The last Wednesday of the month is also know as “The Week When Marvel Tries to Kill Us” by releasing everything they possibly can so that we can all throw our backs out as we leave the comic shop.
New York Five #4 - Here is an early contender for “miniseries of the year” and I’m going to be highly pissed when it gets left off those lists in favor of a bunch of miniseries that end in December because comic fans have the attention span of a mosquito. This whole series has been a really touching slice-of-life drama as we follow these young ladies in the spring semester of their freshman year at NYU. This issue brought things home in a major way. For one thing, someone dies and the characters are left to ponder on the transitory nature of their lives: They’re all moving on in life and the little group of friends is moving apart. We’ve all been there and had friends who seemed like the most important things in our lives before something changed because someone took a new job or moved or signed up for classes at a different time of day from you, and you just drift apart. That’s life and Brian Wood really nails that sentiment. I’ve gushed on Ryan Kelly’s art before (and own an original page from issue #1), but not only does he do a tremendous job on the young ladies who are the center of this book, but he also makes “The City” a co-starring character itself. This is a “must read” for everyone and especially so for anyone with any affinity for New York. Grade: A
Velocity #4 - Oh la la! Kenneth Rocafort is a beast! This series wraps up a very good and straightforward tale of Velocity racing against the clock to save her Cyberforce teammates from a deadly virus. Every panel that Rocafort draws of Velocity just oozes energy. She just looks fast even when she is standing still. He’s got a really powerful understanding of human anatomy and muscle groups. Sunny Gho does a pretty nice job of coloring too. Even though the story was really simple, I think Ron Marz deserves some credit. It’s almost like he knew that this series would take almost a year to come out and kept it simple so that each time all you had to remember was “race against the clock to save teammates.” If you’re an art fan, this is a must-buy in collected form. Grade: B+
Morning Glories #9 - This title continues to be confusing, but in a very good way. Sometimes I get highly annoyed by books that are being mysterious and opaque (see: Batman, Inc.), but I think Nick Spencer is pulling off the confusion because we actually have a hope of learning some answers. In this issue, we follow one of the students, Jun, and see his back story, how the Morning Glories Academy became interested in him and what lengths they were willing to go to in order to get him as a student. Yikes! Once again, I can’t wait for next month. I’ve heard a lot of folks complain about the art in Morning Glories, but I really don’t get it. It’s true that it isn’t JH Williams or Mike Kaluta, but I think Eisma is doing a wonderful job with telling the story in terms of his panels and layouts. Grade: B+
FF #2 - The story here is pretty top notch as the FF has to fix Doom’s brain damage and it has all the moralistic tropes where there are opportunities to kill Doom that are passed upon. Fortunately, Hickman doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on the morals because the idea of the FF seriously killing Doom is just preposterous. And, we get a pretty cool cliffhanger ending featuring Valeria who is having a really nice run as a character under Hickman’s pen. The only thing holding this back for me is Epting’s art. It isn’t that I think Epting is a poor artist, but I just don’t think his realistic style is suited for FF. I’d rather see Epting illustrate a crime story and let us have an artist who is more cartoonist on FF. It doesn’t have to be outlandish cartooning. Let’s just have someone like Dale Eaglesham. Grade: B
Avengers #12.1 - This was a pretty good .1 issue that features the Avengers sending a team to Antarctica to check out an odd energy signal. Turns out that the Intelligencia has found a fallen Galadorian Spaceknight, and after a struggle Ultron pops out. Well, you knew he would be back, right? Not only does this issue establish a new story arc, but it ties into the huge “map of the future” that Tony Stark found in the first story arc of Avengers. I loved that “map of the future” and wonder how long Marvel will be faithful to it. The writing in this issue is strong and clever; Bendis doesn’t even write a “bad” issue. He might have a story line that you don’t care for and it might take too long for things to happen, but he is a really strong writer. Here’s a problem though: Even though this is a good jumping on point for new readers, why publish this issue now when Avengers are going to be sucked into Fear Itself for the next few months? Why not just publish this issue in July or something? The art by Bryan Hitch is fine. Grade: B
