Very DC-centric week this time around, mainly because Was Taters contributed more panels than even me. Not that she’s only into the DC stuff. For instance, she also reads Thor: The Mighty Avenger and that’s Marve–DAMN IT, that’s canceled, isn’t it. Anyway, thanks to her as well as David Brothers and the man known only as luis.

I’m certainly going to need the help of any interested readers for next week because I have an entire three comics I plan on picking up (Green Lantern Corps, Avengers Academy and Deadpool MAX). So if there’s something you’ve been reading that you want represented, by all means. Now on with the chlorophyll.

Batgirl #17
Bryan Q. Miller and Pere Perez

Batman and Robin #19
Paul Cornell and Scott McDaniel

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Prepare to be spoiled.

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Still thinking about February and Black History Month. Formulating a plan of attack, striking things from lists, and catching up on things I missed.

Anyway, my homegirl Cheryl made a brief return to comics blogging with a trio of posts over the last week or so. There’s ten things she wants out of DC in 2011, some stuff she wants from Marvel and DC in other media, and how DC is kind of a lost cause when it comes to getting books that aren’t lily white.

She writes a lot, and I agree with most of it. Together, you have sort of a general list of things that Marvel and DC aren’t doing that they should, and could, be doing to push comics and their characters harder. The point about diversity being a lost cause at DC stings, but it’s true. Marvel’s a little better, mainly due to having created a decent group of black characters in the ’70s and then again in the ’90s, but who do they have that can support a book on their own? Not Cage, not Storm, not Night Thrasher… Black Panther has a solo book, but how absolutely awful has that series been for the past couple years? Right now, he’s batting clean-up in someone else’s book. Six months from now? Who knows? Maybe DC will get Aqualad off the ground, but I’m not sure the market wants it.

Here’s a couple of bits from X-Men comics I dug, mainly for their writing.

First bit’s from New Mutants, Vol. 2: Necrosha, with words by Zeb Wells and art by Diogenes Neves. I really dig Wells’s work in general and his work on New Mutants in specific, but this trade is such a mixed bag. As soon as Wells sets up what was clearly meant to be his second arc (the soon-ending New Mutants: Fall of the New Mutants), he has to write a few tie-in issues to Necrosha (a crossover I did not read) and Kieron Gillen interrupts to clean-up some crap from Siege (a crossover I did not like). The switchover from regular New Mutants to Necrosha was pretty smooth, and the story was good, but the overall picture of v2 is that it’s a hodgepodge. I thought New Mutants, Vol. 1: Return of Legion was a really strong book, too. The ship was righted after all this crossover crap wrapped, but man. Ugly business. Death to events.

Anyway, here’s one page from a Necrosha issue. It’s from the POV of a recently revived Doug Ramsey, whose mutant power is that he listens well. Or understands every language ever. Unsurprisingly, his mutant power didn’t protect him from being shot and killed years ago. Wells introduced a neat twist on his powers in this issue, and hopefully the red on black text (why?) is legible.

I like this, because it makes what’s honestly a pretty crappy power for adventure stories into something interesting. He can decipher what they mean, rather than what they’re saying. He can also now “read” other things, from cities to computer programs, but this was the bit I liked the best. Wells nailed the characterization here, and I particularly like how Sam Guthrie and Bobby Dacosta come off. I’ve liked those guys since I was a kid and high on that Nicieza/Capullo X-Force. Clever work.

Next is X-23 4, words by Marjorie Liu and art by Will Conrad and Marco Checchetto. Colors by John Rauch. I think this page is Checchetto, but don’t quote me. I picked up the first issue because Marjorie Liu is a pretty ill writer, but I was left pretty underwhelmed. The “Wolverine is in Hell. Hell! HELL!” stuff that’s spread across the Wolverine family of books right now is a huge drag, and that first issue wasn’t really for me. 4 was the start of a new arc, and actually feels like where the series should have begun. It’s much better than before, though I’m still not feeling the art. I think that may be due more to Rauch’s colors, though. He makes stuff seem really washed out, sort of like how Pete Pantazis did on JLA a while back. We’ll see how it shakes out.

I think the “Heroes don’t kill!” thing in comics is dumb, and have harped on it ad nauseam. I like this bit, though, because it’s more… honest. X-23 is a character who has gone from killer to child prostitute and back around to being a killer again. Only this time, she’s a Wolverine-style killer, where it’s hyped up and encouraged until someone decides it isn’t cool. And that always rubbed me the wrong way, like the guy who rails about how drugs are for idiots but is down to hit a blunt at a party. Which is it? Pick one and stick with it.

This, though, is a more honest treatment than the either/or that infests cape comics. It’s just, “You did this thing. Can you live with it?” “Yes, he deserved to die.” “Well, all right.” I like that. When your mutant power is “kills people real good,” a different approach from your usual superheroic code of honor is required. Here, the killing isn’t treated as something positive, or something to be encouraged, but it is treated as necessary, or maybe even just. More like this, please.

