Welcome to the 90th instalment of the new Leave Your Spandex @t the Door! Wednesday is Comic Book Day in the U.S., and LYS@D is here again with this week’s Early Bird Reviews, so you can catch up on what rocks and what flops this week before you head to your local LCS! Many thanks to Travelling Man Manchester for providing the advance look copies for review! As many of you have noticed, the advance reviews have been scanter the past few weeks, as a result of DC’s halt on advance retailer copies.
In other news, LYS@D now has its own MySpace at www.myspace.com/lysad , so be sure to drop by and add me to your friends list!
Panel of the week:
Last week’s winner with a landslide 59% over the other two panels is Chris Giarusso’s Mini Avengers from Marvel Adventures: Spider-man!
Three more panels are contesting for your favour this week, the winner as always will be announced in next week’s column.
Panel A:
…ask a stupid Question. (52 week twenty-three)
Panel B:
…believe me, we do (Stan Lee meets Dr. Strange)
Panel C:
…well, that explains a lot! (Wolverine: Origins #7)
Wallpaper of the week:
From the just released cover to the 2nd oversized Runaways Hardcover collection
Newspaper clips:
ITEM: Andi Watson previews 25 pages from ‘Princess By Midnight’ in his blog
ITEM: NEXTWAVE is cancelled (?)
ITEM: Peter David talks F’N Spider-man at Newsarama
ITEM: Seven Soldiers preview at Newsarama!
ITEM: Naruto wins Quill award (Pulse link)
ITEM: Freshmen return! Preview pages at Newsarama
ITEM: Gail Simone interview about Secret Six
The week in (advance) review: Subterannean Hairy Grrls, Mutated Lizards, Gangster Goblins, Soul-trading Demon Gods, Horny Teens, Eye-stabbing Cherry Girls and Bullimic Vampires!
What Were They Thinking: Monster Mash-Up
Boom Studios
Writer: Jose Casey, Kevin Church, Johanna Stokes, Keith Giffen
Artists: planning legal action as we speak
Review Content: Boom Studios’ remixed comics return triumphantly with a new issue focusing on”¦ monster comics! Is nothing sacred?
The directive is simple: find some poor man’s labour of love, make sure it’s under the public domain, re-write the dialogue to include as much sexual innuendo and bestiality references as possible and cash in your cheque. This mont’s unfortunates:
Barry’s Secret Shame,: Joe Casey opens up this remixed anthology with the story of Barry, a diver who must deal with his underwater bestiality (fishiality?) kink. And this mess is all over a Ditko ‘classic’ no less! Love it!
Hairy Grrls: Some guys like it hairy. But, as in female and hairy. And big-footed. Rod is such a guy in Giffen and Churc’s remix of a Sasquatch story into a bizarre love hunt. This is my favourite remix of the issue, mostly because of the rich (sic) characterisation given to the SHG (Single Hairy Grrl) and the narrato’s active involvement in the commentary of the characters, situations and even panel layouts in the story. Between of the two, I can’t decide who was more annoying (and funnier).
Hats Off: Johanna Stokes, co-creator of the sci-fi show Eureka tries her hand on a spicy re-mix featuring”¦ hat envy of all things the resulting cocktail feels a bit too word-heavy, diluting the actual gags per word balloon by 1:100 (and that’s the last barman metaphor I’ll ever use in my life). It’s still a clever stroke to take advantage of the random changes of hats, pipes etc in a comic and use it as the base of a remix. This one could have worked much better with a larger font, is all I’m saying. We love you too, Johanna, don’t cry.
Astro Alien Dog: Kevin Churc’s lazy streak caught up to him in this one, as he simply pastes deliberately obvious post-it words over a monster dog-hunting story in Australia, to make it into a SPACE dog-hunting story in SPACE. Kidsm try this at home!
Manlust: now, we’re talking! Church (again?) retells a monster-hunting expedition as a Brokeback Mountain doodle of unexplored sexualities and facial hair fascination, starring Dirk Rocket and Rick Beardly. If only we could remix the art as well ;) .
