Weekly Comics: May 15, 2013

Age of Ultron #8 (Marvel) - Kind of a filler issue, which basically boils down to the idea that, despite Wolverine and Sue Storm having remade the world by killing Hank Pym, everything still sucks big-time. With Ultron out of the picture since Pym never invented the killer robot, the world is instead devastated by magic, as embodied by Morgana Le Fey, who shows up here leading an army of what look like Doombots. It's a basic idea and if things are ever going to get back to normal it probably had to be communicated, but Bendis probably didn't need to dedicate a whole issue to it, and this alternate future isn't nearly as interesting as the original Age of Ultron one. Also, Brandon Peterson's art doesn't have any of the glaring inconsistencies it suffered from last issue, but it's still sketchy and a big step down from Bryan Hitch.

Avengers: Enemy Within #1 (Marvel) - The crossover between Kelly Sue DeConnick's Captain Marvel and Avengers Assemble kicks off here, following up on plots that have been hinted at in Captain Marvel's series lately. As an introduction to this big crossover, this is very underwhelming. Captain Marvel first arc was great but it hasn't reached those heights again, and this issue is a whole lot of nothing, with the only real advance being that a relic of the accident that gave Carol her powers has been stolen. DeConnick has lately been slipping into some pseudo-Bendis chatter dialogue and it never fails to be grating, as seen here in the exchanges between Carol and Spider-Woman. There are some charming bits between Carol and Thor that play much better, but on the whole this is quite disappointing, and I really miss when DeConnick's Captain Marvel was a fun aviation/sci-fi/war/adventure genre mashup rather than the more conventional superhero soap opera it's become.

Batwoman #20 (DC) - There's no question that this series loses a lot when J.H. Williams III isn't on art chores. Trevor McCarthy isn't trying to channel Williams as much as he had been on some of his other arcs, which is probably a good thing, and he's on his way towards defining his own, less grandiose, more grounded look for this series. Better than an imitation, but the fact is that this is about a lesbian redhead with vampire-pale skin who fights crime in sleek black; this book demands grandeur, it demands Williams' commitment to telling the whole story in fanciful double-page spreads. This is a calm-before-the-storm moment, though, so the more subdued style works, and McCarthy's depiction of an all-too-brief meeting between Kate and her lost, thought-dead sister Beth is great, the sisters' white skin against a stark white background, like two ghosts in a void. Too bad Williams can't think of much for them to actually say.

Conan the Barbarian #16 (Dark Horse) - A new arc starts for Brian Wood's Conan, following several arcs that challenged this book's central relationship between Conan and the pirate queen Belit. This is a great start, too, as the reunited lovers relax in a city of pleasure and take a drug, a yellow lotus flower, that sends them on a journey through their own minds and pasts, dealing with the guilt, regret, and uncertainty that have shadowed their romance. The book opens with a sexy, sensual interlude that provides this arc's artist, Davide Gianfelice, with a great opportunity to draw plenty of curves and naked muscles, and then the lovers are off on an internal journey that's as sensual in its own way. Wood skips effortlessly from one memory, one setting, to the next, giving the issue a smoothly surreal vibe as Conan confronts visions of his past, obvious symbols of his conflicted feelings for his pirate queen, the woman who killed his old crewmates and then became his lover, as well as visions of a possible future that was cut off by Belit's recent miscarriage. The art is sumptuous and strangely concrete for an issue concerned with dreams and fantasies. Gianfelice's a perfect fit for this book; as good as some of the other artists have been, Belit and Conan haven't looked this sexy or well-defined since Becky Cloonan drew them.

The Dream Merchant #1 (Image) - A new Nathan Edmondson series with art by Konstantin Novosadov, a new name for me, with a sketchy, cartoony sensibility that reminds me of a less polished or distinctive Nick Dragotta. A not bad debut, but not as conceptually punchy or immediate as Edmondson's best work with the two Jake Ellis miniseries or Dancer. A mental patient haunted by dreams goes on the run with a cute but tired-eyed girl who'd worked in the mental hospital, after they're attacked by a group of creepy black-robed apparitions. Not exactly thrilling out the gate, and the central character is far too defined by his recurring dream and nothing else.

Fatale #14 (Image) - Concluding a recent trip through the past in a series of standalone issues focusing on previous eras' incarnations of the eternal femme fatale. This issue finally returns to Jo, the book's main avatar of the fatally alluring femme, albeit in a tale set during World War II. This is, at last, the story of Jo's first meeting with Walt Booker, then an American military sergeant who rescues Jo from a would-be sacrifice at the hands of the mysterious supernatural cult that's been pursuing her (and her predecessors in this role) so doggedly over the centuries. This is a book where individual issues seldom stand out if only because the series as a whole is so consistently strong: Sean Phillips is doing his usual amazing work here, and Ed Brubaker is building a complex and far-reaching mythology in which, essentially, the usual noir conceit of the doomed man and the dooming woman has a sinister supernatural explanation hidden in the shadows. This is another piece of the puzzle, and with this arc having filled in a lot of back story and history, it will be interesting to see how the series builds on this mythology when it returns to the story's present next issue.

FF #7 (Marvel) - Mike Allred never fails to bring out the best in a comic. Matt Fraction's Fantastic Four has been decent, despite art from the generally unexciting Mark Bagley, but it's in FF, with Allred's aesthetic driving the book, that he's really letting loose and having fun. That this issue opens with an image that's very evocative of Kazuo Umezu's horror manga The Drifting Classroom is presumably no accident; that series trafficked in gruesome gore perpetrated against children, and it's precisely the fear of such disaster that's been driving Scott Lang, still grieving for his daughter as he tries to wrangle a massive new family of super kids. But Fraction and Allred are all about transcending such grief and fear, not wallowing in it, and this issue's battle with the Wizard — a villain pathetically trying to force a family into existence for himself — is positively poppy, packed with images of such vibrancy and good-time superhero fun that it's impossible not to smile. Best of all: the ant-sized Scott discovering that Medusa's eyelashes have the same powers as the rest of her hair. Also, a rather unexpected tie-in to Fantastic Four that makes sense of Blastaar's appearances in that book. This is a consistently fun and funny book that also has a ton of heart, and always makes room for scenes like Scott's emotional admission that he can't avoid every risk to his charges and loved ones. There's also Darla's growing acceptance of her own role, despite her Thing costume, as this group's Johnny Storm, an immature youth gradually growing into responsibility.

