Welcome back.
Apologies for missing last week, but I was out of town. Thanks to Manolis Vamvounis for providing the rather awesome logo up above. And to think that all it took was hooking him up with some guy at the gay bar… no, not Will, somebody else…
The reviews this week are going to be brief and forgettable, by the way. I am so not in the frame of mind to do anything other than lie in bed and eat ice cream and be asleep. Unfortunately, if I miss more than two weeks in a row then Daron cries and crank-calls me in the middle of the night, sobbing into his eleventh shot of cheap bourbon.
So let’s not disappoint him and his darkly alcoholic, overlordic ways…
EX MACHINA #19:
“March to War, Chapter 3”
Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Drawn by Tony Harris
Inked by Tom Feister
Published by WildStorm
This was originally due out back in January, and to be honest I can’t even remember when issue #18 actually made it onto the shelves. The plot had something to do with Mayor Hundred responding to rallies in New York that protested the war in Iraq, which in all probability mirrored his personal sentiments about the confrontation but were still politically at odds with his professional situation. Somewhere in the midst of this there was a racially-motivated murder of a taxi driver of Middle Eastern heritage, while the Mayor’s intern Journal wound up in intensive care as a result of trouble at one of the rallies she attended. Now the Mayor has to try and keep everything as calm and ordered as he possibly can whilst pleasing the interests of many various ethnic groups in the New York area and convince his deputy Wylie that he should not resign his position. It’s all very Vaughaneville or Ex Machian or however you’d like to best describe it, as immaculately and concisely delivered as ever by the loving touch of Harris (the two-page meditation sequence is particularly impressive). If you’ve liked the series so far then you will certainly like this issue. However, you could probably like it a bit more than I do if you can get by the pretentious nature of the characters without wincing. I know, I know, it’s a political comic book, there’s no reason not to expect them to be high on their own fumes but… well, sometimes the Vaughan approach is palatable and other times you just want to indulge in the scathing, accurate kneejerk criticism of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, you know?
Score: B
INFINITE CRISIS #6:
“Touchdown”
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Phil Jiminez (w/Jerry Ordway, George Perez & Ivan Reis, among others)
Published by DC
INNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNFINNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITE CRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS…
You have to imagine saying that in a Howard Finkel voice to get the full effect. You know, like when he used to introduce The Ulllllllllllllllllllllllllllltimmmmmmmmate Woyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh? Gotta love The Fink.
Anyway, it would be impossible to cover all that happens in this issue in a single wee blog review in our new shiny format. Look out for one of those Nexus Focus things to get all in-depth and informative involving the ins-and-outs of this one. The major development is that the hundreds of thousands of Earths that have appeared in the space surrounding Earth-DC (for want of a better name) by Alexander Luthor are indeed dispersed with by the collective actions of our heroes, most of whom get some lovely character moments along the way. Take Martian Manhunter, for example. Throughout the majority of this event the lynchpin of the Justice League has been left on the sidelines, marginalized by Alexander and Superboy Prime. In this issue he re-establishes himself in just three panels – “I am called the Martian Manhunter. I am Mars’ sole survivor. There is a reason for that.” he says as he sends Prime flying with a vicious left hook. This is the kind of concise characterization that Grant Morrison has been making a staple of the DC diet in recent times, with SEVEN SOLDIERS and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN hopefully providing an example for the rest of the line to follow. Geoff Johns, equally talented in a strikingly different manner, uses this tactic superbly here. Everybody gets their moment in the sun – Black Adam, Connor Kent, Power Girl, Mister Terrific, Faust, everybody. This event was billed as being epic and has long since met expectations, if not surpassed them. DC really does deserve credit for accomplishing such a tremendous feat, minor traditional quibbles over scheduling and crossover fatigue aside.
