The Anti-Nexus

Reviews


52 WEEK TWENTY-FIVE:
Written by“¦.Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid
Breakdowns by“¦.Keith Giffen
Pencils by“¦.Many
Inks by“¦.Ample
Colours by“¦.Alex Sinclair
Letters by“¦.Nobody?
Edits by“¦.Stephen Wacker
Published by DC

“Hard Times”

DAY #176 – In Gotham, some Fat Tony wannabe calling himself Bruno Mannheim pays homage to the wonders of crime and waxes lyrical about his intention to overrun the city with the help of Intergang. Good thing that Batman’s off on a cruise with two strapping young men, otherwise he’d be in trouble. Now he just has to deal with a lesbian and, really, who doesn’t? Other than Bjork, I mean. LAWSUIT! Ahem. So, yeah, some peculiar looking person called Mirage is shown a ‘bible of crime’ – a stone book allegedly used by Cain to slay Abel – and gets his head literally squished for daring to disrespect it. Yes, Bruno squishes his head. But this is the lighter, fluffier, post-post-Crisis DCU”¦ isn’t it?

Oh, like anybody even cares anymore.

There’s a brief attempt at describing Bruno’s back-story but it’s so vague you could be forgiven for thinking it was written by the Anti-Tolkein. LAWSUIT! But, yeah, basically he’s running Gotham now. Or for at least the next twenty pages.

DAY #178 – In Boston, a so-stereotypical-it-hurts suburb has its trick-or-treating interrupted by something large and red and pointy calling itself Sabbac. Captain Marvel Junior, if that is in fact his name, and Mary Marvel are trying to fend it off when the Black Marvels turn up, minus Luke Cage. They traveled some distance to be there, but that’s nothing compared to the Proclaimers, who traveled some 500 miles – and then 500 more – whilst havering – in order to do something involving a bad Johnny Depp movie. Haud yer wheest, lad.

The Blacks win. The Aryan Marvels do nothing. Somebody calls an apple nature’s toothbrush, which is rather peculiar. They’re nature’s candy. Nature’s toothbrush is water. And bamboo sticks. Try it, kids!

Elsewhere, Ralph Dibny and his Helmet walk around some place with a lot of fire and a lack of Health & Safety in order to look at people suffering eternal torment without doing anything. Perhaps they can sing Queen songs and mock them with strutting whilst they are at it. Oh, I strut you bad, baby. Helmet makes a lot of noise about someone called Felix Faust, who gets ample flashback and origin recap time but then just has his soul disintegrate. We ARE the champions. Then Helmet says Ralph must return to the land of the living for his first task on the road to getting Sue back. Under pressure. It does make the fact that they stretched his journey into Elsewhere out for so long without doing anything with it other than talking about off-panel events rather odd. Those were the days of our lives.

No, Meat Load! I mean, Load! I mean, Loaf, dammit! Paradise”¦ by the Dashboard Light”¦ good times”¦


“Haud yer wheest, lad.”


Back in New York, Lutho’s Infinity Inc turn up to counter an attempted bank robbery by Tigress and Icicle, he said, pretending to know who Tigress and Icicle were. Are. Ooh, tense correction”¦ how”¦ tense. The fight ends quickly. Mention is made of somebody turning into a giant gorilla. All the good stuff is off-panel, it would seem. This makes me sad. So did that last episode of The Royle Family“¦ but that was in a good way. I like using these bold tag things. They‘re effective.

Meanwhile, some guy called Alan talks to some guy called Michael. Summat(*) about Checkmate(**). That’s all I’ve got.

DAY #177 – On Oolong Island, which still hasn’t managed to out-charm KooeyKooeyKooey in the “weird name for an island” stakes, a couple of the whacky Frinks debate the merits of constructing for Intergang as Bruno turns up to talk to a big giant egg with a face. Yup. Not a painted face. Not the Kinder egg. Not even Treasure Island Dizzy, though you can bet your arse that I wish I still had my homemade Treasure Island Dizzy comic books from way back when. LAWSUIT!

And it’s Nightwing’s turn for the origin treatment. No mention of Bludhaven or the rape, but Dan Didio does appear in disguise as a Monitor to tell Dick that they chickened out of killing him last year.

(*) This is slang for “something”. You may have heard it before in the vernacular.
(**) Not the chess game(***).
(***) It’s never a game.