-I took a look at ComiXology’s sales charts and Diamond’s sales charts, add in a bit of educated guesswork, and come up with something interesting about digital comics.

-New blog from a friend! Sol, the lady behind the Greg Land gif that brought the internet to its knees, has launched Walking the Comic Book Runway, a fun examination of fashion in comics. This is something I talk about with her all the time, so it’s cool to see her putting these thoughts out there. There’s a few posts right now, but I’m sure if you visit and conversate a bit, she’ll keep on pushing. Go on, do that. She knows her stuff.

-Y’all heard Ye and Jay’s “HAM?” Yeah, it’s straight. The beat is Final Fantasy hot, but Kanye sounds sleepy and Jay needs to stop talking about Beanie Sigel without actually saying dude’s name. As is, though, I liked it better when it was Pill’s “Trap Goin’ Ham,” incredibly ignorant video and all.

-More P I Double: “OK Denn” and “Real Mutherfuckin’ Gs”, “Run Up to Me” with Freddie Gibbs, and one of my favorite songs from 2010, Yelawolf’s “I Wish” remix with Pill and CyHi da Prynce. Every verse on that remix is hot.

-Yelawolf: Woke up in the morning with a fucking pen and a pistol/ I put one to the paper, I put one in my fist/ Stuck up a shop with the pen then I shot up my notebook/ I’m reading bullet holes, I wish a fucker would

-CyHi: I been fly, my momma gave birth to me on a plane/ Nigga, so I guess you could say I’m airborne/ I’m running my city getting my mayor on/ Stay on my grizzly, you know I bear arms

-Pill: Born into poverty, heart torn, obviously/ Dad gone, so we trying to figure out how to eat/ Older brother hustling, momma working overtime/ Now I’m standing in the kitchen whipping baking soda time

-All three of these cats know that when you’re wrapping up a verse, you need to go in or else nobody’s gonna remember you. You can’t just peter out and fade, you gotta hit harder than the rest of your verse or keep rhyming til the beat’s gone, no matter what you’re saying.

-More Yela: “Pop the Trunk” goes so hard, man. It just bleeds menace, from the beat to the lyrics. That bridge at the end is nice, too. “I Just Wanna Party” with Gucci Mane is pretty okay, too. I don’t even really get down with Gucci like that, but he gets it going here. Look for Big Boi roundabout 2:45, too. And who can forget a hot song off one of the hottest albums of the year, Big Boi’s “You Ain’t No DJ”?

-“Yeah, I’m pale, but I’ll impale you with an Impala”

-Also, I bought Weezy’s “6 Foot 7 Foot” with Cory Gunz. Gunz can spit to an absurd degree, and it’s nice to hear Mixtape Weezy again. This song bangs, and Weezy’s punchlines are back to being next level. “Real Gs move in silence like lasagna”? “You niggas are gelatin, peanuts to an elephant/ I got through that sentence like a subject and a predicate”? Ayo.

-Gunner is the only dude who can use “pause” because he’s so rapidfire. It’s like “breath!” “Wayne, these niggas out they mind/ I done told these fuck niggas, so many times/ that I keep these bucks steady on my mind/ tuck these, I fuck these on your mind, pause”

-Dang, I guess the South still got something to say.

-Peer pressure works! Jamaal Thomas over at FBB is rounding up his top ten floppies of 2010. Go, read.

-Here’s an index of all of Spurgeon’s holiday interviews. There’s 20, and they’re great.

–Part 2 of Joe Q’s exit interview is up at CBR. Quesada really did a lot for Marvel, and I think for the comics industry overall. He stumbled, obviously, but if you compare Marvel now to Marvel then… gimme Marvel now any day of the week.

–Sean Murphy is great, but you knew that already.

–Periscope Studio is also full of great artists, and this week they’re drawing the Thunderbolts.

-This NY Times profile of Radical talks a lot about how they’re selling comics to Hollywood, and the only creator they bother to mention is Nick Simmons. How do I feel about that? I think this image says it all, and also shows that you should never run an auto-retweet script on Twitter.

-I buckled under and bought a Kindle. Looking forward to reading real books and newspapers again.

-The Kindle purchase is part of a hard push toward going mostly digital this year. Down the line will be an iPad for comics (once Dark Horse’s store launches and hopefully after Marvel pulls its digital head from its digital butt and fixes). I did some testing, though, and I can already go almost all VOD. I watched the Buckeyes game last week on ESPN3, which was mostly delightful. I use Netflix and Hulu to watch random movies and TV. And now, I can use iTunes to buy stuff I want to keep. I bought Archer and FLCL (iTunes link, but the first ep is free). Between Amazon and iTunes, I should be able to buy most of the stuff I want to keep and rewatch.

