Collected Editions

Review: Avenging Spider-Man: The Good, the Green and the Ugly trade paperback (Marvel Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at Hell Yeah '80s Marvel!]

Multiple Spider-Man titles are by no means a new thing, but in the aftermath of the “One More Day” reboot, the various books were all converted into extra issues of Amazing Spider-Man. However, the allure of multiple ongoing books was too strong, resulting in the launch of Avenging Spider-Man last year.

Despite the name, Avenging is not a Spidey book in the vein of Sensational or Friendly Neighborhood. It’s actually the newest version of Marvel Team-Up, which has traditionally featured Spidey teaming up with a various Marvel hero. The title makes sense when you consider that Avengers and Amazing Spider-Man are two of Marvel’s most recognizable titles, so combining them is a good marketing strategy.

That’s not to say that the book always teams up Spidey with an Avenger; the last story in the collection Avenging Spider-Man: The Good, The Green and The Ugly features Deadpool. But Spidey is the equivalent of Nightwing in that he knows and is (mostly) friendly with the majority of Marvel’s heroes. The first story sees him teamed up with another Marvel social butterfly, She-Hulk. They memorably shared the spotlight in an issue of She-Hulk’s much-missed title in which she helped Spidey sue J. Jonah Jameson for defamation. It’s always fun to see them together, partly because they have similar experiences as both Avengers and replacement members of the Fantastic Four. They’re also two of the Marvel Universe’s premiere quippers.

Kathryn Immonen injects Spidey and Shulkie into a standard museum exhibit opening with the added twist of Egyptian cultists. In the process, gods are summoned, Shulkie gets a tail, and Spider-Man gets to make allusions to Sebek, my favorite Egyptian god and the subject of a comic book pitch I’ve been working on. Illustrating this fun single-issue story is Stuart Immonen; it’s been a while since the Immonens have gotten to work together, and Stuart’s slightly cartoony and very kinetic art definitely helps the story.

The trade skips the next issue (which was part of the “Ends of the Earth” storyline of Amazing Spider-Man) and instead goes to a two-parter featuring Captain Marvel. As the included issue introductions allude to, this was a not-so-subtle ad for the new Captain Marvel series; it’s even written by Kelly Sue DeConnick. Spidey and Carol Danvers developed a strong chemistry during Brian Michael Bendis’ various Avengers runs. While I’m not entirely sold on the idea of a romantic relationship between them, it would potentially be the most stable pairing for both of them. It’s one of the promising storylines derailed by the new Superior Spider-Man concept.

DeConnick’s story is a bit muddled, involving the Occupy movement, privately-funded counter-protesters and a mysterious super-powered vigilante. The newness of the Captain Marvel identity plays a part, as few people seem to know that Ms. Marvel has changed her name. There’s a lengthy mid-air sequence since the Captain Marvel title uses flight as a key theme. Terry Dodson keeps the story moving briskly; he’s a personal favorite, and since his wife Rachel inks his work as always, that makes two married couples on this book’s creative team. (It would have been great to have Walt and Louise Simonson do a story for the trifecta.)

The aforementioned Deadpool two-parter both reads and looks different from the rest of The Good, The Green and The Ugly. As always, I dislike changing artists in the middle of a trade, but since Avenging is an anthology/team-up series, I don’t mind giving them leeway. I also think that this was a story not originally intended for this title. Instead, it feels like it was supposed to be in the defunct Deadpool Team-Up book, and this was as good a place as any to put it. Aaron Kuder’s artwork is darker and more heavily inked, closer to Scott Kolins than either Immonen or Dodson. There’s quite a bit of stylizing going on with the characters, which fits both the characters and the story being told.

Most of the first part of that story takes place in Peter Parker’s mind (clearly the man needs some anti-mind-control lessons from the X-Men), which Deadpool has entered with the help of a mysterious benefactor. Inception is name-checked, along with a half-dozen other films thanks to Deadpool’s madcap dialogue. Kuder does some great work in creating Peter’s inner demons from high school, such as a disembodied shop class teacher and ridiculous renderings of Spidey’s classic supporting cast as the members of The Breakfast Club. When this story took place, Deadpool had a second internal voice in white caption boxes as well as a desire to end his life, two elements which have been eliminated (in my opinion, for the better) in the new book.

Issue #13 transitions the story into the real world and the revelation of the true villain: the Hypno-Hustler, an infamously lame villain who hasn’t been seen for a while. As it turns out, the “inner demons” Peter beat up were actually the Hustler’s prison guards. Hustler uses the same illusion powers to turn the low-rent supervillains in the prison into better ones, including turning the equally lame and weird Painter of 1,000 Perils into J. Michael Straczynski’s Morlun. The ending involves a few jokes about the supposed influence of Spider-Man on Deadpool’s outfit and some comeuppance for the Merc With a Mouth.

Avenging Spider-Man: The Good, The Green and The Ugly is by no means an essential read. If you’re a fan of She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Deadpool or a lighter take on Spider-Man -- and I happen to be all four -- then it’s worth a look. It’s the comic book equivalent of a beach read: fun and brief, with three great creative teams to boot.

Review: Criminal Vol. 4: Bad Night trade paperback (Marvel Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Guest reviewer Zach King blogs about movies as The Cinema King]

I'm halfway through the six Criminal collections, and the series has been so delightful that I'm considering purchasing the deluxe edition hardcovers even though I've been borrowing the shorter trades from my local public library. At $50 each, though, they're quite expensive, so a part of me has been continuing to read the series to see if the quality drops enough to warrant not buying the deluxe editions.

With the fourth collection, Criminal: Bad Night, I haven't found that qualitative drop-off the cynic in me has come to expect. Instead, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips ... well, what can I say about how good this series is that I haven't already said about the first three volumes?

In Bad Night, we get the scoop on Jacob Kurtz, the cartoonist behind the inscrutable Frank Kafka, PI, strips. Presumed guilty after his wife disappeared, Jacob has become an insomniac and a slave to his work; though his innocence was proven when his wife's car crash was ruled an accident, Jacob is dogged by a cop who hates him, to say nothing of the ghostly presence of Frank Kafka himself. As a former counterfeiter, Jacob is kidnapped by one-night-stand Iris and her thug boyfriend Danny, finding himself at the epicenter of a mounting stack of bodies as his tenuous grasp on sanity begins to slip.

Maybe I'm the only one who missed it, but the fact that Tracy Lawless's counterfeiter buddy from Lawless is also the artist behind Frank Kafka came as a great surprise to me, one of those great epiphany moments that I have come to cherish with Criminal. Brubaker continues to fill in gaps by proving just how interconnected all the parts are, and his notes on Center City must look something like Batman's map of Leviathan (from Batman Incorporated [vol. 2] #3). It's like Sin City done realistically; each successive volume expands the web, making Criminal ideal fodder for a TV show now that neo-noir seems to be making a comeback.

Brubaker's use of Frank Kafka is of particular interest because the comic-within-a-comic doesn't fit into the larger story the way you'd expect. Since Watchmen and Tales of the Black Freighter, we've been trained to expect some sort of meta-commentary within the story. In Bad Night, however, it's a breath of fresh air when Jacob admits that the "total artistic freedom" that comes from his contract with Sebastian Hyde (yep, the same Sebastian Hyde we've seen throughout Criminal) has led to a strip that doesn't make much sense. Instead of going the easy route, Brubaker makes Frank a second psyche for Jacob, spending time with him like an invisible friend.

Likewise, instead of rendering Frank realistically to give the book an ambiguous is-he-or-isn't-he angle, Phillips's artwork makes Frank as cartoonish as possible, his permanent scowl and oversized fedora like something straight out of Dick Tracy. Phillips adjusts his style to make Frank an exaggerated caricature in grayscale, cluing us in that Jacob's sanity should always be in question. For Brubaker and Phillips, Frank is the Tyler Durden of Bad Night, and letting us know in advance that he's not real allows the reader to enjoy the book more effectively. It also builds to a fantastic payoff when Frank appears to shoot someone, where any narrative slight-of-hand is betrayed by the artwork, which clues in the reader if they're not taken in by the surreal narrative.

That's not to say that Phillips is slouching on the realism of the comic. Rather, he continues to do great work with facial expressions and body language, particularly in the case of sad sack insomniac Jacob. Phillips also does a great job with Iris, ostensibly the first true femme fatale of the series (after The Dead and the Dying did a phenomenal job humanizing Danica Briggs). Now, I'm not the world's biggest fan of cheesecake art -- Guillem March is about all I can take in my book -- but take a look at that cover. Phillips paints a gorgeous nude Iris, cloaked only in a pink sheet that accents her red hair. This image is a perfect one, since it tells us what kind of a character Iris will be -- especially when we see the gun in her hand.

As with all the other trades in this series thus far, this fourth volume was a one-sitting read -- not that the book was incredibly short or breezy, but because I quite literally could not bring myself to set it aside. And an evening spent reading Criminal Vol. 4: Bad Night is anything but.

DC Trade Solicitations for September 2013 - Superman: Celebration of 75 Years, Death of the Family, Deadshot

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:02:00 +0000

Time for DC Comics's September 2013 trade paperback and collections solicitations. We've all been waiting for these solicits to arrive to finally get the full scoop on DC's now annual September event, which this time is Villains Month/Forever Evil.

But September's solicitations also bring with them a spate of Superman-themed collections (timed, certainly, for the Man of Steel movie, though one would think these would be better off arriving now than being order-able now), plus more Batman: Death of the Family collections and a few odds and ends. Let's take a look, shall we?

• Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years HC
• Lois Lane: A Celebration of 75 Years HC

Though it's nice to see Superman and especially Lois Lane receiving these anniversary collections, there's some confusion in the contents list. The Superman volume, for instance, includes Action Comics #0, #1, and #2. That zero issue is undoubtedly the New 52 Zero Month issue, while Action #1 and #2 are probably the 1938 issues, though the solicitation doesn't make that distinction between the original numbering and New 52 issues. (If it turns out the Superman collection includes the New 52 Action Comics #1-2 and not the 1938 issues, I imagine some people will have something to say about that.)

One might equally wonder in the Superman book whether the Superman issues listed are pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, or New 52 (Superman has changed its numbering three times, while Action Comics has only changed numbering twice). Surely issues like Superman #11, #17, and #53 are the Golden Age comics and not the Byrne era; at the same time, Superman #75 listed right after them is probably the Dan Jurgens "Death of Superman" issue.

The issue listings for the Lois Lane book are equally unclear.

• Superman: The Man of Steel—Believe TP

This collection of seemingly inspirational-themed Superman stories includes some nice uncollected issues from various eras, including Adventures of Superman #623 by Joe Casey (during a run where Casey never had Superman resort to violence to save the day), Action Comics #810 by Joe Kelly, and Superman #185 by Geoff Johns, all from the introspective time just before and after the Ending Battle storyline.

• Superman: Dark Knight Over Metropolis TP

Please pre-order this. Don't read the description DC has released, which unequivocally spoils the last page of the book. Just take my advice and buy it. This trade collects an early Dan Jurgens/Jerry Ordway/Roger Stern Superman story -- perhaps one of my favorite Superman eras -- in which a murder in Gotham brings Batman to Metropolis, just as Superman is dealing with he, Lois, and others being targeted by Intergang. It's an interesting mystery, there's great interplay between Superman and Batman (surpassed only perhaps by Dave Gibbons and Steve Rude's World's Finest), and the end of the story is an important event in post-Crisis continuity -- I've long thought that every fan knows what happens at the end of "Dark Knight Over Metropolis," they just don't realize this is where it happened.

For years, Dark Knight Over Metropolis has been on my personal short list for issues I'd like to see collected. I will be crushed -- crushed! -- if this book doesn't make it through.

• Superman Adventures: The Man of Steel TP

• Superman: H’el On Earth HC

Collects Superman #13-17, Superboy #14-17, and Supergirl #14-17. As with DC's other recent crossover collections, I'll be skipping this and just picking the individual volumes for each books.

• Batman, Incorporated Vol. 2: Gotham’s Most Wanted HC

Villains Month nothing -- this is the big release of September 2013 (actually doesn't come out until November). Includes the Batman, Inc. special, which itself doesn't actually come out until August.

• Batman and Robin Vol. 3: Death of the Family HC
• Catwoman: Death of the Family TP
• Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 3 -- Emperor Penguin HC

Also here comes the "Death of the Family" tie in volumes, the Batman books in November and the Catwoman book in October. These will make for kind of funny reading, because Batman, Inc. Vol. 2 takes place in the middle of these, after "Death of the Family" but before "Requiem" -- for the complete story, you may have to switch back and forth between volumes.

• Deadshot: Beginnings TP

I don't feel nearly as strongly about this book as I do Superman: Dark Knight Over Metropolis, but if you want this Deadshot volumes, I recommend pre-ordering it; it feels like another one that could be cancelled before publication. Includes a couple of Batman issues plus John Ostrander's four-part Deadshot miniseries; I'm (just a little) disappointed they didn't include Deadshot's top hat-wearing appearance, too, and mildly surprised they didn't find a way to work some Green Arrow material in here in reference to the Arrow TV show.

• Aquaman Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis HC

The Aquaman book, disappointingly, still holds at collecting Aquaman #14-16, #0, and Justice League #15-17. The Justice League: Throne of Atlantis book includes all of those issues and more, with just the exception of the zero issue. This is a definite skip for me; I might as well just get the Justice League book and buy Aquaman #0 digitally for a fraction of the price.

• Justice League of America Vol. 1: World’s Most Dangerous HC

I'm curious whether DC will include all 52 state variants within this collection. Maybe thumbnails of each?

• I, Vampire Vol. 3: Wave of Mutilation TP
• Suicide Squad Vol. 3: Death Is For Suckers TP

The final collection of I, Vampire (sob!) and also the last collection of Adam Glass on Suicide Squad -- I started out quite wary of his run but grew to like it quite a bit.

Those are my picks -- what's on your buying list for September? (Hint -- Superman: Dark Knight Over Metropolis!)

Review: Legion: Secret Origin trade paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:02:00 +0000

Paul Levitz's Legion: Secret Origin has an interesting premise, that of examining how the civilizations of the future reacted to the founding of the Legion of Super-Heroes, kind of like a DC Universe: Legacies or Marvels for the Legion. Unfortunately, what inroads Levitz makes are terribly surface, far from the depth of a book like Marvels. Secret Origin is also repetitious and decompressed, only really getting to the meat of the story in the last two issues, and even then not in an especially engaging manner.

Legion: Secret Origin takes a long time to tell a story not all that "secret," most of which the dedicated Legion reader already knows or could guess anyway. Those less familiar with the Legion will find this book dry; if Secret Origin was part of DC Comics's attempt to make Legion of Super-Heroes succeed in the New 52, it's not a surprise that title was recently cancelled.

[Review contains spoilers]

Legion: Secret Origin begins with the future military recruiting the young Brainiac 5 to help solve an entire civilization's murder, while on Earth Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Cosmic Boy save RJ Brande from assassination, forming the Legion of Super-Heroes. The Legion, I have felt, is about as close to Star Trek as DC Comics can get, and there's a good Star Trek vibe to the story's opening -- a murdered planet, mysterious technology, and so on.

But unfortunately, almost right from the beginning, Secret Origin spins its wheels. Brainiac 5 meets Phantom Girl, arrived from another dimension with a warning of danger; through to the second issue, the two essentially remain in one place, talking over the obvious clues of the case. Levitz intersperses this with various scenes of attempts of RJ Brande's life, all of which the new Legion disperse handily. Artist Chris Batista tends toward large (perhaps overlarge) panels, so by the end of the second issue not much more has happened than repetitive conversations and repetitive fight scenes.

As more threatening aliens emerge from the wormhole above the murdered planet, Brainic 5 takes control of the military in an attack on the alien ships. With a minimum of fuss, Brainic is successful, and it all takes place so easily that I thought something more must be going on, that the ships that Brainic shoots down must actually turn out to be peaceful. Alas, there's no such irony here; Brainiac, the military, and eventually the entire Legion fight the aliens with nary a defeat nor injury. It's so on-the-nose Levitz never even shows the actual attacking aliens -- they're attacking, the reader understands, so therefore they must be bad.

Indeed there's an odd distance in the narrative of Secret Origin. Most of the book's major events happen virtually -- the ruling Security Directorate sees the Legion gain new members through their video screens, or Legionnaires join between panels. This contributes to the book's sense of watching the Legion's early days "from the crowd," as it were, but at the same time the audience has to accept a lot of what's established in the book, like the malevolence of the invading aliens, because a character says it to be true, not through firsthand experience. The perspective Levitz offers is interesting, but it doesn't make for a very exciting story.

Levitz also fails to use this second-hand perspective in any ground-breaking way. The United Planets government, the Security Directorate, and the military all debate who should take ownership of the Legion and at the same time worry over endangering children and how the Legion is changing the universe's youth culture. This is heady stuff, handled right, and actually does offer an opportunity to study the concept of the Legion more fully; these conversations simply drop-off toward the end of the book, however, with everyone just accepting the Legion after their final victory. Here again, Levitz takes the most obvious route in the story, telling just a one-dimensional story.

