Author: Ryan

Blue Beetle is a great, fun book. It’s not the most original book in the world — young boy discovers item that gives him great power; somewhere between Power Rangers and Spider-Man — but it’s well executed and has a strong vision. I admit to some trepidation after the past two issues, which suffered from some fair (#5) to poor (#6) art and a bit of a convoluted story. But the book gets back on track with its seventh issue, a standalone story that explains where Jaime’s missing year came from and some background on the scarab and its purpose. And while it’s not terribly surprising to see the book make good on some of its early potential, it is somewhat surprising given the subject of the story: Infinite Crisis.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t read Infinite Crisis. But I did read the entirety of The OMAC Project, which is central to Blue Beetle’s role in the story, and found it to be an overwrought, continuity-obsessed, pedantic and predictable mess. Combine that with a general distrust of epic crossovers, and Infinite Crisis was definitely not on the must-read list. So imagine my surprise at thinking it actually seemed kind of cool while reading Blue Beetle. Indeed, when told by the quite able team of John Rogers and Cully Hamner, the idea of a bunch of superheroes going up into space to fight an evil computer and its army of killer robots seems fun.

In the context of the story it’s fairly serious — particularly since it leads to Jaime losing a year of his life — but the story itself has fun with the ideas: Batman gets to be funny and self-deprecating (“Tell them it was Superman. Everybody likes him.”), Green Arrow and Black Canary bicker (“He’s just upset this fight won’t give him a chance to make a speech about poverty.”), and a kid with an alien battle suit of some sort gets to fight robots and save the day. It’s smart and well-executed, and even references continuity here and there, but it doesn’t feel overdone; Rogers is smart enough to understand the superhero genre is built on a lot of silly concepts, and isn’t obsessed with showing off how adult he can be. I’m not sure, but I think he also makes fun of All Star Batman & Robin.

The story and script is good, but I’m particularly happy to see Cully Hamner back on the book after two issues of fill-ins: His style is perfect for the series, light and cartoonish but still maintining an element of realism and drama. He keeps the hero slim and small, eschewing the massive musculature of other superheroes in favour of reminding us that this particular hero is still just a kid. He’s got a clear style for action, and a great sense of character design.

Blue Beetle is a good, fun superhero comic that uses many of the same stories and ideas as the rest of the DCU, but has a much more distinctive and relaxed tone. Sure, it’s about a kid who discovers a mysterious alien artefact that may have been designed to fight Green Lanterns… but it’s about a kid who discovers an alien artefact that gives him incredible powers and may have been designed to figh Green Lanterns. It’s exactly the sort of thing that made superhero comics so popular for so long.

On the other hand, there’s also Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s The Boys, which is also kind of fun and light-hearted, but in the complete opposite direction from Blue Beetle. In traditional Ennis fashion, it’s a realistic approach that yields over-the-top, absurdist results. Mainstream superhero books tend to shy away from Blue Beetle‘s approach in attempting to be “realistic” or “gritty”, but don’t have the guts to take it to the logical extension. Ennis and Robertson give us a world where superheroes are at best self-centred, and at worst utter assholes.

It’s not entirely new ground for Ennis, but he’s never hit the subject in quite so much depth before. Many of his ideas are quite sensible – when superheroes and supervillains fight in public, innocent people are going to get hurt and killed. It’s also not unreasonable to suggest that many of the superheroes, being fairly average Joes prior to their radioactive exposures and crime-fighting inventions, might think themselves above the gormless masses. They’re not all assholes, of course, as we find out when the virtuous young Starlight meets with the heroic Homelander and finds her temporary membership in The Seven comes with some unpleasant conditions.

Meanwhile, the loveable bastard Butcher has persuaded Wee Hughie to join him in New York with the rest of The Boys. They establish their headquarters and make plans for their first strike on the superheroes who think they’re so much better than everyone else.

And that’s about it. For the third issue in a row, The Boys continues to set things up and establish characters. And while I certainly enjoy Ennis’ characters and the world he’s creating — I’m particularly intrigued by The Female, who’s some combination of vicious psychopath and innocent young girl — something needs to happen. In the first issue Hughie lost his girlfriend, and Butcher has spent the last two issues convincing him to join his group. Hughie still isn’t convinced. While Ennis all but guarantees action in the next issue, the story is still moving quite slowly; it’d probably be swell in a trade, but it feels slow when read 22 pages at a time.