-My only issue is the price. It’ll tend to run slightly more than the Blu-rays after the Amazon discount, but less than the MSRP. At the same time… I have instant access forever with no physical media to worry about. This’ll force me to only buy things I really, really want, which is probably a good thing in the long run. I’m doing a lot of thinking about what I think is fair.

–Archer is incredible, though. “Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts?”

–Judging by the box art and this blog post about their reasoning, Catherine is cruising directly to all of the Game of the Year awards. Gonna be crazy, and probably a story that ends with a good, wholesome message. “Don’t cheat on your girlfriend or else you’ll be damned forever and turned into a sheep dude by sheep cultists.” Here’s a subtitled trailer and a gameplay heavy trailer.

-The Persona games have done a generally good/weird/interesting job of playing with sex and sexuality. A game where the focal point is “You cheated on your girlfriend and now your life is ruined” should be pretty good. It’s sure to be unsettling in probably a Silent Hill sorta way.

-Shoji Meguro did the Persona 4 soundtrack, I’m pretty sure. Curious to see what he comes up with for Catherine.

-Also, whoa, Vincent is in Persona 3 Portable? Cool.

-How messed up is it to cheat on your girlfriend Katherine with a Catherine? What is that, some kind of screwy fetish? Bad luck?

naoki urasawa – pluto: urasawa x tezuka 8

I don’t think I can top this, not really. But Urasawa’s masterpiece is about hate and love and what makes us human. It skips all the trite garbage every other robot story indulges in with regards to what makes a human being and just puts it right in front of your face. It trusts that you’re smart enough to get one of the simplest points in fiction.

Atom is a real boy. Gesicht is a man among men. They have real emotions, and they are just as real as you or I. These are facts. You can’t argue with them, because it’s plain as day right there on the page.

So, Pluto is about emotions. Those that are in us, the reader. Those that are within Atom and Gesicht. Those that lurk just beneath the surface of humanity, waiting to break free and burn everything down. It’s about control and hate and love, and it manages to do it without resorting to cheap tricks. It’s an autopsy on our emotions.

“Nothing comes of hatred.” You knew it was true going into the book, but that doesn’t make the message any less incredible.

takehiko inoue – vagabond vizbig 9

Inoue’s Vagabond is about growth. We see Inoue grow as he creates it, reaching heights a lot of people never well, and we watch Musashi grow as he gets into bigger and bigger battles. After the emotionally intense battle with Denshichiro of the Yoshioka school, you’d think that Inoue would give Musashi a breather after this fight and give the readers some cooldown time. Well, he does, but it only lasts a few chapters before Musashi is thrown right back into the mix.

Fearing the damage Musashi would do to their reputation if he gets away after killing the top two swordsmen in their school, the remaining members of the Yoshioka gang together to ambush him and take his life, no matter what. That’s seventy men against one. Impossible odds for an ambush. Thanks to pure luck, Musashi overhears their plan and decides to make his way out of town rather than face certain death. That was the mature decision. Anything else would be foolhardy.

The thing is, though, Musashi started out wild and undisciplined. He threw himself against better opponents like waves throw themselves against rocks, with no thought to whether he was worthy of the battle. He just wanted to prove himself in battle. He wanted to be the greatest. No matter what. He’s past that now, of course, and he’s begun to learn about kindness. He knows what he needs to do to become a good swordsman. He’s not driven by ego quite so much any more.

So when he turns around and begins running back down the mountain to meet seventy armed men in mortal combat, he knows he’s being stupid. But he’s also thinking about how he can take on seventy men and live and how tough the battle is going to be. He’s thinking about how the challenge is irresistible, and how, since they spared his life one year ago, he owes the past year to the Yoshioka. He owes it to them to meet their challenge, no matter how difficult it may be.

And then he steps out of the woods and into the middle of the ambush, catching his enemies by surprise. He disables one man, takes his sword, and then goes to work.

And in the end, after four hundred pages and one of my most favorite fight scenes ever, seventy men lie dead.

jim rugg & brian maruca – afrodisiac

Blaxploitation homages can go either way. You can nail it or you can fall flat on your face. Rugg and Maruca nailed it, and the addition of a ’70s Marvel comics stylo propelled it all the way out of the park.

Further thoughts here and here.

brandon graham – king city

When she asks “Why didn’t you try harder?” you’ll realize what the series is really about.

Further thoughts here and here.

A very lonely edition of ThWiP. Only ten panels in total. One from Was Taters. One from Space Jawa. Nothing from David. And Esther had that cease-and-desist order made about me asking for panels passed months ago, so that’s a no-go. Man, that judge was a dick.

Speaking of dicks, here’s Eric O’Grady Ant-Man, everybody!