Secret Origin only picks up in the fifth issue, when the Legion's various troubles are revealed to be caused by their long-time enemy (relatively) the Time Trapper. But aside from the Trapper coming to the "past" to try to retroactively stop the Legion's creation, there's not much time-related in the book (the Trapper here uses a lot of mind-control, for some reason). Levitz glosses over other aspects too quickly, too, including that Phantom Girl seems to willingly cut off her only route home without any misgivings; maybe this blitheness is meant to echo similar Silver Age leaps of logic, but it doesn't work in a modern comic.

All in all, a reader expecting to pick up Legion: Secret Origin and find a relevant re-imagining of the Legion a la Geoff Johns's Green Lantern: Secret Origin will be sorely disappointed. Legion: Secret Origin is a rather basic story, one that doesn't even represent the Legion very well; this storied franchise deserves better.

[Includes original covers, Chris Batista sketchbook (including unused Legionnaires like Ferro, which might've been interesting)]

New reviews -- including Star Wars and more -- coming soon!

Review: Glory, Vol. 1: The Once and Future Destroyer trade paperback (Image Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at Hell Yeah '80s Marvel!]

Despite the many flaws of Rob Liefeld’s work, he can at least take solace in the fact that his concepts have been turned into modern classics by more talented creators. Alan Moore used Supreme for a post-modern take on Superman, while more recently, Brandon Graham and a host of artists have transformed Prophet into a unique space epic. Joe Keatinge and Ross Campbell’s Glory, Vol. 1: The Once and Future Destroyer, another of the recent “Liefeld revivals,” provides a clever take on the concept of a warrior woman.

From the cover, you can immediately tell that the modern version of Glory is not a conventional heroine. Back when she was created, Glory was basically just a Wonder Woman copy in both her looks (white hair aside) and her origins (with the “twist” of being half-demon and half-Amazonian). She wore a skimpy red outfit and was often drawn in provocative poses. The new Glory is over eight feet of muscle with only the barest hints of curves. Her new outfit is essentially a red pair of overalls. Her hair, while still stark white, is now in a pair of long ponytails, giving her a surprisingly girlish look. Compared to other highly muscular superheroines, like She-Hulk and Power Girl, Glory is highly unique.

Glory’s new look is now more consistent with her new personality. Keatinge has altered her backstory, changing her parentage from mystical to alien. Normally, I would be against such a radical revamping of a character, but Glory was such a paper cut-out of a character in the first place that there was really nothing to lose. The new origin allows Glory to differentiate herself from Wonder Woman, and it also gives Campbell an opportunity to draw unique character designs, such as Glory’s “ugly cute” assistant Henry and various horrific monsters. However, Glory’s past adventures still happened, leaving her as one of the few World War II-era superheroes of the Image universe. This was a wise move, as it allows her interactions with Supreme to remain canon.

In the wider scheme of the book, Glory isn’t the central character. That role falls to Riley Barnes, a journalist and Glory super-fan investigating what happened to her disappeared idol. She is linked to Glory by mysterious dreams and a destiny that unfolds in a shocking fast-forward look into the future. (I was hoping that this was the same future in which Prophet takes place, but unfortunately, the dates don’t seem to match up.) It takes a little time to warm up to Riley, who starts out as a simple audience surrogate but who eventually becomes a key ally. It’s a welcome transformation to see Riley become an effective supporting character, even if she isn’t quite ready to become a battle-hardened warrior.

There’s another major human in Glory’s orbit: Gloria West, with whom Glory once shared a body during Alan Moore’s very brief run with the character. Exactly what happened to split them up has yet to be revealed, but Gloria serves as a mother figure to both Riley and Glory. She too joins the fight later on, a trait that really endeared her to me. It’s clear from the beginning that something terrible has happened to Glory, who is fighting the evil influences in her genetics. A few key flashbacks show that quite a bit of Glory’s “Image edginess” and anger issues can be traced back to her evil father, Silverfall. All the same, we get a revelation about Silverfall and his motives that makes it unclear whether his aim to abduct Glory is an evil plot or just the actions of a caring father.

Even with all of Keatinge’s changes to Glory’s character, it’s Campbell who really makes the book shine. There’s no cheesecake art or lustful, spine-shattering “boobs and butt” poses -- a nearly impossible feat for a book where the three leads are all female. Even Birds of Prey and Captain Marvel can’t avoid some "fan service," but the characters of Glory have been designed to be almost aggressively “anti-fan-service.” Campbell does have a bit of a problem with drawing Riley cross-eyed, and this, along with a bit too yellow of a color palette, makes her look like an Asian caricature at some points, but it’s a flaw that gets worked out as the story goes on.

There’s quite a bit of gore, and while Invincible has desensitized me to Image’s love of blood and guts, there are a few scenes that actually use violence effectively. This is especially true with the flashbacks to Glory’s time with Supreme and the flash-forwards to a dark future. It helps that we’re following Riley, who is as shocked as the audience is at all of the violence going on around her.

Keatinge and Campbell’s book is part of a broader trend of Image’s newer books to have stronger writing and better art. It’s an impressive change for a company which many (myself included) once derided for the quality of its work. They still have to improve their ability to meet deadlines, but Glory doesn’t fall prey to that issue.

For only ten dollars, you get six issues in Glory: The Once and Future Destroyer, making it almost a must-buy in a world where $25 Marvel hardcovers contain only five issues. Despite the association with Liefeld, the Glory contained within is almost entirely a new character, keeping only the good parts of her old self and reinventing the rest.

Review: Batman - Detective Comics Vol. 2: Scare Tactics hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:02:00 +0000

Tony Daniel's Batman -- Detective Comics Vol. 2: Scare Tactics offers some exceptional moments, but unfortunately not enough for me to recommend this book to anyone except a very certain kind of Batman reader. For me, this volume of Detective Comics failed to impress enough that I might be inclined to drop the series entirely, except for my curiosity about what new writer John Layman (Chew) might bring to the series.

[Review contains spoilers]

Through a couple of exceptional collections in the Dick-Grayson-as-Batman era, Tony Daniel has made his Batman run synonymous with the villain Black Mask, and the best part of Scare Tactics is getting to see Daniel recreate Black Mask for the New 52. As I mentioned in my Night of the Owls review, Daniel takes advantage of the tie-in issue collected here to smooth over some of the unexplained jumps between the old continuity and the New 52 -- how Jeremiah Arkham can be back running the asylum, how Roman Sionis is alive and remembers his time as Black Mask, etc. Daniel handles all of this well and establishes the new mind-controlling Black Mask as a credible threat for Batman in the New 52.

Daniel takes the unusual step of continuing that story into the included Detective Comics annual. Too often what happens in a crossover tie-in stays in a crossover tie-in, such that the tie-in is more about the crossover than the characters affected. The annual struggles from too much comics pseudo-science -- whether science or magic gives Black Mask his mind-control powers isn't quite clear -- but pairing Black Mast with the also mind-controlling Mad Hatter is interesting, and the story reads like a "classic" Batman story with the hero crashing down on the villains from the ceiling.

Indeed what might most attract some readers to the first and second volumes of Detective Comics is that Daniel's stories are very much "iconic" and continuity-light. Aside from in the "Night of the Owls" crossover, the main characters here are just Batman, Alfred, and Commissioner Gordon; this is a collection any "Dark Knight" movie fan could pick up and understand. If one wanted "just a Batman story" to read on a plane ride, Scare Tactics might be the thing, but for most readers, the book will lack the significant heft of Scott Snyder's Batman work, for instance.

This is not necessarily a pro-continuity argument that all "good" Batman stories have to "matter." Rather, what irked me about Scare Tactics was the extent to which I could tell that these stories didn't matter at all.

The book starts positively with a one-issue follow-up to Dark Knight: Knight Terrors that also forwards the Hugo Strange storyline from Detective: Faces of Evil. But after the "Owls" crossover, the meat of Scare Tactics is a three-part story where Batman fights the villain Mr. Toxin, whose appearance is just as ridiculous as his name. This story, too, follows from Faces, but the end is terribly sudden (as if maybe Daniel had his issue count shortened, thought the annual peters out like this, too) and the reader is pretty much guaranteed they'll never see Mr. Toxin again.

Again, a story need not tie to ten years of continuity nor change Batman's life irrevocably, but the Mr. Toxin story changes Batman not at all; there's no emotional resonance to the story really, more than simply Batman stopping a bad guy. There are certain similarities between Daniel's Mr. Toxin story and Scott Snyder's Batman: City of Owls too, that only underscore how City really got to the core of who Batman is and the Mr. Toxin story only flits along the surface.

The book finishes with the Detective Comics back-up stories. I'm glad DC included these, and the two by James Tynion -- about Alfred and about the Joker's severed face respectively -- acquit themselves well enough, though Daniel's Two-Face story is a mess. This is Two-Face's first major New 52 appearance and the story fails to explain his status quo; apparently Two-Face is some sort of semi-legitimate businessman, in that the Gotham DA is suing him in open court and then later even offers Two-Face his old job as DA back, though how exactly that would work is never quite explained.

Daniel stretches even comic book credibility by introducing a group of monks with a monastery in downtown Gotham; they are the worst hitmen ever given that they judge their victims before execution and then don't kill them if the vicim is deemed "good." Artist Szymon Kudranski provides some nicely dark, shadowy art at times, but late in the story it gets crowded and it's hard to tell how many actors there are in the scenes.

Gregg Hurwitz contributes the Detective Comics Zero Month issue; again, I'm glad DC has collected these with the various series, though the issue and its predictable ending didn't move me, and I was left to wonder whether Snyder will pick up or ignore the events of these issues in the upcoming "Zero Year" storyline.

What issues Daniel draws are consistently good throughout, with echoes of David Mazzucchelli and also Jim Lee; inker Sandu Florea must certainly share some credit here. Ed Benes also contributes a perhaps unusually strong issue, with inks by Rob Hunter, whose images to me resembled Bernie Wrightson's in Batman: The Cult. Colorist Tomeu Morey contributes a muted color palette that I found distracting at first, but felt ultimately worked with Daniel's iconic approach to the Batman character.

Detective Comics Vol. 2: Scare Tactics is an uneven book, caught as it is between two Bat-crossovers and, for that reason, containing seemingly more filler than it does actual story. There is purpose for filler or one-off tales (certainly plenty of good has come out of Legends of the Dark Knight over the years), but I just don't think it's for me. If you've been enjoying John Layman's Detective work, let me know; otherwise it might be time for Detective Comics and I to part ways.

[Includes original and variant covers]

Later this week, Paul Levitz's Legion of Super-Heroes: Secret Origin. Don't miss it!

Review: World's Greatest Super-Heroes hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Guest reviewer Zach King blogs about movies as The Cinema King]

I've spent the past few months looking at DC's newest version of the "Greatest Stories Ever Told" trades, which sought to collect the best and the brightest of DC's most iconic characters. As far as iconic goes, though, you could do worse than Paul Dini and Alex Ross, the creative team behind The World's Greatest Super-Heroes, which collects the pair's six oversized graphic novels on top DC characters facing real-world problems.

While The World's Greatest Super-Heroes isn't a part of the twelve-book "Greatest Stories" series proper, both projects seem similar -- collect in one volume a snapshot of the characters that encapsulates the heart of who they are and why they're heroes. The latter is especially significant; aside from fleeting references, there's not a super-villain in the whole book.

Instead, each tale finds a hero faced with an everyday threat like hunger or poverty or just loneliness; these are stories, beautifully rendered by Ross's photorealistic paints, that recall the Norman Rockwell-esque "day in the life" chapters of Geoff Johns's JSA, catching the heroes on their more low-key days and positing interpretations so down-to-earth that they'd fit right at home in the hyper-realist Nolanverse.

The style of each is the same, with the stories functioning more like picture books than comics. Panel divisions are subtle and infrequent, allowing Dini's internal monologues to meander over Ross's lush artwork. It's not inconceivable to picture reading this book to a child before bedtime, and indeed some day I plan to do precisely that. Even for adults, though, there is much to enjoy in this surprisingly earnest and delightfully iconic book.

The sum of the parts being more than the whole in this series, let's take a look at what's inside this volume.

Superman: Peace on Earth (1998)

How else do you begin? One of my most treasured Christmas presents many years ago, Peace on Earth finds Superman recognizing the disparity between Christmas as a time of giving and the world as a place of great need. With the means to feed the entire world, Superman sets out to end world hunger. Tragically, it's a story that we know is doomed to failure, for the same reasons that Superman could only arrest Hitler and Stalin "out of continuity" in the pages of Look magazine. But it's also a familiar storyline, since we've seen Superman wrestle with his inability to do everything almost since his origin. What makes the story succeed isn't any originality of purpose but rather the compelling and earnest narration Dini writes for Superman; the prose passages which pepper Ross's paintings strike a proper balance between godlike Superman and humble Clark Kent, and we feel his shortcomings just as tangibly as we revel in his triumphs. The book is filled with new classic moments like Superman's descent from the sky with a Christmas tree balanced on his shoulder, and it's to Dini and Ross's credit that these moments never feel campy or anything less than genuine. Peace on Earth succeeds further by reminding us that the value of a superhero lies not in what he does but in what he motivates us to do; Superman's Christmas gift to us, in line with Grant Morrison's concept of Superman as the Ideal Man, is the example he sets.

Batman: War on Crime (1999)

If I had to list my top ten Batman stories from any medium, much of that list would include works authored by Paul Dini. Although I love Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight Trilogy" to death, Dini's work with the character (both on television and in the comics) seems to touch something closer to the character's central nature, with every story being recognizable Batman-fare. War on Crime is a quintessential distillation of what I believe is the heart of Batman -- the pain of loss and the determination to prevent others from feeling that loss (as distinct from, say, Nolan's interpretation of Batman as a symbol to inspire positive change).

Aside from one-panel cameos from Alfred and The Penguin, Batman is the only recognizable face in this story, and his narration anchors the story in a voice which is clearly pained but with grim optimism coloring his action. Dini wisely keeps the action small, with Batman struggling against local crime and waging a battle for a young boy's soul in the process; it's a story that works well because of how uncompromisingly good Batman's quest is as he pauses mid-battle to offer a kind word of encouragement to a young man who has also lost his parents to gun violence. Alex Ross makes expert use of the shadows here, judiciously deploying streams of light to accentuate the hopefulness which is inherent in Batman's mission. Ross's photorealistic shadow play matches perfectly the tone of Dini's script, but Ross also does great work with Bruce Wayne out of the costume, making Bruce Wayne as much of a commanding presence as his cape-and-cowled alter ego.

Shazam!: Power of Hope (2000)

At first, the writing in this story seems odd, overly enthusiastic with too much gee-whiz for my tastes. But when a full-page splash reveals that the story is narrated by Billy Batson and not Captain Marvel (the hero currently known in the New 52 as the somewhat more cynical Shazam!), Paul Dini reveals that he's playing with narrative voice in a way the series hadn't seen before. And it's to great effect; the childlike exuberance of Captain Marvel's narration gives the story more weight when Captain Marvel volunteers at a children's hospital to restore hope. It's a story that probably wouldn't work were it not for Dini reminding us that Captain Marvel is still essentially a child.

Surprisingly, and to the story's credit, Alex Ross creates a Captain Marvel that is leaps-and-bounds more approachable than his Kingdom Come rendition of the character. His heavy eyebrows and wide grin carry none of the malice of brainwashed alternate future, instead posing like a child in front of a mirror after a muscle man marathon. Billy, however, sometimes looks too old, which takes some of the thunder (no pun intended) out of the shift in identity. The transformation scenes are staggering, however, and it's difficult not to feel a tugged heartstring or two when Captain Marvel realizes that he can't save everyone but can share the gift of hope with all.

Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth (2001)

The fourth Paul Dini/Alex Ross pairing is somewhat stronger than the Captain Marvel one, in part because Wonder Woman's a more potent character with a clearer mission. Her role as "ambassador to man's world" has sometimes been a nebulous one, but Dini takes full advantage of it with Diana as a kind of goodwill tourist, assessing the world's problems from the vantage point of the disadvantaged. The character's compassion and dedication to the powers of good are so compelling that it's almost a disappointment when Clark Kent shows up, as if to say that Wonder Woman can't carry a story on her own. It's entirely untrue; her quest is more intriguing and more realistic than most in the book, and Ross's artwork steps up to match. His Wonder Woman is beautiful and majestic, the scenery striking, and her goals for humanity attainable. While I'm impressed with the "daughter of mythology" approach that Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang are bringing to the New 52 incarnation of the character, I didn't realize how attached I was to this version of Wonder Woman, and I'm glad to have such a nutshell encapsulation delivered by such able creators.

JLA: Secret Origins (2002)

It's a bit difficult to review this chapter as a separate entity, since it's equal parts warm-up for Liberty and Justice and two-page origins for the characters who didn't get their own solo books: The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, Hawkman, The Atom, and Plastic Man, as well as a few second-stringers lumped in on a JLA origin page. They're concise and effective, but none is truly distinctive, aside from the Plastic Man page which plays with voice in the same way that Power of Hope did. That these are not distinctive is not a knock on the quality, however, but the Dini/Ross team has been turning in consistently good work throughout this volume, and Secret Origins is no exception.

JLA: Liberty and Justice (2003)

Surprisingly, and unfortunately, Liberty and Justice is the one book in this volume that never really works. In part, it's because the format is substantially different from the others; instead of relying on the interaction between narration and silent panels, Liberty and Justice is structured much more classically, with traditional speech bubbles competing with the narration boxes for attention. The result is that it's harder to focus on Alex Ross's gorgeous artwork; after a whole book of his work, I was eager to see his Justice League in full force, but too many overfull panels prevent the full effect from being felt.