That said, it’s still Ennis and Robertson having some fun, which makes for an entertaining read. Starlight’s encounter with The Seven is hilarious, disgusting though it may be, as Ennis and Robertson don’t suger-coat anything: It’s all blunt and out in the open. Even if they’re doing a riff on Alan Moore’s superhero porn-ring in Top Ten, they’ve got their own take on it.

One can’t be blamed for feeling some disappointment in The Boys, but much of that has to come with the high expectations that accompany a creative team like this. Ennis and Robertson may be taking their time in setting up the pieces and finding their groove, but they can still produce a readable book. Hopefully the next issue will start the serious and gratuitous ass-kicking.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Brian K. Vaughan these days. He certainly caught my, and everyone else’s, attention with Y The Last Man, which remains one of my favourite books. But a stellar first issue of Ex Machina was followed by a fairly dull opening arc that led to my dropping the book, and I’ve never been quite hooked on his superhero work. Even Y has slipped a bit from its once-lofty heights, as Vaughan’s quirks – his style of dialogue, the pop culture references, the flashback origin issues – became repetitive. He’s still good, but one could be forgiven for wondering if he’d reached the edge of his range, or perhaps was just being spread too thin. But when Pride of Baghdad was announced a year ago, I was still excited – the story of a pride of lions who escape from the Baghdad Zoo during American bombings was both compelling in its own right and an interesting departure for Vaughan. I’d never heard of the artist, Nico Henrichon, but that seemed less important – even though Vaughan has lost some of his shine, his work still carries an automatic “Try me!” label. And that’s quite an effective label when the work in question is a hardcover original graphic novel. Thankfully, Pride of Baghdad lives up to much of its promise, thanks in part to Vaughan stretching his storytelling legs, but mostly thanks to the work of his previously unknown artistic collaborator.

The story is a departure for Vaughan, whose work is often peppered with pop culture references and historical anecdotes. Writing about animals clearly doesn’t lend itself to Shakespeare jokes, and the history lessons are kept to a bare minimum. The lions are written with human traits, but still maintain animal sensibilities. He’s done at least the bare minimum of research on the species: Zill, the male, is fairly passive and laid back, if not actually lazy, letting the feisty females, Noor and Safa, do most of the hunting and fighting. Vaughan trip slightly into cliché with the cub, Ali, who is innocent, easily impressed, and curious about the world outside the pen he’s known for his entire life. The lions are largely defined by their experiences in the outside world, from Safa’s world-weary knowledge that it wasn’t a bed of roses down to Ali’s fanciful imagination, fed by Zill and Noor’s vague, rose-tinted memories. They aren’t the deepest characters, but they drive the story effectively.

It’s difficult to write a book about the war in Iraq without discussing the political elements, and Vaughan certainly isn’t a writer to shy away from the subject. The politics of Pride of Baghdad are allegorical, easy enough to ignore but there for examination if you’re so inclined: The animals of the zoo represent the Iraqi people under Saddam, caged and restrained if generally well-fed. Despite Noor’s attempts to unite the animals and organize an escape, no one trusts another, and when the US invasion finally sets everyone loose, that mistrust turns to chaos and violence. Even after being imprisoned, the lions can’t bring themselves to see their former captors as potential food, and they find other animals that have taken advantage of their situations as pets. It’s a subtle enough analogy, more Watership Down than Animal Farm, and the only hiccup comes when Vaughan tries to be a little too clever (or perhaps just cute) and has one animal mention an regime change.

Otherwise, Vaughan’s usual traits are all on hand: The dialogue is snappy and clever, and funny when it needs to be, with Ali expressing the desire for other animals his age because he’s always wanted to kill a baby goat. It’s still a very smart script, paring down some of his clever-for-the-sake-of-clever mannerisms due to the necessities of the story. And it’s not hard to imagine early drafts of the script that envisioned the story as a miniseries, with a few of Vaughan’s usual jaw-dropping cliffhanger pages in evidence.

Those moments come courtesy of Nico Henrichon, who steals the spotlight from his higher-billed writer with some astonishing art. I’ve never seen his work before, but he’s certainly jumped onto my must-watch list with Pride, for which he provided pencils, inks, and colours. There’s a rough, sketchy quality to his art, particularly the characters, but it fits together to form a beautiful whole. There’s a distinct European influence on his work (perhaps unsurprising, as he lives in Quebec City), with the slightly rough characters balanced out be intricate backgrounds and incredible colours. Like Vaughan, he treads a fine line between giving the lions distinctive personalities and emotions without veering too far into Disneyfication. Action may be the weakest card in Henrichon’s deck, but it’s nothing to complain about, and only seems weaker due to the exceptional job he does with characterization, setting, and mood.