Iron Man #10 (Marvel) - Well, this is weird. Last issue introduced the idea that the alien robot 451 was a part of Tony Stark's past, and this issue pursues that thread full-bore with a totally wacky Ocean's 11-style heist movie vibe, complete with gathering-the-team montage. Kieron Gillen really commits to it, unfurling the secret history of Tony's father Howard through this bizarre heist set-up. I'm not sure it really works, and if all this eventually leads to is telling Tony something new about his birth, I'm not sure it will be substantial enough to sustain a full arc, but it's at least interesting so far. And Dale Eaglesham's art, realistic with just a faint cartoony curviness in his line, is a real joy, especially as a replacement for Greg Land.

Weekly Comics: October 26, 2011

All Star Western #2 (DC) - Some people complained that the first issue of this series was too heavy on text box narration from Amadeus Arkham. Though the text-heavy first issue didn't bother me — it was a good way of delving into the characters of Arkham and bounty hunter Jonah Hex — it is nice to see that the second issue is much lighter on text and moves at a much brisker pace. The secret society that Hex and Arkham stumbled across last issue is now revealed as the same "religion of crime" that's been featured in Grant Morrison's Batman and the Greg Rucka/JH Williams III Batwoman. Between Morrison and Scott Snyder's work with Batman of late, there have been a lot of comics that have delved into the history of Gotham City, and this series now promises to tie in with that work in interesting ways. Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti vary the pace here nicely, with a great shootout composed on a few busy pages full of frantic action panels. There are some occasional awkward moments in the writing (the very first page refers to "a more bloody destination") and even Moritat's generally fantastic artwork isn't always in top form. The staging of a fight scene between Hex and a hulking brute makes it pretty unclear where exactly the characters are in relation to one another, for instance. This issue also introduces a back-up feature about El Diablo, also written by Gray and Palmiotti, and drawn by the great Jordi Bernet, which justifies the book's title as something other than a Jonah Hex solo series. This short piece, in which El Diablo prepares to face down some zombies, is slight (like many backup features) but nicely drawn.

Aquaman #2 (DC) - Well at least this issue goes much lighter on the relentless Aquaman-is-a-joke punchlines from Geoff Johns' first issue. There are still traces of that annoyingly defensive tone, but for the most part integrated much more seamlessly, so this issue's gags — like the way Mera keeps getting called Aquawoman, or the scene where a cop doesn't quite recognize Aquaman without his orange shirt — are funny without being as blunt and obvious. I'm still not totally sold on this series but this is a decent issue, and the deep-sea monsters with their huge razor-sharp teeth are really creepy. Ivan Reis' art is mostly nice, too, especially during the gory battle scenes with the gilled monsters. Reis' youthful, square-jawed Aquaman is a pleasure to watch in action, but his facial expressions vary from awkward to just plain inscrutable. There are too many panels where Aquaman stares blankly straight ahead, his feelings or thoughts unclear. The tonal uncertainty in those moments is emblematic of this series as a whole.

Captain America & Bucky #623 (Marvel) - I've been really enjoying the World War II era stories in this comic of late, more than pretty much anything in Ed Brubaker's Captain America stories since around the time Steve Rogers came back from the dead. The basic gimmick here is that Brubaker, along with co-writer Marc Andreyko, is retelling the stories of this era from the point-of-view of the sidekick rather than the larger-than-life hero, and all of it is informed with an extra level of poignancy by the knowledge of Bucky's ultimate fate as developed during Brubaker's Captain America run. In this issue, Bucky comes face to face for the first time with the horrors of the concentration camps, probably an inevitability considering that this is an attempt to do a gritty war movie version of Bucky's life story. It's appropriately horrifying, the kind of story that never would have appeared in the original World War II Cap and Bucky comics. Chris Samnee's moody, wintery artwork — evoking the feel of David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One — makes the images of skeletal, silent prisoners especially heartbreaking. These World War II stories have been so generally good that it's a little disappointing that this series is now moving on, though the promise of checking in on Bucky's years as Soviet assassin the Winter Soldier is equally enticing.

Daredevil #5 (Marvel) - It's really wonderful to see the methodical way that artist Marcos Martin breaks down a fight scene into a flurry of small panels. Martin's art, together with Mark Waid's writing, puts the emphasis on Daredevil's senses: this book continually captures the way that Matt Murdock compensates for his lack of sight by analyzing his surroundings through the input of his other senses, turning each move, each action, into an elaborate but super-fast calculation. On one page, Martin pulls back from a closeup of the interior of an ear as Murdock winnows away all the extraneous sound threatening to overload his senses, honing in on the few important sounds he needs to hear clearly. Waid's writing has a clever, breezy feel to it that emphasizes just how much fun Daredevil is having doing what he does. "Oh, no! Six armed mercs wearing night vision goggles! Whatever will I do?" Murdock thinks, before Martin inserts a perfectly timed panel of a finger flicking a light switch to blind the bad guys. It's whimsical and light-hearted, despite the high-stakes danger and intrigue, although Waid does keep hinting that Murdock's new happy-go-lucky attitude is a defense mechanism to deal with all the trauma inflicted on the character by previous Daredevil writers.