Then there is the death of a fairly major character that closes this book and also removes one of the two villains from the scene. As far as expendable characters are concerned, this was probably the best choice they could have made as far as tolerable feather-ruffling was concerned. The clues in the series leading up to this character’s demise have become only too clear to see in retrospect, which is exactly the kind of writing that we like to see. The clues have also been there for all to see in the recent batch of One Year Later titles, not to mention the horror-movie laws of survival laid out for us in Scream (no sex, no drink/drugs, no coming back after saying “I’ll be right back”). Make no mistake about it; this Crisis has been one long horror movie for the DCU heroes and villains. May there be light at the end of their tunnels…
Score: A
MARVEL TEAM-UP #19:
“1991: A ‘Freedom Ring’ Prelude”
Written by Robert Kirkman
Drawn by Cory Walker
Inked by Cliff Rathburn
Published by Marvel
It’s hard to know what to make of this title really. There hasn’t been any official word either way, but I would imagine that the stories are meant to be set thoroughly outside of any official continuity. Since the last couple of tales involved Arana dying and Spider-Man teaming up with Invincible, this is hardly surprising. The latest issue takes things in a bit of an odd direction though, with Kirkman taking Cable and Wolverine as they were back in 1991 (real time) and telling a story that could easily have been published by Marvel that year. This means that Wolverine is in the brown costume and spends an awful lot of his time hanging out with Jubilee for some reason, while Cable is in full-on armament and shoulder-pad mode and has precious little to do with Deadpool. In fact, he has precious little to do with anybody and mostly hangs around in his own time, conversing with the super-computer he has dubbed The Professor and being helped out around the house by robots he has named after the X-Men. If this means he can tell Logan to unblock his U-bend then, well, that wouldn’t be too surprising really. Anyway, the two (really three, since Jubilee is there, but we’ll pretend otherwise for our own sakes) meet up in the 1991 incarnation of the Marvel Universe and have a little brawl with Hydra over a fragment of a Cosmic Cube (what else?) that Nick Fury has been trying to reclaim lately. What is rather surprising is that Kirkman plays this completely straight rather than going for the cheap laughs that could so easily be made in this Anti-Liefeld day and age. This is not the impression that the solicitation text for this issue gave me, so perhaps there was a minor communications breakdown somewhere along the proverbial production line. Turning this series into a way of telling stories with certain incarnations of certain characters is an interesting idea. I’m sure that there will soon be a market for seeing Spider-Man in the black costume or She-Hulk in the Fantastic Four, if there isn’t already, and a series like this is a clean and easy way of making such things happen. Unfortunately, due to low sales, the book is almost certainly going to be cancelled once the “Freedom Ring” story wraps up. That would be a shame… but not as much as we might have expected.
Score: C
THE O.M.A.C. PROJECT INFINITE CRISIS SPECIAL:
“The Lazarus Protocol”
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Jesus Saiz
Published by DC
If you didn’t know already, you should read this one after INFINITE CRISIS #6. Then again, if you’re reading the reviews of either book before actually reading them then you have no grounds to complain about spoilers. Honestly, why would you need a review of those books to make your mind up about buying them by this point?
Am I talking myself out of a job? Hmm, anyway, IC #6 shows what happened to the hunting party that went to combat the Brother Eye satellite (inc. Batman, Booster Gold, the new Blue Beetle, Jon Stewart, Hal Jordan, Green Arrow and more). This book goes into the aftermath of their trip in more detail, with Batman and the other heroes bowing out in the early stages and handing control of the clean-up operation to Sasha Bordeaux, the Checkmate agent who had been turned into some kind of advanced O.M.A.C. by Maxwell Lord (in reality looking more like the woman at the end of Superman 3 that scares the babejus out of me). Checkmate itself is in a bit of a shambles, as you would expect after the Black King went into business for himself and wound up being killed on camera by Wonder Woman. By the end of the issue, however, Checkmate does indeed have a new Black King (the title is merely a half-truth), a superhero representative with an allegedly unsavoury past, and a final resolution to the O.M.A.C. Project and Brother Eye that takes Bordeaux’s life in yet another unexpected direction. The purpose of this special is of course to promote the upcoming CHECKMATE ongoing by Rucka and Saiz, which is beginning to resemble Rucka’s own QUEEN & COUNTRY by way of BIRDS OF PREY. If that sounds at all like something you would consider reading then I would urge you to give this one-shot a, um, shot. It is certainly the most adept of all these Crisis related minis at providing a freestanding story. Personally, I prefer to keep my DCU superhero antics and my spy/thriller comics more emphatically separate. Since I’m only up to the fourth collection of 100 BULLETS, there’s no need for me to add CHECKMATE to my list anytime soon – though it is clearly going to be good enough to earn a solid recommendation.
Score: B