Grade: C


52 WEEK TWENTY-SIX:
Written by“¦.Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid
Breakdowns by“¦.Keith Giffen
Pencils by“¦.Patrick Olliffe
Inks by“¦.Drew Geralt
Colours by“¦.Pete Pantazis
Letters by“¦.Pat Broussea
Edits by“¦.Stephen Wacker
Published by DC

Oh, GOOD, more 52!

“Halfway House”

DAY #183 – People wonder what happened during days 178, 179, 180, 181 and 182. Then they tune into repeats of Friends and eat pizza and forget that they had a question. Can you tell what I’ve been doing tonight? It involved oxygen”¦

Oooh, a Superman Returns DVD advert. “Pure exhilaration”? Really? If that’s the case then every single thing I do that doesn’t involve excitement is exhilarating.

But, because I have to, back to the comic”¦

Black Adam! Cool. What’s he doing?

I dunno, but it can’t be as exhilarating as listening to Huey Lewis. Therefore, I am better than Black Adam. Therefore, I am better than sliced bread and baked bread and all types of flour. Even self-raising”¦ no, no, never that. I can’t back that one up. Not even if I’m doing it all for my baby.

Oooh, weird colouring. Thank you, Mr Pantazis. Black Adam and his potential-threesome take The Question and Renee Montoya (remember them?) to some uninhabited and remote mountain region, then saunter off in their blissful irritance. Charlie’s secret-decret teacher dude, Richard Dragon, resides here and will be soon be having the sight of seeing the having of Renee’s sights of learning as tutor being. Right? CLEAR AS MUD.

Snow.

Muddy snow.

Leave me alone and write your name your own damned way.

DAY #184 – In Metropolis, the Big Bad Booty Daddy that is not known as Jack Ryder (but only because Jack Ryder is not known as the Big Bad Booty Daddy) yells and yammers and yelps about the ‘new’ Justice League’s disastrous outing from a fortnight ago. Steel is on his show and then Starlight joins him as a surprise guest. They try to outdo one another in the metaphor stakes (not the metaphorical stakes, there are no vampires present as of this page) and no conclusions are reached, no answers are produced, and no honesty is given without preconceived deceit. Ah, ‘tis an honest current affairs show alright.


“Oh, GOOD, more 52!”


DAY #186 – We skipped day 185 due to a religious feast. The Festival of Sam & Max Remembrance. I BOPPED GOPHERS!

In some house I don’t know, some brother and sister I’ve never seen before are doing weird science on a time machine, then some flaming metal dude briefly appears somehow, then the mother and some crappy looking robots tell them to knock it off, but some weird green thing is left in the basement, then there’s a product placement for Coke, which I am drinking at the moment so perhaps it does work, though I am drinking Diet Coke and it does have a little “kick”, and then someone turns up at the door to come to dinner and it is”¦ the Black Marvels.

Christ, just give them their own f*cking book already.

GO ON, XEEBUS!!!

Okay, the mother is called Venus. The father was called Thaddeus but he’s disappeared. She spent $20 million on Khandaq children’s hospital to get them to come to dinner. I have an itchy armpit. Van Halen says jump. The pieces are starting to fit together”¦

Meanwhile, back on Oolong-not-Oblong-never-Oblong Island, the scientists are all a flutter because a girl is being brought there. JUMP!

My heavens, they actually made a “deluxe edition” of Superman IV. The real wonder is that the script for that had far more potential than the script for the Bryan Singer film.

Back at the dinner party”¦ they have dinner. But no party. And Venus’ surname is Sivana. There are another couple of blonds at the table but their exact meaning escapes me. Like that time I almost missed the bus, but then got to the stop on time, but then a better bus came along behind it so I got that one instead! Oh, t’was a Blogspot day, to b esure. Or to be sure, whichever.

Then the weird green thing attacks.

It runs off, but it did allow me to learn that the other blonds are called Magnificus and Beautia. Oh, I’ll sleep just fine now. Junior Black Adam Marvel Boy meets with the green thing in the garden and it apologises for interrupting dinner. It’s also a crocodile-man. So many Steve Irwin jokes, so few stingrays. Anyway, the kid comes onto the crocodile. Yup.

In better news, I took the Time Spy maze and made it through unscathed after collecting both issues. Yeehaw!

Oh sweet mother of mercy, they’ve given Hawkman and Hawkgirl an origin. In just two pages? HAW! I tried reading it but I was not drunk enough to be apathetic enough to acknowledge it. Sorry. But – mmm, pretty!