FF #11 (Marvel) - Jonathan Hickman consistently packs an awful lot into 20 pages. This comic features another typically charming scene with Val and Franklin Richards and their assortment of oddball friends, multiple world-ending plots churning into motion, and Reed Richards assembling a huge group of heroes to face the threats closing in from every direction. It's briskly paced, funny and thrilling by turns, and every page has some fun bit of business or a startling twist or some visual stunner. This is dense and exciting, the total opposite of the trend towards decompression that dominates so many other superhero comics these days. What happens in this issue might have been stretched out over a few months in other series — or a few years if Bendis was writing it — but Hickman continues to hurtle forward with so much going on in different corners of the universe. Probably the best sci-fi moment is the revelation of the fate of the two alternate universe Reeds held captive by the Inhumans: a totally unexpected twist that Hickman and artist Barry Kitson brilliantly depict in a few gorgeously outrageous pages. Other writers would have made that the last-page cliffhanger, but Hickman just confidently tosses it out there in the middle of the issue and then moves on, ending with an even bigger cliffhanger. This is an especially strong issue for Hickman's crackling dialogue, too, after a few issues that focused more on epic fight scenes and plot machinations. The banter centering around the Future Foundation kids is crisp as ever, and so is a great scene where She-Hulk and Sue Richards gently, affectionately mock a grumpy Ben Grimm. It's yet another reminder that Hickman's Fantastic Four (which returns for its 600th issue next month) and the spinoff FF are so strong not only for their wild high-concept sci-fi but for their low-key humor and keen grasp of family dynamics.

The Flash #2 (DC) - I thought the first issue of this series was really good, but this one ups the ante even more. Artist Francis Manapul and colorist Brian Buccellato also share writing duties on this series, and considering that they're not tested writers with a lot of experience, this book reads briskly and enjoyably, telling its story with more clarity and wit than many of the New 52 books guided by supposedly more seasoned writers. But the art is where this book really shines, the art and how it's used to show Barry Allen in super-fast action. This issue introduces a new wrinkle to the Flash's powers as he realizes that, while he's physically using his powers to their full potential, he hasn't really taken mental advantage of his speed. Needless to say, the pages where Manapul shows Barry flexing his new sped-up mental prowess are jaw-dropping. The pages are filled with small square panels depicting everything Barry sees as he walks around the city, as he takes in all the different aspects of a scene and then foils a robbery without anyone even realizing that he's intervened. This scene reminds me of the Marcos Martin-drawn story in Mark Waid's recent Daredevil #1, and the two books share some similarities in that both are about sensation and heightened ways of experiencing the world. It's brilliantly staged, and suggests the possibility of the Flash as a hero whose heroic acts pass unnoticed, explained away as elaborate coincidences and mishaps.

The Incredible Hulk #1 (Marvel) - I could have read quite a few issues of the shaggy, bearded Hulk hiding out underground, chilling with the Moloids and hunting great big monsters. So it's a little disappointing that this situation basically only lasts for the first half of Jason Aaron and Marc Silvestri's new first issue about the big green guy. Silvestri's densely hatched art is instantly striking, though it's puzzling why he needed three inkers as well as Michael Broussard doing "pencil assists." The issue opens with Hulk battling monsters, then brooding while his adoptive underground family feasts and celebrates his successful hunting. These pages are evocative and beautiful, depicting a haunted Hulk vainly trying to escape his past. I'm not as sold on the rest of the issue, as Aaron very quickly — too quickly, I think — breaks Hulk's isolation by bringing in a squad of chatty robots to fight him and teasing what looks to be the larger plot for subsequent issues, involving Hulk's former alter ego Bruce Banner (apparently they're separate beings now?). This was a decent enough first issue, and it's certainly cool-looking, but I'm still a little disappointed that Aaron has so quickly moved beyond what could have been a promising status quo for this book's initial arc.

Justice League Dark #2 (DC) - I didn't really expect to be saying this, but the highlight of this issue is the creepy/kinky relationship drama between Deadman and his girlfriend, Dove. Deadman attempts to get laid by possessing random strangers in the hopes of having an actual physical relationship with Dove, and it's both strangely poignant and really funny, especially when he possesses a girl and clumsily hits on Dove, causing her to storm off. Meanwhile, the main plot with Enchantress simmers a bit after the all-out chaos of the first issue. The villain mainly unleashes some random weirdness on Zatanna and Dove and delivers threatening messages via the radio. Constantine appears briefly too, very much in character, drinking and getting beat up and generally just providing a reassurance that Constantine can exist outside of Vertigo without losing his edge. I like that Milligan seems to be randomly jumping around to different characters, delivering twisted little character beats or offering up visual weirdness for Mikel Janin to draw in his hyper-real style. It's also nice that Janin subtly alters his art to suggest the different worlds of the characters: Constantine's gloomy, heavily hatched pages seem very different from the much brighter, cleaner style of the bar scenes where Deadman and Dove awkwardly banter and argue.

The Mighty Thor #7 (Marvel) - Last month, Matt Fraction wrapped up this series' first arc in a very satisfying fashion. This month, the book is given over to what amounts to a prequel to Fraction's Fear Itself crossover, the story of how Thor's father Odin ascended to become first among the Norse gods. It's just a solid, action-paced issue, an excuse for artist Pasqual Ferry to draw lots and lots of heads being lopped off and bodies torn apart as Odin does battle with the forces of his cruel, warped brother. The best part is Fraction's writing of the bold, overreaching young Odin, whose bravado and leaping into danger is very reminiscent of the child Loki who Fraction created on his last Thor series. It's a decent standalone issue, if not as boldly imaginative as the great stuff Fraction was doing with these characters prior to Fear Itself. What will be really interesting now is to see if Fraction can maintain this series' level of quality with Thor, for the moment, "dead" after the events of the crossover.

Spaceman #1 (Vertigo) - This is the debut of a new nine-issue miniseries that reunites writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso, the creators of the great, pulpy 100 Bullets. It's a post-apocalyptic thriller set in a future wasteland, where the title character Orson — a genetically engineered humanoid manufactured for spacefaring missions — has virtual reality sex via remote hookups and scrounges for scrap metal to feed his drug addiction. The story thus far is a mash-up of various dystopian genre conventions and little meta in-jokes, with a kidnapping plot that revolves around a vicious and transparent satire of Brangelina. There's not enough here yet to tell where this is really going, so this first issue is all about atmosphere, both in terms of Azzarello's goofy, invented future-slang and Risso's typically jaw-dropping, shadowy artwork. Though I can already feel the weird, slangy dialogue growing on me, like a nutty sci-fi twist on the purplish street patter that Azzarello slung throughout 100 Bullets, it's Risso's mostly wordless visual storytelling that provides the issue's most compelling moments. That's why the best sequences are the ones in which Orson in a spacesuit navigates across Mars, in what may be a glimpse of the past or the future or simply a druggy reflection of the main character's inner states.