Flipper_Boy_47: That Church guy also closes the issue, with a one-page excerpt of a sea-monste’s web blog. Euch.
Not the re-mixed Odyssey, but essential toilet reading!
Grade: B
Amazing Spider-Girl #1
Marvel
Writer: Tom DeFalco
Artists: Ron Frenz
Review Content: Spider-Girl is the little Marvel title that could.
After its umpteenth threat to cancellation, Marvel finally went ahead and snuffed the title. Fans everywhere panicked and cried, while the cynics couldn’t believe the plug was finally pulled from the long-suffering (sales wise) book; boy, were we right! Only few months later, Spider-Girl relaunches with much fanfare and a new #1, a new class and a new look for May! This issue along with last week’s #0 will be more than enough to get any new readers up to speed on May’s world, as deFalco makes sure to make this new series as approachable as the last #1 issue.
A brief intro to the book: Spider-Girl started off from a single issue of What If? spotlighting an alternate future reality where Spider-man’s daughter had survived childbirth and had grown up to be a high-schooler and a crime-fighter like her dad, while spider-man himself had retired after an accident and joined the police force. The issue was so popular, it spawned an ongoing Spider-Girl series and a slew of satellite titles featuring that future’s Avengers, Juggernaut, FF and more. In the last issue of that series, Spider-Girl quit the webs and decided to be just normal everyday May Parker. Much like her numerous cancellations through the years, I’m willing to put good money down that this is not bloody likely to stick.
So what is different this time? May has grown older, let her hair down and is enjoying life as a high-schooler, making friends and running for school president. She has a new boyfriend (Flash Thomspon and Black Cat’s son), her friends are drawing their own version of her comic starring Spider-Girl from Spidera, and a familiar spidey-villain is waiting in the wings! Even in the first issue, May is tempted to put the webs back on, but instead opts for a less traditional way to help out someone who comes to her in need.
The big appeal of the title isn’t the superheroics, but the world that deFalco has created for May, following the example of Spiderman’s adventures in the 60s and 70s but not copying from it. Unlike her dad as a teenager, May is very popular in school and doesn’t have to keep secrets from her parents about her secret identity. Like her dad though, she keeps bumping into a colourful cast of villains, and going through prospective relationships with alarming speed! MJ ages perfectly into the role of the mom with modern sensitivities who plays best friend to her daughter and oversees proudly from behind the curtains at her first kiss with the new boyfriend.
Ron Frenz returns as well, as the series regular artist. Like any self-respecting heroine, May changes haircuts at every important passage in her life, and the new longer hair will take a few issues to get used to, but they definitely suit her new more mature and experienced outlook. She now looks even more like my favourite TV star Veronica Mars, in both tone and attitude! Frenz’s art passed through a distracting angular phase in the previous title which drew away some readers who were accustomed to Olliffe’s more timid style. Thankfully, he’s now settled in a more appropriate style for May, and even pokes some fun at his older work with the opening shot of a very ‘super-heroic’ Saviuk-esque spider-girl and spider-man team-up from Jimmy’s fancomic.
Every time I think I’ve fallen out of the spider-girl habit, they keep pulling me back in to her webs! I’ll be here for the long run this time.
Grade: B
X-Men First Class #2
Marvel
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artists: Roger Cruz
Review Content: John Byrne must be going red by now.
The reason the classic creator broke any ties with Marvel was the cancellation of his vanity project ‘X-Men: The Hidden Years; when Joe Quesada trimmed the fat around the X-titles as soon as he took control of the company. The justification was that the franchise was already spread out thin enough as it was, without titles around adding to the past continuity.
5 years later, the X-titles must seem pretty together for the Marvel execs (there’s only about 6-7 core x-men titles), so they decide we do need more x-men team line-ups; enter First Class, a continuity-defying look at the original X-Men’s (Beast, angel, iceman, Cyclops, marvel girl) first adventures as a team.