What's more, we know that a Justice League needs a large threat to combat. What we get here is an odd plague which seems sinister and extraterrestrial but which disappointingly never manifests itself as anything more than a stubborn space flu. We don't, for example, get the Starro combat promised by the back cover; instead, it seems that the League is called in, overreacts, and then moralizes about their actions to a hostile United Nations. There are plenty of wonderful moments, as when Superman saves a suicidal jumper (anyone who knows me knows I'm a sucker for these kinds of moments, as in All-Star Superman or Young Justice), and it's not that the story is a dull read. But it's a disappointing note on which to end the book, two great creators who are turning work that is somewhat less than.

The World's Greatest Super-Heroes is padded out with pages from Alex Ross's sketchbook, most interesting when it details his process of photo referencing with shots of his models, and the book concludes with a few luscious gatefolds that this collector was too timid to tear out. It's a delightful package, a fantastic coffee table book on the order of Ross's Mythology, and despite its anticlimactic ending, it's a wonderful read.

I had purchased this book when the word "Flashpoint" was just another teaser word that signified another crossover I probably couldn't afford. But now that we're more than a year into the New 52, it's difficult to read this trade without your glasses seeming a little rosier. Love it or leave it, this interpretation of these characters is a thing of the past, and I can think of no better send-off than The World's Greatest Super-Heroes, a loving tribute by two master craftsmen.

This concludes the "Greatest Stories" series, but fear not -- I'll be back with more Criminal reviews and more very soon. Thanks as always to our gracious host and to the readers who've been following along!

More Greatest Stories reviews: Superman Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Batman Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Justice League, Shazam, Batgirl, Superman/Batman, and Joker.

Wednesday Talkback: Cover enhancements on trade paperbacks?

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:29:00 +0000

So with official announcement of DC Comics's September Villains Month/Forever Evil, I only half-seriously asked the following on Twitter:

@alex_segura But what we really want to know is, will we trade-readers get 3D covers on our Forever Evil collections, too? :)
— Collected Editions (@collecteditions) June 3, 2013

But it got me thinking ... with all the controversy over cover enhancements -- really cool effect or high-priced throwback to the 1990s -- would you want to see trades start to get cover enhancements, too?

I couldn't think of many times this had already been done -- no doubt you all can tell me more in the comments section -- but at least one is Spectre: Crimes and Punishments, the first (and only) collection of the John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake Spectre series, which came with a glow-in-the-dark cover. And then of course the Batman: Death of the Family hardcover will have an acetate dust jacket to mimic the die-cut covers from the single issues.

It's an open forum today on Collected Editions -- sound-off in the comments section whether you'd like to see cover enhancements on trades -- die-cuts, 3D covers, holograms, you name it -- or anything else you're thinking about ...

Review: Swamp Thing Vol. 2: Family Tree trade paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:02:00 +0000

Scott Snyder's Swamp Thing Vol. 2: Family Tree contains just four Swamp Thing issues, plus the "Zero Month" issue and the first Swamp Thing annual. As such, the book comes off a little thin; while the reader is treated to the first appearance of the new Alec- Holland-as-Swamp-Thing, the story mainly serves to spotlight one of Swamp Thing's long-time enemies.

Though Swamp Thing and companion title Animal Man began at the same time and are both racing toward the "Rotworld" crossover, Animal Man has succeeded in standing as a title on its own; with this foreshortened volume, Swamp Thing continues to feel like a title biding its time until the crossover, even if in generally enjoyable fashion.

[Review contains spoilers]

In previews I had some concern about Swamp Thing's new horn-headed design, but on the page artist Yanick Paquette and others depict it quite well. Snyder's Swamp Thing is the "warrior-king" of the Green, and his horned helm and ridged body armor reflect this well; Swamp Thing has never looked so regal. There's certainly debate to be had as to whether Snyder's "built for war" Swamp Thing improves upon or detracts from Alan Moore's "slow to anger" version, but for the Swamp Thing that Snyder has created, his new appearance coincides nicely.

The first two chapters of Family Tree wrap up the cliffhanger from the first volume, Raise Them Bones; Swamp Thing rescues the kidnapped Abby Arcane and the two escape to regroup. The following two chapters, as well as the zero issue and the annual, all focus in one way or another on Swamp Thing's arch-nemesis, Anton Arcane. In giving Arcane so much space, Snyder takes a route similar to Geoff Johns's use of Sinestro in Green Lantern; more than just a villain, Arcane is a vital character here with a backstory and strong connection to Alec Holland himself.

Arcane is and has always been a delightfully grotesque villain, and Family Tree is a gorgeous read largely due to some great "stunt" artist "casting" of Francesco Francavilla for Arcane's noirish first appearance and Becky Cloonan for a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque tale of young Holland's forgotten first introduction to Abby and Arcane (both artists did notable turns with Snyder on his Batman-title work, too).

While Arcane, again, is visually interesting, Snyder does not give him Sinestro's depth; Snyder's Arcane is notable for having plagued all the various iterations of Swamp Thing through time, but always with a villainous single-mindedness. Snyder establishes well the danger Arcane poses to the Swamp Things, but the audience is left without knowing much about Arcane himself -- questions like who Arcane was before he became a servant of the Rot, how he became such, and so on go unanswered. Throughout this book, Arcane is bad because, well, he's bad.

As well, much of Family Tree's the third chapter takes place in flashback, plus the zero issue and the annual, devoting more than half of the book to something other than the present action. This has the effect of making this second Swamp Thing volume appear as though it's mostly standing still. In two issues, Swamp Thing fights the Rot's avatar Sethe and wins, then he fights Anton Arcane and wins, and then there's two tales of the past. I'm skeptical how much of this is really necessary and how much is filler; while Animal Man has offered complex family drama and explored Buddy Baker's burgeoning new powers, Swamp Thing spent a lot of time on Holland's reluctance about his (inevitable) transformation into Swamp Thing. Once it crossed that threshold, Swamp Thing doesn't seem to have much place to go until Rotworld.

At the same time, by virtue of the flashbacks and even a Green "vision," Snyder is able to make considerable use of the human Alec Holland in this book. An emphasis on "the man behind the monster" has been a hallmark of the New 52 Swamp Thing series, and setting aside the controversies inherit in that, it does help to make Swamp Thing a more relatable character; Snyder reminds the reader a couple times that there's fragile flesh underneath Swamp Thing's crusty surface. Adding a "young love" to Alec and Abby's histories helps bridge the somewhat awkward gap in which she had a relationship with Alec's former Swamp Thing doppelganger and makes their pairing more believable overall.

Snyder also hits a Swamp Thing touchstone by introducing Jason Woodrue (presumably still the future Floronic Man) into young Holland's life, and I wouldn't mind seeing another flashback tale in the same period, drawn again by Cloonan, that follows up on those events -- some Smallville-esque "pre-Swamp Thing" stories, as it were.

Swamp Thing: Family Tree isn't objectionable by any means; in fact, in its scant offerings I probably came to like Alec Holland and Abby Arcane more than I did before. The crossover is the problem; Often the danger with crossovers is that they threaten to overwhelm the story itself, and Rotworld is on a bad track, having similarly sucked some life out of the final Frankenstein volume as well. The upside is that with all this emphasis on Rotworld, perhaps that means there are good things to come, and I look forward to seeing what the Swamp Thing title does when it finally gets there.

[Includes original covers, Yanick Paquette sketchbook]

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 3 -- Lies, Damn Lies, and Omissions

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

DC Comics's New Teen Titans Omnibus series has been controversial almost from the get-go. Aside from concerns over the binding, there was the strange omission of New Teen Titans issue #38 from Volume 2; DC originally solicited Volume 3 with a content listing that couldn't be right (too few and duplicate issues), and then they cancelled the third volume altogether and resolicited it a few months later.

Well, DC has finally released the New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 3, and with a hat-tip to Facebook friend and frequent commenter Xavico, it looks like the trouble's not over yet.

DC solicitations, and even their current web page, said the New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 3 would collect Tales of the Teen Titans #45-61 and 66-67, New Teen Titans #38, New Teen Titans #1-6, and Secret Origins Annual #3. We knew right away this wasn't right, because among other reasons, Tales #60-61 are actually the same comic as Titans #1-2, and even if what was just included were pin-ups or such, the contents were far too few to make an omnibus.

I've now learned that the contents of the Vol. 3 Omnibus are New Teen Titans #38, Tales of the New Teen Titans #45-50, New Teen Titans (Vol. 2) #1-6, New Titans #50-61, New Titans #66-67, and Secret Origin Annual #3.

In comparison, this means the omnibus collects not Tales of the Teen Titans #45-61 and 66-67, but rather Tales of the Teen Titans #45-50 and New Titans #66-67; added are New Titans #50-61.

Now, even as we might prefer the contents be listed right in the solicitations (and again, they're still wrong at the moment on DC's website), gaining ten or so extra issues isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately, however, there's some significant gaps in this volume that make for a tricky reading experience.

Titans Hunt for Missing Issues

That New Teen Titans #38, the first "Who is Donna Troy?" story, is here and not in the previous book seems silly to me since the first two volumes unfolded chronologically otherwise, but it appears here with the "Who is Wonder Girl?" story, so it's understandable. Tales #45 picks up where the last volume finished and continues to issue #50, Donna Troy's wedding. Still OK so far.

Starting again with New Titans #1, however, jumps over Tales #51-58, and here we get a sense of what's really going on. Though billed as the New Teen Titans Omnibus series, these books are really the Marv Wolfman/George Perez Teen Titans Omnibus series. Tales #51-58 didn't have Perez on art; New Titans #1-6 did.

Then the book jumps again, skipping over forty issues to pick up with New Titans #50 when, you guessed it, Perez returned to the art again. At this point the book has lost all semblance of being a Titans omnibus and has instead become George Perez spotlight book (it's not a Marv Wolfman spotlight book, since Wolfman is the writer on a number of the issues that are skipped). There's nothing wrong with a Perez spotlight book per se (it's probably overdue), but I sincerely doubt that's what readers thought they were getting when they started buying this series years ago.

And even worse, New Titans issues #60-61 are parts 2 and 4 of the Batman story "A Lonely Place of Dying"; the other parts, written by Wolfman but drawn by Jim Aparo, are omitted. At this point if I'd purchased this book, I'd be steamed -- I specifically avoid DC's artist spotlight books because they contain "parts" and don't tell a full story; it's OK if that's your thing, but again, I don't think that's what readers were expecting at the beginning of this series and it feels like a bit of bait and switch now.

Others smarter than me can speak to this -- and in no way do I fault Wolfman or Perez for any of this -- but I wonder if this has to do with royalties, if it's easier to just include one writer and artist in this book and only pay two sets of royalties than to also pay to Aparo and others, the reader's experience irrespective.

Looking at this omnibus one more way, there's thirteen issues here that have never been reprinted (Tales #45-49, Titans #6, #56-59, and #66-67, and Secret Origin Annual #3), versus ten issues that have been collected before. That's not great, but it's actually better comparatively than the second New Teen Titans Omnibus, which only included one or two issues not found elsewhere.

Fool Me Twice ...

Chances are, with all the jumps, that this is the last New Teen Titans Omnibus. DC's track record on these series is not great -- there was the cancellation of the Starman Omnibus paperbacks mid-series recently, a seeming switch from the Chronicles volumes over to omnibus format, and the mid-series cancellation of collection series like Justice League International a couple years ago. After New Teen Titans, I wouldn't blame a reader for being wary here on out of starting to read any high-priced collection series until they know exactly how it's going to end.

Still planning to pick up the New Teen Titans Omnibus Volume 3? Cancelled your order? Sound off in the comments and let me know!

Review: Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE Vol. 2: Secrets of the Dead trade paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Thu, 30 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

In Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE Vol. 2: Secrets of the Dead, new series writer Matt Kindt continues the monster mayhem aesthetic found in exiting writer Jeff Lemire's first volume of the series. There are minor blips in the transition from writer to writer, but these are minor; Secrets, however, largely involves a crossover with the Animal Man/Swamp Thing event "Rotworld" that serves the other two series far better than it does Frankenstein. Kindt's writing of Frankenstein won't disappoint fans, but the push and pull of connecting this last volume of Frankenstein with other series' events might.

[Review contains spoilers]

Jeff Lemire contributes the first two chapters of this collection, which respectively close out Lemire's previous storylines and lead in to the larger "Rotworld" crossover found later in the book. The first chapter then (issue #8) is perhaps the first of the "concluding issues of Frankenstein" found in this book, as Lemire reveals that it was controversy over the death of the "Son of Frankenstein" that lead to Frankenstein and his Bride's split. The issue ends with the Bride leaving the SHADE organization and raises the possibility that Frankenstein might do the same, a thread that continues through Matt Kindt's stories but never ultimately materializes (else the book might've needed a title change!).

Lemire's second issue, more exactly, picks up threads from Lemire's own Animal Man series, prior to "Rotworld." Frankenstein and Nina Mazursky (the Creature Commando's human-hybrid sea creature) arrive at Animal Man Buddy Baker's mother-in-law's farm in the aftermath of the events of Animal Man Vol. 1: The Hunt and fight Animal Man's enemy The Rot. Lemire's last issue doesn't add much to the Animal Man storyline per se, but he begins to bring to fruition the romance between Frankenstein and Mazursky, and the issue ends in a way that might equally be the conclusion of the Frankenstein series.

It's mainly because of where Lemire ends that makes the beginning of Kindt's story jarring; Frankenstein is apparently visiting his own book collection in the SHADE library when the librarian embraces and begins kissing him, and also tells him about a conspiracy within SHADE. Why the librarian becomes so amorous is never explained; this is just one of a number of odd "jumps" that Kindt's story makes. To some extent this works with the madcap nature of the Frankenstein title (the librarian rubs up against Frankenstein precisely because it's absurd for her to do so), but it also demarcates, perhaps a little more than necessary, where Lemire leaves off and Kindt begins.

Kindt also takes Lemire's habit of spelling out SHADE's various strange acronyms and stretches it to an absurd degree; sometimes pages after pages have acronym asides. This is a little too cute; however, Kindt also introduces asides that give glimpses of the lives of Frankenstein's assorted body parts pre-monster, which is quite interesting (and chilling) and offered plenty of story potential had Frankenstein not ended.

The three-part "Son of Saturn" storyline that starts Kindt's run, to extrapolate a bit, has a bit more of the secret-agent flair that Kindt is known for (Mind MGMT, etc.) than perhaps Lemire's run did, not that there's anything wrong with that. Frankenstein and the Creature Commandos hunt the SHADE traitor Mission Impossible-style through an alternate dimension; in a series of weird twists, Frankenstein ends up inside a sentient beast that houses SHADE's retirement facility, except some of those retirees are actually prisoners. The rumored conspiracy is actually a plot to trap Frankenstein before he can kill a rogue SHADE agent, who learned of his death at Frankenstein's hands through one of SHADE's future-seeing mechanisms.

If it sounds complicated, it is, and I might add that it's delightfully so, except that the issue ends with Frankenstein having gathered an army of SHADE retirees to fight "Victor" and the Rot. Victor is none other than Victor Frankenstein, the monster's creator, though how Frankenstein knew that Victor has returned or that he needed to gather an army to fight him is yet another of Secrets of the Dead's unexplained jumps. Possibly in tying Frankenstein to "Rotworld," some aspects had to be speeded up or glossed over; this shows also in a couple of issues where Kindt uses considerably heavy narration to move the story forward rather than "in the moment" scenes.

What follows next is the three part "Secrets of the Dead" "Rotworld" tie-in. The first part mainly establishes that the world has turned to Rot while Frankenstein has been away; the second has Frankenstein and the Creature Commando vampire Velcoro hunting pieces of the McGuffin soul-grinder across the Rotworld; and then in the third Frankenstein battles Victor using the soul-grinder. The second issue is the clear winner, as Frankenstein and Velcoro journey across the ruined Rotworld landscape in scenes reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road; Kindt builds up the sarcastic Velcoro's personality well toward an especially effective ending.

Unfortunately, the "Rotworld" tie-in hardly needs its three issues, as some of the battles in the first and third parts get overlong. As well, the "Rotworld" story ends with Mazursky and others seemingly transformed into Frankenstein-like creatures, with Mazursky perhaps pregnant with Frankenstein's child ... and then the last panel directs the reader to the Animal Man and Swamp Thing "Rotworld" collections to see what happens next.

Not only, ultimately, does the book's major conclusion not feel complete, but also how the characters are un-Frankensteined between issue #15 and the final issue, #16, isn't explained, nor how the SHADE leadership, all of whom were apparently killed in the "Rotworld" story, have all come back to life. Surely those answers are in the Rotworld collections -- my guess is time gets rolled back somehow -- but for those interested solely in Frankenstein, it's a disappointing read.

Fortunately, Kindt gets to go out on a high note in which Frankenstein and the Creature Commandos, all live and restored, stop a dirty bomb from exploding over Central City and reveal their existence to a homeland security agent in the process. It is a one-off "regular" story with some deft perspective tricks, and it serves to give Frankenstein and especially the Commandos one last hurrah (Frankenstein appears next in Justice League Dark, but I don't think the Commandos do), before the series comes to a close.