Venom #8 (Marvel) - Spider Island is yet another big Marvel crossover that I haven't been reading but which is infiltrating books I like anyway. It hasn't derailed Rick Remender's Venom, though, even if the whole concept for this storyline seems spectacularly, amazingly stupid. Remender has wisely chosen not to allow the crossover to completely overwhelm the stories he was telling with this series already, so that even if the events of these issues tie into what's going on over in Amazing Spider-Man and other books, Remender keeps the focus on Flash Thompson dealing with the illness and death of his drunkard father and coping with the Venom symbiote's strengthening hold on him. Though this issue isn't as strong of a standalone issue as Remender's previous two Spider Island tie-ins — for one thing, it ends with a cliffhanger battle that's going to be resolved in Amazing Spider-Man #672, the final issue of the crossover — it's still a character piece as well as a crossover fight scene. Remender weaves the plot together with narration from a letter that Thompson's dad wrote just before he died, so that even as Thompson/Venom brawls with the Spider Queen and teams up with Steve Rogers, the book remains focused on more than the violence. That's what makes Remender's Venom so enjoyable; he does the big dumb action well but never delivers an issue that's just big dumb action. Even if these Spider Island issues haven't been as strong as the series was before the crossover started (and I'm glad it's over) Remender has managed to keep this series on track even while compromising with other writers' stories.

The Walking Dead #90 (Image) - Robert Kirkman's zombie epic has been running for so long now — holy shit, the 100th issue will be out next year! — that there's a real sense of its characters changing and growing over time. So when, as in this issue, Rick discusses the ways in which these experiences have changed him with Andrea and Carl, or when Maggie lets the pressure of life in the zombie apocalypse get to her again, these moments resonate with everything that's happened to these people in these pages. Rick's ongoing evolution, his struggle with his need to control everything, his increasing comfort with life-or-death decisions, continues to be very compelling, highlighted here by a stunning double-page spread in which he asks Andrea, and by extension the reader, to look into his eyes and really think about what he's seen and done. That expansive portrait, by Charlie Adlard — who's been with these characters nearly as long as Kirkman has — delineates Rick's exhaustion, his numbness, with lidded eyes and heavy shadow. He seems haunted, and the image itself is haunting; in an issue with no zombies, no gore, no violence, this portrait encompasses the horror of this series' premise, the horror of accepting death and violence as an everyday occurrence, just another part of what happens. This is an especially good issue for this kind of low-key character work, which is Kirkman's primary strength as a writer. He's good enough at this stuff that even the last-page romantic twist — which Adlard has been subtly hinting at with body language and visual feints for several issues now — doesn't come off as a gimmick but as a natural outgrowth of these characters and this moment.

Wolverine and the X-Men #1 (Marvel) - Jason Aaron's Schism event, which separated the X-Men into two teams focused around Cyclops and Wolverine, was lame and forced, a perfect example of a story existing solely to justify (weakly) its end point. So it's surprising that the first issue of Aaron's new book, about Wolverine setting up a new mutant school, is a blast from start to finish, totally clearing the air of all the turgid Schism/Regenesis stuff and making it clear just why Aaron was so excited to get to this point. There's just so much to love here, as Wolverine and Kitty Pryde take a breathless tour of the new school's grounds with a pair of frazzled, caricatured state education inspectors in tow, harrumphing everything they see. It's a delight from start to finish. The structure provides an opportunity for Aaron and his artistic collaborator Chris Bachalo — whose energetic manga-influenced style is a perfect fit for this issue's flippant, funny tone — to introduce the huge cast bickering, gossiping and careening through the halls committing all sorts of wackiness. It's fun to see all these underused mutant characters colliding off of one another. I got a special kick out of seeing Doop, from Peter Milligan's classic X-Statix, serving as the school's receptionist. It was also nice, and logical considering Bachalo's presence and the school setting, to see a bunch of alumni from 90s X book Generation X, which I fondly remember as a favorite of my 13-year-old self. This issue is fast and funny and packed with little character beats and visual gags, like the full page shot of mutant terrorist Quentin Quire being kept prisoner with the dragon Lockheed perched threateningly over him. If Aaron and Bachalo can keep this frantic pace and level of energy up over the long haul, they've got a real classic in the works.

Weekly Comics: October 12, 2011

American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest #5 (Vertigo) - The final installment of this Nazi vampire spinoff miniseries plays out like a full-on action movie climax. Scott Snyder knowingly and lovingly hits all the expected beats, with the hero sacrificing himself to save the girl, giving her a final kiss as a sendoff before he storms into the center of the Nazi tanks, literally giving the finger to the enemy as he sings the Star-Spangled Banner. It's just that kind of over-the-top pulp craziness. It's also the kind of story where the heroes escape the Nazi vampires by leaping across a seemingly unpassable gap on a motorcycle as, behind them, the towering and recently unearthed godlike ancient vampires demolish the newer, uniformed monsters. Sean Murphy's manic hatching and exaggerated facial expressions are perfect for this explosive material, but he's equally excellent in the comparatively understated and moving coda in the final pages of the book. At that point, when the insanity has abated and the clamor of war faded away, Snyder and Murphy offer up a simple, moving epilogue and a surprisingly sweet last page.

