Welcome to the inside of my thought bubbles. I’m Pulse Glazer, as you no doubt noticed (giving you a bit of credit right from the start), and I used to write East of Gotham and comic reviews for the Nexus. After awhile that all fell apart because, you see, despite a passion for comics and some really great feedback, I was never pleased with my work. So, never one to settle for mediocrity, I took a hiatus and focused on my Pulse Wrestling writing for the time being. Now, the problem, as it turns out, is that I was trying too hard to be…. well, to be Paul O’Brien of X-Axis fame. Paul takes a very cerebral look at comics, and while I’m capable of that (in my other life, I’m an English teacher), comics serve as an escape from all that. Of course, there’s intellectualism as well, but I was focusing on that to the exclusion of having fun. Upon realizing that, finally, this column will be my Capsule Style Reviews, of everything I read for the week in comics, followed by a rating out of 10. Hope you enjoy and click the feedback button below (or just comment, I loves me some comments) to let me know what you think. Since this is the first column, there will be two weeks worth of reviews here. Reviews will be in alphabetical order.
Astonishing X-Men #27 – I must confess: Joss Whedon’s “historic” run on X-Men did next to nothing for me. It felt like a light, fun (if cliché) X-Men book, overly reliant on huge coincidences. Warren Ellis has taken over and, while I love Ellis, has immediately turned this into a book about Ellis’s pet ideas. We have alternate reality mutants who might not be mutants (invoking self modification as an ideal) and bestiality. All that’s missing is super cell… nevermind, we hit the super cell phones too. This issue is all talking heads with dialogue amusing enough to keep the book from collapsing on itself, except for the still strangely out of character Cyclops, who everyone insists is displaying a natural character progression from Grant Morrison’s run (thereby finally butchering every positive new idea from the Morrison run). Still, unless you’re a big X-Fan, all of Ellis’s standard ideas are covered far better elsewhere. 5/10 – Average
Blue Beetle #32 – This book has suffered a bit under new writer Matthew Sturges, but that simply means it’s gone from great to just good. This issue packs in the fun despite an overly preachy Dr. Polaris, who bores us with his full origin, and a bit more of preaching, this about illegal immigrants. Those preachy scenes dragged down this issue, but Jaime’s dad kicking ass with a shotgun and cane, while his magician girlfriend wields normal carrots conjured magically keep the fun alive and the book worth reading. 7/10 – Good
Captain America #45 – Marvel, I know Cap’s selling really well and is important to the Marvel U, but, do me a favor, please keep this character the hell away from Bendis. Actually, for that matter, keep him away from everyone who isn’t Ed Brubaker. No one has handled Bucky-Cap at length besides Brubaker, leaving the character with an extraordinarily clear voice and focus. Brubaker, in his first new storyline since essentially the start of this series, uses Bucky’s past to frame his current role and foreshadow later developments in the story. Batroc the French Assassin, of all people, is given a prominent and successful role, while Bucky continues to grow into his role, highlighting how he and Steve Rogers are different people who handle situations differently. Really, though, you know a story is firing on all cylinders when even Batroc seems awesome. 8/10 – Great
Criminal #6 – This is part 3 of 4 of the Bad Night arc. Don’t read this without hitting parts 1 and 2. This might be the best book on the market, but this is certainly the weakest arc. The big coincidence upon which this issue turns pushes things a bit too far. Still, this is very good and very raw material and if you like noir at all, there’s no better place to go. Sadly, after this arc Criminal goes on a five month hiatus for a Marvel Icons book called Incognito that’s sure to be great, but still, will be no match for a consistently coming out Criminal. At least there’s one more issue out before this grinds to a halt… again. 7/10 – Good