It’s unusual to buy a Brian K. Vaughan book and come away more impressed with the art than the story, and that’s no small thing given some of the great artists with whom he’s worked. The story he’s written for Pride of Baghdad is good, but not quite great: It’s effectively a simple story, though it can mean a great deal more, which leaves a great deal in the hands of the artist. If entrusted to a lesser artist, the book could have been sappy, trite, and overwrought, but Henrichon’s touch elevates it by several notches. Vaughan isn’t quite able to distance himself from his other, human-based work, but most of the flaws with the script and story are washed away by Henrichon’s wonderful visuals. Vaughan sets up the story and the characters, but Henrichon sells it, and makes Pride of Baghdad one of the most satisfying and affecting books of the year.

So DC editor Steve Wacker left DC for Marvel. And even by the insane standards of Newsarama overreactions, the Newsarama fanboys insanely overreact with accusations of unprofessionalism and disloyalty.

First, the obvious: Wacker could have given a year’s notice he was leaving, but as soon as he said he was going to Marvel, Dan Didio pretty much had to stand over Wacker while he cleaned out his desk. Senior employees don’t get to work at one company while they’re planning to go to work for the major competitor.

Beyond that, I find it interesting that the unwashed masses seem to believe that Wacker is single-handedly responsible for the success of 52, and that things are likely to fall apart without him. While I’m sure Wacker is incredibly hard working and deserves a lot of credit for pulling off a weekly comic with a massive creative team and a couple dozen storylines involving half the DCU, it’s not like it’s some pet project he’s been doing in his spare time. He’s likely got a small army of assistants, for one thing. And for another, 52 clearly enjoys nearly unparalleled corporate support: This is the event for DC, and it has a lot riding on it. As such, Wacker must have a lot of clout at DC: If he needs an extra artist, I’d imagine he gets it; if there’s a question of 52 or Firestorm shipping late, there’s no question at all. Again, Wacker deserves lots of credit, but 52 is the 1000-pound gorilla in the movie theatre, and Wacker is the gorilla trainer standing between order and carnage – if he wants bannanas, he gets bannanas.

The other interesting assumption seems to be that Wacker will be doing a weekly comic, or something similar, at Marvel, because obviously he knows how to keep a book on track. Again, it’s a flawed theory: In keeping 52 on track, Wacker has managed to avoid one of the major causes of late books: Superstar artists. 52 has a stable of solid, reliable artists – and with Keith Giffen providing layouts, there’s a certain amount of consistency from artist to artist. That’s significantly different from a Bryan Hitch or Steve McNiven, whose detail-heavy art is a headline attraction. It has nothing to do with quality, but the approach – Ultimates sells largely because of Bryan Hitch, while 52 sells because of the story and characters. (at least in theory)

There was an interesting hint in Newsarama’s story about the John Ostrander & Tom Mandrake fill-in arc on Batman, where Dan Didio said

There are certain books that I feel we can take less liberties with: Batman, Superman, Action and Detective. They can’t miss because of the history, the numbering, and what it represents to the company. So, from my standpoint, when we go into those books, we have to go into those books with the understanding that at some point, we’re going to break the run of particular talent.

There are some books that run on their own schedule because the talent is paramount, and others that run on a monthly schedule because it’s important there be in issue of Batman every month. 52 falls into the latter category – it’s a weekly comic, it has to be a weekly comic, and there’s no way you can do that the sort of artists that are popular these days. Wacker isn’t selling an individual creator, he’s selling the entire DC Universe.

Lastly, via Johanna, we get a column by Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, wherein Wacker’s new colleague admonishes internet fandom for having their heads up their asses, but then gets a wee bit defensive comparing the outcry over Wacker’s departure to the one over Civil War delays:

Frankly, I’m appalled at some of the things that are being posted about this situation, and this editor. Derogatory, insulting, know-nothing posts that really all translate back to one simple idea: “I’m afraid I won’t be able to have the comic book I want when I want it.” I lived this firsthand a few weeks back, when we announced that CIVIL WAR #4 was going to be delayed. There were something like a dozen pages of posts, all rallying support for the beleaguered retailers, and all those new readers who’d come into reading comics with CIVIL WAR and who would now be hopelessly lost forever because the book would now be late. And all of those posts really said the same thing as well: “I’m afraid I won’t be able to have the comic book I want when I want it.”

