The Weekly Round-Up #218 With Ms. Marvel #1, Archer & Armstrong, Lazarus, Secret, Trillium & More

Columns, Top Story

The Best Comic of the Week:

Ms. Marvel #1Usually I avoid reading any other writer’s reviews of new comics until I’ve written this column for the week, as I don’t want to have my thoughts influenced by someone else’s.  The thing is, before I even got to my regular comic store this week (thank you snowstorm), my Nexus colleague and good buddy Matt Graham was already presiding over some pretty spirited debate on the book, and I was looking forward to reading his review.  Well, the guy nailed it, leaving me with nothing much to add.  Read his review here.  Anyway, I liked the book a lot.  I thought that the portrayal of Kamala felt more real than a lot of other teen characters (like, say, Sam in Nova, or Alpha in Amazing Spider-Man), and I felt that her ethnicity, faith, and ‘outsider’ status in mainstream New Jersey culture was handled with sensitivity and no heavy-handedness.  Her apparent identity crisis is what makes her, to me, a very interesting character.  It’s nice to see G. Willow Wilson writing a monthly comic again.  I loved her Cairo graphic novel, and found Air, her short-lived Vertigo series, to be a very interesting read.  I also thought that Adrian Alphona killed it on the art in this comic, and I’m really excited to see his art on a more regular basis.  If there was one thing I didn’t really like, it’s the fact that Kamala got her powers from a mysterious mist that wrapped her in a cocoon.  Am I to read into this that Kamala is an Inhuman?  Is this book somehow tied in to Inhumanity?  I hope it’s just a coincidence, and that the cause of her transformation will be explained later.  If she is an Inhuman, it stands to reason that her brother and at least one of her parents would be too, which will really alter the tone of the book.  Regardless, this was a great comic.  If you haven’t read it, you should go buy a copy quickly.  Marvel’s taking a bit of a risk with this book, and I really hope to see it be successful.

Quick Takes:

All-New Invaders #2I’m still firmly on the fence about this new series.  I’m having a hard time understanding why it’s not working for me though – James Robinson is a gifted writer, and I usually love Steve Pugh’s art.  As well, I have long been a fan of the Invaders, and WWII heroes in general, and have every issue of the old Invaders series.  The thing is, the second world war was a long time ago, and it’s getting harder and harder to credibly find reasons for stories to begin in the war and continue in the modern day.  Unfortunately, that’s what Robinson is doing with this opening arc, as the Kree come looking for a weapon that three of the Invaders broke up and hid sixty years ago, which they all conveniently forgot.  Now the surviving original members of the team are going to have to go to Kree space to rescue Namor and destroy this weapon.  Here’s the thing – the Avengers just saved the Kree during the Builder War, and they’re all allies.  It doesn’t make sense that Captain America wouldn’t take some of the 1000 people who are currently Avengers to help out on this mission, especially considering that he wasn’t part of the original Invaders mission, and can’t claim this as unfinished personal business.  His reason for not being able to get more help, that people don’t like Namor, is ridiculous.  Maybe this is all just growing pains for a new title, but it’s making it hard for me to get into the story.  I think a series set during the war, incorporating the tweaks that Ed Brubaker made to Bucky’s character, would have been a lot more interesting.  Also, I’m not loving the straight-forward superhero style that Pugh is employing on this book.  Read Hotwire or Shark-Man, or even his old Vertigo run on Animal Man – this guy is an incredible artist, but here his stuff looks very generic.

Archer & Armstrong: Archer #0Fred Van Lente uses this zero issue to reveal Obadiah’s early childhood, from his time at Project Rising Spirit to his life as the Archers’ son, all by means of setting up the A&A cross-over with Bloodshot and HARD Corps.  It’s a very well-written issue (that goes without saying), with very good art from Pere Pérez.

Baltimore Chapel of Bones #2 – Lord Baltimore confronts Haigus, the vampire that ruined his life, in this issue, and it’s a pretty big scene.  Baltimore’s been a cool series of mini-series, and while I know that it was designed to supplement a novel written by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden that I’ve never read, I have enjoyed reading about Baltimore’s journey.  I really wasn’t expecting it to end the way it did.  Apparently the story continues in that original novel from this point, before eventually returning to comics.  I hope when this book does come back, that Ben Stenbeck will be drawing it again.

