Hey @$$holes, @CR editor Greg Scott here.
Boy, Halle sure looks mad, doesn't she? It's like the picture was taken after she saw last weekend's box office grosses.
And you know, it wasn't like we didn't warn them. Fandom begged them not to make this movie. But no, Warner Bros. wouldn't listen, and now look what's happened.
On the other hand, if anyone from Warner Bros. happens to be reading this, don't let it get you too down. In fact, try to look at it as practice for when Jack Black's GREEN LANTERN comes out.
Now enough schadenfreund, it's time for reviews!
- Burt Bacharach was WRONG! What the world needs now is more X-Titles, and Corm is here to tell us about the latest, ROGUE.
- Vroom Socko, stops just short of asking BLANKET'S Craig Russell to marry him in his effusive review of CARNET DE VOYAGE.
- But luckily Vroom managed to save a little sugar for Warren Ellis and ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #9.
- Dead Men Tell No Tales, so it's a good thing Buzz Maverik is alive so he can tell us all about his latest Book Club selection, the pirate novel THE SEA HAWK. Arr matey!
- And of course, Cheap Shots and more!
As Catwoman would say, it's a purr-fect combination of comedy and middle-brow comic analysis. At least she'd say that if she read comic book review columns. Er, you get the idea.
(Click title to go directly to the review)
ROGUE #1
CARNET DE VOYAGE
PLANETARY #20
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #9
SMALL GODS #1
Buzz Maverik's Book Club: THE SEA HAWK
Cheap Shots!
ROGUE #1
Writer: Robert Rodi
Artist: Cliff Richards
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
I was talking up the new team on HAWKMAN a bit last week. I cracked wise that while the book had yet to reach peaks of greatness, it was definitely one to check out before wasting your hard-earned money on any of the spate of solo X-titles that were coming down the pike.
It's a potshot I'll stand by – Hawk-people bashing crooks with medieval weapons are inherently cooler than angst-ridden muties - but far be it for me to be close-minded. Sure, ROGUE scribe Robert Rodi is the man behind the cringe-inducing USUAL SUSPECTS riff, IDENTITY DISC, but he's also impressing on the miniseries, LOKI. Hit and miss kind of guy. So which is ROGUE?
Ehh...little of both, but leaning towards "hit" if you can believe it.
The book definitely starts out strong. Rogue, the X-Men's famous "Suhth'n belle," is strolling through a downtown shopping area with her parents on a bright and sunny day. She's eating ice cream and arguing the merits of her latest boyfriend to 'em. Right about as I was wondering, "Wait, aren't Rogue's real parents supposed to be dead or still mysterious or something?", Rodi reveals the interesting twist: this is Rogue living another girl's life, just for a few seconds. She's given the girl the barest touch to live a minute or so in her world as the daughter of loving parents. And with a glancing touch, all she's done is make the girl woozy with the memory theft, not fully K.O. her as per a full touch.
That's pretty sharp writing. In the economical space of three pages, Rodi's given us a clever opening, a new use of Rogue's powers, a glimpse at her loneliness, and even a hint of the amoral past that would lead her to steal someone's memories for her own gratification – however brief.
All well and good, but I know what you horndogs are really wondering about: Rogue's lesser known but unquestioned power to be the hottest babe in the X-Universe. Well, she's not in full-on boomin' Jim Lee mode here, sporting as she does a coat that covers some of the curves on the well-known green 'n' gold outfit, but artist Cliff Richards seems to be working in Early Adam Hughes, so she's pretty cute. When Richards is drawing the more mundane stuff – scenes at the X-mansion or in town, characters talking casually – his realistic style is confident and assured. His action scenes are notably more iffy. The backgrounds fall out or become generic, and the action itself is just unremarkable.
Said action scenes take in a small town in Mississippi – Rogue's hometown in fact. The X-Men are investigating a young mutant girl whose powers seem to eff up the natural laws of physics. She's a little like their old foe Proteus in that respect, but a lot more like a plot device. Clearly she's meant to bring out Rogue's abilities and empathy, which is fine but for the fact that it feels so obvious with all the rest of the X-Men acting ridiculously ineffective.
The girl leads to a larger mystery, though, one that'll have Rogue going solo at least for a time. I can't say I really care that some of Rogue's mysterious past is to be revealed in this story, but as a good ol' boy from Texas I see some potential in Southern-themed mysteries. I think that'll play more to Rodi's strengths than the big action stuff, and the same goes for the artist. The only thing that's really worrisome is the fact that these stories will apparently be leaning toward the supernatural (this taken from interviews with Rodi). For a miniseries, that'd be fine – the X-Men have had their share of supernatural adventures – but as an ongoing theme? I'm just remembering Chuck Austen's horrific supernatural take on Nightcrawler, a take that's actually become canon until some better writer can retcon it the hell out. Hopefully we won't get the same misstep out of ROGUE.