Batgirl #2 (DC) - This series seems to have stirred up a lot of controversy just for giving Barbara Gordon back the use of her legs and making her Batgirl again after decades as the wheelchair-bound Oracle. I can't say I feel too strongly about that decision one way or the other, though the circumstances of Barbara's recovery continue to be pretty vague here. So, putting aside whether or not the basic idea is a good one, Gail Simone's new Batgirl is just a pretty good book about a very likable character whose internal narration wavers between anxiety over her return to superheroics and girlish euphoria at once again being able to swing through the air and fight bad guys. I could do with a little more of the enthusiasm and a little less of the hand-wringing, honestly. It makes sense, though, that this first arc's villain, the Mirror, is basically a personification of survivor's guilt, a perfect foil for a hesitantly recovering Barbara who isn't quite sure why she's experienced this "miracle." Barbara's new roommate is just a bundle of annoying quirks, and her boyfriend is bland, but this issue has some kinetic, intense fight sequences (fluidly rendered by Ardian Syaf) and the writing has a breezy quality even when it's mired in Barbara's self-doubt and uncertainty.

Batman and Robin #2 (DC) - Maybe it's just because I like Bruce Wayne's son Damien as a character, but I'm really digging the way this series seems to be focusing on Bruce's ongoing attempts to channel his son's killer nature and angry temperament into constructive pursuits. Peter Tomasi writes this father/son relationship well, especially in the scene where Bruce awkwardly questions Damien about homework before transitioning into the set-up for a Batman and Robin mission. It's an interesting relationship unlike the dynamic between Batman and any of his previous Robins, and it seems to be what's really driving this book so far. Although, it could just be that the actual villains here are pretty uninteresting, as Batman and Robin take on some generic weapons dealers. Then, at the end of the issue another nemesis shows up, and I'm unsure if I'm supposed to know who this is or not, but I don't, except that he was the guy killing the Russian Batman in the previous issue. I'm not too invested in the actual menace that Tomasi is haphazardly setting up here, whatever it is, but I'll keep coming back to see more of the central father/son relationship.

Batwoman #2 (DC) - At this point, it's almost easy to take JH Williams' interpretation of Batwoman for granted, even just two issues into the character's first solo title. His brilliant, sprawling double-page layouts and mastery of different styles is fully in place by this point. His action scenes are spiky and kinetic, full of pointed edges and panels-within-panels that call attention to points of impact or reveal the X-rayed anatomical contortions behind each well-placed kick. The panels become wavery and watery whenever the ghostly "weeping woman" makes an appearance, and the scenes in the ordinary civilian life of Kate Kane have a comparatively rigid panel structure and soft, brightly lit feminine colors to suggest the disparity between this woman's secret identity and her nightly crimefighting activities. This is an amazing comic in every way, guaranteed to be mindblowing month after month. The best scene in this issue is one in which Kate's detective girlfriend Maggie Sawyer walks around a supernatural crime scene, using the evidence to concoct a coherent story of what went down, and as she speaks the battle springs into life in the air around her, shaped by her conclusions and conjectures. Williams excels at this kind of diagrammatic layout. He excels, too, at jamming together contrasting styles, as he does when Maggie meets Cameron Chase, who's rendered in a shadowy noir style even in daytime, recalling her appearance in the short-lived Chase series that Williams illustrated back in 1998. The issue ends on an abrupt cliffhanger that suggests that the comic simply ran out of pages — Williams' plotting may be a little shakier than his jaw-dropping artwork — but otherwise this is yet another remarkable, unmissable installment in one of comics' most consistent visual treats.

Deathstroke #2 (DC) - I'm not sure what to say about this one, because even more than in the first issue, Kyle Higgins and Joe Bennett have just delivered a 20-page fight scene that takes all of two minutes to read, if even. It's got explosions, decapitations, and Deathstroke's rather quick destruction of a goofy, armored-up, roller-blading guy called Road Rage. There's not much at stake here, and barely a hint that the title character has even worked up a sweat after easily dispatching everyone who comes at him. It's lightweight and utterly disposable, with less of the quirky touches of personality and humor that spiced up the first issue. This comic is bound to just be the bloodbath-of-the-month and it does that just fine.

Demon Knights #2 (DC) - The first issue of this series was one of the bigger surprises of the New 52, since I didn't really have any expectations for it and it wound up being a whole lot of fun. This second issue lives up to the promise of throwing a whole bunch of DC's olden-times magic/immortal characters together to fight dragons and an evil queen. It's fast-paced and action-packed, inflected with the fun-loving spirit of warriors who love nothing more than digging into a tough fight and feasting on dragon meat when it's all over. Paul Cornell's dialogue has a peppy zing that mostly compensates for his characters' tendency to narrate their every move. This light-hearted style only occasionally gets tiresome, as when Cornell takes a cue from manga's jokey meta asides, which results in some very out-of-place dialogue. Other than such small dialogue issues, though, this remains a rollicking good time, gorgeously illustrated by Diogenes Neves and Oclair Albert, whose lush, European-influenced style is perfectly suited to this old-school wizards-and-demons adventure.

FF #10 (Marvel) - This is a pretty low-key set-up issue, a breather after last issue's climactic extended battle, which didn't so much conclude as take a momentary break. Jonathan Hickman continues to excel at hitting just the right emotional beats. The prime example here is a quiet scene between Sue and Reed Richards, staged so that Sue is looking away from her husband, facing the "camera," her expression mostly guarded but betraying a little smile, knowing and satisfied, when Reed tells her she's right. The scene plays out entirely in small shifts of facial expressions as husband and wife reconcile without laying it all out in so many words. Barry Kitson, filling in for regular artist Steve Epting, does an excellent job in moments like this, with a glossy, economical style that defines faces in a few graceful lines. Thanks to Hickman's facility for one-on-one dialogue scenes and Kitson's unshowy feel for the emotional nuance of Hickman's writing, what could have played out as a mere lead-up to bigger plots instead feels like a series of emotional climaxes for Reed and Sue, Ben Grimm, even the peripheral Inhuman Crystal and her Kree husband.