Black Science #3 – I missed this last week, and am very happy to have been able to get caught up.  This new series, by Rick Remender and Matteo Scalera, is terrific.  It’s a cross-dimensional take on Lost in Space.  While the group is trapped on a world where technologically superior Native Americans are invading Europe, and trying to find a way to heal Grant, the main character, we also get to see a lot more of the backstory behind their ill-fated trip, and get to know some of the secondary characters a little better.  I can’t think of a better artist than Scalera to have to come up with Native-designed battle robots.  Very cool stuff going on here.

Captain America #16.NOWThe ‘fake #1′ (as John Babos would call it) that launches the All-New Marvel Now! era in this title, is a strange choice, mostly because Captain America doesn’t even appear in the comic.  Instead, Jet Black, his house guest from Dimension Z stars, as she wrestles with her place in the Marvel Universe.  Jet is the product of her upbringing, at the hands of Anim Zola, but is also at her core a good person, even if she sees no utility in Cap’s approach to helping people.  When she is offered a place working for her dad’s oldest friend, she has to make a choice.  Rick Remender really writes in his own corner of the 616 – there is some stuff happening here that wouldn’t really make sense unless you also read his Uncanny Avengers, but that’s fine with me, as I like the way he crafts larger stories.  Pascal Alixe’s art is very nice and detailed, and as a bit of an interlude issue, this is fine, but it doesn’t do much to launch the Iron Nail story that Remender has been building towards for a while now.

Catalyst Comix #8 – It’s the penultimate issue of Joe Casey’s little romp through Comics’ Greatest World (a name that never came close to living up to the hype back in the day), and I really feel like this title never lived up to its potential.  Casey is one of the best idea-men in comics, but I never really clicked with this title (although I love his comic Sex), aside from enjoying the great art by Ulises Farinas, Dan McDaid, and Paul Mayberry.  Paul Pope does the cover this month – I loved Rafael Grampá’s work on this book, but this was still a nice surprise.

Green Arrow #28Green Arrow (alongside Wonder Woman) is easily the best book that DC is putting out these days.  Jeff Lemire has structured an interesting (if familiar to anyone who read Immortal Iron Fist) world for the character to inhabit, and with last issue’s return of a character long thought dead, added a lot of drama to the proceedings.  The real star this month is artist Andrea Sorrentino, whose innovative approach has GA, Shado, and another important character fighting Kodiak in minimalist panels structured out of large letters spelling sound effects.  It’s very cool, and separates the fight scenes from the rest of what’s going on in the comic.  This is a great read, and I hope it’s seeing increased sales, so DC will just let Lemire tell his story without forcing any more tie-ins (like the Zero Year one, which added nothing much to the story).

Hinterkind #5 – Another decent issue for this new Vertigo series.  Since most of the action has moved into an underground military complex, I’ve found my attention wandering a little.  The first couple of issues showed a lot of promise, but I’m still intrigued enough by Ian Edginton’s story to give this comic a little more leash.  I like the idea of humanity, at the end of its rope, interacting with characters that were once the thing of fable, but I’m not sure that Edginton is building the story in such a way as to inspire long-term readership.  I’ll see what next issue brings…

Lazarus #6Greg Rucka is continuing to flesh out his vision of the future in this second arc, and by focusing on the tribulations of one family of ‘Waste’, we get a good sense of just how inequitable this future really is (as in, not all that much worse than our present).  I know that this series has been criticized in some circles for not being very exciting, or for not really working, but I don’t agree.  I find that Forever is an interesting character, and I trust Rucka to have a pretty big story to tell here.  Plus, I really like Michael Lark’s art.

Lobster Johnson: Get the Lobster #1 – Crazed wrestlers are rampaging through New York while various groups start circling in on Lobster Johnson in the start to this latest, five-part mini-series.  Tonci Zonjic is drawing this, which makes me wonder if Where is Jake Ellis? is on hold for at least another five months or completely dead in the water, which is a shame.  At the same time, I’m just happy to read some Zonjic art.  The story is decent, but I’ve long felt that the Lobster is kind of the weakest link in the Mignola line; it’s a fun pulp story, but there’s never all that much to it.