Right now the best thing the series has going for it is the character moments and Rodi's clever uses of Rogue's powers. There's a good scene where Rogue's helping a recently-blinded Gambit, but he gets pissed over her fussing, pushes her away, and when they briefly touch, she gets a nasty dose of his growing bitterness about having to rely on her. Later, she has to absorb Juggernaut's powers while he's recovering from a heart attack, carelessly risking the heart attack hitting her along with the super strength. The fact that Rogue's power always has an element of risk, either physical or emotional, is definitely a concept to play with.
This is what I'd call a solid start. It popped out a bit more than expected because expectations were so low, but there's no denying it's a well-crafted opener marked by some smart twists and turns. Minor criticism: the series doesn't seem to take into account Claremont's more recent evolution of Rogue in X-TREME X-MEN, so she feels a touch retro in her angst (which some folks might prefer). On the other hand, Rodi tones down Rogue's "kiss mah grits!" cartoon accent, so seriously, big ups for that.
Worth a look for the X-folks. You know who you are.
CARNET DE VOYAGE
Craig Thompson: Creator
Top Shelf Productions: Publisher
Vroom Socko: Hard Travellin' Reviewer
You guys remember BLANKETS, right? Best long form comic book of 2003, winner of the Eisner Award… this ringing a bell? Well, Craig Thompson has released his not-quite-follow-up. No, it's not HABIBI, his next multi-hundred pages graphic novel. What it is, is a bridge between the two; a journal of his travels through the setting of his next book, while also promoting his last.
Written while Craig was on a European promotional tour, CARNET follows him through France, Spain, and Morocco. Everywhere he goes Craig is sketching, and it's those sketches more than the travelogue that make this book such an interesting read. Oh, don't get me wrong; the details of Craig's Morocco trip in particular are fascinating. He meets some interesting people, to say the least, and the stories that he hears and lives make for a great read.
But it's the sketches, oh my GOD the sketches, that are the reason to pick up this book, posthaste. It's been a year since I first read BLANKETS, and in that time I haven't seen a comic as beautiful until now. From Paris rooftops to the African desert to the French Alps, every page of this book is drool inducing gorgeous. And that's just the scenery. Wait until you see the ladies. Oh lord, the ladies!
I have no idea how Craig Thompson does it. I've seen him at signings, whipping out the most amazing sketch in minutes. He makes it look so effortless, and yet, as this book tells us, the man has crippling arthritis. I can tell you that he doesn't show it in person. He does show it here though. One of my favorite pages near the end shows an absolutely beautiful drawing of a woman bathing, with Craig underneath doubled over in pain. You can tell this man loves comics, because anyone else would have given up drawing for accounting by now.
Is this book as much of a must read as BLANKETS? Not necessarily. But if you loved BLANKETS, will you enjoy this one? A thousand times yes.
PLANETARY #20
Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: John Cassaday
Publisher: DC/Wildstorm
Reviewed by Buzz Maverik
A Seminar by Buzz Maverik.
Welcome to "How To Read An Issue Of PLANETARY." I'm your instructor Professor Maverik. Those of you who like to read older comics may think that Professor Maverik sounds like a supervillain name. Those of you who read newer comics may kindly inform them that supervillains now have names like Cecelia Quark. At any rate, who care what you think because I already have your credit card numbers!
Chances are, you may have heard of PLANETARY, the cool comic by writer Warren Ellis and artist John Cassaday. "What's this all about?" you ask.
The Planetary Group is an organization dedicated to detailing the secret history of the 20th, and now, I guess, the 21st Century. This secret history is simply our popular culture. The conceit of the book is that the characters in comics, movie genres, public domain books, pulp novels and maybe TV really existed on the fringes of our world. For example, a nuclear physicist really was turned into something that could survive the atomic bomb on a test site in the '50s. Or an Amazon princess, a cosmic policeman and an infant survivor of a destroyed planet really did head for Earth. Or giant monsters appeared off the coast of Japan shortly after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Except that everything worked out a little differently than the stories we know.
Why do you need this seminar? Because you've read thousands of comic books and you cannot put that aside enough to look at skewered interpretations. Or because you like new and different comics and you can't draw close enough to the source material to get a full appreciation of what Ellis and Cassaday are doing. Mainly, you need this seminar because I need the dough, so if you haven't given up your credit card number by now, stop screwing around!
Yes, you in the third row!
"Isn't the Planetary stuff like the Hulk or the Fantastic Four or Doc Savage only fucked up?"
