Walking on the Moon

My review of The Ghost Map is up on Bell, Book, and Candle.

Not many this week, and they’re really from last week, but here we go.

Captain America #49, Brubaker, Ross, Magyar, D’Armata. We spend an issue with Sharon Carter tracking the aftermath of her difficult time with the Red Skull and company. It’s good to see the fallout of living in the Marvel Universe, and Brubaker handles it well – except maybe the contrived trigger that jogs her memory. A few hints at the future seem to be littered about this issue as well. Next issue seems to be another big look at Bucky and his new responsibilities. I hope that’s not the case.

Incognito #3, Brubaker and Phillips. Unlike Captain America, which seems to be slowing down from it’s zippier start, Incognito keeps things moving at a breakneck speed. Characters come and go, as Zack’s situation goes from bad to worse with predictable rapidity. While the plot’s fun to watch, it’s really the well executed noir tropes overlaid on the super-hero world that are the reward here. Good fun. I wandered over to Criminal and enjoyed that as well.

Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye #1, Morrison and Stewart. I think Seaguy is genuinely good comics that takes aim at the current storytelling tics with a dead-on satire that exaggerates their failings well beyond the threshold of human hearing. Unfortunately when the failings include a hopeless tone and stagnation it’s hard to read. The hopelessness clings to every panel of Morrison and Stewart’s genuinely wonder-filled world creating a grueling congnitive dissonance. I think it’s well worth the time, but I can understand not reading it.

My review of George R. Stewart’s Names on the Land is up on Bell, Book, and Candle.

Walking on the Moon is now running under WordPress 2.71.  Holler if you see oddities.

Captain America #48, Brubaker, Guice, Ross, D’Armata. I wasn’t as taken with this arc as I have been with the others, but that’s because most of the arcs under Brubaker have been both significant to the characters and well done. The point of this arc seems to be to establish the new status quo. It was well done, but a little drop off in pace. Still, Brubaker’s Namor is a thing of beauty. He manages to capture the Sub-Mariner’s egotism and lust for adventure perfectly: “Finally.. something worth fighting.”

Top Ten Season 2 Special #1, Cannon and Daxiong. A little aside looking at Girl Two’s place in the world after her stint in the precinct. Cannon’s developing a real feel for writing these characters and Daxiong’s art and storytelling are well done. There’s a lot to like here.

Ignition City #1, Ellis & Pagliarani. Ellis’s distopyian sci-fi is solidly built and well executed. This issue sets up the environment and the characters well, but the big question is whether I’ll care about them come issue 3. Pagliarani’s art seems to do the job, other than one panel transition where a car door disappears, but doesn’t seem to be adding too much. I’ll stick around to find out if these characters turn into people, but this isn’t the grabber that Anna Mercury was.

Will Eisner’s The Spirit #27, Uslan, DeSanto, Justinano, Wong. I’m rather enjoying the new team’s update of the Spirit. They’ve grabbed the essence of these characters in a way that the previous team didn’t (for me) while not trying to clone the Eisner characters. I find myself liking the overall picture enough to overlook some of the rough parts of the execution. And there are a non-trivial number of such flaws: the gibberish frequency and the gratuitious Wii scene to name a pair. Still there’s something about how they’ve grabbed the essence of the characters and their zest for writing and drawing that carry me through. I can’t say this is great comics, but it draws me in.

Doktor Sleepless #12, Ellis & Rodriguez. The good Doktor’s plot is beginning to emerge from the fog. Assembling it from the points of view of the characters Ellis has been introducing over the last couple issues is pretty effective. Those introductions slowed the flow somewhat, but this issue seems to be picking the momentum back up. I still have trouble determining who’s on what team in Rodriguez’s crowd shots, which can make untangling the big picture more challenging than it needs to be. At least the major female characters are all color-coded, though Rodriguez never misses a chance to pose them rather than show them as real.

Secret Six #8, Simone, Rodriguez & Bit. This is a little filler issue, but again real fun. Dave Sim once made a comment to the effect that throwing 3 of his characters into a closet and letting them interact could fill out an issue. That’s what we get here as Deadshot and Jeanette double date with Scandal and a new interest. It’s all good fun and we maybe learn a little about the Six as well. There’s some less enjoyable filler featuring Ragdoll and a preview of a Power Girl series that didn’t do much to grab me. But the front story in Secret Six remains a highlight for me every month.

Glamourpuss #3-6, Dave Sim. Apparently my comic shop didn’t pull these for me and doesn’t buy enough for me to see them on the racks. But I have my ways. And Glamourpuss is worth buying, just for the mind-blowing oddness of the thing. I still don’t think much of Dave’s fashion magazine parodies in and of themselves – a little too blunt – but there’s something about interspersing them with the detailed history of comics photorealism that makes the whole package irresistible to me. And, make no mistake, that history and analysis is absolutely fascinating. Sim’s great passion for the material, considerable research, and unique artist’s viewpoint make his insights well worth reading, even for a dilettante like myself. Go buy a couple of these for me, to keep it on the shelves.

Hey, these are close to on time.

Top Ten Second Season #4, Cannon and Ha. This was downright good. The characterization is all excellent and consistent, both internally and with the earlier season. The art is also a continuing delight. I recommend this if you enjoyed Top Ten. And if you haven’t read Top Ten, you should.