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #2 (DC) - This is stronger than the already good first issue of Jeff Lemire's Hellboy-ish paranormal series, because with most of the exposition out of the way Frankenstein and his troupe of monster soldiers just leap into action here. The best line comes early on, when Frankenstein slaps an old woman (she had it coming) and deadpans, "Frankenstein's vengeance does not discriminate on the basis of age." After that, there's more frenzied action sequences with massive monsters, rendered in scratchy scribbles of dark lines by Albert Ponticelli. Lemire takes a break in the middle of the issue to provide a backstory for one of his newly introduced monster characters, a female Creature from the Black Lagoon lookalike, which suggests that maybe each of these early issues will fill in the pasts of these new characters one by one. It's perhaps an inelegant way of shoehorning in exposition, but it works in this case because the flashback is packed with little bits of weird science fun, and because it ties in thematically with this issue's revelations about child sacrifice in the small town where this interdimensional infestation has broken loose.

Green Lantern #2 (DC) - It's not too surprising that Geoff Johns has wasted little time in getting Hal Jordan back in a Green Lantern costume after spending the first issue of this title powerless. It's not a total return to the status quo given that Jordan's power is now tied to his one-time nemesis Sinestro, but Jordan once again has a costume and a ring, even if it's not a "true" Green Lantern ring. Considering how clumsy and hackneyed the plotting of Hal's human misaventures were in that first issue, this is probably a good thing, and this issue establishes the terms of the unlikely Jordan/Sinestro team-up with some solid action. Sinestro's lesson to Hal has a hint of meta about it, an acknowledgment that for all the power of the Lantern rings, most of those who have wielded them have not changed worlds but simply constructed big green weapons to fight other superpowered beings. It's a distant echo of the end of Alan Moore's Miracleman, which questioned why superheroes with awe-inspiring power always thought so small. The point is perhaps erased when the very next scene involves Sinestro and Hal constructing big green weapons to kill a marauding alien, but it's nice to think that maybe Johns will work his way up to something more ambitious over time. This series isn't blowing me away so far, but it's offering up interesting, dynamic characters and some good old spacefaring action, and so far at least that's been enough.

The Punisher #4 (Marvel) - Though Greg Rucka's new series bears the name of antihero Frank Castle, the Punisher, what makes it worth reading is that, this time around, Castle isn't quite the center of his own book. In Rucka's first issue, the Punisher was a ghostly presence glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye, little more than a blurry flash of that white skull logo and the bloody evidence left behind in his wake. He's become a bit more of a physical presence in subsequent issues, and in this fourth issue he speaks more — 25 whole words — than he has in the previous three issues combined. But this is still a comic about the effect of the Punisher, the idea of the Punisher, more than it is about the man. That makes sense; the Punisher has starred in a lot of comics and has had a lot of writers define and redefine him. His psychology is pretty well established at this point. Rucka has decided to take the Punisher himself as a given, a powerful force tearing through New York's criminal underground, and his Punisher is more about the cops, journalists, and crime victims who would be glimpsed at the fringes of a more traditionally centered Punisher story. That street-level grit is affecting, especially when it comes to the continued emphasis on Rachel Alves, the survivor of a wedding day shootout that killed her new husband and most of her family. The Punisher is all about revenge, but Rucka seems interested in exploring crime and vengeance in ways that go far beyond the Punisher's simple, predictable, bloody retribution. In this, he's ably assisted by Marco Checchetto, whose art is gritty but somehow also soft-focused, as though there's a shadowy fog hanging over everything, blurring the black-and-white moral clarity of the Punisher's world. This issue is much more conventional in form than the brutal, near-wordless bloodletting of issue #3 or the destabilizing ambiguity of issue #1, but it continues Rucka's examination of the grimy nighttime world that revolves around Marvel's most ferocious antihero.

PunisherMAX #18 (Marvel) - If Rucka's Punisher stays fresh and interesting by taking a new approach to the character, Jason Aaron and Steve Dillon's MAX series is much more traditionalist. Aaron's Punisher is very much recognizable as the hardboiled killer of Garth Ennis' justly praised MAX run, an alternate take on the Punisher, free of mainstream Marvel continuity and also free to be much more explicit in terms of sex, language and especially all the inevitable blood and guts. Aaron doesn't do anything too daring here, just offers up more of the same for those who loved Ennis' Punisher. The book has been structured elementally, with each arc examining a character: Kingpin, Bullseye, then Castle himself. In the current "Homeless" arc, there's no such clear character focus, but Castle has been reduced to zero, having to rebuild his store of weapons, re-establishing himself as a force on the streets after a stint in jail. This is a Punisher book where Elektra can dispatch a room full of mob flunkies in memorably gruesome ways, tearing out eyeballs and sticking knives up men's noses, then screw the Kingpin on a bloody table for some reason. A few pages later, she goes to bed with Vanessa Fisk instead, a puzzling development that suggests the gleefully juvenile sensibility of this material. Dillon, with long experience drawing similarly trashy stories for Ennis, brings his characteristic physical heft to each disfigurement and death, each gory action sequence. But what he's best at, it turns out, is drawing Frank Castle himself, as an old and grizzled man with hard lines cut into his face as if out of granite, scowl lines etched so deeply into his skin that they're like wartime trenches. Castle's mask-like face is the real star of this series, the craggy visage of a man who's fought and killed his way to the brink of old age without exhausting his appetite for blood.

Resurrection Man #2 (DC) - Oddly enough, I still don't have much of a handle on whether this series is actually any good or not. It's an engaging concept — a guy who dies and is reborn every issue with a new power — written in a fast-paced, jagged style. In this issue, Mitch Shelley goes looking for answers about his own murky past, trying to figure out who he was while various supernatural entities and killer glam girls track him for their own mysterious purposes. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning mostly go for a light, casual writing style that allows the issue to glide by quickly, though there are a few clunkers ("wow, pretty mad surfing skills there, Darryl") to serve as speed bumps. Similarly, Fernando Dagnino's art is not bad, but tends too much towards awkward pin-up poses, especially for the hitwoman villains, who seemingly lounge around in their underwear reading porno mags while waiting for their next mission. (They don't wear a whole lot more while on a mission, for that matter.) This second issue does little to improve upon the problems I had with the first, but there's still something goofily entertaining and intriguing about this off-kilter book. Its odd cast of characters includes the resurrecting man himself, glamorous hitwomen, angels, shape-shifting monsters, and it ends with Shelley plunked down into a weird netherworld with chalk-outlined bodies drawn on the ground and shadowy demons in the sky. If Abnett and Lanning simply mean to keep readers guessing and coming back for more off-kilter, uneven weirdness, so far they're succeeding.