Whether by virtue of style or outside interference, I can't say Matt Kindt's Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE: Secrets of the Dead is quite as strong as Jeff Lemire's War of the Monsters, but it remains that any Frankenstein is good Frankenstein, and Kindt's is close enough; series artist Alberto Ponticelli draws every issue including the Zero Month issue included here, giving the book a nice consistency overall. One chapter for Frankenstein closes; I look forward to seeing the character again in his new home.

[Includes original covers, Alberto Ponticelli sketchbook]

New reviews on the way!

Review: Journey into Mystery Featuring Sif Vol. 1: Stronger Than Monsters trade paperback (Marvel Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Wed, 29 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at Hell Yeah '80s Marvel!]

The tale of Kid Loki, the first star of the modern Journey Into Mystery, came to an end with the “Everything Burns” crossover with The Mighty Thor. While Kieron Gillen continues to work with that character in Young Avengers, there was some concern as to what would happen to Journey Into Mystery. The choice of Sif as the new main character was a smart response to the book’s demographics. Kid Loki has a very strong female fanbase, so giving the book not only a female lead but also a female writer kept the readership levels steady. Journey Into Mystery Featuring Sif Vol. 1: Stronger Than Monsters collects the first five issues of Kathryn Immonen’s run on the Marvel NOW! title, which I hope will last as least as long as Gillen’s Kid Loki epic.

As I said in my review of Captain Marvel: In Pursuit of Flight, Sif is one of Marvel’s answers to Wonder Woman. Physically, she’s the closer match due to her black hair, battle skills, and mythological background. But while Captain Marvel embodies Diana’s friendlier personality and leadership skills, Sif has Diana’s warrior spirit. Immonen’s Sif reminds me quite a bit of Gail Simone’s Wonder Woman, especially when we meet three exiled Berserkers from the early days of Asgard. They’re Journey Into Mystery’s version of Diana’s ape friends, funny (but violent) outsiders who follow Sif around despite her wishes.

Unlike Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman, though, Sif is pointedly not a superhero, a distinction which drives the events of Stronger Than Monsters. While she saves a life within the first few pages of issue #646, it’s that of an Asgardian child, and Sif is dedicated to protecting her home over protecting humans. She pointedly doesn’t understand her neighbors in Broxton, OK, as illustrated in a conversation with a man who criticizes overseas troops but can’t give a good answer as to why he won’t fight alongside them. This would normally come across as heavy-handed, but out of the mouth of a warrior-maiden, it seems perfectly in-character.

There’s a strong theme of being an outsider running through Journey Into Mystery. Sif won’t settle for just being the future wife of Thor as the myths proclaim she will become, and an encounter with a mysterious witch gives her new berserker strength and an angrier disposition. The ensuing rampage injures one of Volstagg’s daughters, forcing Sif’s brother, Heimdall, to send Sif to another dimension for her own sake. Newer readers more familiar with Idris Elba’s turn as Heimdall in Thor: The Mighty Avenger might be surprised to know that Sif is Heimdall’s much younger sister. It’s a holdover from a time when Journey Into Mystery was less devoted to mythological accuracy.

Speaking of the origins of Journey Into Mystery, Kathryn Immonen pays homage to the title’s early days with the reintroduction of a number of old monsters. Like many early Marvel titles, Journey was an anthology book featuring giant monsters and space invaders. After Thor’s introduction in issue #83, it was eventually retitled to The Mighty Thor, and the numbering from there gets sort of complicated. (The math for how J. Michael Straczynski’s The Mighty Thor got renumbered to #600 a few years back is fuzzy at best.) The monsters from the early days of Journey Into Mystery were banished into obscurity, both in the real world and, as it turns out, in the Marvel Universe: they inhabit the dimension Sif is sent to. Immonen brings in Hellcat and Monica Rambeau, characters from previous comics she wrote, to take on some of these invaders in some fun cameos.

Artist Valerio Schiti is a newcomer to Marvel, having worked at IDW for some time, and his artwork is easily some of the best I’ve come across. The treatment of women in comics has become a hot topic recently, with extra scrutiny attached to the provocative designs heroines are given and the poses they are put in. Schiti, thankfully, is not a cheesecake artist, and while Sif is gorgeous, she’s also wearing a mostly practical outfit. Her thighs are exposed, but they’ve been that way on-and-off since her introduction. Schiti also has a gift for facial expressions, avoiding the bland “porn faces” of some artists. Colorist Jordie Bellaire (who also does Captain Marvel) helps with a subdued color palette that knows when to go bold just at the right moments. Cover artist Jeff Dekal also provides dynamic painted covers; I’ll leave my complaints about how he renders Beta Ray Bill for the next volume.

At points, Journey Into Mystery Featuring Sif: Stronger Than Monsters feels like it needs to justify its existence now that Loki is no longer the lead. By demonstrating that Journey Into Mystery has always been a book with a variety of characters, it shuts down complaints from zealous Loki fans who would otherwise dismiss it. Immonen keeps the book fun while illustrating the complexities of Sif’s life. Immonen is aided by one of the best art teams at Marvel right now; I sincerely hope that Schiti gets to draw a big crossover in the near future. Continuing from the Loki run, Journey Into Mystery continues to demonstrate that Thor has the strongest supporting cast of any Marvel hero.

Review: Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and the Dying trade paperback (Marvel Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Mon, 27 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Guest reviewer Zach King blogs about movies as The Cinema King]

On first glance, Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and the Dying is a set-up for disappointment. The volume is short -- collecting only three issues -- though the editors have tried to obfuscate this by using noticeably thicker pages. What's more, this the third Criminal collection marks a soft reboot of sorts, with the single issues renumbering back to #1 (no, no Pandora cameo to be found).

What might turn off some readers is the fact that this trade collects three chapters billed as stand-alones, straying from the longer format of the first two volumes, which might lead readers to treat it less seriously. But as usually happens with these Criminal trades, The Dead and the Dying is a marvelous surprise that's almost impossible to put down.

What the book doesn't tell you right away -- and I almost feel bad revealing it here -- is that the three stories aren't stand-alones. Instead, they're interlocking parts of a larger story, and a great deal of the book's enjoyability comes from tracing the way these three stories are related. In the first, "Second Chance in Hell," we learn about boxer Jake Brown and his strained friendship with mob heir Sebastian Hyde. The second, "A Wolf Among Wolves," introduces Teeg Lawless, the father of last volume's Tracy Lawless, and explains how he came to work as an enforcer for the Hyde family.

The final story in the collection, "Female of the Species," fleshes out the character of Danica Briggs, the unlikely femme fatale who enmeshes herself in the book's events and turns out to be more human than any of her lovers know. "Female of the Species" pulls the book's threads together, explaining Danica's motivations and fleshing out her connections to Jake, Sebastian, and Teeg.

The most potent feeling channeled by this volume is that of epiphany. There are many moments of intersection among these three stories, moments when puzzle pieces click into place. Some take the form of repeated panels (almost outdoing Watchmen in this regard), while others fill in storylines the reader hadn't noticed. For example, in "Second Chance" Sebastian Hyde vows to find those who had wronged him, and in the next panel one such enemy turns up dead. But while readers fill in that Sebastian was the killer, "Wolf" reveals that Teeg was the triggerman, a clever and satisfying twist that deepens the shared universe feeling of Center City.

After reading The Dead and the Dying, I have to wonder if Brubaker has a master story in mind. Before this point, it seemed that Criminal was going the route of Sin City, with standalone installments set in the same gritty locale. But seeing how deftly Brubaker puts the pieces together here, I can't help feeling that there may be an overarching narrative developing. (Update: I've since discovered that there is an unwritten "final" Criminal story named Coward's Way Out, suggesting to me that the series is going to end where it began.) This book explains Teeg's coldness toward his sons -- a surprisingly touching moment rendered by the noirish narrator -- and backfills the rise of the Hyde family, pointing to an interconnectivity beyond the Undertow Bar (owned, of course, by Jake).

The artistic consistency on this title is not to be underestimated here. Sean Phillips returns for this volume, and I can't be happier about that. One of my only complaints about The Invisibles was the rotating artistic team which led to an overenthusiastic jam session and characters who could look wildly different from issue to issue (here's looking at you, Lord Fanny). So the continuity provided by Phillips is a welcome presence. Sebastian is instantly recognizable as a young man who will eventually grow up to become the crime boss from the end of Lawless, and the use of visual repetition reverberates throughout the book, echoing across pages when you least expect it. Criminal is subtler than his gory Marvel Zombies, but it's no surprise that Brubaker keeps him around -- Phillips is comics noir.

If I had doubts about the longevity of my interest in Criminal after Lawless failed to surprise me, Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and the Dying restores my dedication to the series. Brubaker and Phillips prove that they continue to innovate, within both the crime noir genre and the comics form. Center City may be populated by the dead, but the series is alive and well.

Review: Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told trade paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Guest reviewer Zach King blogs about movies as The Cinema King]

Up to this point, the "Greatest Stories" series has profiled the best and brightest of the DC Universe. But when the series takes a turn toward the villainous, it's in many ways appropriate that DC's most iconic villain gets the "Greatest Stories" treatment in The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told.

Perhaps even more so than with Batman, it's a bit difficult to assess what makes a Joker story "great" since I'm a staunch proponent of Grant Morrison's theory that The Joker is "super sane," reinventing his personality almost every day; as such, it's not hard to reconcile a Joker who builds sandcastles with a Joker who guns down Barbara Gordon.

But perhaps it's just that the relationship between The Joker and Batman is (literally) so black-and-white that it's difficult not to create an interesting match-up between the two. As for the contents of this volume, it's safe to say that each story in here is significant in one way or another; there are no real duds, and readers new and familiar will get a strong sense of who this character is -- just in time for Scott Snyder's big Joker story "Death of the Family" over in the New 52's Batman title.

The sum of the parts being more than the whole in this series, let's take a look at what's inside this volume.

"Batman Versus the Joker" (Batman #1, Spring 1940): It's no surprise that we begin with The Joker's first appearance, but what is surprising is just how fully formed the character is While The Joker's creation has been a point of contention for Batfans, writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane both craft a dynamite introduction to the character who has, aside from a goofy period in the Silver Age, remained mostly unchanged. The story's formula is familiar -- Joker vows to kill prominent Gothamites -- but its familiarity points to its influence on numerous adaptations (including The Dark Knight and an Steve Englehart remake reprinted later in this anthology). Kane's Joker is more morose and of somber countenance than readers might be prepared for, but he's never unrecognizable as Batman's greatest foe.

"The Joker's Comedy of Errors" (Batman #66, August/September 1951): Here might be the weakest story reprinted in this collection, because it doesn't seem to have been chosen for its importance to The Joker's character -- there's no "first" in this story, nor is his plot against Batman and Robin particularly compelling. No, it seems the editors chose this story because of its popularity on the Internet for its repeated use of the word "boner." Of course, the word meant something entirely different in 1951, but that doesn't stop the occasional snicker -- even from this reader, who usually considers himself above toilet humor. Finger's plot is overly involved, and Lew Schwartz's art stockier and cheekier (literally, The Joker's cheeks are huge here) than most, but the tale is ultimately not a terrible one. It's just that the editorial insight here seems sophomoric at best.

"Joker's Utility Belt" (Batman #73, October/November 1952): The story begins with a full-page teaser splash by Dick Sprang, in which Batman and Robin are menaced by perversely large Joker heads springing from an oversized utility belt. It's one of the most iconic Joker shots ever drawn by one of the definitive Joker artists, and the story by David V. Reed introduces a gimmick that, while abandoned in later stories, amps up the dark mirror in which The Joker reflects Batman. The story is cleverer than I was expecting, finding unique ways to utilize the bizarre gags that pack The Joker's utility belt. And while I've lamented the fact that this series doesn't reprint full covers, the inclusion of the hydra-like Joker's belt is "great" enough.

"Crime of the Month Club" (Batman #110, September 1957): Dave Wood and Dick Sprang take The Joker into new territory with this story, which casts the Clown Prince of Crime as a criminal consultant, auctioning off his master plans to the highest bidder. The premise is intriguing and given sufficient attention despite the brevity of the story, and it plays up one of my favorite Joker traits -- he always has a back-up plan. This is no "dog chasing cars," but rather the master strategist he always lies about being. Sprang's art again is classic and cements the angular grin which is The Joker's trademark.

"Joker's Last Laugh" (Detective Comics #332, October 1964): It's hard to believe that The Joker's signature laughing gas wasn't introduced until 1964, but here it sees first light -- this time as a powder which is (spoiler warning) easily defeated by a strong antihistamine prescription. While Sheldon Moldoff's pencils here are less compelling than Sprang's (indeed, Sprang is a tough act to follow), he's quite good with facial expressions, a key skill to have in a story where characters frequently erupt into spontaneous laughter. And the story also includes the rotating jail cell gag, which sums up The Joker's whole relationship with law enforcement but also raises serious questions about the security of Gotham's police station.

"The Laughing Fish" / "Sign of The Joker" (Detective Comics #475-476, February -- March 1978): If we're excluding The Killing Joke (if only for reasons of length) and Mad Love (on the grounds that it's more a Harley Quinn story), this might be my favorite Joker story of all time, so I'm elated to see it included here. It's easily the "Hey Jude" of Batman/Joker stories, because it's included on every top list and performed at every available opportunity. I gushed at length about this Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers story in my review of Batman: Strange Apparitions, but it bears repeating that these are near-perfect stories, even thirty-some years later. Here is The Joker's dead-serious attempt to copyright fish, his trademark entrance in a stretched panel surrounded by laughter, and his spooky and dogged pursuit of the copyright officials. But it's also a great Batman story, giving us a snapshot of the Dark Knight's life at this time, as well as providing a look at the state of Gotham City as a whole. The story echoes The Joker's debut with a series of announced homicides, and its adaptation into an episode of Batman: The Animated Series only reverberates its iconic and greatest nature. It's a story that every Batfan needs to read.

"Have a Dreadful Birthday, Mr. Joker" (Batman #321, March 1980): After "The Laughing Fish," any story might feel like a comedown, and unfortunately for Len Wein and Walter Simonson such is this case with "Dreadful Birthday." It's not that it's a bad story; there's no shift in tone with the oversized (notice a trend?) birthday cake to which The Joker's hostages are tethered like candles, and the exploding boat finale is probably the most familiar version of the classic "We haven't seen the last of him" trope. It feels familiar, but it might just be a chicken-and-egg case of a spot-on distillation of this kind of story. What's more, Simonson's Joker is a wonderful interpretation, even more elongated than Rogers's, if it can be believed. While I may be sad that we didn't get anything from The Joker's solo series, the inclusion of Simonson in this story might atone for that.

"Laughter After Midnight" (Batman Adventures Annual #1, 1994): Throughout this series of reviews I've been clamoring for more representation from the DC Animated Universe, so it's wonderful to see that interpretation of The Joker represented here. I've long contended that the Dini/Timm approach to The Joker is the best and most accurate in any media adaptation -- even including Heath Ledger's wildly original Joker -- and it's telling that I still hear Mark Hamill's voice in my head when reading this and every other story in the collection. This story finds The Joker making his way home after yet another ignominious defeat at the hands of the Caped Crusader. John Byrne apes the style of the DCAU so cleanly that I had to double-check the artist wasn't Bruce Timm. It's a great story, one that I missed in my days reading the original series, but it's also a perfect peek into the odd blend of dark humor and deadly evil that made this interpretation of The Joker so beloved -- and so great.

"New Year's Eve" (Batman: The Long Halloween #4, March 1997): One of the earliest Joker stories in the post-Crisis canon (being that The Long Halloween is essentially "Year Two," only The Man Who Laughs is earlier for my money), this story combines many of my favorite characteristics of a Batman story: a dead serious Dark Knight, an eccentric Joker with a lethally insane plan, Jeph Loeb's writing, Tim Sale's art, and snow. While the whole issue isn't reprinted, the parts relevant to the collection unite seamlessly, such that you'll be hard-pressed to find the edits without a copy of the original on hand. Sale takes The Joker's facial elongation to its absurd nadir, such that The Joker's chin dangles near his navel by the end of Dark Victory, but it fits within the cartoonized world of the story; Batman is similarly exaggerated, muscular beyond plausibility but unmistakeably our hero. Considered by many a definitive Batman story, The Long Halloween does justice to The Joker and ought to encourage readers who had never read it before.

"Case Study" (Batman: Black and White, Volume 2, 2002): Ah, Alex Ross -- it's been a while since we saw you around these parts. Here Ross teams up with Paul Dini for a classic Joker origin story -- classic in that it's entirely plausible but probably not true. Riffing on Batman '89, Dini and Ross cast pre-chemicals Joker as a cunning and ambitious mobster whose last days as The Red Hood only made him more audacious. It's a nice nod to The Killing Joke, too long to be reprinted here but undeniably worthy of the "Greatest" appellation, but Dini puts a new "multiple choice" spin on Joker's possible origin, which is too clever to spoil. Ross's artwork is, as ever, stellar, even in black-and-white; his Joker reminds me of Jack Nicholson, which couldn't be less of a bad thing.