That much of the reaction to Wacker’s departure is ignorant and derogatory can’t really be questioned, but the Civil War comparison doesn’t really hold up. People are mad at Wacker because they don’t understand how publishing works and are generally insane. People are mad about Civil War delays not because they can’t have the book when they want it, but that they aren’t getting the book when Marvel said they would. It’s a lot of insane ranting and overreaction in either case, but out of very different motives. I suspect Brevoort, who normally seems like such an astute guy, may be getting a bit burned out.

So, as I was just saying, Mike Carey is one of my favourite writers. And when I was about 13 and discovered Whilce Portacio’s work on X-Factor and Uncanny X-Men, I thought he was pretty awesome; while hindsight and a more mature appreciation of comic art says he’s bigger on scratchy art than he is on coherent storytelling or well-defined characters, I still have a certain fondness for him. And there can be no question that a story involving cyborgs, aliens, vampires and werewolves is kind of cool.

Bearing all that in mind, I have no idea what the hell is going on in Wetworks #1, and I really don’t care. It’s an incoherent, over-complicated, and generally uninteresting mess.

Portacio’s art is much the same as it was back on the X-books, the recent Stormwatch, and indeed the original Wetworks, which I’m not even sure I ever read. There’s very little in the way of artistic evolution, which is kind of disappointing for a guy who never had the automatic audience of Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld. It’s all very 90’s-style Image, but Portacio at least maintained his own style: Lots of lines and grit, and some character designs that were probably cutting edge 15 years ago. He’s not a great storyteller, and he’s got command of about four more facial expressions than Liefeld (which is to say, six or seven). And geez, there’s a lot of empty white space on his pages – not just in lieu of actual back grounds, but in between panels which don’t take up nearly enough of the page.

But while Portacio’s art is essentially what you’d expect, Carey’s story is the real disappointment. It certainly reads like an old Image book, starting in the middle of a story the creator has all mapped out but didn’t bother to share with anyone. Carey seems to be working from the assumption that everyone read the original Wetworks book and will understand who everyone is and what they’re doing. Nothing is really explained beyond some weird stuff happening at a military base and one of the original Wetworks guys recruiting a new team to do something. Portacio’s storytelling abilities – to say nothing of his barely consistent character designs – don’t help a lot, but Carey doesn’t make much effort to explain anything. There’s a time and place for being obscure and letting the audience in slowly, and there’s also a time for clearly explaining what the hell is going on.

The Wetworks relaunch is obviously calling for the latter approach for two reasons: First is that the previous Wetworks series is hardly the sort of landmark with which a majority of comic fans are acquainted. Second is that this is a part of the bigger Wildstorm relaunch (the opening salvo even, thanks to the month-late Wildcats) that’s aimed at reinvigorating a bunch of properties that have fallen from their once lofty heights – the whole point of the big Worldstorm thing is that no one has cared about most of these books for nearly a decade. Writing a story that assumes fairly detailed knowledge of the characters seems to kind of miss the point.

Of course, Wetworks was announced quite a bit before the rest of the Wildstorm books – I remember hearing it mentioned nearly two years ago – so perhaps it was written with a different marketing agenda in mind. Still, it’s hard to imagine this story succeeding on just about any level other than almost immediately following Wetworks volume 1. It’s needlessly obscure and convoluted, and for probably the first time in history, Portacio’s not even the worst offender in his own book.

I like Mike Carey. He’s probably one of my favourite writers these days, largely due to his excellent work on Lucifer: he writes great characters and mixes them with wonderful and fantastic stories. I have mixed feelings about Pasqual Ferry – his art looks entirely too slick sometimes, but there’s still a lot of energy and creativity on display. On the whole, they seem a pretty good team for Ultimate Fantastic Four, which is a book that could use some energy, creativity, and fun. And they do deliver, doing one of the best Kirby homages I’ve seen in a while. There’s just one problem: They’re using the wrong Kirby characters.

Yes, the title says Fantastic Four, but the bulk of both issues #33 and #34 are given over to another team: The Forever People, one of Jack Kirby’s 1970s creations that fit into the whole New Gods craziness. Which is plenty cool, admittedly, but they’re DC characters. Carey and Ferry are working at entirely the wrong company for a New Gods revival: It’s such a bang-on update on Kirby’s characters that it’s hard to imagine this getting by DC’s legal department: The characters line up pretty well, they ride a giant futuristic motor bike, they have a sentient computer that talks in clicks and beeps, and their teleportation technology makes a “WHOOOOM” sound. I’m left wondering how on Earth Marvel expects this to get past DC’s legal department.