I won’t lie; this is a very enjoyable read, a back-to-basics adventure pitting the x-students against the classic spidey-villain, the Lizard. The Professor and Dr Curt Connors are retconned into being in the same undergraduate class. when Connors goes missing, the Professor tasks Angel and Beast to track down the out-of-control reptile while sending Scott, Jean and bobby to the beach for some R&R.
The inter-team dynamics are given a freshing-up for a new set of readers, nevertheless they still feel dated, as this isn’t an ultimization of the book but simply a flashback series. Parker strikes the ball out of the park in most of the character scenes, like Scott’s self-important and patronising attitude towards his team, overthinking how much they actually need him and made fun of. In other scenes he simply loses the bat, as in the case of Professor-X sending Iceman away so that Scott can make the moves on Jean alone, while giving him an astral projection wink. I won’t even begin to count how wrong and corny that scene rings, not only for the relationship between the professor and the students back then, but even in modern continuity where Scott hasn’t outgrown his need to call him ‘professor’ after so many years. Certainly not the chummy attitude that would lead to Xavier setting his students up for a romantic beach date. In the end it’s hard to stay mad at Parker for that, when he follows it up with one of the single most touching Scott-Jean moments outside the Phoenix sagas, when Jean helps Scott let loose with his optic blasts across the open ocean. It’s a rare talent for an x-writer to portray this romance properly.
As always I’ll finish the review with the artist bit. Roger Cruz used to be a favourite artist of mine in the mid-90s before I realised he was simply aping the hot artist flavour of the month, switching from Lee to Madureira and Bachalo. There was always a nuance of his own style underneath it all, and thankfully he’s given the chance to breathe his own air in this series. It’s not as dashing as his Bachalo impersonation, but I prefer seeing his own creative voice for once.
Grade: C
Runaways #21
Marvel
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artists: Mike Norton
Review Content: The conclusion of ‘Dead means Dead’ finds Chase in the Gibborim dimension with Lotus trying to strike a deal to bring his dead girlfriend to life, while the rest of the team face off against a towering monster who is trampling L.A. and deal with it in classic Buffy-fashion.
There’s only 3 issues left to his run, but BKV continues with business like usual: strong characterisation, quips and surprising character moments. Chase is faced of the dilemma of killing an innocent to bring back his loved Gert. A new couple is finally formed in the team (no surprise there) and Molly is still going on a caffeine-high! I hope the new romance proves more convincing than how it has been dealt with so far. Gert’s involvement with Chase in volume 1 had been completely unexpected but it worked so well as the two characters had amazing chemistry together. With Gert’s death the only couple in the series, Carolina and the genre-shifting Skrull always struck as a forced pairing, with Carolina falling conveniently in the arms of a man who could pretend he’s a woman as a safety blanket. since their return they haven’t shared an intimate moment, which is something I hope is either addressed or amended in future issues.
Mike Norton is filling in for Adrian Alphona between arcs, managing to juggle his monthly Marvel Adventures issues with regular fill-ins and still maintaining a high quality in the artwork. Norton’s still not up to par with Alphona who’s quickly reached superstar levels, but he’s a good fit for a teenage title, and I hope he’s soon given a high profile book of his own to play around with.
With the current quality of the title, I’m contemplating Whedon coming on after Vaughan as a negative thing. I hope he at least comes back to visit from time to time and check up on his kids.
Grade: B
Cable/Deadpool #33
Marvel
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artists: Reilly Brown
Review Content: G.W. Bridge has assembled a new Six-Pack team to go after Cable, including a reluctant Domino, the irrelevant Anaconda and a bunch of other guys I’ve already forgotten. The surprise sixth member of the team is a big spoiler I guess as it’s saved for the final page, but there’s little punch to the big reveal after what happened in the title during Civil War.