Saga of the Swamp Thing #21, Moore, Bissette, and Totleben. This is a re-issue of the point at which Swamp Thing stopped being a run-of-the-mill horror title and became a whole new mixture of magic, wonder, horror, and romance. Everything holds up remarkably well, especially the unique and expressive Bissette and Totleben art. Moore’s writing is well known and justifiably praised (often by me), but the spooky images and innovative layouts that defined the art on this run are already there. It’s a great read and a historical moment available for a buck. Grab one.

Reviews of Box and The Bishop’s Boys are up on Bell, Book, and Candle.

I’ve been busy, so once again a couple weeks worth at once.

Madame Xanadu #8, Wagner, Hadley, Friend. The first couple issues of this had great promise, but nothing essential seems to happen and the characters haven’t developed any nuance. Even the art that I found so compelling early on is becoming more pedestrian and dim. Last issue for me.

Anna Mercury #3-5, Ellis & Perico. I finished up the first run all at once. I hadn’t put this on my pull list and missed a few issues as they came out, but was able to catch up. All things considered I liked this quite a bit. It was evident Ellis was trying to end each issue on a cliffhanger, and just seeing how he’d pull that off every issue was fun. At the heart this is a pretty conventional SF thriller and, other than the style points, doesn’t aspire to be much more. It would be more gripping if the visuals of the action sequences were more tightly meshed. It’s often difficult to take in the layout of the areas and see where all the players are. As a result the scenes often seem like Anna dodging about in a hail of bullets until she’s magically where she needs to be, rather than a tense progression across a well-defined place. Even with that shortcoming, this is stylish genre fun.

Captain America #47, Brubaker, Guice, D’Armata. Still superior genre fare, but not a lot beyond that this issue. Not much else to say.

Batman #686: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, Gaiman & Kubert. Apparently Batman’s dead at the moment in DC continuity, and DC’s taking the opportunity to let Gaiman tell an end-of-Batman story. It’s a little more complicated than that, of course, with a supernatural wake of some kind and several nested tales. It’s all well executed and there’s great attention to the detail of the Batman mythos(es). I’m enjoying it, but it doesn’t have the same feel to me as Moore’s Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow. Perhaps that’s a function of the multiple intentionally inconsistent stories that give the whole thing a feeling of meta-fiction rather than a superhero story. But, I am enjoying it.

Incoginto #2, Brubaker & Phillips. The volatile mix of noir and superhero tropes begins to bubble here, with more than a gritty setting coming from the noir side. There’s a lot to like here from Brubaker’s hard-boiled narration and twisted plot to the expressive blacks and whites of Phillips’s art (yeah, it’s a color book, but the colors aren’t the best part…).

Secret Six #7, Simone, Scott, Hazelwood. The Six’s cross country run and passage through the gauntlet of crazed superhuman killers ends this issue with a little more whimper than bang. We learn what Deadshot was up to, and it is unexpected for him, and most of the immediate plot tangles are resolved. Unlike Madame Xanadu above, these characters are being more defined with each off-the-cuff comment, and changing as the series progresses to boot. I only care a little about how these adventures are plotted out and affect the rest of the DC universe, but these characters are interesting enough to keep me coming back.

Will Eisner’s The Spirit #26, Uslan, DeSanto, Justiniano, Wong. Another new creative team with a slightly different take on our cast. I liked the fast pace and the winks at the Spirit conventions. More compellingly, their Octopus seems like the sort of person who actually could recruit and motivate an international team of terrorists, rather than just being a generic megalomaniac. I also liked the genuine romantic connection between The Spirit and Ellen. A few things seemed a little clumsy – the Spirit’s secret identity isn’t something he’s terribly good at keeping, for example – but really not bad for a new team. I’m worried about the hints that the Octopus and The Spirit share a dark secret will drag things too far into traditional melodrama, but overall this is a promising debut.

Captain America #46, Brubaker, Epting, D’Armata. Despite the underlying links with the past, this issue is all business. A group of professionals is reacting to a threat as professionals, despite the old ghosts moving around. I like how well Brubaker captures the veneer of business that covers the characters’ shared loyalties and beliefs. The exchanges all underline how together they are without coming out and saying much that isn’t directly related to the operation. It’s a nice bit of characterization. I can’t say I’m terribly worked up about this storyline, but I am enjoying the execution well enough.

Top Ten Season Two #2 & #3, Cannon and Ha. I’d missed talking about these when they came out, and may have missed more issues. Cannon and Ha are really doing a good job keeping the spirit and tone of the Moore issues. The pacing seems a little fast to me, but a lot happened in the original run as well, and I may be remembering it different than it is. Still there’s a lot going on here, and some of the characters seem that little beat off-model. It remains better than many super-books out there. And the art functions both as an effective storytelling vector and as a source of in-jokes in the margins. Fun stuff.

Sandman: The Dream Hunters #4, Gaiman and Russell. A gorgeous finish to a beautiful collaboration. There’s nothing in this issue that haven’t been in the other three, but it’s still a joy to read. Russell’s compositions beautifully complement and focus Gaiman’s script. Great stuff. I imagine there will be a retelling under one cover that’s clearly worth buying.

Secret Six #6, Simone, Scott, Hazlewood. Woosh, what a ride. Big plot twist that I didn’t see coming, and am still not sure how I interpret. The problem isn’t that the twist is unbelievable – it’s that many possible interpretations are all believable. There are genuinely dark goings-on this issue, but it’s a natural progression. The humor up to know has definitely been whistling past the graveyard, and this issue kills the streetlights. I haven’t been this surprised by a genre comic in a long time. Great stuff.

My review of Me of Little Faith is up on Bell, Book, and Candle.