself wrapped up in a suspicious death case that has people trying to kill her.  In Gillen’s future, all jobs are temporary, and bid for on something called the Grapevine.  It’s an interesting extrapolation of our current temporary contract-loving economy, and Gillen does not make the future look too bright.  Because this is an Avatar comic, someone gets their head squashed, and it is exactly that type of thing that makes me reluctant to add this title to my pullfile.

Robin: Son of Batman #1 – I wasn’t too sure what to expect of Patrick Gleason’s writing in this new, Damian Wayne-centred comic.  Gleason is a terrific artist, and shows himself to be a decent writer.  He is revisiting some of the work he did with Peter Tomasi on Batman and Robin in the earliest days of the New 52, as the daughter of Nobody starts looking for revenge, just as Damian feels the need to atone for some of his sins from the period before he met his father.  There is a lot of potential in this book, and were it not a $4 comic, I’d have added it to my pull-file list already.

The Week in Graphic Novels:

Crossed Volume 2: Family Values – I was curious to see what David Lapham’s work was like in his first foray into the Crossed world.  He gives us a story about a deeply religious (and therefore twisted) family that has to hold out against the end of the world.  Much of it works, and because it’s both Lapham and Crossed, much of it is disturbing.  The artist, Javier Barreno, has apparently never seen an infant before, and instead of Googling images of them, chose to study Renaissance art for visual reference.

Escapo

by Paul Pope

Paul Pope is not a very prolific cartoonist, and I find that there are often more older pieces by him that I wasn’t aware of that keep resurfacing or showing up almost at random.  Escapo, the 2014 book published by Z2, collects two short stories from the 90s, and gives them the deluxe treatment, with colours by Shay Plummer, in a nice hardcover volume.

Escapo is an escape artist who works in a travelling circus.  He has feelings for an acrobat, has a bit of a facial deformity or wound, and some self-doubt.

In one story, he tries to get with the acrobat, and in the other, he ends up making a deal with the devil when it looks like he might not be able to escape from a water-filled deathtrap.

There’s not a lot of story here, but there is a great deal of big, exciting Paul Pope pages, and that’s what I bought this book for.  Pope is a dynamic and exciting cartoonist, and this is a very cool looking book.  I’m not sure it would be worth the cover price of $25, but I paid less than half of that, so it’s all good.

I do wish we would see more work from this amazing artist.

Kill Shakespeare Vol. 4: The Mask of NightHere is a series that should have ended after its initial twelve-comic run.  This latest volume (I’ve heard of no more books planned from the Kill Shakespeare camp) has Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, and Shakespeare captured by pirates who debate joining the Prodigal cause, until they are attacked by a superior vessel captained by the cannibal grandson of Titus Andronicus.  The central characters barely register (I’m not even sure that Shakespeare speaks once), as the story shifts to the pirate Cesario and his lover Viola.  These are interesting characters (aided by Andy Belanger’s awesome design for Cesario’s mask), but the story itself is pretty flat.  In fact, the only reason I kept reading was because of just how good an artist Belanger is.  Were there to be a fifth volume of this book, I doubt I’d read it.

 

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