C/D is one of the marvel titles who most benefited from the Civil War tie-in, jumping 135% up in sales with the crossover issues! Now that Cable has bowed out of the Rebels’ side as of issue 4, it’s business back to usual for the Terrible Twosome. Fabian Nicieza wisely tries to make this issue as reader-friendly as possible in hopes of retaining the new readers, but fails due to overzealousness. He’s obviously very proud of his new status-quo for Cable as the president of a European country called Rumekistan (as if Magneto, Panther, Doom and Black Bolt hadn’t stretched that sub-genre thin enough) and the cast he has assembled around him. In an effort to bring new readers up to date he throws every single supporting character in the game even for a panel while throwing complicated full names and rushed plot summaries and references to the new reader. I hadn’t read the title before the CW tie-in, so I can subjectively say as a new reader I was intimidated by the continuity this title is dragging around. This issue’s story could have been easily told without more than half of the assembled cast, or at least without having to retell all their origins to the reader.
The only thing saving the issue from a lower grade is the art by newcomer Reilly Brown. He’s a beautiful mix of Manuel Garcia and Tim Sale. His figures and linework are clean-cut, but the faces of the characters and the shading remind me a lot of Sale’s allure. With the title struggling for a permanent art team since Zircher’s re-assignment, I hope this is Reilly’s big break and a stepping stone for bigger projects.
Grade: C
Last week:
Pirates of Coney Island #1
Image
Writer: Rick Spears
Artists: Vasilis Lolos
Review Content: i’ll try and make the following review as ojective as possible, although it’s going to be coloured by my ‘Greek Pride’ over seeing a young greek artist (Vasilis Lolos) finally make it big in the U.S. comics market.
Lolos has made a name for himself in Greece through his comics work in anthologies like the weekly ‘9’ supplement to one of the biggest circulation newspapers. He was talented and fortunate enough to get a chance to work abroad which he has seized with envious results. Lolos had already stood out from the rest of the current generation greek artists because of his daring signature style which dared to be ‘punk’ instead of following the prevalent ‘learn to draw the marvel way’ style among greek amateur artists.
The story follows Patrick, a homeless teen as he arrives to Coney Island on the train only to be welcomed by the violent female gang of the Cherries who are out for blood. Patrick won’t make it out of that first encounter ‘unscarred’, but luck will get him close to the Pirates of Coney Island and revenge.
Pirates is one of the most impressive books put out by Image this year, along with Fell, Phonogram and Casanova (only pricier). It’s a meaty read, with an extra page count of 28 total which allows it to breathe more; it opens up leisurely with a word-less sequence so well-paced I can feel the drums thump the beat as the panels flow. The character designs are both grounded and out of this world at the same time. Lolos isn’t afraid to make his female characters unattractive in the traditional sense while still sexy in their composure.
Lolos’ colouring is perhaps even more important in the great final result than the pencils, using a series of scene-setting pallettes with high-saturation contrasted colours. The issueopens up at night with a moody purple pallette which gives way to the bright pink and blue of the ambush scene with the Cherries. Then the scene changes to Sal’s pizzarie, with a warm orange pallette which gradually grows blood red when Sal gets a violent visit of his own. The issue closes with the next day dawn and a pale yellow sky dulling all the colour-tones into soft pal hues.
The final word: so exciting and colourful, that it comes with an ecstasy-induced seizure warning!
Grade: A
For more on Pirates of Coney Island, check our interviews with Vasilis Lolos and Rick Spears
Gen13 v.4 #1
Wildstorm
Writer: Gail Simone
Artists: Talent Caldwell
Review Content: After a long run of successful (and not so) runs, Gen13 gets a re-boot under the capable hands of Simone and Talent Caldwell. Unlike the other Worldstorm titles which seem to be acknowledging past continuity, Gen13 starts from scratch, by reintroducing the 5 kids before their first meeting and the formation of their team. They don’t seem very different from previous incarnations, and Simone is purposefully depending on their recognisability as she doesn’t re-introduce them in more than broad strokes (geek turned beauty, trailer trash, eco-lesbian, brain-dead skater, and whatever Burnout is supposed to be).