Final Crisis #4 of 7 – Issues 1-3 of this series were completely hit or miss. Most of the series was disjointed scenes leading to, without much structural build, Darkseid’s Anti-Life equation taking over Earth. This is the first issue with a real, live plot and, unsurprisingly, considering it’s by Grant Morrison, it wholly succeeds in building a sense of hopelessness around the heroes possibly winning. The tiny resistance to the Darkseid takeover is massing, trying desperately to survive. In and of itself, this is just nice atmosphere building to a clear showdown. What really makes this work is some very nice character moments built around Barry Allen and Wally West (Flash’s past and present) reuniting, as well as the rest of the heroes, like the Alan Scott Green Lantern giving a speach and Green Arrow fighting off the invasion. I finally feel like I’m reading an apocalyptic story here with characters I care about. About damn time. 7/10 – Good
Echo #7 – Terry Moore of Strangers in Paradise writes and draws this. He’s a complete master at body language. This seemingly mild story of a liquid chestplate falling on a girl and her going on the run with a nice guy who has his own reasons to be suspicious should be dull to the point of tears. In fact, fairly little outside of the characterizations has happened over the seven issues, and those are fairly cliché. We have a nice guy with a heart of gold and a woman who makes bad decisions, but ultimately too has a heart of gold, running from the evil big government. Still, somehow, through great timing and quiet moments, the characters have come to life and become increasingly sympathetic, despite no traits that make them so. This is rather slow as an ongoing, but still very readable, and I’m sure this will make a fantastic trade. 6/10 – Solid
Fable #77 – With the war over and the homelands reclaimed, this book has turned mostly mundane again. Bigby is leading the reclamation efforts, two mercenaries uncover a bit of trouble, Gepetto deals with the witch, some second generation fables want to conquer parts of the homelands, and Sinbad finds a new relationship. This should be satisfying in the heroes victory, but it all feels so plain and anticlimactic that I’m not sure why the book is continuing on. 5/10 – Average
Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #2 – First, understand, with George Perez drawing this, it isn’t getting below a 6. He’s my single favorite artist, maybe ever, and no one does huge fight scenes quite like him. This issue is the gathering of the Legion of Super Villians under Superboy, as they recruit Mordru and kill the last Green Lantern. In answer to this, Brainiac 5 begins the recruiting of the 3 different Legions and what is apparently Geoff Johns’ favorite character, the final Guardian and supposed greatest Lantern ever, Sodam Yat. This has an epic feel, but I honestly don’t know enough of the Legion to comment on the characters save that they’re fun. Still, this is a great set up for a brawl and a huge super-powered brawl drawn by George Perez is definitely right in my wheelhouse right now. This will likely set up a new Legion status quo and give me a jumping on point too, as a nice bonus. 7/10 – Good
Final Crisis: Rogue’s Revenge #3 – The Rogues are great villains. They all have their own backstories, usually tragic and cliché, but they rarely, if ever, fall into simple angst or redundant patterns. Their reactions are complex and their code makes sense. They’re some of the best villains in comics and right up there with a properly written Magneto for moral ambiguity, while still clearly being in the wrong. Here, they are seeking revenge for being set up to kill the Bart Allen Flash and at the same time being hunted for refusing to join the Darkseid Club of evil with the other villains. These rough and tumble characters, being hunted and hunters, are forced to confront their own demons just to survive, but while the symbolism is simple, it doesn’t come off as forced or heavyhanded… just part of these characters journeys. The confrontations with Inertia, Zoom, and even Libra (Darkseid’s messenger) occur here and, like Captain Cold says, it all becomes a question of different shades of grey. This is the one series to give us depth and moral ambiguity, while the rest of the Final Crisis is all about a simple “Evil wins” premise. I must admit, I much prefer it this way. Get this underappreciated gem of a book now.9/10 – Excellent
Final Crisis: Submit – In which Black Lightening saves a family whose father is angst-filled and hates heroes (though he has powers himself). That leads his son to a bad decision, costing Black Lightening’s mind to the Anti-Life equation whereupon the father, deciding to be a hero and having the “circuit,” which I assume is the dues ex machine that will get us out of the crisis, decides to be a hero. Totally superfluous preaching about choice, all of which is self evident within the anti-life premise. There was no need for this comic. 3/10 – Poor.