"The Joke" (Batman #614, June 2003): It's been said that Batman: Hush, of which this is the seventh chapter, is a retelling of all the iconic Batman moments in one epic story. If that's the case, "The Joke" represents the moral issue at the heart of the Batman/Joker conflict: Should Batman kill The Joker? Writer Jeph Loeb uses his internal narration style to its maximum potential here, stepping inside Batman's head as he beats The Joker near death; using Batman's memory to cycle back to some of The Joker's most notorious moments. It's a tidy package that interrogates what separates Batman from The Joker, but as an entry in this collection it also encompasses stories (i.e., The Killing Joke and A Death in the Family) that were too long to be included but still immensely significant. And the superstar artwork by Jim Lee doesn't hurt, either; Lee plays with shading and line thickness to emphasize the emotional shifts between memory and reality. As a part of one of my all-time favorite Batman stories, "The Joke" is also a wonderful summation of this complicated relationship.

"Slayride" (Detective Comics #826, February 2007): After fully exploring the Batman/Joker dynamic in "The Joke," Paul Dini returns to the writer's chair with "Slayride," another Christmas story in which The Joker abducts Robin Tim Drake and holds him captive during a series of brutal holiday crimes. Don Kramer's artwork in particular stands out for how well he makes The Joker look insane and evil without compromising his more clownish features. Dini is the master of the one-and-done Batman story, having honed his craft on The Animated Series, and this story is both thrilling and unforgettable; it's not difficult to picture this as an episode of the cartoon, although it's more violent than fans of the show will expect. It is, however, a great note on which the book can close, showing us what The Joker is like in the modern era -- still spooky and still uncomfortably funny.

Up to this point, Shazam! The Greatest Stories Ever Told was probably my favorite "Greatest Stories" collection, with Superman/Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told as a successful close second, with neither book wasting a story and instead presenting a highly canonical approach to the character's (or team's) history. But now I'm almost certain that The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told is my new favorite, in part because the character is so strong but also because the editors have really done a bang-up job acknowledging every major interpretation of the character while providing each of his most significant moments without reprinting some of his longer appearances.

Indeed, I can't think of a story that's missing, no glaring omissions that got short shrift here; the only major story absent is the O'Neill/Adams tale "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge," but that's reprinted over in Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Volume One. I can't kvetch about the DCAU not being represented, since the editors rightfully recognize that The Joker, more than anyone, became a star at the hands of Dini and Timm; on that note, though, I might have liked a bit more Harley Quinn in this trade, since she only appears only peripherally in three small appearances here. And the Grant Morrison fan in me can't help but wonder why "The Clown at Midnight" didn't make the cut, although it's either too weird or too recent to merit inclusion.

All told, The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told is as near to perfection as this series ever came, hitting all the important beats without wasting pages on unrewarding stories. It's a first-rate primer on the character -- exactly what I wanted from this series -- and it's excellent for all readers who want to know what The Joker is really all about. Just don't gaze too hard into the abyss, lest ... well, you know.

We've reached the last of the official "Greatest Stories" collections, but there's one more entry in this review series. No, it's not a post full of my complaints about missing stories. For the final entry in this series, I'll be reviewing The World's Greatest Superheroes, a collection of the oversized Paul Dini/Alex Ross OGNs which seems to fit nicely as a coda to the "Greatest Stories" line. Stay tuned!

More Greatest Stories reviews: Superman Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Batman Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Justice League, Shazam, Batgirl, and Superman/Batman.

Review: The Judas Coin graphic novel (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at Hell Yeah '80s Marvel!]

A few years ago, DC published a book called Solo, allowing artists a chance to create stories in their style as they saw fit. Despite decent sales, great critical reception, and three Eisners for three individual issues [plus a forthcoming collection -- ed.], the title folded in 2006. Various artists had already begun working on ideas for issues; one of them was Walt Simonson. Last year, Simonson reworked some of his Solo ideas into a graphic novel, The Judas Coin, which was one of Collected Editions’ recommendations for holiday shopping. Even though The Judas Coin is broken up into six individual stories and a brief prologue, it doesn’t feel like a watered-down miniseries in the way JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice does.

As the prologue reveals, the titular coin is one of the pieces of silver paid to Judas in exchange for betraying Jesus to the Romans. However, the book doesn’t dwell on theology; Jesus is simply called a betrayed friend, and the curse seems to derive more from the betrayal than any Christian doctrine. The coin’s cursed nature is immediately apparent: after Judas flings his blood money in the faces of his benefactors, a beggar finds the coins, only to be immediately trampled by a Roman soldier. Throughout The Judas Coin, simply being in the coin’s proximity is enough for bad luck to happen, although it gets progressively worse if you invoke the coin as a lucky totem.

Each section is prefaced with a brief text piece about the actual history of the time period to set up the situation with a minimum of exposition. The one exception is Part 5, starring Batman and Two-Face, where the text blurb is just reads “Gotham is an awful, awful place.” Instead, hints of backstory are given through newspaper articles printed behind the panels. The entire story is printed so that you have to tilt the comic on its side, turning it into a newspaper broadsheet complete with a “Gotham Gazette” header on the first page. Normally I complain about this technique; a particularly annoying example was in Iron Man/War Machine: Hands of the Mandarin, in which one single random Force Works splash page was printed vertically. But in The Judas Coin, the entire story is done this way, and it actually enhances the story. Two-Face is actually the only person to really figure out the curse, a refreshing take on the character.

Batman and Two-Face are the most famous characters to feature in the graphic novel; the rest are obscure stars of features in books like The Brave and The Bold, the home of Golden Gladiator and Viking Prince. The Golden Gladiator story finds the character near the end of his life in the service of Vespasian, who rose to power during the bloody “Year of the Four Emperors.” In fact, Vespasian co-stars in the story, a detail I thought was odd until I found out that he was a soldier as well. By setting the story in Germania, Simonson allows the coin to migrate from Judea to Europe in a realistic manner. This sets the stage for the Viking Prince chapter, which, as you might expect, has a few The Mighty Thor nods, including a picture of Hela with a half-rotted face and elaborate Kirby-esque Viking helmets.

The next three chapters were two of the furthest along in the creation of Simonson’s Solo issue, and are thus the most solid. The Captain Fear tale takes advantage of the traditional greed of pirates and uses it to accentuate the treachery of Fear’s crew in a mutiny. His resulting plan ends up destroying his ship, and the mutineer leader experiences the book’s most karmic death. Next, the tone shifts to comedy with a poker game between Bat Lash and some hooligans where everyone is on an even keel due to cheating. Like Captain Fear, Bat Lash has an intricate way to get out of his bad situation, even if it involves beating the crap out of himself. It’s a necessary tonal shift after three fairly dark stories in a row. The aforementioned Batman and Two-Face story was, according to Simonson, a Solo concept which would have taken up the entire issue, so it’s satisfying that it found a home here.

Simonson’s last story takes us into space with Manhunter 2070, a character I didn’t even know existed until I read The Judas Coin. I thought Starker was just an extrapolation of Archie Goodwin and Simonson’s famous Manhunter stories, but no, he was created back in the 1970s. The coin appears to be destroyed in this final chapter, although the final captions indicate that the curse can even withstand the force of a star. There could easily be a sequel if Simonson ever wants to do it; personally, I’d love to see Booster Gold in a story about greed and cursed coins.

Along with letterer John Workman and his brilliant sound effects, Simonson’s other collaborator is Lovern Kindzierski, a prolific colorist and the creator of Lobo parody Lunatik. Occasionally, the coloring seems a little rough, but that might be the interaction between Kindzierski’s colors and Simonson’s often heavy inks. One excellent technique is that each chapter is colored in a different manner. While the Golden Gladiator chapter is “normal,” the Viking Prince chapter has a more pastel palette in the manner of The Mighty Thor. The Captain Fear chapter has heavier white panel borders and distinctly thicker lines. The Bat Lash chapter has almost a sepia tone to it. Most dramatically, the Batman story is in black and white, while the Manhunter 2070 chapter has bright colors and swifter lines to evoke a manga style.

If you went into The Judas Coin not knowing that it was all by one writer and penciller, you might think it was an anthology from various creators. Not only does the art go through various styles, but the stories vary in tone as well. It’s a well-balanced graphic novel worthwhile for both the story and the artwork.

[Includes Walt Simonson sketchbook]

Two new Collected Editions ebooks

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

Today Collected Editions announces the release of two new ebooks!

The Collected Editions Guide to the DC Comics New 52 Vol. 1

In 2011, DC Comics relaunched their entire line of titles, replacing over twenty-years of post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity (and some pre-Crisis continuity!) with the New 52. The Collected Editions website chronicled the newly unfolding DC Universe with reviews of each of the inaugural New 52 collections, and now those reviews are collected in a new ebook as an in-depth study of the New 52. The book includes two new, never-before-published Collected Editions reviews, as well as a new introduction by the author.

The Unofficial DC Comics Trade Paperback Timeline Vol. 2

The second volume in the Unofficial DC Comics Trade Paperback Timeline series is updated and expanded to include over 900 titles, including all the New 52 Volume 1 titles, making this the perfect guide for both new and established readers. The Timeline shows how to read DC's library of collected editions in order, offering a quick glance at the most significant DC events as well as collections that readers might have missed. Copious notes help explain how the collections fit together. Whether a fan of DC's old continuity or new, the Trade Paperback Timeline is your map to navigating the DC universe. This volume also contains a new introduction by the author.

How to order

The ebooks are just $0.99 each, available direct from Smashwords and compatible with all ebook apps and devices (Kindle see below). You can also order the books from Barnes and Noble for the Nook, the Apple iBookstore, Kobo, and the Sony ReaderStore (link to come).

Kindle users: Collected Editions ebooks are sold DRM-free from all vendors. For Kindle compatibility, download the free Calibre ebook management system and easily convert the Smashwords EPUB file to MOBI format.

For press/blogger inquiries and review copies, contact collectededitions at the Yahoo account or DM @collecteditions on Twitter.

Reviews appreciated. Enjoy your new ebooks!

Review: Worlds' Finest Vol. 1: The Lost Daughters of Earth 2 trade paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

An interesting premise and some wisely re-imagined characters carries Paul Levitz's Worlds' Finest: The Lost Daughters of Earth 2 a very far distance. Unfortunately, the number of issues collected here outpaces the utility of the plot, to the point where the book begins to feel decompressed; the juxtaposition of the past and present with artists Kevin Macguire and George Perez respectively is entertaining and certainly pretty to look at, but this too gets gimicky after a while as it fails to come to any cohesive point.

[Review contains spoilers]

The best part of Paul Levitz's Worlds' Finest is his new Earth 2-born Power Girl and Huntress. Though the two initially seem much like their pre-Flashpoint counterparts (as did Huntress in Levitz's Crossbow at the Crossroads miniseries), later in the book Levitz begins to differentiate and re-imagine their voices. Huntress is, in comparison to the former Helena Bertinelli, somewhat bookish and reserved, preferring to remain in the shadows; Power Girl is bold but also surprisingly flirty, more tawdry than one would expect considering that she was once Earth 2's Supergirl.

The two are friends but not close, only having recently reunited; Power Girl Karen Starr nee Kara Zor-El has spent the past five years in the spotlight, building a tech company in an attempt to find a way back to Earth 2, while Huntress has fought crime but largely remained hidden.

Power Girl is brash enough that at times it's hard to fully sympathize with her character; also, that Levitz chooses to have Karen buy her way into corporate dominance rather than on her own smarts, as in the previous continuity, seems a step backward. Huntress, however, is a more interesting study -- a new Robin, the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, raised from birth for the role and having experienced all the pressure and adventures that go along with that. Levitz only scratches the surface of the stories he could tell, well aside from the present Worlds' Finest action.

But most of what this book establishes, it establishes in the first issue. In the past, Power Girl and Huntress are mistakenly shunted to "our" Earth, as also seen in James Robinson's Earth 2: The Gathering, they filch a little of Bruce Wayne's money, and they set up lives for themselves; in the present, they fight a radioactive hulk named Hakkou that's bent on destroying the device that will send them home. Little about that, if at all, changes over the next successive three issues; Levitz shows them continuing to set up their lives, but there are no surprises there that change our understanding of the characters in the present, nor does their continuing fight with the one-note Hakkou reveal anything about how they became stranded across dimensions.

Levitz would seem to take the Lost approach (or do we call it "the Arrow approach" now?), paralleling the present with the characters formative moments in the past. Worlds' Finest has a classic art team, and Maguire especially sells Power Girl and Huntress's clowning around and the differences in their personalities. But again, well-drawn flashbacks aren't enough -- Levitz doesn't actually tie the past action to the present nor offer any new information, so four issues in, the book feels repetitious.

The fifth issue sets Huntress and Power Girl in separate adventures, but again what follows is mostly predictable -- Power Girl fights a rampaging machine in the sunlight, Huntress takes out a sniper in the night. The final issue is the book's Zero Month issue, and this is a good look at the characters' more interesting Supergirl and Robin personas, though I wonder whether Levitz has revealed here too early the circumstances of Selina Kyle's death.

At the same time, Levitz offers up plenty of other mysteries -- maybe too many. Power Girl's powers don't work right on "our" Earth for some reason (though Levitz is never specific how they're different), Huntress has apparently gained a modicum of invulnerability somehow, there's a mysterious belt that made the trip across dimensions with them, Hakkou has some sort of dimension-hopping in his background, and apparently even the circumstances of Power Girl's original arrival on Earth 2 are suspect (it would be an interesting turn if it ended up that Power Girl was sent from "our" Earth to Earth 2 originally and not vice versa as in pre-Flashpoint continuity). Levitz sums up these questions at the end of the fourth chapter, perhaps too helpfully; mystery is fine, but the list of questions only serves as a reminder of all that hasn't been explored already six issues into this series.

I really enjoyed James Robinson's first Earth 2 collection, but unfortunately this second book in the franchise doesn't live up to the first. From writer -- Paul Levitz created Huntress, once upon a time -- to artists to characters and concept, Worlds' Finest: The Lost Daughters of Earth 2 should be a book that can't miss, but unfortunately some good character work only takes it so far. Possibly Levitz had to bide his time here to line up with other events in the DC Universe; hopefully that's the case and this series's second outing will be better than its first.

[Includes original covers, costume designs and sketches by various artists]

New reviews on the way!

DC Trade Solicitations for August 2013 - Joker: Death of the Family, DC One Million Omnibus, Necessary Evil, Legion cancelled

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

Earlier this week DC Comics released their August 2013 solicitations, including trade paperbacks, collections, and graphic novels. As you know, DC also cancelled four titles -- Legion of Super-Heroes, Threshhold, Demon Knights, and Dial H. Even as we're talking about August, I think most of us have our eyes tipped toward September, such to see what new books might replace the fallen. (What Wave will this be now? I can never keep track.)

Losing Legion certainly stings, as for me this has been one of the most enjoyable and accessible Legion runs in a while -- up there with the early issues of the recent Mark Waid/Barry Kitson run, but maybe a little better because I adored this return to the "new classic" Legion. But while Paul Levitz's Legion was superlative just before Flashpoint, in the New 52 the wind seemed to go out of its sails a little bit, and I can't necessarily say the cancellation was a surprise.

Nor can I gather up the ire that Waid has about this -- surely there's been an instance before where Legion has been cancelled one month and restarted the next (for instance, when Waid himself relaunched Legion after Zero Hour). And even if Legion does go on hiatus, I find it hard to believe Waid would expect DC to keep publishing Legion if it wasn't making money -- just because a title's been around for forty years (in three or four different iterations, which I'm not sure counts as "continuous") doesn't make it too big to fail if it's, well, failing.

Some collections:

• Joker: Death of The Family HC

We already knew about this, but now we have a semi-confirmed release date of October 16, the week after the Batman: Death of the Family collection comes out (so they're the opposite of Night of the Owls, where the tie-in book came out first; this time the tie-in book comes out second).

Contents are reported as Batman #17, Catwoman #13-14, Batgirl #14-16, Batman and Robin #15-17, Nightwing #15-16, Detective Comics #16-17, Red Hood and the Outlaws #15-16 and Teen Titans #15, plus pages from Batman #13, Batgirl #13, Nightwing #14, Red Hood and the Outlaws #13-14, Suicide Squad #14-15 and Teen Titans #14 and 16. This will mark the first time in the New 52 that a DC collection has included "pages from" instead of a full issue, and I'll be curious to see how seamlessly (or not) the pages fit in. I recently re-read Batman: Murderer/Fugitive, whose collections also tried to patch together just the relevant parts of the tie-ins, and it's a valiant effort but my thinking is overall these collections read better with the full issue.

• Batgirl Vol. 3: Death of The Family HC

This collects Batgirl #14-19, Batman #17, Batgirl Annual #1, and the Batgirl story from Young Romance #1, which is a nicely large enough selection of issues that it doesn't feel like Joker: Death of the Family duplicates it too much. I'm especially glad to see these Young Romance stories collected with their respective titles, too; here and also in the Stormwatch book, to name two off the top of my head (or does Stormwatch? See below).

• DC One Million Omnibus HC

If it's go big or go home, DC went big with this one. You've got to admire a book that not only collects the original crossover and tie-ins (in and of itself a feat, and it makes me still hopeful for that Crisis on Infinite Earths Omnibus with all the tie-in issues, one day), but also ancillary stories that came out years (and in one respect, even a decade) later like the 80-Page Giant, Superman/Batman, and Booster Gold. Plus this is about the only place you can find collected issues of Chronos and Creeper, among others.