Loki Agent of Asgard #1 – Aside from Walter Simonson’s legendary run, I’ve never really liked Thor and his cast of characters.  That continued to be the case for a long time, until Kieron Gillen got his hands on Loki in Journey Into Mystery, and made him an incredibly loveable character.  Now, Loki has been aged to better resemble the actor that plays him (too often) in the movies, and he’s gotten a new job as a secret agent working for the All-Mother in Asgardia.  This first issue has him on a mission that involves Thor and the Avengers, and the book is a fun read.  I like the way writer Al Ewing (who can really do no wrong at Marvel these days, see below) maintains the voice that Gillen created for the character, and the way in which he is already playing with our perceptions.  The one thing you know for sure in a comic that stars Loki is to not trust him, so I imagine that most of the fun of this series will be in following the character through his lies and machinations.  Lee Garbett is an artist I’ve liked for a long time, and I hope he sticks with the book.  I wasn’t going to preorder this title, but this issue has me wanting to read the next one, so it may end up on my pullfile list (I like that it’s a $3 book, which makes me more likely to stick with it).

Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #5Marco Rudy has done an amazing job drawing and painting this series, and for that reason, I’m sad to see it come to its end (although I know that Rudy has an issue of Uncanny X-Men coming out soon that I’m very excited to see).  In this issue, Spidey finishes running his gauntlet of 99 villains, and Rudy continues to have a lot of fun laying out the book, this time around channeling Bill Sienkiewicz, David Mack, and Gustav Klimt.  Fun stuff.

Mighty Avengers #6 – Now that we finally get an issue without the taint of Greg Land’s art (Valerio Schiti drew this, although sadly it looks like Land will be back in a couple of months), it is much more obvious that Al Ewing is writing one of the best new series on the stands.  This is a pretty quiet issue, structured around the Cage family’s move to a new apartment, and it gives the characters plenty of space to be themselves.  Ewing gives a lot of space to Adam Brashear, the Blue Marvel, who was retconned into existence a few years ago and then barely used again.  Brashear and Jessica Jones have a great chat, and then later Cage and Brashear get into it in a very well-written scene.  We also see Ewing start to explore the new Power Man’s abilities, show how driven the White Tiger is, and in a wonderful scene, comment on the way Land has chosen to draw Monica Rambeau and her relaxed hair.  I love how quirky and realistic this series feels, and can’t wait to see the team start to approach heroism Cage’s way.

New Avengers #14Jonathan Hickman continues to have the main characters of this book observe how other realities deal with incursion events, as a way of introducing the various groups of characters that the Black Swan has mentioned, and to ramp up the sense of the inevitable destruction that powers this storyline.  I wonder if Hickman has been quietly setting up a Marvel version of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and might use this storyline to wipe out a reality we will recognize (at one point, I would have thought that could have been the Ultimate U, which would have been cool).  Meanwhile, it looks like it’s Doctor Strange who is the only person to really be doing anything about the problem.  A pretty decent issue, with nice art by Simone Bianchi.

The Saviors #2 – It’s strange contrasting this new Image series to writer James Robinson’s other book, All-New Invaders.  Where that title is all about the big fights, Robinson started this series with strong character work before leading into this issue’s extended chase sequence, as Tomas works to get away from the alien creature who also happens to be his local sheriff.  We get a bit of an info dump to bring us up to speed on just why there are aliens in positions of authority in a small New Mexico town, and lots of fun dynamic artwork by J. Bone.  I see a lot of potential in this series, as the alien conspiracy gets examined and revealed.

Secret #5 – Since this series started, Jonathan Hickman has had the story on a very slow burn (exacerbated by great delays between issues), so it’s nice to finally get the full scoop on what this comic is about.  What surprised me is how similar the Kodiak plan, which involves the great Cold War power agencies working together, is to what has happened in Hickman’s other Image book, The Manhattan Projects, just played very differently.  Grant and his crew have plans to steal a large amount of money from their boss, and as they lay out the plan, Ryan Bodenheim draws in it a strange kaleidoscopic spider-web layout, which adds some energy to what would otherwise be a pretty static scene.  It’s a nice look for the book.  This is an interesting comic.

Superior Foes of Spider-Man #8Another great read from Marvel’s best-written, and densest, book on the stands.  Chameleon has tracked down Boomerang and is looking for the head of Silvermane, while the rest of the gang has figured out that Boomerang has betrayed him.  What’s a washed-up baseball player turned themed supervillain to do?  Date night!  Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber are doing great things with this book; I’m really worried that when Superior Spider-Man gets relaunched, all the ‘Superior’ books are going to get canned.  This book stands on its own merits, and I hope it has a long life.