All that said: It’s an entertaining, if slightly original, beginning to Carey’s Ultimate Cosmic Stuff arc. A group of aliens make a crash landing into a shopping mall where Reed and Sue are coincidentally spending a day off. Naturally, in the confusion, the aliens and the FF mistake each other for enemies and fight, which results in Reed and Sue being taken out quite easily. The aliens escape, but leave behind Seed, their sentient computer, as well as their big teleporting motor-space-bike, which are taken back to FF headquarters. When the aliens realize this, they track down Seed and try to take it back, which results in another fairly lopsided fight against the whole Fantastic Four. Ben gets one good punch in, but everyone else goes down pretty easily… until they all finally come to their senses and realize they shouldn’t be enemies, at which point the real bad guy shows up.

It’s all fairly cliché, but it’s well-executed cliché. It’s fun and light, and the aliens are written as both believably alien and relatable. Most of the first issue is given over the aliens, with the FF reduced to backup players in their own book, but it’s a workable strategy. Ferry’s visuals seem well suited to the FF’s futuristic world and Carey’s sci-fi take on the characters. I’m still not entirely sold on his actual storytelling – it’s not bad, but the book just doesn’t feel as dynamic as it could. Still, he’s got a great imagination and has some great character designs for Carey’s forever people, and caps off #34 with a great closer.

There are slight logistical problems: If the alien runaways can take out the FF so easily, what good are the humans going to be against the big bad guys the aliens are running from? It also takes two issues to really get the story going; in the old days, this would have been a double-sized special issue kicking off the new creative team’s run; unfortunately. Carey covers a lot of ground in the two issues so it doesn’t feel like filler, but it’s still an awful lot of setup.

Carey has a lot to live up to in his post-Lucifer projects, and while Ultimate Fantastic Four isn’t perfect, it does seem the best proving ground for his style and imagination. Hopefully these two issues are just his introduction, and the cosmic ass kicking shall begin with #35.

I realize that death is one of those things you really shouldn’t take too seriously in superhero comics. Dead, alive, dead… it all just blurs together after a while. You kind of have to accept that no one significant is ever going to stay dead, and that even B- and C-listers will probably make it back from the dead. It’s easier to get away with when the “death” in question was the sort of “falling down a bottomless pit” or “blown up in a huge explosion” death that doesn’t leave a body, but even that didn’t stop DC from bringing back Jason “Beaten to death with a crowbar and then blown up and subsequently buried” Todd, so whatever.

But there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and this is one of them: Greg Rucka, along with co-writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, has brought back the Suicide Squad in the latest issue of Checkmate. That, in itself, is kind of cool, and the issue on the whole is pretty decent. The problem? They also brought back Rick Flag, the former leader of Suicide Squad. The same Rick Flag who went on a solo suicide mission back in Suicide Squad #26 and detonated a bomb right next to him that made a mountain fall down on him.

Yes, yes, I know — that’s exactly the sort of death I said you could bring characters back from. But in this case, it’s just wrong. Flag went into the enemy base knowing he wouldn’t come back. It was the end of a very nice character arc by writer John Ostrander. And the book was called Suicide Squad, for god’s sake, not Taking a Quick Nap, Be Back in a Couple Minutes Squad.

Seriously, guys: You’ve got Amanda Waller in Checkmate. You’ve got Bronze Tiger. You’ve got a bunch of C-list villains to draft. That’s all you really need for Suicide Squad, and in fact what Ostrander had for the second half of the series. Why not just let Rick Flag rest in peace?

(or, The Many Faces of Sue Storm, continued)

A preview page from Ultimate Power #1, “the crossover of the decade” (apparently able to top Civil War without a clone). Note the Thing, and particularly the Invisible woman, in the top panel:

Next: The cover to Ultimate Fantastic Four #21:

And finally, the cover to Ultimate Fantastic Four #31:

One woman. One pose. Two different faces. Two different right-arm positions. Two entirely different faces, with the one from UFF #21 being a particularly bad paste job — that, or the story involves Sue suffering from a serious neck injury. The Thing actually comes off a bit better – he’s got an entirely different pose in #21, though the only difference between #31 and Ultimate Power is that his mouth is open in one. At least Sue gets to move her arm.

That’s not bad, all things considered: One pose for Sue and two for Ben turn into two covers and one panel with only the slightest of alterations. It’s not that Land cheats, because plenty of artists do it in one way or another. It’s that he’s so incredibly bad at it.

(I’m also positive Land is re-using the Sue Storm picture from the centre panel, though I can’t find the reference.)