Echoes #5 - The mystery is revealed in this issue. In the first issue, we saw the protagonist get a disturbing death-bed message from his dying, demented father: [paraphrasing] “I put the little girls in the basement.” The protagonist checks out the basement and finds hundreds of little dollies made out of the bones, skin and hair of murdered little girls, which causes the protagonist to begin to lose his mind and think that perhaps he too is going to start killing little girls too– just like his father. Along the way, he runs into a helpful police detective who wants to get to the bottom of several recent missing girl reports. The resolution is both clever and pretty depressing, but in a good way. It sure won’t make you want to give any money to the police benevolence association! Rahsan Ekedal again carries the day with incredibly creepy, black and white artwork. Everyone who likes horror should be sure to buy the collected edition. Grade: B
Haunt #15 - I feel as if this title has a funeral march air about it with the news that artist Greg Capullo is leaving to go draw Batman comics for DC (which is ironic because I had just chopped most of the Bat-books off my pull list and now I’ll be adding at least one). He may be leaving, but he surely isn’t mailing it in on his last few issues of Haunt. Everything in this issue is just want you’ve come to expect from Capullo: vibrant characters who just bristle with energy, incredible detail, imaginative layouts and beautiful women. He’s a true pro! I just hope that DC has some top-flight inkers lined up because I’ll be pissed if they get some scrub inker and they mess up Capullo’s awesome linework. The story itself carries on the attack of the Apparition who is some otherworldly force that is coming to drag the ghost of Kurt off to the abyss. Chaos ensues! Grade: B
Spider-Girl #6 – This is kinda what I want Spider-Girl to be: Spunky and taking on enemies that are slightly too big for her. The new Hobgoblin is a bit of a tall order for an unpowered teenage girl, BUT part of the charm of Spider-Girl is that she doesn’t know that Hobgoblin is a bit much, and therein lies some of her power. As long as it doesn’t get her killed, she can go a long way with having a little bit of irrational confidence. My only two little quibbles with this series are that I don’t like Spider-Man guest-starring (over-exposed?) and that I wish we’d get to see a big more of Spider-Girl’s training (show us how she is able to hang with big time villains). One thing that held this series back (since I think it’s cancelled after issue #8) is the lack of a regular artist. It isn’t that I don’t like Clayton Henry, but he’s a LOT different than Matthew Southworth who did last month’s issue. I just wonder what the hell Marvel is thinking when they launch a series with a D-list character (I LIKE Anya, but she is D-list) and then don’t give the series a regular artist. Does that sound like a recipe for success in this soft comic sales market? Grade: B-
Incredible Hulks #627 - I reread the Planet Hulk saga a few weeks ago and it enticed me to jump back onto Incredible Hulks (which I had dropped during the dreadful “Dark Son” arc). This isn’t a great issue, but it does have a few things going for it. For one thing, it is a fun little story of Hulk and his ex-wife fighting and then teaming up to prevent the unleashing of Pandora’s Box. So, he’s not smashing dinosaurs or anything like that, but it’s fun and you do get to see Hulk wearing a tuxedo again (thanks to unstable molecules). For another, we get art by Tom Grummett who I really like. He never does anything very flashy, but his style is just old-school, superhero goodness and no new-fangled short-cuts like dot-overlay. There should be room in all of our lives for a Hulk comic. Grade: B-
