The Weekly Round-Up #639 With Newburn #4, Crossover #12, Alien #10 & More Plus The Week In Music!

Columns, News, Top Story

Best Comic of the Week:

Newburn #4 – Chip Zdarsky’s Daredevil run has gently approached being critical of policing, but with this latest issue of Newburn, he goes after the New York Police Benevolent Association full on, comparing it to the crime families that employ Newburn to investigate their problems.  The police union decides to hire Newburn, which means they have to threaten him, to figure out who killed a cop.  This is a provocative and well-constructed issue.  Zdarsky and artist Jacob Phillips have a cool take on the traditional crime comic, and I really like the episodic nature of it, which is so rare these days, especially in independent comics.  It’s very good stuff.

Quick Takes:

Alien #10 – Jane takes the survivors of the Alien attack to the other terraforming station on their planet, only to find that it’s also been attacked by the xenomorphs.  This issue continues the discussion around Jane’s faith, and raises the question of whether or not it was created by Weyland-Yutani as a way of engineering the situation she finds herself in.  Phillip Kennedy Johnson is taking this series in unexpected directions, and I’m liking that.

Batman #121 – I guess the Abyss story is over now?  I’ve really been liking Joshua Williamson’s run on Robin, and have found his approach to Deathstroke Inc. interesting, but having learned that Chip Zdarsky is taking over this title, I see that Williamson never intended to tell a long-running story here, but is instead using this title to lay the groundwork for yet another crossover event before taking his exit.  This issue was fine, but the ending jumped around a lot as Williamson worked to align this book with the other Batman series.  This is the reason why I stopped reading Batman books a few years ago – there are too many of them, and when they depend upon one another, it’s too expensive and too much work to follow.  I’ve preordered the rest of Williamson’s run, and am definitely going to be checking out what Zdarsky has planned, but I would like things to be better.

Crossover #12 – This series just keeps getting wilder and wilder, and more and more meta as it goes.  This issue opens with Negan, the character from the Walking Dead, paying a visit to his creator, Robert Kirkman, in a sequence written by Kirkman.  Then we return to the story in progress, as Donny Cates (the character in the story who is no longer writing the story in the story, and not Donny Cates the writer, who is writing the comic) makes his move.  I feel like Cates really wanted to outshine Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run, in which he appeared, and has just gone as wild as possible with this book.  It’s making it a really fun read, as the lines between different Image properties and the real world continue to blur.  This is a very niche book, but I’m here for it, as it’s a lot of fun to read.

Daredevil: Woman Without Fear #3 – Well, this really kind of spoils a big part of the next issue of Devil’s Reign, which is kind of unfortunate.  Chip Zdarsky hasn’t added a whole lot to Elektra in this series, but it’s not bad, and helps set up the Hand storyline that looks like it’s going to come after Devil’s Reign wraps up.

Devil’s Reign: X-Men #2 – I can’t quite get my head around the idea of Emma Frost and Elektra having worked together in the past, and that does make me question just how a lot of the scenes shown in this book could have happened and fit in the continuities of Daredevil and the X-Men, but at the same time, I like how Gerry Duggan is looking at Emma’s past with the Kingpin.  Also, I’m always happy to get a book drawn by Phil Noto…

Moon Knight #9 – Moon Knight has found himself trapped in the sentient top floor of a local hotel, which does not appear on that building’s plans.  This is an odd issue, but it shows Marc’s willingness to search for new kinds of solutions to the types of problems he usually uses his fists for.  It’s a curious issue that feels a little out of sequence (I would have thought the Devil’s Reign issue would have come out first), but it’s all good.

One-Star Squadron #4 – Red Tornado has been tasked with firing half of his staff, but that’s really not the kind of leader he is.  Mark Russell and Steve Lieber have gathered up a number of unused characters and cast them in their remake of the Office, and it’s all pretty great.  This book has a lot of heart, and is equally bizarre, funny, and touching.  I’m really liking it.

Star Wars #21 – Shara Bey, the Rebel pilot, is still in hiding on Tarkin’s Will, the Star Destroyer, evading the Imperials and gathering information to send to the Empire.  She knows that she can’t evade detection forever, so she gets reading to make her big move.  At the same time, her husband, Kes Dameron, grows ever more tired of waiting for her return, and advocates for her rescue.  I like when this book looks at some of the newer characters added to the cast, and found this issue to be pretty cool.  Shara is a strong character, and I hope we get to see more of her.

War For Earth-3 #1 – DC seems to have these mini event crossovers quite often, and I decided I’d go along with this one since it stemmed mostly from Suicide Squad, with a bit of Teen Titans Academy linked in (although not in this issue).  If you haven’t been reading Suicide Squad, you’d have no idea what is happening in this issue, although even if you have, it’s a bit of a confusing thing.  Amanda Waller has decided to take over all of Earth-3, the home of the Crime Syndicate, and has just shown up in the middle of Metropolis with a bunch of villains from different realities (including some of her own Squad).  Ultraman doesn’t seem interested at first, but as Waller’s forces take down some of the Syndicate, he is left with no choice but to come and talk to her.  At the same time, Rick Flag has been leading his own Suicide Squad on a mission to stop Waller, and they work to reach her.  There are lots of characters here that writers Robbie Thompson and Dennis Hopeless assume we know already, so little to nothing is done to introduce them or explain their presence, and the result is a big mess of a book.  There are three artists with pretty different styles on this book, and that only adds to the mess of things.  It also seems like Thompson is bent on ignoring or erasing the character work he put into the Squad (which is ending soon), as the characters are pretty interchangeable in this issue.  I’m disappointed in this, and the way it’s negated everything that made Amanda Waller one of the coolest characters in the DC stable back in the day.

Suicide Squad #13 – Chapter Two of the War For Earth-3 is a little more cohesive than the first part, as the focus is more on individual members of the Squad as they try to figure out how to resist Waller and her plans.  I have no idea how this is supposed to move into next week’s issue of Flash, as neither he nor any other characters from other titles have shown up yet.  Part of me wishes I’d dropped this book before now, but I’m still hoping we’re going to find out that this isn’t the ‘real’ Amanda Waller we’re dealing with.

X-Men #9 – This title is another very inconsistent one, as it masquerades as the flagship X-book this month.  We get a look at some of the inner workings at Orchis, as they recruit MODOK to help in the fight against the mutants.  At the same time, the Quiet Council decides to not engage in open warfare with their enemies, and on Arakko, the planet requests a rescue mission to Otherworld.  We also get to see Rogue and Gambit in action in space, and learn about the depths of Destiny’s dislike of Remy.  This issue is all over the place, and doesn’t feature the characters that have been getting most of the spotlight of late.  Is this what the post-Hickman X-books are going to be like?  I’m looking forward to X-Men Red and Immortal X-Men, and hope that Al Ewing and Kieron Gillen can get things running smoothly again.

Comics I Would Have Bought if Comics Weren’t So Expensive:

Avengers Forever #3

Batman Killing Time #1

The Week in Music:

Immanuel Wilkins – The 7th Hand – There’s a kind of jazz that I associate with Blue Note Records.  It’s a lot more timeless than most of what I listen to, and it’s always very accomplished, but doesn’t always grab me.  Much of saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins’s new album is like that – academic, pure, and kind of cold, but the rest of it is fantastic.  Certain tracks carry the kind of groove that I look for in all genres of music, and have a genuine warmth to them.  A standout track is “Don’t Break”, which features the Farafina Kan Percussion Ensemble, who use African drums.  The more I listen to this, the more it grows on me.

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