The Flash #245 – I don’t usually bother with this book, but since Johns is handling the Resurrection of Barry Allen, I figured now’s a good time to get caught up. Flash’s powers here are wonky and he’s nearly panicked about the reason. Suddenly he went from limitless speed to being limited by the Speed of Sound. That’s a huge difference, one which the heroic community here takes interest in, while the lack of speed nearly costw Flash’s wife her life. There’s also some seemingly random flashbacks to Wally’s Teen Titans time with Speedy, the current Red Arrow. These don’t fit here, but do a better job of showing why they care about each other than Titans, a book dedicated to showing us just that. Not great, but it accomplishes what it sets out to. 6/10 – Solid
Guardians of the Galaxy #6 – This is probably the best book you aren’t currently reading. The basic idea is that a group of the cosmos greatest heroes have united to prevent another cataclysm like Annihilation or Annihilation Conquest. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have, through this book and the similarly awesome Nova, taken the Marvel cosmos to their greatest heights since The Infinity Gauntlet and the heyday of Jim Starlin. In this issue, the teams tensions take center stage, with a Secret Invasion tie in as the Skrulls are hidden somewhere on the Guardians space station (made out of a severed Celestial’s head). Both Drax, who is now an awesome mix of Kratos from God of War and his former character, and one of my all time favorites, Adam Warlock figure things out using vastly different means, but the remainder of the team is left trailing, arguing over their direction and purpose. The skrull reveal is fairly predictable, but that it comes from a talking Russian space dog… that justifies a lot. The real fun is in the established badassery of the characters and their subsequent interactions. Get into this book, it’s worth the effort to familiarize yourself with the characters. 8/10 – Great
Invincible #54 – Robert Kirkman is probably the best comic author at creating his own mythos this side of Warren Ellis. Not since Ellis rocked the comic world with Authority and Transmetropolitan has an author had two creator owned projects the quality of Invincible and Walking Dead at the same time. This issue, Invincible randomly goes to the future to stop a despot in a nice random adventure issue. Naturally the despot is a recurring character, and so inspired Invincible to ensure that future never comes to pass. This is pretty obviously filler, but it’s well-done filler for a very fun book. Next month the Viltrumite war begins, so this would get a pass even were it bad… and rest assured, it isn’t. 6/10 – Solid Book
Justice Society of America #19 – This has been, over the past decade, probably the best book on the market. Johns and Alex Ross here tackle bringing Kingdom Come into continuity. Gog, the god dedicated to fixing the world, is heading to the Middle East to bring his own variety of peace (turning soldiers to trees) and plenty. The older members of the JSA, besides a certain reincarnated hothead, realize how questionable these black and white morality judgements can be. The altruistic youths, on the other hand, rather prefer changing the world, even if it requires breaking a few skulls. They’re lead by Magog, who you really, really must read Kingdom Come to fully appreciate (and because that book is pure, unfiltered awesome), while leading to the seemingly inevitable generation war among heroes. This comes together with absolute precision by using the type of portentous moments other books can only look up at in awe. 9.5/10 – Nearly Perfect
The New Avengers #46 – I often find Bendis’s team books wholly lacking anything approaching a structured plot (see also Secret Invasion), but this isn’t a team book at the moment. Rather, it’s a book about The Hood, the new and mysterious king of the criminal underworld, discovering skrulls. Hood can see skrulls and, with the other villains (who take a bit of convincing), recognizes their threat. The Hood is a really fun BK Vaughan creation who gets his powers from a mystical hood he finds. The secret of said hood is finally revealed here and I, for one, was impressed. I won’t spoil it here, but this one lives up to the billing for long time Marvel fans. The only real flaw here is that with the Secret Invasion nearly over, this feels like it could have done a lot to help build the series if it came out months ago. Now, besides the big reveal, this feels like its coming after the fact, leaving the drama suffering for it. Rating 6/10 – Solid
Robin #179 – Fabian Nicieza writing a story that doesn’t revolve around chasing some random artifact around? Shenanigans, I say! This current Robin storyline deals with the fallout from Batman RIP, with the slight problem that we aren’t allowed to know the conclusion to that arc save that Batman disappears. That’s almost covered by Fabian throwing every bit of shit he can at the wall to see what sticks, including several mysterious enemies and even more mysterious plans, the most notable of these being the Red Robin of Kindom Come fame. With everything headed towards KC (see JSA), and that being such an awesome story, that buys this a good deal of good will. Still, the haphazard, underdeveloped chaos caused by Batman not being around (which goes from common knowledge at the start, to a surprise when Robin his hidden in the Batmobile pretending to be Batman) and all these mysterious characters showing up keep this issue from being more than a mildly interesting curiosity. I trust Fabian to deliver more, but thus far, the job isn’t getting done. 4/10 – Below Average