Osborn #5 - This was a satisfying end that saw Norman Osborn escape from his underwater prison, but then quickly surrender himself to law enforcement. Ol’ Norman is a kinda compelling character as it seems that he really just wants to have his day in court, where he can talk about all the despicable things he knows about people and the US government. And really… what’s the downside for him: The prisoners love him AND he can probably bust outta prison anytime he feels like it. The only downside is that it got a little to tied up in the political intrigue for me. I really don’t want to see many pages of US Senate hearings in my Marvel books. I’m fine with it in my non-Big 2 comics where serious topics can be handled better. Anyway, even though Norman is locked up in prison, they sent him to the Raft and hopefully that means that Jeff Parker will get to play with him in Thunderbolts. Becky Cloonan helps out Emma Rios on art here and the result is very pretty. Grade: C+
Marineman #5 - Ironically, this series isn’t tickling me nearly as much now that we’ve gotten into the meat of the story. I liked this series better when we were just focusing on Steve Ocean as fun-loving, blond-haired, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered and extremely nice American man. That part of the story put a huge smile on my face. But, now that we’re into the story, it just doesn’t have as much magic to it. I still LOVE the art and coloring (which look like nothing else on the shelves right now), but don’t really care that much about Steve Ocean’s parentage. Grade: C+
The Mission #3 - I honestly was surprised to see this on my pull list because I thought I’d dropped it after being underwhelmed by the first issue. The joy of pre-ordering is that you’re often “stuck” with the first three issues before you’ve even read the first one. Gotta love this Direct Market system, huh? Sometimes getting “stuck” with these issues is good because the series turns things around in the second and third issues, but that didn’t happen in this case. The Mission isn’t bad, but it just isn’t good enough to stay on my really long pull list. The basic story is that an everyman is approached by a mysterious older guy and told to murder a stranger. As you can imagine, mysteries abound, but I can live without getting to the bottom of this story. Grade: C
Cavewoman Snow #1 - This is kinda a guilty pleasure book. Written and illustrated by Rob Durham, Cavewoman proves to me that there should always be a place for beautifully drawn, black-and-white, scantily clad jungle-girl comics. There really isn’t a whole lot to the story of this issue… It’s just a chance to see Durham do his thing, drawing the beautiful Meriem as she and her adopted town are faced with a snowstorm and fuel-shortage. Thankfully, Meriem doesn’t have a problem wearing a bikini in the snow. In sticking with Cavewoman tradition, this book is mostly a tease as naughty things are implied, but rarely shown. I honestly would hope that every red-blooded male comic fan could find one stinker of a superhero book and support Cavewoman. C’mon, it’s way better than Secret Avengers or Batman! Grade: B
Age of X Universe #2 - Well, the main Age of X crossover ended with a real wet fart, so you wouldn’t expect much of the tie-in series. Given that the ultimate resolution to Age of X was that one of Legion’s personalities had created a universe where everyone was attacking them and only Legion could save the day with the Force Wall around their Fortress X compound…it is a little hard to figure how these other heroes fit into that story. For the main X-Men, you can kinda say that they were on Utopia with Legion and got pulled into Legion’s reality via psychic power. But, it just doesn’t make any sense that all of these other alt-versions of Marvel heroes would be anything other than figments of Legion’s imagination (in the fake universe), especially when Age of X established that there was nothing beyond the Force Wall (ostensibly because creating something beyond the Wall would have been too much work for Legion). So, in light of that, Legion still created a fully fleshed out background for all these alt-heroes? I call bullshit! Grade: D-
-Dean Stell
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Filed under: Image Comics, Marvel Comics, Vertigo Tagged: Amryl Press, Avengers, Brian Wood, Bryan Hitch, Bryan Michael Bendis, Cavewoman Snow, Clayton Henry, Dean Stell, Echoes, FF, Greg Capullo, Haunt, Image, Joe Eisma, Jonathan Hickman, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Kenneth Rocafort, Marvel, Morning Glories, Morning Glories #9, Morning Glories #9 review, New York Five, New York Five #4, New York Five #4 review, Nick Spencer, Paul Tobin, Quick Hit Reviews, Rashan Ekedal, Rob Durham, Robert Kirkman, Ron Marz, Ryan Kelly, Spider-Girl, Steve Epting, Todd McFarlane, Velocity, Vertigo