• Necessary Evil: The Villains of the DC Universe TP

Collects parts of Action Comics Annual #10, Batman #244 and 614, Batman Villains Secret Files #1, Black Adam #6, Green Lantern Corps #14, Solo #1, Superman: Lex 2000, Wonder Woman #214, Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1, and profile pages from Countdown #2, 6-11, 14-16, 19, 27, 29, 33-34 and 36-37. I don't think I spot anything in there that hasn't been collected already except maybe the Batman Villains story, whatever it turns out to be, and the Countdown profiles.

• Ame-Comi Girls Vol. 1 TP
• Arrow Vol. 1 TP
• Batman: Legends of The Dark Knight Vol. 1 TP

Chris Arrant at Robot 6 asked the other day whether DC's digital comics were their best-kept secret. It certainly seems like they're rolling out collections of the same pretty regularly. That a collection is coming out doesn't necessarily speak to the quality of the product, but from what I hear Smallville and Injustice and the rest are all doing well; how long until an in-continuity title goes digital first, do you think? (And how long until DC goes ahead and adopts the Thrillbent/Marvel Infinite Comics method of digital comics "animation"?)

• Animal Man Vol. 3: Rotworld—The Red Kingdom TP
• Earth 2 Vol. 2: The Tower of Fate HC

At some point I was thinking the next Earth 2 collection wouldn't be out until 2014. Quite thankfully it's October, and it's got almost seven-to-eight issues of content in it.

• Green Lantern Vol. 3: The End HC

Does ... does this mean I just have one more Geoff Johns Green Lantern collection to read, and that's it? Oh. Oh my.

• Green Arrow Vol. 3: Harrow TP

I mentioned elsewhere I'm kind of disappointed not to see any of Jeff Lemire's new run on the series collected here, just because it means we have to wait that much longer before Lemire's first Green Arrow collection. At the same time, while I expect from reading authors Ann Nocenti and Rob Liefeld's other works that I may find this collection a little rough, between the Savage Hawkman and Justice League issue this collection is obviously meant to milk the Justice League of America connection for all its worth, and that's an enjoyable prospect.

• Stormwatch Vol. 3: Betrayal TP

Some of the online retailers list a Young Romance story as being included here, but DC themselves don't, so your guess is as good as mine.

What are you buying for August? And more importantly, is it time for September solicits yet?

Review: Criminal Vol. 2: Lawless trade paperback (Marvel Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Guest reviewer Zach King blogs about movies as The Cinema King]

I came out of Coward, the first Criminal volume from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, with a compulsion to seek out more crime comics, especially the ones by this creative team. The second volume, Lawless, continues developing the shared universe in which these stories occur with considerable inventiveness, but it is for a number of reasons an overall less entertaining read than its strong predecessor.

After a military scandal which led to his untimely departure from the service, Tracy Lawless returns to Center City to avenge the murder of his brother Ricky. All he knows is that his brother Rick was betrayed by a member of his own crew, so Tracy infiltrates the gang to learn the truth about his brother's death. But as Tracy takes Rick's place in the gang, he learns that his brother's past was more complicated -- and more twisted -- than he expected, even as his investigation leads him to the most corrupt of the city's real power brokers.

As a follow-up to Coward, Lawless has a very high bar to match; I was extremely impressed with Coward and quickly understood why the series was gaining high marks for originality. How, then, do you do an original sequel? Brubaker negotiates that territory by opening up a new corner of Center City rather than following up with Leo and the rest of the gang from the first trade.

If Coward was Brubaker's reexamination of the heist story a la The Italian Job, Lawless is his revenge film in the vein of Get Carter. But in Lawless, Brubaker doesn't do as much as I was expecting to subvert the genre. While he does play with expectations by making the case about who Rick actually was rather than who killed him, the central mystery of the triggerman is quite transparent; anyone with a passing familiarity with noir revenge films will probably spot the culprit right off.

But even a predictable Brubaker story is still a first-rate read. Tracy's voice is clearly different from Leo's, and the narrator is hard-boiled without clutching cliches in his teeth. More interesting, though, is the way that Brubaker plays with time in Lawless. Coward was more linear, its protagonists haunted by a past we dispensed with in the prologue, but in Lawless the book itself is haunted by an intrusive past that appears without warning, disorienting the reader and forcing us to restabilize the narrative.

Take the book's first page, which opens with Tracy standing over a dead body. A few panels later, we see the murder itself; by the end of the first chapter, we see the moments before the murder. This wibbly-wobbly approach to chronology is initially jarring, but it smartly helps us to understand Tracy's relationship to his past so that his surprising decision at the end of the book at least seems justified. It's clear that there is more to Tracy's story yet to be told, so I'm eager to see this character recur in the shared universe of Criminal.

Brubaker is again teamed with Phillips, and it's a peanut-butter-and-jelly partnership that makes absolute sense, like Morrison/Quitely, Lee/Kirby, and Moore/Gibbons. Phillips's use of shadows fits perfectly with the neo-noir vibe, cultivating a sense of danger melded with intrigue. His facial expressions are subtle and sketchy, expressive without too much distracting detail. Better still, each character has a unique look, with signature expressions that help the reader keep everyone straight while getting a sense of who's telling the truth and who's lying. At home both in the bedroom and in a shootout with the cops, Phillips's art solidifies itself as an essential component of the Criminal ambiance.

Though it doesn't break new ground in the same way that the first volume did, Lawless retains a readability that raises the profile of crime comics; I haven't read something as deceptively straightforward since Frank Miller's Sin City, with both doing exciting things in the realm of capeless comics. If the recent move toward creator-owned comics produces more books like Criminal, I'm all for it.

Review: Stormwatch (1997) Vol. 5: Final Orbit trade paperback (Wildstorm/DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at Hell Yeah '80s Marvel!]

One of the biggest appeals of the Aliens vs. Predator franchise is that to use the Xenomorphs, you don’t have to explain what they’ve been up to since their last appearance. There are millions (if not billions) of them spread out throughout the universe, and their motive is simple: they want to breed. They just happen to require the bodies of living creatures to do so. As a result, you can take the Xenomorphs and cross them over with other characters without requiring a lot of backstory. They’ve met Batman, Superman, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Judge Dredd, Witchblade, and even the Terminator (although, surprisingly, not Robocop, despite that franchise crossing over with The Terminator).

Because of the inter-company crossover nature of those stories, they aren’t canon. Few stories of that stripe can be, apart from JLA/Avengers. The Stormwatch: Final Orbit trade contains another exception: the infamous WildC.A.T.S./Aliens, which will unfortunately not be reprinted in the upcoming Stormwatch: Vol. 2. But publishing rights aren’t the only reason why it won’t be in that volume. As it turns out, the Stormwatch team doesn’t really appear in WildC.A.T.S./Aliens at all. Only a few living members factor into it; the majority of the Stormwatch cast are slaughtered before the WildC.A.T.S. even arrive on Stormwatch’s orbital headquarters.

Warren Ellis famously used WildC.A.T.S./Aliens to change the entire Wildstorm status quo so that he could introduce The Authority. Under the aegis of Jackson King, the Weatherman, Stormwatch protected the Earth and beyond in a fairly standard superheroic manner. This kind of guardianship wouldn’t be conducive to the Authority’s antics, so they had to go; why not do it in the most gruesome and publicity-grabbing way possible? It helps that they got Chris Sprouse and Kevin Nowlan to draw the crossover. As much as I like Jim Lee, his slick style of art wouldn’t have worked for a mass-slaughtering horror story.

As for the WildC.A.T.S. themselves, I know about them mostly from their appearances in the New 52 titles and -- just to show my age -- their short-lived animated series. Mind you, I can’t really name any of them off-hand apart from Grifter and Maul. The WildC.A.T.S. may be the only team with two warriors wearing their hair in high-off-the-head ponytails. Zealot and Warblade are sometimes indistinguishable due to the dark coloring; I’m happy that they identified Zealot in this book very quickly, because otherwise I would have pegged her as Glory. The team was going through rough times during this story’s publication, so there’s a lot of arguing, with ex-lovers Grifter and Zealot doing the bulk of the sniping. They also have a manager patterned after Justice League International’s Oberon, which I didn’t remember the team having on the cartoon.

So if Stormwatch isn’t the focus of WildC.A.T.S./Aliens, then why is this a Stormwatch trade? Well, the trade includes issues #10 and 11 of Ellis’ tenure on the title, which take place before and after the crossover one-shot. Wisely, the trade was designed to sandwich the one-shot between these two issues, so that you can read them in the proper order. I decided to do a little test: could I understand what happened to Stormwatch by reading just those issues without WildC.A.T.S./Aliens? You can certainly do that, but the end result is anti-climactic. The Xenomorphs aren’t shown in the Stormwatch issues; when their asteroid ship appears in issue #10, it’s at the end, so there’s a cliffhanger about what will happen with the heroes. In issue #11, the Stormwatch members are already dead and buried, and we’re not told the details of how; the WildC.A.T.S. aren’t even shown!

Going into this, I knew a little more about Stormwatch than I did about WildC.A.T.S., mostly because of The Authority and DC’s current Stormwatch ongoing. None of the killed-off members have made appearances in the New 52 as far as I can tell, since DC’s Stormwatch is essentially The Authority plus Jackson King and the Martian Manhunter. Honestly, reading these issues after reading The Authority really does feel like I’m taking a step backwards. The Stormwatch heroes are visually rather bland, and King’s struggles with funding just aren’t that interesting of a story. When the UN decommissions Stormwatch, it feels like what would have happened even if the Xenomorphs didn’t attack.

At the very end of Stormwatch: Final Orbit, Jenny Sparks, Swift, and Jack Hawksmoor come out of hiding and brutally attack recurring villain Henry Bendix. This is the true start of The Authority, especially because the art is by Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary. Parts of both issues were drawn by Michael Ryan, and his art is a little less detailed but still high-quality, but the final pages were by Hitch and Neary specifically to flow right from Stormwatch into The Authority.

There are many ways to clear out a comic’s status quo, from dismissing members in conversation (like in Avengers: Avengers World) to just rebooting the universe entirely (like in Justice League: Origin). Warren Ellis would have likely killed off most of Stormwatch anyway, so the fact that he was able to use the Xenomorphs to do so is just a bonus. The presence of the WildC.A.T.S. is intrusive, and if it had been Stormwatch fighting for their lives against such a powerful threat versus just dying off-panel, then I think this would have been a much better story.

If you’re just a fan of Aliens, there’s not much here for you. That said, Ellis puts some good work into this crossover, aided by Sprouse and Hitch’s artwork. Since it might not be reprinted any time soon, if you’re a fan of The Authority, you can just pick up the one-shot if you can get it at your LCS. Alternately, since comiXology hosts most issues of WildC.A.T.S., there’s a possibility that WildC.A.T.S./Aliens might one day be put up there. Otherwise, Stormwatch: Final Orbit is a decent buy, cataloging the fall of early 1990s extreme comics and the rise of the more mature era of the late '90s.

Review: DC Entertainment Essential Graphic Novels and Chronology 2013 trade paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

The DC Entertainment Essential Graphic Novels and Chronology 2013 should be in your local local comics shop now (and hopefully on comiXology soon).

Let me say first of all that I'm really excited that DC has published this; Marvel has had books of this type -- scores of them -- for a while now, and an organized DC trade backlist, especially one that's going to be updated every year, is a good thing for trade fans and for retailers. I don't want us to lose sight of that.

Given a good thousand collections that DC has produced, it's pretty easy for a dedicated fan to come along and say, sure, you've got Batman: Year One on here, but where's Batman: Evolution by Greg Rucka with art by Shawn Martinbrough? We fans want deference for the books that mean the most to us, and that's understandable, but DC's goal as a company must be first and foremost to sell books -- I love Superman: Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite, but that book is long out of print and I can't blame DC for using the space in this catalog for something else if a reader couldn't go buy Krimson Kryptonite anyway.

This is not to excuse the lack of a Wonder Woman section in this book, which ought be rectified for the next edition, but rather to say that with this "review" of sorts, I don't necessarily want to engage in the kind of "what, Flash: Rebirth gets a spot but not Legion: The Great Darkness Saga?" conversation (though indeed Flash: Rebirth gets a spot and Legion: The Great Darkness Saga does not), which seems too easy to me (even as I'm going to do a lot of that anyway).

Rather what I want to do is simply look through this book with you and make some observations. Many of those observations are going to be nitpicks, but again, this book is good for the trade-waiting cause and I'm glad it's out there.

(I'll jump ahead for a moment so as not to keep you in suspense: the Chronology aspect of this, while a good effort, is wrong or incomplete in numerous places. These are for the most part fine "suggested reading lists" if a customer asks to see a list of new-ish, notable-ish titles, no, but the DC Trade Paperback Timeline it is not.)

DCE 25 Essential Graphic Novels

You may remember six years ago DC published a list of their 30 Essential Graphic Novels on their website; that post is no longer there, but we still have the list on Collected Editions at the link.

Of that list, 14 of those titles have made it to DC's new 25 Essentials list, 14 have come off, and 11 new titles have come on (the math gets a little funny because some two-volume sets have been combined now into one volume). Below, I've marked with an asterisk the books that are new to the list; the titles without asterisks were on DC's list six years ago.

• Watchmen
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
• Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
• Batman: Year One
• V for Vendetta
• Saga of the Swamp Thing Vol. 1 *
• Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile
• Batman: The Killing Joke *
• Y, The Last Man Vol. 1: Unmanned
• All-Star Superman *
• Kingdom Come
• Batman: The Long Halloween
• League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1 (previously Vols. 1 and 2)
• Batman: Earth One *
• Green Lantern: Rebirth
• American Vampire Vol. 1 *
• Blackest Night *
• Final Crisis *
• JLA Vol. 1 (previously New World Order)
• Identity Crisis
• Batman: Hush (previously Vols. 1 and 2)
• Joker *
• Flash: Rebirth *
• Superman: Earth One *
• Planetary *

For the record, those books that have now been retired from DC's Essentials list are:

• Sandman: Endless Nights
• Superman For All Seasons
• Superman: Birthright
• Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Batman: Dark Victory
• Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again
• Crisis on Infinite Earths
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street
• Quitter
• Hellblazer: Original Sins
• Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne
• Sword Of The Dark Ones
• Ex Machina Vol. 1: The First Hundred Days

I don't disagree with the 25 Essentials list too ardently, and the ones that came off the list are probably the ones I would have chosen. There's a "flavor of the month" aesthetic to the list I might disagree with -- I'm not sure Blackest Night and especially Flash: Rebirth need to be on there, and I wouldn't necessarily trade Joker for Arkham Asylum.

Ex Machina, I'm glad to see, does appear elsewhere in the book (though under the Vertigo section, which is logically right but factually wrong.)

There's no book on this list, I don't think, with a female protagonist; I might've dumped Flash: Rebirth, for instance, for Greg Rucka and JH Williams's Batwoman: Elegy.

It's too easy to pick on the various descriptions of these titles, but I notice the catalog says Watchmen "examines the lives of the eponymous superhero team ... [who] reunite to investigate who's behind a teammate's murder." Not so -- the "team" is never in fact called "the Watchmen."

Picky continuity note and spoiler alert: In the 25 Essentials list, Blackest Night's page is on the left and Final Crisis's page follows on the right, even though Final Crisis was published before Blackest Night. Also, the pages shown from Final Crisis are the ones where Barry Allen comes back, which I think would qualify as a spoiler for a new fan looking to pick up that book.

The New 52

Justice League Vol. 1: Origin, Batman Vol. 1: Court of Owls, Green Lantern Vol. 1: Sinestro, and Action Comics Vol. 1: Superman and the Men of Steel all get full pages here; all the others are listed a few books to a page with covers and descriptions.

I promise I'll stop picking on the descriptions, but here's some more that struck me as a little off:

Detective Comics Vol. 1: Faces of Death: "Writer/artist Tony S. Daniel's take on Batman's infamous rogues' gallery." Seems kind of bland; how 'bout "Batman races to save Commissioner Gordon and the Joker from the Dollmaker, in this prelude to the Death of the Family crossover"?

Demon Knights Vol. 1: Seven Against the Dark: "The medieval Justice League." Actually not. The medieval Stormwatch, maybe?

Grifter Vol. 1: Most Wanted: "Grifter's first starring role in his own series!" ... If you don't count the starring roles he had in two of his own series from Wildstorm/Image.

Justice League International Vol. 1: The Signal Masters: "The UN's answer to the Justice League battle against the Signal Masters." Booster Gold gets tired of explaining this. "No, see, it was this alien called Peraxxus, and he sent signals to these robots, so he was the Signal Mast -- OK, fine, yes, you're right, we fought a bunch of Signal Masters, can we drop it now?"

Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Green Arrow each get special essential books sections, followed later by a "Backlist and Suggested Reading Order" section. For purposes of organization I'm going to combine my thoughts on each character's section below.

Batman

The initial two-page Batman introductory spread credits Bob Kane; the Superman spread credits Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

In addition to a number of other books, including some mentioned in the 25 Essentials list, the Batman section includes Arkham Asylum, Dark Victory, Knightfall, Under the Hood, Batman and Son, RIP, the Batman and Robin books, Black Mirror, Batman, Inc., all the Batman New 52 Vol. 1 books, and Dark Knight Strikes Again.