The Shade #1 (DC) - James Robinson returns to one of the characters from his beloved Starman series for a 12-issue miniseries. Thankfully, he definitely does justice to the always-intriguing character of the Shade, capturing the witty, urbane tone of this character perfectly, as well as the emotional openness that characterized Robinson's best work. I haven't followed Robinson or the Starman characters after the end of the great original series, but this already seems like a worthy follow-up. This first issue establishes the scope and the tone of this material, opening with a philosophically inclined conversation between the Shade and Mikaal, one of several characters to bear the mantle of Starman. The dialogue is florid and romantic, as befits an ancient, gentlemanly character like the Shade, but it never gets weighted down by the stylized language. Instead, the dialogue zips and darts around with wit and insight, both in this conversation and a later scene between the Shade and his girlfriend. The action scenes are equally adept, particularly the showdown between Shade and Deathstroke that ends the issue. Cully Hamner's art is great and is especially strong when the Shade begins drawing shadows around himself, his red eyes shining from beneath the brim of his hat, his face becoming a maze of black patterns layered over his skin. Like Robinson's Starman, this is just great comics, with a relentless forward momentum and a real feel for the characters that perfectly balances the action. I'm really looking forward to more of this.

The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror #17 (Bongo) - Traditionally, the "Treehouse of Horror" series has been the annual opportunity for The Simpsons, whether on TV or in print, to mess with the formula, to tell outrageous, surreal, gory stories where the usual rules of the characters don't apply. In the comic, this has often meant that this annual institution has been an opportunity for comic creators from outside the mainstream to tackle the iconic inhabitants of Springfield. This year, the real draw here is a story by Jim Woodring that closes the anthology. But first, Zander Cannon and Gene Ha turn in a loving homage to Nosferatu, with Mr. Burns as the vampire, Homer as Renfield, and Bart as the hapless visitor to the vampire's lair. Cannon and Ha have a lot of fun translating silent film aesthetics to print, including a line of musical notation that runs beneath the panels until Bart decides to turn the record off. It's a fun, quirky read with some clever nods to the story's cinematic source, and several panels recreate iconic compositions from the film, with the most effective being a few silent panels in which Burnsferatu creeps towards the "camera" through a stone archway. The second story in this issue, written by Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's with art by Tom Hodges, is much less successful. It starts as a lame and haphazardly plotted Star Wars pastiche (Hodges is an artist for Star Wars webcomics), tosses in some zombies, and it's just an unfunny tonal mess. Even the lettering is ugly.

Unsurprisingly, Woodring's final story is the issue's primary treat, and it's great indeed. It's a tribute to the classic EC horror comics in which Bart discovers a third-rate EC knockoff comic that terrifies him. Woodring draws the comics within the comic in a throwback style and packs the story with meta gags and weird, unsettling imagery. The first story Bart reads starts with a boy brutally killing a turtle, which leads to a wonderfully awkward panel of his two friends spitting as they deliver the kind of unsubtle moral message that always acted as a counterbalance to the gore in EC-style comics. Woodring's slightly off-model drawings of the Simpsons characters go well with his subtly off-kilter humor. He ends the story with a fantastic meta flourish in which his comic mirrors the comic within the comic, merely implying the gory and gruesome ending. This issue is well worth a look for Woodring's story alone, and moments such as these make one wish that the Treehouse of Horror was more than a yearly event.

Superboy #2 (DC) - At some point, probably soon, I know I'm going to get tired of the new DC titles that offer up dependable, solid superhero entertainment but don't really rise above the pack. When that happens, I think Scott Lobdell's connected Superboy and Teen Titans are pretty sure to fall by the wayside. This is a decent second issue and not much more. There's still a lot of internal narration from Superboy here, infusing the book with the title character's continued quest for self-discovery. And there's a nice balance of governmental conspiracy plotting with, in the latter half of the issue, some all-out action. The rationale behind said action is weak enough that it transparently comes across as the writer deciding, "OK, now we need some action," but it's still pretty fun to watch Superboy and Rose Wilson thrash it out with some shark-like aliens. R.B. Silva's art is attractive and clean, slightly cartoony in a way that makes everyone look like teenagers, which is great for Superboy and slightly problematic for his handlers. All around, this is a good read but I just can't see this ever becoming a must every month.

Weekly Comics: September 28, 2011

American Vampire #19 (Vertigo) - With the recent epic World War II storyline concluded, Scott Snyder's gritty vampire series takes a break with an arc dedicated to the early life of Skinner Sweet, before he became a vampire. Sweet and his future adversary Jim Book are in the army together, fighting Indians, and the bulk of this issue focuses on the brotherly rivalry between these two men who would eventually become worst enemies. Jordi Bernet is the guest artist for this arc, and his cartoony, slightly sketchy style is a good fit for this tale of a simpler time in these men's lives. This is especially true of the first few pages about Sweet and Book's boyhood, which features a bright, sunny look and big-eyed character drawings that immediately contrast against the much darker style usually brought to the series by Rafael Albuquerque. With the emphasis on Book and Sweet and the broadly telegraphed differences between them, this is a pretty atypical (and largely vampire-free) issue for much of its length. Of course, the ending marks a return to the pulpy lunacy that I've come to expect from Snyder's Western vampire saga, when a curvy, naked vampiress makes an appearance in the last few pages. At that point, Bernet's bold art gives the scene a splashy, campy tone that suggests that some good goofy fun is ahead for this story.