Too much of the issue is spent on the chilling opening sequence, featuring a gruesome date-gone-wrong with a gen-active teenager manifesting powers while I.O. are commenting and a group of internet posters who funded the operation are web-chatting about the going-ons. It’s a smart bit of comedy mixed with gore, but the mistakes in colouring and lettering make it impossible to follow without severe eye-strain. The book then shifts focus to the kids who each get a one-page introduction and then find themselves together for the first time before the issue closes. (sidenote: Gail, stop ripping off Liefeld’s Cap, it’s unseemly! ;-) )
Talent Caldwell is a new name to me, but he has an ‘Image’ style that’s different enough from the norm to make an impression (think Humberto Ramos meets Arthur Adams).
For the final word, this isn’t Gail’s finest effort, and I wouldn’t imagine picking up the follow-up issue if I was a new reader and wasn’t familiar with the characters’ and the writer’s potential, as there is no important hook for the reader to grab onto by the end of the issue.
Grade: B
Dork #11
SLG
Writer/Artist: Evan Dorkin
Review Content: Now that’s what I call funny!
A few years in the making, Dork #11 is the cure to depression and de-com-pression! With 26 pages of small 3 panel strips and one-panel jokes, it averages 18 to 28 panels per page! it’s the longest pamphlet you will read this year and the unashamedly best toilet read.
There is no interconnecting theme or plot between he self-contained strips and gags, apart from some repeating strip titles, like:
*the Man Upstairs
*101 practical uses for James Joyce’s Ulysses
*Truly Understanding Comics
*The shitty witch and the crappy cat
*Hank Jenkins, chronic masturbator
*so and so, the world’s worst…
*the case against intelligent design
Despite what someone would think, good comedy in comics isn’t an easy feat; comedy relies a lot on good timing, which is tough to control element on the printed comics page. Other writers who attempt humour in modern American comics fall flat on their face and are lucky to get a few giggles. Readers of newspaper comic strips will be more aware of this. Evan Dorkin, on the other hand, had me laughing my ass off for a full 40 minutes (which is how long it took me to pore through this comic), often grasping for breath. The jokes range from the obscure, to the obviously geek references, the slapstick and the downright genius. In a perfect world newspapers would run only Little Cthulu strips and Hank Jenkins’ adventures :)
I’ve included my 9 favourite gags from the issue. Whether you love or hate these, just remember that it’s as good as it gets inside! ;-)
DISCLAIMER: Dork is criminally absent from this week’s Panel Poll, because I simply couldn’t choose my one favourite panel from it to use, and it just wouldn’t be gentlemanly towards the other panels to compete against it. That’s all:
Grade: A
Previews of the week:
Elephantmen #4
Image Comics
story by RICHARD STARKINGS
art by TOM SCIOLI
cover LADRÖNN
flip cover BRIAN BOLLAND
“HAZARDOUS MATERIALS, WOUNDED ANIMALS”
As Hip Flask and Ebony Hide recover from their injuries, Miki stops by with a bunch of grapes and learns about Tusk and the torturous world of MAPPO.
32 pg – FC – $2.99
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5
Girls #18
Image Comics
story by JOSHUA LUNA
art & cover by JONATHAN LUNA
If you build it, they will come.
32 pg – FC – $2.99
RETAILER WARNING: MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5
Noble Causes #24
Image Comics
NOBLE CAUSES #24
written by JAY FAERBER
art by JON BOSCO
cover by KHARY RANDOLPH
Race’s quest to regain his powers leads him down a dark path. Will Liz follow?
32 pg – FC – $3.50
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5
CURRENTLY
Listening to:
Lily Allen (this Saturday LIVE in Manchester!)
in the cinemas
Devil Wears Prada
on TV
Ugly Betty
reading
STICKY
Aaaaand that’s a wrap for this week! I’m waiting your comments and feedback through email to Manolis@gmail.com. If you self-publish your own comics or represent an Indy comics company, add me to your press release list, and I will run your news in this space every week.
Manolis Vamvounis
a.k.a. Dr. Dooplove