Runaways #3 – I couldn’t have been more excited when Terry Moore of the phenomenal Strangers in Paradise series was slated to write Runaways. He’s the best in the business at fun, deep characters and body language… but of course, he isn’t drawing this. Humberto Ramos is… and man is it awkward. There’s several scenes where I just have no clue what’s going on. The plot is fine, with Karolina’s race hunting her for supposedly betraying them, while the team argues about what to do about it. This arguing isn’t handled as well as it could be. Instead of being due to teen characters having angsty moments, the infighting is because of a mistaken spell in such a way that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since nothing like this ever happened before. You see, when Nico said “scatter,” along with their enemies scattering, so did the team. Why this spell had two such wildly different effects isn’t explored. This feels like a false reveal and I hope that, for the story’s sake, it is. The rest of the issue is characters being gruff with one another for no reason, leading to the conclusion next issue. Moore can do so much more. 3/10 – Poor
Secret Invasion #7 – And Bendis finally hits a home run on his, what, hundredth shot at these crossover issues. Here we have the big fight scene. The Skrulls’ plans, or what’s revealed of them, clearly suck a bit to have let it come to a brouhaha when they had every advantage in the book, but Bendis has dues ex’d that away by making the plan a religious thing. I can live with this because of how well the giant fight scene is handled. Wolverine, Thor, Norman Osborn, Nick Fury, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, Ares (who’s quickly become a personal favorite), and especially Hawkeye all get amazingly cool character moments within the giant brawl. Generally speaking, that wouldn’t carry an issue, but, hell, this giant brawl is too damn fun for me to care. This might be my favorite huge Marvel fight scene (besides Annihilation) since the final battle of the original Onslaught mini. Considering the stilted build, this was just about as good as it could be… and then some. 9/10 – Excellent
Thunderbolts #125 – Christos Gage needs some more appreciation… right now. His Stormwatch PHD was great and the current Thunderbolts title, not an easy write with a team of reprehensible villains, has been golden, as well. This issue tackles Secret Invasion #7 from Osborn and his team’s point of view. Norman gets to show that despite being seemingly heroic in that book, he’s got anything but altruistic intentions when given a closer examination. The manipulation here is subtle and great, perfect for this character, making him far more dangerous than the psycho Green Goblin. As stated elsewhere, it’s Osborn, not the Goblin that’s a master villain, one of Spider-Man’s greatest. That comes through here with manipulations of both his team and the media. Gage has Osborn save the day and still manage to be a scumbag. Sadly, Gage is leaving the book with this issue after stepping into Warren Ellis’s always huge shoes, leaving yet another difficult legacy to follow. 8/10 – Great
Titans #6 – Judd Winick decided to keep the New Teen Titans lineup together again for no major reason, apparently, other than that they missed each other and had an enemy show up to help them realize it. Characters caring about each other I can deal with, even if they did dig up what amounts to the same old Trigon/Raven story to do it. They added the cliché seven deadly sins twist and finished up with a random doohickey that solved all the problems. That’d all be fine were the characterization particularly strong, but only Raven and Gar (even then, not so much) get real characterization. The rest are essentially ciphers. That’s totally unforgivable in a book about how much these characters mean to each other. Everything makes sense, but also feels like it’s going through the overly nostalgic motions without much enthusiasm. 3/10 – Poor
Uncanny X-Men #503 – Aw man, what the hell! Sam Guthrie has aged 6 years since 1982. Cannonball is now 21. X-Force was now a bunch of teenagers… for that whole damn run! He, Karma, and Moonstar celebrate being able to be mutants in public while drinking. Grant Who? New X-Men What? Yeah, apparently that shitty book where characters died every other issue is the only New X-Men we’ll acknowledge now. Hey, at least the rookie, Pixie, shows up to beat the piss out of the bad guy (Empath) that all the experienced X-Men couldn’t handle. I refuse to believe Brubaker and Fraction wrote this. 2/10 – Terrible
X-Men Legacy #217 – The book about Xavier figuring out and atoning for his sins has finally crossed over with Wolverine Origins, the book about turning Wolvy’s origins into a stupid conspiracy theory. In a ridiculous rewrite, apparently Wolvy joined the X-Men after trying to kill Xavier (just like Ultimate X-Men, but now in all new poorly conceived flavor!) and Xavier brainwashing him. Wolverine is, with Xavier, hunting the Hellfire Club who he thinks have his son, Daken, but who is really with Sebastian Shaw, who is sort of trying to take the Club over again. It’s all about Shaw’s manipulations and badly butchering past continuity… and worse, it wraps up in Wolverine Origins. No, thank you. 3/10 – Poor
