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Uncertain, Fugitive, Half-fabulous
Stories about people. People who must ponder the implications of their laser gun swords.
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Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond
Deathstalker War (Owen Deathstalker, Vol. 3)
Jews Without Money
Jury's still out on whether Bendis can redeem Cyclops in here. I know I'm in the minority, but he's one of my favorite characters ever and I think he's been treated pretty shittily lately. We will see.Still, having an X-Men team on the run and genuinely at odds with everybody takes me back to some of my favorite classic runs. It's nice to really not know what's going to happen, to have some genuinely new mutant characters, and then for Dormammu to pop up for some reason. Bachalo's art is overall great, but in a series with so many skinny blonde women, it'd be nice if he didn't draw them all the same.
Hard to judge this story arc, because it's kind of still going right now (and into a crossover -- ugh). But it's great to get characters like Monica Rambeau and Deathbird back (only if one is only kinda...) and it's beautiful to look at. And Carol is forced to stop flying and use a weird air-car thing: always, always bonus points for hobbling one's hero a bit.
[Here's the beginning of my review, which you can read here:]It was realism in ways that only comics readers defined the term: pessimistic, violent, and more concerned with repercussions than with moments of transcendence
- page 414
For my birthday last year, my parents bought me, independently, copies of Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. I started reading it a few days ago, and tore through it at a speed that employed, married, video-game-owning me doesn't usually reach. I am directly in this book's target audience, is what I'm trying to say here. So while I'd like to think Marvel Comics... would interest someone with no knowledge on the subject, I honestly don't know if that's true. I hope it is.
Not only do I love a huge number of the comics that Marvel has put out in its lifetime, I also love Stan Lee immeasurably. There was a time when I bought entirely into the image that he's carefully crafted for himself and believed that he, as the writer, had basically created everything. Later I read Jack Kirby's Fourth World books and realized just how great The King was not just as a comics artist, but as a creator. I soon became aware of the "Kirby created everything and got fucked over for it" version of events that many Kirby fans prefer, but I could never find it in myself to vilify Lee.
[And another excerpt:]
...generation gaps are one of the major themes of this history. The clash between Lee and Kirby's WWII generation and the artsy new writers who started to take over in the 1970s is particularly fascinating. In the early '70s Marvel's coastal and metropolitan blue collar types, who started working in comics to get through the Depression, are slowly supplanted by young men (and yes, almost all men) who had grown up in other parts of the country, loving comics desperately, and were much pricklier about their artistic expression.
[I also take some cheap shots at early 90s Marvel, as is my God-given right as a comics fan.]
I don't think I've yet to read an individual issue of this that I haven't liked, (And indeed, there might have been a part that got me choked up. No you shut up.) but sometimes when I look back at what's being put together, or at the larger arc so far, I get uneasy. It feels like the chances of any kind of satisfying ending is getting lost, but I'll reserve judgment.Either way, there is some wonderful character work in here. And with the X-Men, that's what I really want anyway. P.S. The art is pretty.
Uncanny Avengers #1
Aside from one problem that's been pretty well publicized by now (including by me), this is very good stuff that takes its main conceit -- that the Marvel Universe should care more about its mutants -- straight on. Remender is not exactly subtle about the messages he's putting across, but it is comics, and he makes up for any bludgeoning with a stream of great ideas. (I've also been reading his current Captain America run, which is a whole other magnitude of crazy.) It makes me happy that Marvel is, for the moment anyway, back to a status quo that has heroes disagreeing and sniping at each other without it just turning into another war, and over things that actually matter. Cassaday's art is always beautiful, and he finds the perfect middle ground between supposed realism and four-color iconic heroes.Also, this first book features a team in which almost every memeber has funny things on their heads. That's gotta count for something.
This is just great. The Fantastic Four are going on a long trip through time and space, but they'll only (supposedly) be gone from Earth for four minutes. In a great bit of Reed Richards logic, they still need to pick replacements, in case something happens in those four minutes.Look, one of these replacements is a young starlet who was dating the Human Torch, because he forgot to pick someone. She puts on a Thing exoskeleton and is called Miss Thing. If this sounds as great to you as it does to me, you should read this.
Also it has She-Hulk in it, who is never not great.
If you've been paying attention to comics at all, you don't need me to tell you how good this is. Everyone loves it, and everyone is right.Or, as Chris Sims put it, it's essentially The Rockford Files in the Marvel Universe.
A lot of people try, in one series or another, to go back to the glory days of full-on Jack Kirby insanity. Remender and Romita come very close, without compromising their own voices (does the artist draw with a "voice"? probably not). This is part because Remender comes awfully close to having as many amazing, batshit crazy ideas to just throw at the wall as Kirby did, and part because Romita Jr. might just be one of the best comics artists ever. I once even read a Mark Millar comic for his art. Ew. (Not Kick Ass though, that would've been too much.)Cast Away in Dimension Z does something very smart with Captain America -- it removes him almost entirely from the Marvel Universe as we know it. No other heroes, no WWII flashbacks, and an unlimited amount of time (since the man is ageless, he could even end up trapped there for decades) mean getting to the core of who Cap really is. Nothing else in Dimension Z even knows what "America" is.
It's great, is what I'm saying. Pulpy and weird, but not a slave to the past. Like Captain America.
Oliver Twist (Nonesuch Dickens)
Well. That was really good, if quite different, in the end, than what I expected. Full review is, of course, on its way.
X-Treme X-Men (Why make it X-Treme... Vol. 2 instead of Exiles Vol. 2? The world may never know.) began to flag in its second half, so it's probably not the biggest tragedy that it wasn't long for this world. I didn't even read the last issue, because it was part of a crossover I couldn't bring myself to care about.Nonetheless, some good stuff here, including the return of Greg Pak to writing about Hercules!
What an strange and magical book; erratic and melancholy. If I wasn't in the middle of real-life mourning right now, the end might've gotten me tearing up.Review soon.
How do atheism and belief work in a universe where gods are very clear and present, where they're literally everywhere, and where they can die?Also, will Thor hit stuff and make funny faces in beautifully painted art?
Thor's one of those characters whose solo adventures I'm usually not even interested in -- like the Hulk, I'm happy when he shows up in someone else's book, but that's about it. This book though, it is so very good.
Hickman's writing is always building something gigantic, but I found this portentious beginning a little harder to get into than the one in his Fantastic Four run. Maybe it's just having so many disparate characters, without close family bonds, as the reader's anchor in the early going before the plot starts making sense. (Also, I'll be honest, Cannonball and Sunspot becoming Avengers was the catalyst for bringing me back to Marvel comics at all, so I would've liked to have seen more of them.)Some of the emotional stakes at this early going feel unearned (particularly when it begins with the "classic" Avengers team being one that's only existed in the movies, but I digress), and the big scary threat is sometimes hard to take seriously because it seems awfully similar to the big scary threat in Hickman's as-yet-unconnected New Avengers.
All of that said, as soon as he begins to take a minute to let his characters breathe -- especially the new ones, heroes and villains -- Hickman's book comes to life. Thanks in no small part to Opeña's fucking gorgeous art.
In [b:Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe|8675283|Vanished Kingdoms The History of Half-Forgotten Europe|Norman Davies|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327472243s/8675283.jpg|13547159], I've finally gotten into enjoying history books the way I always hoped I would. Time to buy more of them!
I don't know if I've ever read a book that was both so right, and so very wrong, for cinematic interpretation as Startide Rising.I wrote a full review of the book. I also wrote about Space Dolphins.