Grade: C


ACTION COMICS #844:
Written by“¦.Geoff Johns & Richard Donner
Art by“¦.Adam Kubert
Colours by“¦.Dave Stewart
Letters by“¦.Rob Leigh
Edits by“¦.Matt Idelson
Published by DC

“Last Son – Part One”

Can Superman ever escape the shadow of 1978?

Lately it feels like the character is forever doomed to remain rooted to the movie that made people believe a man could fly. Jonathan Kent died on Smallville because that was how it was done back in the day. The Fortress of Solitude, both in comics and on TV, has to look like it did back then. Zod has to retain his fondness of making people kneel. Bryan Singer spent several hundred millions of dollars on providing a big-screen sense of closure to the previous franchise rather than forging a new one. Now, with Warner releasing deluxe editions of all four original Superman movies on DVD alongside Superman Returns, including the infamous original cut of Superman 2, and with numerous large adverts promoting these releases spread throughout all of the DC books, Richard Donner himself conveniently comes to ACTION COMICS as a co-writer with his former protégé and current DCU architect, Geoff Johns. Cynics might well wonder if Donne’s input progressed beyond agreeing to have his name appear on the cover and writing the letter that graces the now very familiar Superman 2 – The Richard Donner Cut DVD advert.

Have I mentioned the DVDs yet?


“Have I mentioned the DVDs yet?”


That letter advert appears on the back cover. The front cover is fundamentally a fine piece of art, yet truthfully it is grey and flat and dull and uninspiring. Many used those same words to describe Singe’s movie. Those pesky cynics might wonder why DC are so happy to wallow in the past, particularly when INFINITE CRISIS provided them with the perfect opportunity to forge a glorious future. There is no question that ACTION COMICS will see its sales greatly increased for the duration of this Johns/Donner run, yet it is hard to imagine that those new readers will be tempted to stick around afterwards, or that many of them will actually be new readers. Most of them will be the same strange souls that consider the return of Hal Jordan to be a memorable event in their life. Comic books were always pop culture, yet they are stagnating into retro culture instead. This is a creative team that will offer no answers, ask no questions and essentially provide nothing more than padding for the advertising space that brainwashes people into buying some of those shiny DVDs. Well, Superman is not Christopher Reeve. He is Clark Kent. Remember that and focus on it instead.

The actual plot is that a small vessel carrying a young boy crashes in Metropolis. All signs indicate that he is Kryptonian and possesses the same powers as Superman. Lex Luthor hears of this and plots. Superman, determined to not see the boy exploited by the government, kidnaps him and takes him to the Kents to be raised ‘correctly’. The boy looks rather similar to Lois Lane’s creepy son in Superman Returns. A pastiche of the sole original element in an homage. Don’t worry, 1978 gets a look-in as well, courtesy of an opening scene in the Fortress of Solitude in which Superman consults Jor-El and dialogue is lifted wholesale from that movie. It’s the dialogue that was used in the new movie as well. My head hurts. Can we never move on from here?

To be fair, it is an interesting story idea. Unfortunately, Superman looking out for a young boy with powers and trying to protect him from nefarious interveners was done in an affecting manner on Smallville not that long ago. Check out the episodes “Ryan” and “Protect”. It’s hard to imagine “Last Son” being quite so touching. At the moment it is hard to imagine this being anything more than a dead medium consigned to wallow in the overflow of those that superseded it long ago.

Wake me when the next generation arrives and decides to base the character around the animated series instead.

Grade: D


LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #23:
Writer“¦.Mark Waid
Penciller“¦.Barry Kitson
Inker“¦.Mick Gray
Colourist“¦.Nathan Eyring
Letterer“¦.Phil Balsman
Editor“¦.Stephen Wacker
Published by DC

Crap, I just noticed that Wacker edited this book as well as 52. Hopefully Waid and Kitson didn’t rely on his assistance too much. I’d hate for this title to lapse after his move to Marvel. Then again, 52 started to lapse before he made the switch”¦

Ah, well. This is issue twenty-three and we are still trying to sort of explain Supergirl being in the thirty-first century. To further complicate matters, she is genuinely back in Kandor as well, the presence of which is explained in a rather nifty way that makes perfect use of the Legion’s universe. It still doesn’t really indicate why Supergirl is there, but at least it feels as though we are on course to get a decent explanation now.

Other than that, the issue is one of those perfunctory ‘subplot showcase specials’ that the series likes to do now and then. This doesn’t just involve Kandor but the Legion of Super-Villains, something possibly dubbed Plant Boy, a most unusual blossoming romance, steering the continued greatness of Brainiac-5 into a new direction, and the return of”¦

Well, I can’t tell you.