Chronology: Here's where we get into my bread-and-butter: reading orders. As I said above, I think this is a valiant effort, but the DC Trade Paperback Timeline, it isn't.

The Batman list starts out with the Batman: Greatest Stories Ever Told volumes, then the Tales of the Batman/Legends of the Dark Knight writer/artist spotlight books, then a Batman Chronicles volume. Your introduction to classic Batman -- no qualms so far.

Then the list has Batman: Year One, Batman: The Man Who Laughs, Long Halloween, Dark Victory, Haunted Knight, the Matt Wagner Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman: Trinity series collection (which I'm pretty sure is out of print), and Batman: Prey. Still OK -- the reading order might be a little suspect here (not all of these books play 100% well with one another), but essentially they're all Year One-era stories.

Next is Batman: Death in the Family, then Grant Morrison's Batman: Gothic and Arkham Asylum, then Killing Joke. Now we have issues. First, I know specifically that Killing Joke takes place before Death in the Family -- it's not like anyone doesn't know what happens in either of these books or that one is a major spoiler for the other, but irrespective, the reading order is off. And what Gothic (a Legends of the Dark Knight story) and Arkham Asylum are both doing there, I don't know. Maybe it's because Death in the Family is a Joker story, Arkham is a Joker story, and Gothic is also a Morrison story like Arkham? Got me.

Then the list has Batman: Venom, Batman vs. Bane, and Knightfall. So this is Knightfall-era -- Venom ties to Knightfall, Batman vs. Bane includes the Vengance of Bane one-shot that precedes Knightfall -- but then again, Batman vs. Bane also includes stories that take place after Knightfall; maybe this won't cause big confusion for a new reader, but it might cause some.

From Knightfall, the list jumps straight to No Man's Land and then to Hush. So much for Contagion, Legacy, and Cataclysm, right?

The list enters the new Morrison era from there, from Batman and Son through Batman RIP and Final Crisis. The reading order gets shaky again toward the end -- Batman and Robin Vol. 4, Dark Knight, White Knight is listed before Return of Bruce Wayne, when indeed the fourth volume of Batman and Robin takes place after Bruce returned; Batman: Life and Death is listed after Bruce Wayne: The Road Home when Life and Death actually takes place while Bruce is still considered dead.

Then come the Flashpoint and New 52 books, and then a variety of non-continuity stories -- Joker, Year 100, Dark Knight Returns, Arkham City, etc. Strangely, Batman: Birth of the Demon finishes up the list, and that one's actually more in continuity than, say, Batman: Noel.

A bad list? No. A list with some omissions in it? Sure, but every list is going to have that. A credible reading order? Maybe, but with a couple of major caveats.

Superman

Among the books listed here are Superman Chronicles Vol. 1 (the eleventh volume of which I could have sworn was just cancelled), Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, John Byrne's Superman: The Man of Steel Vol. 1, Superman for All Seasons, Death of Superman, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Brian Azzarello's Luthor, Superman For Tomorrow, Secret Origin, Last Son of Krypton (including Superman: Brainiac), Escape from Bizarro World, Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes (so all the Johns books, though New Krypton gets no mention in this book), The Black Ring, the New 52 books, Earth One Vols. 1 and 2, Birthright, All Star Superman, and Red Son.

Chronology: The Superman list starts like the Batman list with Superman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Superman Chronicles, Superman vs. Flash, Superman vs. Brainiac, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow -- again, classic material.

Next is six of John Byrne's Superman: Man of Steel collections, followed by Superman For All Seasons, and then Death of Superman, World Without a Superman, and Return of Superman. My dreams of seeing Superman: Panic in the Sky in this list lie in tatters.

Then, Azzarello's Luthor and Superman For Tomorrow again, Kurt Busiek's Camelot Falls, James Robinson's Coming of Atlas, and then the Geoff Johns books -- Secret Origin, Last Son of Krypton (again, including Superman: Brainiac), Escape from Bizarro World, Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Last in that section is Geoff Johns's Superman: Up, Up, and Away, probably included there because it's by Johns, but wildly out of place reading-wise; Up, Up, and Away followed Infinite Crisis and 52 (the weekly series), and takes place before Camelot Falls. (And any number of books are skipped here including the President Lex and Our Worlds at War stories.)

Next are the Grounded, Black Ring, and Reign of Doomsday books, published just before Flashpoint, and then the New 52 books.

Following that is Wagner's Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman: Trinity book again, then all the Superman/Batman collections, then Kurt Busiek's weekly Trinity series collections (not sure why that's on the Superman list necessarily), Earth One, Birthright, All Star Superman, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, and Red Son -- so, the out-of-continuity one-shot books.

Green Lantern

The Green Lantern books listed here are the Geoff Johns Green Lantern books listed in order, starting with Rebirth, through to the New 52, and then Green Lantern Corps: Recharge and Green Lantern Corps: To Be a Lantern.

Chronology: Similar to the others, this section starts with Green Lantern: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, then the anthology collection In Brightest Day, Green Lantern Chronicles, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, and Section 2814 Vol. 1 (the new early 1980s Green Lantern collections) -- so again, the classics.

Then, interestingly, the list includes Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, so a bit about Hal Jordan's fall. Note that neither the collections for Legends, Millennium, Invasion!, Underworld Unleashed, Final Night, DC One Million, Day of Judgment, nor Joker's Last Laugh are included in this book, making it surprisingly crossover-light; you may also find interesting that the word "Countdown" is never used in the Essentials book. (Also no Absolute editions are listed in this book.)

After Zero Hour comes Rebirth and all of the Geoff Johns Green Lantern books, including Blackest Night, Brightest Day, and into the New 52. Following that are the Tales of the Green Lantern Corps books and the new Green Lantern Corps volumes -- this is an equally funny "reading order" in regards to how the Green Lantern and Corps series sometimes interrelate.

Flash

In a move that will make no one happy, the Flash books listed here are Rebirth, Dastardly Death of the Rogues, Road to Flashpoint (so the two post-Final Crisis Johns books), Flashpoint, and the New 52 book Flash: Move Forward. Write your letters now -- the Mark Waid Flash books aren't mentioned in this book at all.

Chronology: The first book listed is Flash vs. the Rogues, followed by the three Geoff Johns Flash Omnibuses (read another way, Wally West is here but Mark Waid's Flash work isn't). Johns's pre-Flashpoint books follow, then Flashpoint, then the New 52 volume. A valid reading order but certainly not to many readers' tastes.

Green Arrow

Year One, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Longbow Hunters, Archer's Quest -- interestingly, neither Kevin Smith nor Judd Winick's Green Arrow books get a mention in the whole book -- and the New 52 volume.

Chronology: The Green Arrow list starts off with the Jack Kirby Omnibus Vol. 1, which you and I know contains Green Arrow stories but this might be confusing to the audience for whom this book is intended.

After that is Andy Diggle's Green Arrow: Year One, Green Lantern/Green Arrow again, Longbow Hunters, and then Meltzer's Archer's Quest. As above, the omission of the Kevin Smith book is surprising; that Green Arrow/Black Canary collection might've been right here, too. The list ends with JT Krul's two Brightest Day tie-in volumes and the first New 52 book, Midas Touch.

Justice League

Among others, this includes JLA Vol. 1, the Earth 2 graphic novel, Identity Crisis, Brad Meltzer's two Justice League volumes Tornado's Path and Lightning Saga (Justice League books by Dwayne McDuffie and James Robinson get a nod later), the New 52 Justice League Vol. 1: Origin, New Frontier, The Nail (I have never read this book nor necessarily understood the appeal of it), Alex Ross's Justice, and Kingdom Come.

Chronology: Greatest Stories, and then the JLA deluxe volumes 1-4 (which collect all of Grant Morrison's work but end just before Mark Waid's Tower of Babel), then Morrison's Earth 2 (which is also collected in the deluxe JLA Vol. 4), then Identity Crisis, omitting both Waid's work and my personal fave, Joe Kelly's JLA run.

The saving grace of this section is that after Identity Crisis and Meltzer's books, the list includes Dwayne McDuffie's four Justice League books (McDuffie's only appearance in the book) and also James Robinson's, before the first New 52 volume.

Following that, again in a skewed fashion if looked as as a "chronology," are five of Keith Giffen's Justice League International books (even though six of these were published), Judd Winick's two Justice League: Generation Lost books, and the New 52 Justice League International book. Similar characters, but a reading order it is not.

This list is rounded out with Justice League Dark, and then similar to the spotlight page, New Frontier, The Nail, and Ross's Justice, Kingdom Come, and then its spin-off Kingdom. (Build-a-comment: "They put Kingdom on here and left off ________?!")

Women of the DC Universe

Indeed, as you've no doubt heard, this Essentials guide includes a "Women of the DC Universe" section and not a Wonder Woman section (or, and not also a Wonder Woman section). Good thoughts on this can be found at DC Women Kicking Ass, Every Day is Like Wednesday, and the Grumpy Old Fan column.

Books included here include Wonder Woman: Odyssey Vols. 1 and 2 (a story I liked, but not what I'd call "essential"); the first New 52 volumes of Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Batwoman, and Catwoman; Batwoman: Elegy; Catwoman: When in Rome; and Huntress: Crossbow at the Crossroads.

The following doesn't mitigate this ill-conceived section or the book choices ("not to be outdone by their male counterparts, the Women of the DC Universe are just as powerful," the introductory text reads), but from a business standpoint, I kind-of get why DC might want to spotlight ongoing and Earth One writer J. Michael Straczynski's Wonder Woman books over recently-left-the-company Greg Rucka's (aside from the long backlist, Batwoman: Elegy is the only place Rucka gets a "spotlight" credit), and equally why they'd want to mention Catwoman: When in Rome ("this sequel to the events of Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory) over collections of Ed Brubaker's cancelled Catwoman series (Brubaker's book gets a mention in the backlist). Doesn't mean I agree, but I think we have to differentiate between "actually essential" and the DC Entertainment Essentials marketing tool.

Vertigo

Notable to me on this list (among many other titles) is that Wildstorm's Ex Machina
shows up here, as does Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan and Denise Mina's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Vol. 1. The John Constantine, Hellblazer entry on the list is the first one, Original Sins.

Sandman

All ten volumes, plus this list includes Endless Nights, two versions of The Dream Hunters, and both Death: The High Cost of Living and Death: The Deluxe Edition, which includes the contents of the former.

Fables

Seventeen Fables volumes(!), plus the Peter and Max novel, 1001 Nights of Snowfall, Fairest, Jack of Fables, and Cinderella.

Y, The Last Man

Ten volumes. I guess it behooves DC to suggest the individual collections here and not the deluxe editions, maybe because the cost of entry would be less off-putting to the audience this book is aiming at?

Alan Moore/Grant Morrison/MAD

These are three separate sections, but I'm moving this along a bit. That DC has an entire section devoted to Moore, a writer with nothing but bad things to say about them, is an interesting bit of cognitive dissonance. Books are Saga of the Swamp Thing Book One, V for Vendetta, Promethea Book 1, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vols. 1 and 2, and Black Dossier.

I think Morrison's page is a nice cross-section of his non-mainstream-superhero DC work: Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, Joe the Barbarian, Invisibles, and We3.

It surprises me that MAD remains profitable in the digital age. Anyone else?

DC: All Ages

This is seven volumes of Tiny Titans, two of the Young Justice cartoon tie-in comic, and one of Batman: Brave and the Bold. No disrespect to Tiny Titans, which I adore, but surely something's not right here. I wonder if DC could see to list some of their non-graphic novel young readers books in this section next time.

DC Comics Reading Order

These are books that did not receive an Essential spotlight page, but do have a "Backlist and Suggested Reading Order" section.

Wonder Woman

The six-title Wonder Woman backlist won't make unhappy fans any happier: the Greatest Stories volume, Twelve Labors, Odyssey, the Wonder Woman Flashpoint volume(!), and the first New 52 volume. Rather surprised, at least, not to see the Diana Price books on here, or at least Gail Simone's books (see articles above and also my own list of the top Wonder Woman collections).

Justice Society of America

Say what you will about this catalog, but it does include Justice Society, Legion, and Teen Titans sections; these are three one-hot DC properties that are each somewhat cooled at the moment, and despite that this book often seems to try to chase what's hip (perhaps understandably so), I think these three sections are a nod to the larger DC fandom.

At the same time, the Justice Society listings are start with Geoff Johns's Justice Society of America: The Next Age (so, they omit the JSA series from this book entirely), through to the Bill Willingham and Marc Guggenheim volumes, and ending with the first New 52 Mr. Terrific collection -- so, no classic (Golden Age) Justice Society material at all.

Legion of Super-Heroes

This is a list of the kind I might have preferred to see for Justice Society. Starts with the brand-new Legion: Secret Origin, which is a little weird but what can you do, and then goes to the deluxe Legion: The Curse and Legion: The More Things Change. Good, that this is semi-classic material, but -- wait, are you saying The Great Darkness Saga isn't anywhere in this book, even though it, too, just got a deluxe edition? Why yes, yes I am.

Following that, the Legion "suggested reading order" is really a muddle.

Legion Lost, then Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds. OK, those didn't quite follow one another but at least they share characters. Then Superboy and the Legion: Early Years -- OK, that book actually does take place after Legion of 3 Worlds. Then ... Enemy Rising and Enemy Manifest, which are an entirely different Legion continuity that predates Legion of 3 Worlds. Then Paul Levitz's pre-Flashpoint Legion books, which do actually go with Superboy and the Legion: Early Years -- the reading order is tied in knots now. It ends with the New 52 Vol. 1 books.

New Teen Titans

The first two Omnibus collections, Games, and then the New 52 Vol. 1. Somewhere my copy of Geoff Johns's Teen Titans Vol. 1: A Kid's Game is weeping.

Selected Backlist

After this is the DC and Vertigo selected backlist. Eagle-eyed readers will no doubt catch some things I missed, but here's some quick hits: the Crisis on Multiple Earths volumes are on there, plus Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis (both regular and Omnibus), and Final Crisis, but again not DC's various other crossovers. Strangely only the last of four Gotham City Sirens collections made it on there. Jack Kirby's Fourth World is there; Gotham Central is there. Planetary is there and so is the first "classic" Stormwatch collection, but no Authority. Starman is there, but readers will be interested to hear the paperback is listed for Omnibus Vols. 1 and 2, and then the hardcovers for the rest.

One pick at the Vertigo list -- there's no Sandman Mystery Theatre.

And that is your look through the DC Entertainment Essential Graphic Novels and Chronology 2013 catalog. Again, let's acknowledge that no book from any publisher in which they say "these books and not those" will be to everyone's tastes and your favorite title was bound to be omitted. I would rather that DC have this catalog than not have it, and I look forward to seeing how it improves in 2014 and on.

Have you picked up the Essential book at your local comics shop yet? Eager to hear your thoughts on it.

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Vol. 2 graphic novel (Vertigo/DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

The second volume of Denise Mina's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is better than the first, both in plot and characterization. The second volume benefits from the principle characters actually meeting and working together, plus considerably more of the mystery unfolds. As well, Mina, with artists Leonardo Manco and Andrea Mutti, captures more of the characters' subtleties this time, especially in their dialogue, making for a volume that needed less careful parsing and offered more enjoyment.

[Review contains spoilers]

Though the first volume of this two-book series offered an interesting character study -- more so of Lisbeth Salander than Mikael Blomkvist -- it didn't ultimately feel like a satisfying read. Salander has an arc, in that she's raped by and then later takes revenge on her state guardian Nils Bjurman, but Blomkvist makes little headway in solving the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, and Salander and Blomkvist don't meet before the end of the book. The book felt less like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and more like Before Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The second volume makes up for this, however, and indeed to read the two books together is to get a much better reading experience (I wish Vertigo had released these as one truly novel-sized book, or that they eventually will). Within the first fifty pages, Blomkvist's daughter helps him find his first real lead in the case, and soon after Blomkvist hires Salander to assist him; they're getting shot at (and in bed together) before page 100.

I haven't read Larsson's books in print nor seen any of the movies, so I can't say whether the same is true to the originals, but in the second part of this tale considerably much more happens, and faster, than in the previous volume. That Blomkvist and Salander solve their case helps in no small part for the second book to feel more complete than the first; it probably doesn't hurt that the second volume has twenty more pages to tell its story than the first, too.

That Blomkvist makes no progress in the case in the first volume makes his storyline feel less necessary, contributing to the first volume's unevenness; the mystery, as it were, does not drive the story in the first volume. Perhaps it's Salander's personal storyline that gets short shrift in the second volume, but she's involved so much one would hardly notice, and indeed the psychological effects of Bjurman's attack permeate this book even if he physically appears in only one scene.

Indeed, in the second book Mina puts the comic book form to greater use to drive the book and show the states of the characters than in the first book; this second book feels positively more like a translation than an adaptation. This is most prominent in the phantom voices that taunt Salander about her assault -- Mina and artist Leonardo Manco depict these in floating instant message windows, on the backs of cell phones and the sides of purses, really giving the reader a sense of how inescapable Salander's trauma is. I also noted and appreciated that the only two-page spread in the book is where Blomkvist and his daughter talk and Blomkvist makes his first progress in the case. Blomkvist's break is highlighted by the spread, and the specialness of the paneling underlines the importance of the scene.