Brilliant #1 (Icon) - This is the first issue of a new creator-owned series by Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mark Bagley, which has apparently been a long-gestating idea that Bendis has been waiting to do with Bagley. The first issue is... okay. After loving a lot of Bendis' work for years, especially Alias, I've gotten burned out on his style since he started steering Marvel's Avengers and a lot of the company's big superhero crossovers. This issue does little to alleviate my exhaustion with him, because the trademark wordy, hyperactive, pattery Bendis dialogue is all over the place, with chains of word balloon exchanges winding through most of the panels. His stylized dialogue has always walked a thin line between amusing and annoying, and here it jumps back and forth between the two poles, with an unfortunate emphasis on the latter. I'm not sold on the idea (a bunch of prodigy Ivy League college kids "invent" superpowers) or the characters, and so far it basically feels like Heroes, dealing with the concept of superpowers in a mostly realistic world with young people who don't don costumes when they get their new abilities. I'm curious enough to check out some more of it, but so far it doesn't seem like Bendis has returned to the heights of Alias or Daredevil or the best parts of the sometimes-uneven Powers.

FF #9 (Marvel) - Jonathan Hickman has been doing excellent work on Fantastic Four and its successor series FF ever since his debut on the former series. The reverberations of his fantastic first arc, in which Reed Richards tried to "solve everything" with the help of a pandimensional assembly of his parallel selves, are still being felt in FF, as four dimensionally stranded Reeds stand at the center of a massive war that Hickman's been patiently setting up for some time now. This issue takes place at the climax of this war, so it's mostly all dedicated to battle and action, with visceral art and layouts by Steve Epting that make all the explosions and fist-fights pop off the page. As usual, though, Hickman is at his best when he cuts away from the action for a few pages spent with young Valeria Richards and would-be child supervillain Bentley. Hickman's expansion of the Fantastic Four cast to focus on the Richards kids and a host of other children and oddball characters is the best aspect of his run, and his dialogue for these characters — precocious but definitively childlike — is pitch-perfect. This is a short, delightful little scene, a much-needed break from the otherwise non-stop action on display here. One hopes that Hickman's FF will eventually focus even more on the Future Foundation class and other supporting characters — maybe once the main Fantastic Four series returns, also with Hickman writing, in November.

Journey Into Mystery #628 (Marvel) - I've been reading this series ever since it split off from Matt Fraction's Thor as a showcase for the young, newly resurrected Loki, and I'm not sure why. Part of it is that I love the character: Loki as a kid is just a lot of fun and his constant machinations are really charming, whether they're here or over in Fraction's Mighty Thor. The problem is that this series has been mired in the Fear Itself crossover (which I'm not reading) since it began, and a lot of these issues just read like summaries of things happening elsewhere or bits of ancillary action at the fringes of the story. Also, Kieron Gillen's wordy, text-box-heavy style is doubtless intended to give the impression of a series steeped in old world myths, but the effect is mostly just stilted and arch. This issue features nice art by Whilce Portacio, who's a little more lively than Dougie Braithwaite, whose art on previous issues of Gillen's run has always seemed overly stiff and static, not to mentioned smothered under oppressive coloring. There continue to be flashes of cleverness and fun here whenever Gillen abandons the endless narration boxes to let Loki crack wise, but he still doesn't nearly have Fraction's subtle wit or sense of scale. I'm hoping this series will be able to stand on its own well once Fear Itself finally ends, though.

The Mighty Thor #6 (Marvel) - What I love about Matt Fraction's take on Thor is that it's totally unpredictable, working at a grand epic scale, dealing with myth and belief and fate and choice, as befits a character right out of mythology. This issue concludes the war between Galactus and the inhabitants of Asgard that has run through the first six issues of Fraction's Mighty Thor. And suffice it to say that the war has been resolved in an utterly unexpected way, tying together the large-scale cosmic conflict with the ground-level struggle between the Asgardians and the humans living in a town near Asgard's current earthly location. Most notably, the local Christian pastor who had often been a subject of comic relief in earlier issues unexpectedly gets treated in a much deeper and more complex way here, and the resolution of that plot sets up a strange new status quo that should make the next arc of this series just as interesting. As usual, Olivier Coipel's art is stunning, particularly in the panels of a brooding, shadowy Galactus looming over the tiny figures of the men and gods arrayed at the feet of the world devouring being. Also as usual, much of the action is splayed across the elaborate double-page spreads that Fraction favors for his work with Marvel's Norse characters, contributing to the sense of scope that's so important to dealing with gods and aliens and creatures that dwarf mountains.

Rachel Rising #2 (Abstract Studio) - This is the second issue of a new series written and drawn by Terry Moore, of Strangers In Paradise fame. While I never liked Moore's most famous series, his clever, light sci-fi follow-up Echo was remarkable, and this new horror project promises to be equally compelling. Moore and genre fiction seems to be a really good fit. In the first issue, a young woman named Rachel woke up in a shallow grave in the woods, seemingly brought back to life with only vague memories of a shadowy figure strangling her with a length of rope. This issue is mostly about Rachel's visit to her mannish coroner aunt, who, curiously enough, takes Rachel's presence as a hallucination of sorts, reacting very strangely to her niece. These scenes have an odd rhythm, as though something is subtly off, disconnecting the reincarnated Rachel from her former life.

Moore's drawing is as beautiful as ever; his line is graceful but just a little ragged, and he makes liberal use of white space so that the overall effect is spare and ethereal. He's a sublime draftsman, and he especially has an affinity for capturing the nuances of facial expressions and body language. In one wonderful two-panel sequence, a young woman comes home from a date, her face flushed, a distant, contented smile on her lips, and in the next panel her expression falls and her body language becomes antagonistic and coiled as she sees her sister, who has been spying on her. It's slightly cartoony, and Moore doesn't flinch from manga-esque exaggeration and cartoon devices like big dramatic sound effect lettering. He blends these cartoony flourishes with whimsical dialogue and contrasts the tonally lighter moments against the darkness and violence that forms the core of the book. To that end, the issue ends with a harrowing, brilliantly rendered sequence that suggests that the series' horror component is going to remain prominent (and very satisfying).