No, not because it would be a spoiler. Because I really don’t know who it is. It’s made out to be a fairly big deal, and it kinda looks like a familiar character but the costume seems to be lacking a certain chest symbol, so I’ve no idea. Buy the issue and see if you have more luck.

Grade: B


EX MACHINA #24:
Written by“¦.Brian K. Vaughan
Drawn by“¦.Tony Harris
Inked by“¦.Tom Feister
Coloured by“¦.JD Meller
Lettered by“¦.Jared K. Fletcher
Edited by“¦.Ben Abernathy
Published by WildStorm

“Smoke, Smoke – Conclusion”

I wish I could remember the flashback portion of this story more clearly. Delays are unfortunately quite good at diminishing the impact of plot threads. That’s why you should probably just pick up the trades. It’s too late for me to switch over at the halfway mark of the series, so I’ll just continue to pick up the monthlies. But you should pick it up in some form. Possibly using your hands. Or maybe a large magnetic device that raises it by the staples? Mental note: buy staples. And a staple remover.

EX MACHINA is great. This issue is particularly so. The smooth feeling of satisfaction gained only from the truly worthwhile stories as all of the parts start to fall into place is present here. The flashback’s lingering guilt, its effect on Mayor Hundred, his powers starting to shift from ‘impressive’ to ‘worrying’, those left behind by his career path taking action to counter this”¦

It’s all here and it’s all matched by political writing so sharp you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a West Wing showcase instead. Between this, Y: THE LAST MAN, his recent graphic novel PRIDE OF BAGHDAD, and his various superhero comics, we are in the midst of a stretch of storytelling so superlative that the English language requires the invention of new superlatives in order to do it justice. This is the fault of Brian K. Vaughan and we can surely forgive him.

Grade: A


SEVEN SOLDIERS #1:
Written and possibly true because of events driven by“¦.Grant Morrison
Art by“¦.J.H. Williams III
Colour by“¦.Dave Stewart
Letters by“¦.Todd Klein
Fat Chanced by“¦.Peter Tomasi
Published by DC

Oh, come on.

Reading this issue has the same effect of toiling all your life to construct a time machine to go back in time and attend a Beatles gig at the Cavern Club, succeeding, yet ending up having to wear earplugs forged from Excalibur in order to prevent the timeline from unraveling and not hearing a damn thing. Sure, you’ll have fun, but you’ll still be thinking of how much more fun you never wound up enjoying.


“This is one for the ages.”


There are parts of this comic book that are nothing short of genius. There are parts with art so beautiful that it makes you want to stop referring to the pretty pictures in other comic books as ‘art’. There are twists and turns that skate along the fine line that separates surprising from random. There are instances of dialogue that can take away breath and replace it with light. Above all else there is the palpable thrill to be had from sitting back and letting this book’s giddy excitement wash its wonder over your eyes.

And yet”¦

There are parts of this comic book that are as irritating as Anne O’Ying. You’ll meet her soon. Morrison just about manages to tangle the seven story threads together in a satisfying manner – even if the pretence of never having the Seven Soldiers meet one another is ruined on at least two occasions here – but only if you are really trying hard to pay attention without being charged for sensibility. At times it is hard to figure out how what, where, who, when and why fit together. Hell, I’m still not sure which of the seven died. The art tricks and complete disregard for traditional layout and structure are certainly impressive but at times they come at the expense of clarity and make for a far less satisfying read than expectations predicted. The dialogue and narrative doesn’t help matters by continually delving into the murky depths of the Pree Ten Shuss and forgetting that nobody can hear it underwater.

And yet”¦

Nobody can deny that this is the most inventive comic book DC has produced since”¦ well, take your pick. This event has been too unique in too alternative a sense to be tagged with the same timeless classic status as WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, yet it has truly been an Eve Ent. By comparison, CIVIL WAR: A MARVEL COMICS EVENT IN SEVEN PARTS seems as substantial as a house made of cucumber slices. It makes things like the above-mentioned ACTION COMICS #844 seems as progressive as sleep.

This is one for the ages. It is a cacophony of harmony, scarcely fit for our times. Set an alarm, try again later, and repeat as necessary until Grade A is reached.

Grade: B


Next Week – nothing but 52 WEEK TWENTY-SEVEN. In other words, people need to get their fingers out of their crevices and release some damn trades already. The new MAN OF STEEL and Y: THE LAST MAN collections, for instance. Shipping in October, my precious arse”¦