Swamp Thing #28 – I really like the way writer Charles Soule has moved into Swamp Thing’s world and made it his own.  Too often, writers attempting to tackle ST have kept reworking ideas from Alan Moore’s legendary run on the book, or have dredged up old Anton Arcane again and again to pit against the hero.  That’s what the first two years of this title were too, but now, Soule has gotten rid of the Parliament of Trees (more or less), and provided Alec Holland with some interesting new supporting characters (including a cult?).  Capucine, a long-lived warrior who was introduced at the start of his run, finally shares her backstory in this issue, which helps set up a future conflict with a popular DC character I haven’t seen since the end of Demon Knights.  This book feels much more fresh than a lot of the New 52 titles, as Soule is really taking the character in a new direction.

Trillium #6Reading this book, which has the reader almost constantly flipping the book upside down and back as the story alternates from Nika’s perspective to William’s, started confusing me to the point that I began reading pages as if the comic was manga.  I love Jeff Lemire’s willingness to play around with layout, and he’s doing a great job of it here, as his time-travelers are converging on each other once again.  I really think this story will be annoying to read in a trade, as the format is so much better suited to reading it in single issues.  Here’s a question for digital comics readers – how does this series work?  Do the panels swirl and swoosh around as the perspective changes (which would be very cool), or are you stuck with upside panels?

X-Men #10.NOW – It’s a little weird for this book to get the fake #1, suggesting a relaunch, right in the middle of a story that has been dominating this title since it began (taking a couple of months off for Battle of the Atom, of course).  New readers might be a little confused by the whole Arkea storyline, as that sentient alien bacteria works to build her new Sisterhood (of evil mutants?), and as the X-Men work to stop her.  Parts of this issue were a little dull, as writer Brian Wood just moved pieces around on the chessboard, but towards the end, as more of the younger X-Men began to be used, things started speeding up.  I like that Wood is determined to make use of so many characters at a time when the other X-books seem to be focusing on very small casts.

Comics I Would Have Bought if They Weren’t $4 (or more): 

Batman Black and White #6

Black Widow #3

Detective Comics #28

Grindhouse Doors Open at Midnight #5

Iron Man #21

Juice Squeezers #2

Punisher #1

Shadowman #15

The Star Wars #5

Suicide Risk #10

Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1

Wolverine #1

Bargain Comics:

Cataclysm: Ultimates #2Nick Fury’s crew is fighting the Gah Lak Tus swarm in Belarus of all places, and while it’s all pretty bleak, it’s also not all that interesting, sadly.

Fairest #17-20 – The back end of this arc, featuring Prince Charming and a few other familiar Fables, is a lot of fun, and while Steve Sadowski’s art is beautiful, the colouring renders it quite muddy.  Still, it’s nice to see Charming again, and I like the way this arc set him up for a return to the Fables main series, without cheapening his sacrifice in the war against the Adversary.

Über #5-7 – These issues encompass the conclusion to the first story arc, and a two-parter set in the Pacific Theatre of the war.  Kieron Gillen’s meticulously researched superhuman alternate history of the Second World War continues to be a very good read.  I like how he’s picked certain moments to include the enhanced soldiers that fuel this story, and how their entrance changes the shape of the war.  It’s an Avatar comic, so when it gets bloody, it gets very bloody, but still retains my interest over the gore.

Uncanny #3&4 – Andy Diggle’s Dynamite series is a terrific read.  As our main character finally finds out what’s been going on, and gets recruited by a powerful man to plan the theft of some secrets involving the manufacture of superpowers, the comic takes on a bit of a heist movie feel, albeit a very kinetic one.  Aaron Campbell’s art is fantastic.

The Witching Hour #1I didn’t pick up this Vertigo anthology because I’ve gotten tired of their need to run serialized stories in them (I have no interest in the Dead Boy Detectives), but at half-price, this is well worth picking up.  The ‘witch’ theme doesn’t extend to all the stories, oddly, and so we get a great science fiction story by Brett Lewis (remember The Winter Men?  No one else does either, but it was wonderful) and Cliff Chiang, set on Mars and featuring the winners of a reality TV show.  Ales Kot and Morgan Jeske provide a great story about a soldier who had wanted to bring a small girl home from Afghanistan with him, and the opening story, by Steve Beach is very impressive.  The rest is all pretty okay, with some nice work by Ming Doyle and Tula Lotay.

X-Men Gold #1 – It’s kind of cool seeing the X-Men team I grew up with in action again, with controlled writing by Chris Claremont, and while it was also cool to see art from Bob McLeod in the main story, I would have preferred Paul Smith.  The back-up stories are not very well-written, but with art from Walter Simonson and Jorge Molina, I’m not complaining all that much.  The X-Men have a pretty storied past, and it’s nice to see someone remember that from time to time.

 

So what did you read this week?  Let me know in the comments.

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