I’ve got a short bit of time to work in reviews and impressions of the comics I picked up a short while ago, and that is what I’m going to do. The end.
Or is that….the beginning? Oh, ho! Writhe in painful delight as I use dodgy horror movie clich�s and hammer back an iced Americano because I’m a real fucking American who doesn’t want any fucking steamed milk in his espresso.
Wow. Is this what caffeine in continuous megadoses does to me? Good god, I like it!
Anyway. Nextwave: Agents Of HATE (which looks to be the official title of the thing now) is at the top of the pile and that there, that’s a comic that does what I want. Maybe, just maybe, Ellis laid on the fanboy buttons a bit much with Giant Robot Disgraced Cop, but the Man Bites Dog ending made it all worthwhile - it made my heart smile. (No points for getting that reference, I’m afraid. Quiet in the back please.)
Mike Hawthorne’s Hysteria: One Man Gang features punching and kicking in doses that grotesquely exceed the USDA recommended portions, but I have to say I wish there was just a hint of a greater story. Don’t get me wrong, this is exactly what it promises to be: martial arts comics that give nor take any quarter. but maybe I’m spoiled after rereading Kagan Macleod’s Infinite Kung-Fu. The backup story may well work for me in larger doses, but six sparse pages don’t cover my bases.
Brubaker’s latest issue of Daredevil manages to avoid too-well-handled prison fiction tropes and get into the meat of this first storyline, which I appreciate. Dialogue that rings true (seriously, I’m voice-casting this thing in my head here,) big meaty plot points starting to fall into place, and a final three pages that tells Brian K Vaughan where to stick his “cliffhangers” means that I’m in this one for the medium haul, as long as Captain America doesn’t show up to frown in this book too.
While I doubt the world needs a comic like Big Max #1, I’d be hard pressed to argue against it as a fine way to spend a few minutes. Slott’s actually fairly clever with this one; gags like a gorilla that wears a human mask as his secret identity (a man wearing a gorilla suit) and a telekinetic mime kept me entertained. I’m still not completely sold on James Fry’s art - something about his faces bothers me.
Why is there an ad for a sporting event from a month ago in the back inside cover of Bite Club: Vampire Crime Unit? You’d think the ad department at DC would flog editors for late books or something, if this book is indeed late. On-time or not, the follow-up to Chaykin, Tischman, and Hahn’s original series is, if anything, a bit better with a sympathetic (but not too much so - this is Chaykin, after all) narrator, a proper mystery established, and a fully-realized version of Miami that makes me hate the CSI series with Caruso a little bit more.
Hey, Marvel? How’s it going, man? Look, I’m just gonna put it out on the table like this: not giving Milligan a Doctor Strange series of his very own would make me sad. I really, really like the version of the character presented in X-Statix Presents Dead Girl and think that a longform series with this version of the character would be mighty nice. Also, if you can get Dragota and Allred to draw my Gwen Stacy Parties And Is Really Cute And Norman Osborn Doesn’t Sex Her Up mini, that’d be totally cool too, OK?
Joe Kubert emotionally gutted me with the latest installment of Sgt Rock: The Prophecy. Stripped to the bone and stark in its depiction of Nazi horror, this still manages to be remarkably effective despite the inclusion of someone called the Ice Cream Soldier and some heavy-handed religious symbolism.
On the other end of the World War II, Slaughtering Nazis Because They Have It Coming spectrum is Ennis and Robertson’s Fury: Peacemaker, where Nick fucks to get what he wants (at least until a bomb blows up the girl) and joins a team of supercommandos to assassinate a particularly nasty German field marshal.. Things don’t go quite to plan, but that’s where the fun lies. One of my favorite things about Ennis’s WWII books is the way he weaves history into the whole thing and makes it seem fairly natural.
While I would normally declare something like Jeremy Tinder’s Cry Yourself To Sleep self-indulgent and simultaneously bloated and meager in its observations about the life of young people, he seems to realize it, too. That’s why he’s got a rabbit and a robot to portray two-thirds of the main cast and managed to create some bleak comedy that I really enjoyed.
And that’s it. Good night, good luck, etc.