Ant-Man & Wasp #3
Tim Seeley

Avengers Prime #5
Brian Michael Bendis and Alan Davis

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Last Wednesday brought us the end of Avengers Prime by Brian Michael Bendis and Alan Davis, which really should have been called Avengers: Ah, I Can’t Stay Mad at You. Steve Rogers, Iron Man and Thor accidentally get sucked into one of Thor’s locales. There, they all have their separate moments of being badass, deal with Enchantress and Hela and a subplot involves Rogers hooking up with a blue elf lady. That might be a little scummy, since that means he’s cheating on Sharon, but I’m pretty sure the “what happens in Vegas” rule applies to most of the nine realms. The point of the miniseries is to put the three guys in a situation that reminds them that they’re buddies and thick as thieves.

But still, the ending rang pretty familiar to me…

Odin’s will be done.

scott snyder & rafael albuquerque – american vampire

preview

With the sole exception of the first two Blade movies, vampires don’t really do it for me. I get the myth and the metaphor–blah blah sex blah blah corruption blah blah mores–but it just doesn’t click for me. It wasn’t scary, and really, it wasn’t even interesting. Thin, pale men and women sucking the life out of others because… why? Who cares? It took Wesley Snipes and Stephen Dorff to make me care, and imagine my disappointment when I went back to those Gene Colan books and found out Deacon Frost was some wack regular vampire.

Turns out that Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque have the magic touch, because American Vampire is great. The central conceit of the series, that American vampires aren’t like European vampires, means that all of the stuff I hate about vampires, like the aristocratic demeanor and boringness, are left in the past. American vampires are newer, leaner, meaner, and more monstrous.

Skinner Sweet, one of the vampires the series focuses on, is proof positive. He’s a sadistic goofball, used to making money the easy way (meaning taking it from other people), and using violence to get his way. He’s casual, but there’s always that glint of menace lurking somewhere behind his eyes. Him and the European vampires don’t get along at all, and with good reason. He’s their antithesis. He’s gutter trash.

Snyder’s writing on the series is good, and Albuquerque’s art is great. He was talented before this series came out, but, in part due to colors by Dave McCaig, he’s a monster now. The facial expressions, layouts, action scenes, covers, and fashion are all on point. Albuquerque’s never looked this good, and I feel like he’s doing the kind of art now that you’ll want to sit down and examine later. What’s more is that he’s working in two different styles, and each suited to the time period he’s using them for.

McCaig’s colors are a huge help, and perfectly complement the mood of each scene. He even colors people differently–when’s the last time you saw white people in a comic with different skin tones?

American Vampire, from top to bottom, is well done. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Snyder was a writer worth paying attention to, and while I expected to like Albuquerque and McCaig’s artwork going into the series, I was stunned at the leap forward they took together.

jeff parker & kev walker – thunderbolts


preview

Let’s be honest here: Jeff Parker is hands down the best writer in Marvel’s stable. He’s been working the side books for so long, the Atlases and Exiles of the line, but Marvel threw him to the front and center of their universe in 2010. That’s a move that paid off big. He turned Hulk from the best art showcase since Solo into a comic with a really compelling story.

Thunderbolts is one of those series, and concepts, that I’m super fond of, so it wins the year over Hulk. It’s one of the few 100+ issue series that I’ve read back to front because I was so into the idea. I feel like it went completely off the rails once Nicieza left that last time and Ellis came on. It became too mean, too much about villains being villains rather than villains working toward redemption.

Parker and Walker righted the ship, though, and they did it with ease. They stacked the crew with some classic choices (Songbird, Beetle, and Moonstone) and some brand new faces (Juggernaut, Crossbones, and Ghost) and created a situation where Thunderbolts actually feels like a new comic again, with just enough of a taste of the classic run to keep old heads like me interested.

First off: Walker’s art is great. It runs counter to what I think of regular Marvel comics as looking like. He’d do a killer job on, say, Punisher MAX or something at Vertigo, but on a mainstream Marvel book? He’s a weird choice, but the perfect one at the same time. The way he approaches action scenes and character work gives Thunderbolts a feel unique amongst the sea of mainstream comics. It’s a lot more interesting than what you might expect to see on a book starring villains. It’s not shiny, but it’s not all faux edgy, either.

What makes it work, at least in part, are the team dynamics. Crossbones is just a douchebag, Ghost is a paranoid conspiracy nut but not 100% a bad guy, Moonstone is what Emma Frost wants to be when she grows up, Beetle is trying to do the right thing, Songbird is trying to prove her worth, and Juggernaut is just hanging out until he gets a chance to leave. The way they bounce off each other, sometimes as allies, other times as enemies, and always in interesting ways. It’s not just a situation where everyone hates everyone else, or a subset schemes against others. Allegiances shift and slip as the series goes on. Thunderbolts is just a good comic to read, executed well and perfectly pitched. You can see the thought that went into it, and that’s something I’m pretty happy about.