Mina has an unenviable task in trying to bring forth two characters voices on the page, both of whom are somewhat unemotional or disengaged from their surroundings. In the first book, some awkward paneling made it difficult to discern Salandar's social difficulties, requiring the audience to read a page over and over to "get it"; the extent to which Blomkvist is meant to be taken un-seriously, as something of a cad, was completely lost. In the second volume, sequences like Salander talking to her boss or Blomkvist bedding the emotionally-unstable Cecila are more direct, without being unsubtle; in comparison to Cecila's lovesick weeping, Blomkvist's disinterest becomes all the more clear.

Here again, the words and images are working together better than before; there's fewer panels that don't move the story forward, and a greater amount of the characters acting on the page in addition to the dialogue.

Again, the twenty extra pages here benefit the story immensely. Blomkvist and Salander have dispatched the bad guy, if not solved the mystery, a little after page 100, and that gives Mina fifty or sixty pages to really let the denouement unfold. This includes a couple of travels overseas that tease out the mystery's solution to the end, but I found even more interesting Salander's paranoia over her role in dispatching the villain. What is a victory for Blomkvist at the end of the book is not a victory for Salander, as Mina shows in the last pages as Blomkvist celebrates while Salander disappears to the streets.

When I'd only read the first book I wondered about the wisdom of Vertigo adapting Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as the first volume didn't seem to do enough to entice the non-comics reader to follow this series over two or three years. I still believe that; however, it equally seems to me that if a reader did return for the second book, they'll probably be enticed to get the third. Hopefully Vertigo plans a long game for these collections, released as individual volumes and then as larger collections or omnibuses (a collection of volumes one and two would be wise just before the third single volume comes out) -- the better reading experience is certainly in reading the two books together, getting the build-up and the resolution all together.

UPDATE: DC/Vertigo has changed their plans and the next book, Girl Who Played with Fire, will be released in May 2014 as one volume, not two. I think that makes a collected version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Vol. 1 and 2 even more likely.

Review: Iron Man/War Machine: Hands of the Mandarin trade paperback (Marvel Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:17:00 +0000

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at Hell Yeah '80s Marvel!]

The early 1990s era of Iron Man is something I enjoy despite its flaws, mostly because it was such a big part of my comic book collecting origins. The Modular Armor was brought to television as the base design of Iron Man: The Animated Series, which was one of the most influential shows in my childhood. When I was twelve, the very first back issue I ever bought was a copy of Iron Man #300 -- the Modular Armor’s debut. The issues from Iron Man, War Machine, and Force Works that form the newly collected Iron Man/War Machine: Hands of the Mandarin crossover show the Iron Man franchise right before its utter collapse.

At its core, Hands of the Mandarin consists of two stories: the Mandarin taking over China with the aid of an extraterrestrial weapon, and Iron Man and War Machine reconciling after a long period of mistrust and anger. The rift between Tony Stark and Jim Rhodes has a deep history, demonstrated by flashbacks to everything from Rhodey’s first appearance and his first tenure as Iron Man to the Armor Wars and the events of the War Machine trade. At the end of that book, Rhodey cut ties with Tony for not being in the loop about his faking his death. Now roaming the world as the violent vigilante War Machine, Rhodey needs Tony’s help to fix his armor -- by force, if necessary.

Meanwhile, the Mandarin lost badly to Iron Man in John Byrne’s classic Dragon Seed Saga (featuring Fin Fang Foom as one of the titular dragons). He’s now found a device called the Heart of Darkness, which rebuilt the hands he lost in the previous story with dragon-like claws and has increased his power immensely. Additionally, he’s gained a new philosophy on life, choosing magic over technology; his plan is to rid the world of technology entirely and rule over a new Dark Ages. It’s a bit of a departure from his old methods, but the Mandarin has always been a character in need to a purpose since the fall of Communism.

If the story had just been about Iron Man, War Machine and the Mandarin, then Hands of the Mandarin would have been a great success. Unfortunately, there was a third title in the Iron Man franchise which caused problems. Under the leadership of Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch, the West Coast Avengers decided to become a “proactive team” called Force Works. If the name and concept bring the infamous Extreme Justice to mind, it’s worth noting that the two titles were contemporaries. The Force Works parts of the crossover suffer from traditional '90s team book problems, such as uninspiring roster choices, combative members, and a lack of strong leadership.

The Scarlet Witch leads the team ... unless Iron Man is present, or unless U.S. Agent decides to go off and do his own thing. Supposedly, Wanda is more powerful than before, but her characterization is next to nonexistent. Julia Carpenter, the second Spider-Woman, also brings little to Force Works; it was disheartening to learn this since Julia was one of my favorite characters on the Iron Man cartoon. Even more depressing is U.S. Agent’s decline from a misguided anti-hero into a juiced-up goon.

Rounding out the team is Century, a spindly alien who has an odd verbal quirk of speaking in synonyms when trying to sound out concepts in English. Century has an interesting subplot in Hands of the Mandarin involving the theft of his staff, which makes him relive the memories of other people. This plot point is unfortunately not answered within the pages of this trade. Incidentally, his staff is called Parallax, proving that that word was the bane of comics in the '90s.

Most of the Force Works material consists of the team engaging in what '90s grim and gritty teams did best -- attacking a fortified base, in this case the Mandarin’s castle. It gets extremely spread out because extra pieces of the crossover were published in the Marvel Comics Presents anthology series. These short stories are told from the point of view of Force Works’s members but do little except pad out the story. Worse still, they take room away from what could have been important linking sequences, such as the rather abrupt ending. In a silly move, Marvel had an editorial policy banning curse words to make them feel more “mature” than upstart companies like Image and Dark Horse. As a result, people are told to “go to Hades” numerous times.

The biggest problem in Hands of the Mandarin is the art. The War Machine issues won the artist lottery with Gabriel Gecko (an alias of Hulk artist Gabriel Hardman) and Geoff Senior (known for his work on Transformers). Their art is a little above the '90s standard with far more consistent proportions and clearer action. Tom Morgan’s Iron Man work is full-on early Image, but still somewhat readable through the heavy lines.

Once again, Force Works is where it really falls apart, with numerous errors in proportions and even botched coloring, such as Scarlet Witch’s hair being colored purple many times. However, the absolute worst comes in the Marvel Comics Presents short stories. There’s a thin line between “art you dislike” and “bad art” The artwork in these short stories is so incredibly sloppy and poorly done that I think they should not have been published without heavy editing. There are points where Century’s face tattoos jut off from his face like horns, and others where U.S. Agent has a full-blown case of Liefeld’s Disease.

It may sound like I hated Iron Man/War Machine: Hands of the Mandarin but I’m really accepting of its flaws. There’s a great story buried under a veneer of bad artwork, and the Mandarin, Tony, Rhodey and even Century get some good character development. If you’re willing to accept exposure to early '90s artwork ranging from acceptable to utterly horrifying, you’ll find something to like here.

Review: Batwing Vol. 2: In the Shadow of Ancients trade paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

Fans of Azrael Jean Paul Valley or Batgirl Cassandra Cain who haven't taken a look at Judd Winick's Batwing, should. In the second collection, Batwing: In the Shadow of Ancients, Winick continues to present a Batwing David Zavimbe who fights for justice not as Batman does, out of a sense of personal injury, but rather out of a sense of atonement. Zavimbe has blood on his hands, as Azrael and Batgirl did before him, and his struggle against evil is also a struggle for his own redemption.

Winick's stories here range from an issue that was so good it made me want to stand up and cheer, to some that are less notable, but the book is carried throughout by Winick's strong depiction of Zavimbe himself. More's the pity Winick only wrote two Batwing issues after this one; I'd have been curious to see what Winick would do fifty issues into Batwing and beyond.

[Review contains spoilers]

Ancients begins with a two-part story, illustrated by Streets of Gotham's Dustin Nguyen, which concludes the "Massacre" storyline from the first Batwing book, The Lost Kingdom. I read that volume over six months ago and all that time I thought, as the Batwing character did, that I knew the villain Massacre's identity -- boy, was I wrong. I'm happy to say Winick fooled me both with Massacre's identity and with the identity of the mastermind behind him; what had seemed like a too-obvious solution previously was actually a red herring. Real surprises in comics are rare these days, especially for trade-waiters, and Winick lands a good one.

What is especially fantastic about the revelation scene in the second chapter (Batwing #8) is that Winick bucks any number of super-villain cliches for some crushing emotional honesty. For as bloodthirsty as Massacre was in Kingdom, once Batwing reveals Massacre's identity and moreover when he speaks Massacre's real name, the villain becomes completely distraught. Winick could have chosen defiance, but instead he gives Massacre a childlike panic that fully embodied the trauma that Massacre has gone through. These are gripping pages, begging for a later followup that unfortunately, without Winick, probably won't ever come.

The seven-issue collection also includes two single-issue stories. The first is Batwing's Night of the Owls tie-in issue, which at the beginning builds up a disgraced Talon assassin for Batwing to fight, but ultimately the Talon's history doesn't affect the story. As with most Night of the Owls tie-ins, the story is basically an elongated fight scene, and of them all it's Batwing's least remarkable issue.

The other single-issue story, however, is the book's Zero Month issue. So far in other titles these issues have worked best when they offer some "secret origin" aspect -- not just the character's origin but some detail that reshapes the character's present. Winick's story doesn't necessarily do that, but it does reveal how Zavimbe's assistant Matu Ba lost his eye, something I'd thought had happened well before Zavimbe met Ba and I was surprised to learn it was more recent. I think Winick also works to smooth a bit of pre-/post-New 52 continuity vis a vis Batwing and Grant Morrison's first Batman Incorporated book, too. Winick calls out to Frank Miller's Batman: Year One in showing Zavimbe's early crimefighting, as is only appropriate, and this is entertaining especially since the issue comes as a coda at the end of the book.

The larger three-part story that finishes out this book is interesting but rough, suggesting perhaps that Winick's strongest Batwing idea might have been in the initial Massacre pitch. Batwing and Nightwing solve a mystery involving a kidnapped nuclear scientist, at the same time that Matu Ba's estranged family is killed in Africa. These are each cogent threads separately, but then sends Ba to his family's funeral in a mystical, isolated African nation ruled by a warlord called Lord Battle, and as Batwing continues to solve his mystery, it turns out not coincidentally that Lord Battle is involved in the nuclear warhead story.

I say "not coincidentally" because the difficulty here is that in the three issues, all the pieces ultimately fit, and too neatly. Ba's family had barely been mentioned before now and indeed he's estranged from them all, so the slaughter of an entire family comes mainly for plot purposes; it does not seem to resonate in a larger, more "real" way for Ba or Zavimbe. Also, Lord Battle, with his on-the-nose name and giant hammer, comes off as a silly villain (especially after the legitimately-frightening skull-faced Massacre), not to mention his immediately-forgettable henchmen, the "Blood Storm," who are there mainly for the Justice League International to fight. The story starts off compelling, but the end is basically just an exercise in superheroes versus super-villains.

No doubt writing about the Batman of Africa, and making Batwing's stories seem realistic and germane to an African setting may be one of the toughest tasks of the DC New 52. Winick makes the book both moving and believable when he's dealing with child soldiers and even the African Kingdom superhero team that stands between the government, the warlords, and the people's revolution. The Batwing title seems to depict Africa more stereotypically, however, with Lord Battle in his fur cloak, and here the African setting seems more of a detriment. I tend to like my Batman (or at least Bat-family) stories more realistic than fantastical, and the end of Ancients veers too close to the fantastical for my tastes.

The Bat-family's presence is strong throughout this book. Batman, Robin, Batgirl, and Nightwing all appear in the first story (it's a joy to see Nguyen draw Damian Wayne again), and Nightwing remains for the second story as well as Batwing's Justice League International colleagues showing up. All of this perhaps makes Batwing feel a little less like Zavimbe's book, but it's nice to see how quickly Zavimbe has been accepted into the superhero community, and the JLI's presence in the last chapter ups the fun even if it lessens the seriousness (doesn't hurt to see Winick write some of the Generation Lost characters again, too).

With the Massacre story completed, Batwing seems to be evolving into a more superhero-y book; not necessarily where I'd like to see it go, but not a terrible direction, either -- and I imagine things will change after Judd Winick departs anyway. Again, Batwing: In the Shadow of the Ancients has some remarkably good moments and some that aren't so good, but Winick's David Zavimbe remains a riveting character throughout, and whatever legacy Zavimbe may have will be largely due to Winick's efforts.

[Includes original covers]

Later this week, the Collected Editions review of the second volume of Denise Mina's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Review: Earth 2 Vol. 1: The Gathering hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

noreply@blogger.com (collectededitions) — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:15:00 +0000

Just as there's few writers I'd trust more to return Barbara Gordon to the role of Batgirl than Gail Simone, there's few writers I'd trust to re-imagine the Justice Society of America than James Robinson.

I can't help but see the Earth 2 series (the first issues of which are collected in Earth 2: The Gathering) as fitting right in Robinson's writerly sweet spot. It's specifically DC's older heroes, which gives Robinson license to delve into all the DC historical minutia he uses so well, and it's largely an Elseworlds series (though with "real universe" ties), such to let Robinson do his own thing unfettered by larger continuity, in the spirit of his Golden Age.

I have enjoyed and found interesting Robinson's somewhat controversial works since he returned to DC, namely Cry for Justice and Justice League, but now I can finally say this: Earth 2 is James Robinson's best work since Starman, one that I think will fully put him on the map again.

[Review contains spoilers]

What complaints one might have about the new Earth 2 depend largely, I believe, on the expectations the reader brings into it. For instance, I'm thrilled with Robinson's recreation of Green Lantern Alan Scott and don't mind at all that Alan's green powers now come from the Earth; his ecological bent combines Alan's mythos with aspects that hearken to his one-time love Rose "Thorn" Canton, who had plant-based powers and passed them for a time to her daughter Jade -- generally, this all seems germane to Alan Scott, and Alan's demeanor is in line with his pre-Flashpoint "elder statesman" portrayal. (Robinson also offers perhaps the most cogent ever explanation for why this hero should be called Green Lantern, and why his powers should be then summoned through a ring.)

On the other hand, Robinson's new Flash Jay Garrick evokes former (Kid) Flashes Wally West and Bart Allen considerably more than he does the Justice Society's -- and his powers, far from being science based (as science-based as super-speed from inhaling water vapors can be) are now mystically granted by the god Mercury. Granted, old-Jay and new have Mercury's helmet in common, but this is far afield from the Jay of the past, and the greater issue is Jay's personality -- it's considerably jarring to see him go from elder statesman to young turk, impetuous and somewhat naive, especially when Alan Scott beside him keeps his leadership status.

But, indeed, Earth 2 is not the same old thing, though it's clearly a tribute to it. Robinson also introduces here a new Hawkgirl (though still Kendra Saunders, whom Robinson helped create), and a new Atom, Solomon Grundy, Mr. Terrific, and the Sandmen. Each different than before, but each with echoes of the past. And in this way, Earth 2 emerges as something DC Comics has needed for a while -- an ongoing Elseworlds series, a kind of Tangent universe, though where the characters' adventures still "matter," in which the best aspects of an Elseworlds book come through on every page: getting to see old, familiar characters reimagined in new and different ways.

And if the new Jay Garrick reminds us a little bit of Wally and Bart, well, that's not such a bad thing to have around, either.

Earth 2 is a rolicking adventure story that indeed reminded me of Robinson's very first (and only) JSA arc back with David Goyer -- the gathering of the heroes, the mysterious threat in the background, and this time, and all-out battle with Grundy rather than Mordru, which seems more appropriate. Robinson builds a fascinating world here quite outside the new heroes, especially the World Army that polices Earth 2. More than just a Justice League title using different heroes, Earth 2 depicts an entirely different reality even with its own language tics, and learning more about it will keep me coming back just as much as the heroes.

Robinson has always tended toward more emotional explorations of his characters, and in his most recent Justice League run, this almost became too prominent, as well as a certain choppy Superman/Batman-esque tendency to overlap the characters' narration boxes. Both of these aspects are present, worryingly, in the book's first issue (even as Huntress Helena Wayne is about to lose her father, I couldn't quite rectify her sorrow here with the tough Helena Bertinelli that I hear in my head), but fortunately these quirks dissipate once the book gets going.

Sometimes the characters' conversations, in Robinson's Sorkin-esque realistic style, feel disjointed (see Flash repeating Hawkgirl's "Trust me" four pages after the says it), but these are the exception and not the rule. For a reader who might have had difficulty with Robinson's style in the past, they can rest assured that in Earth 2, the coast is clear.

Artist Nicola Scott does her best work for DC so far in Gathering. I have enjoyed her work on Teen Titans, among other places, though I felt at times the characters' faces had a sameness to them. I have no such concerns in Earth 2, and I thought Scott depicted the youthful Jay Garrick especially well, and the inside of the World Army headquarters. It's tough to tell when fill-in artist Eduardo Pansica takes over, too, which is nice, making the look of the book cohesive overall.

From a bunch of great origins to equally-great character interaction and action, Earth 2: The Gathering never stumbles; the quality remains high from start to finish. This is an exciting book, and I couldn't be more thrilled that James Robinson is at its helm. The next volume, Earth 2: Tower of Fate, can't come soon enough; heck, why isn't DC producing digital specials about Earth 2's secondary characters?

[Includes original and variant covers, character designs, pencilled pages by Nicola Scott]

New reviews next week. Have a great weekend!