Well, "fucked up" isn't a term I'd use. I'd say that PLANETARY views the comics and popular fiction we love through social, historical and scientific viewpoints. As you may know, I believe reality in comics is an oxymoron, so I won't say realism. But I will say that this modern viewpoint, this hindsight on big bug movies, Hong Kong shoot 'em ups and ghost stories, '60s spy characters and superheroes can enhance our appreciation of other eras of pop culture. This isn't a deconstructionist comic, although it does contain a healthy subversive element. For me, it's a way of looking at a lot of my favorite sensibilities (which seem to be similar to Ellis' and Cassaday's) in a different context and getting back to their roots at the same time.
Let's use PLANETARY # 20 as an example. It's not the best issue I've ever read, but it'll do. It contains the usual smart storytelling from Ellis and the customary breathtaking art from Cassaday. These guys work well together. The story is sparse, which I hate when it doesn't serve a point, but this team has a point to their style. They are telling you just what they intend, because neither Ellis or Cassaday are so prolific that you could ever accuse them of skimping to make a deadline. And I hate this kind of pacing in most comics, but PLANETARY was created to be paced slowly. Cassaday's images are conveying Ellis' ideas more than any dialogue or sequencing does here.
The issue concerns the Planetary team, Elijah Snow and his sidekicks, observing a trio of cosmic/angelic beings they've sent inside an enormous, derelict spacecraft which contains multiple environments and beings. The guy running the viewer looks like Biff Henderson from LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN. Last issue, I likened this to the PLANETARY take on Marvel's Galactus and the Silver Surfer. One of our cool talkbackers pointed out the similarity to Arthur C. Clarke's novel RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA, for which I am grateful. The issue ended with Jacob Greene, the pilot of a Cold War spaceflight that created an evil version of The Fantastic Four, arriving on the scene. We haven't seen Greene at this point, but he's their Thing.
In this issue, we see him. All I'll tell you is that his eyes contain Masonic symbols. But then, so do Yu-Gi-Oh cards.
The issue ends with Planetary's Jakita Wagner questioning whether Elijah is really Elijah. Personally, I think he's just finally getting around to showing her what Planetary is really all about.
That conclude our seminar. I hope it has been helpful. Thanks for the credit card numbers and be sure to fork over all the cash you have on the way out.
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #9
Warren Ellis: Writer
Stuart Immonen: Artist
Marvel Comics: Publisher
Vroom Socko: Feelin' Fantastic
The whole time I was reading the first two issues of Warren Ellis' introductory run on this book, I had this anecdote from the tv show FARSCAPE running through my head. There was this great episode called "Green Eyed Monster" that was written by Ben Browder, the show's leading man. In it, a giant space monster swallows the heroes' ship. During the writing process, the staff writers were trying to come up with ways to explain just why they were swallowed, and how the creature's throat, digestive tract, and metabolism would work. At the end of all this, Browder stood up and said, "Look, who cares about any of this? THEY'RE SWALLOWED BY A MONSTER! Let's move on!"
Reading the first two issues of ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR by Ellis felt like being in that meeting, and at the end of each issue I felt like Browder. The last thing I want to see in an FF comic is three pages talking about whether or not Ben Grimm is still able to take a shit. I'm not interested in what happens to Reed's internal organs when he stretches, and I don't want to see five pages wasted on talking about it. Who cares how the Thing's chest is able to expand when he breathes? He's made of rock, Reed can stretch, Sue turns invisible, Johnny bursts into flame, THEY'RE SWALLOWED BY A MONSTER! Let's move on!
After two issues of this, with the only redeeming element being the back story of Dr. Doom, I decided that Ellis had just one more issue. Just one more issue to convince me that this title was still worth buying, just one more issue to wow me.
And man alive, did he wow my sorry ass.
Just as with issue five, where Bendis and Millar had the team defending New York from a giant monster attack, Ellis has taken a familiar plot device and spun it into storytelling gold. Doom's attack on the Baxter Building is swift, merciless, and wholly unique. The way that the Four handle this situation is pitch perfect. I love how Ellis handles the character work here, letting us know about each one by how they handle violence. There's Sue's "don't fuck with me" attitude, Ben's immediate assumption of the defensive role, Johnny's cavalier burning of everything in sight, and Reed… Damn. Ellis shows with this issue just how much he gets the character of Reed Richards. Not knowing how to apply his new powers to the situation, Reed instead outthinks the attack, a quality that no good Doom story can be told without.
Then there's Stuart Immonen's work. There are two different sections that stuck with me after I put the book down, and both were on account of him. The first features Sue encasing the attacking robots in a force field and crushing them. Just the way that her skin turned transparent when Sue became stressed, the look on her face, everything about that page was extraordinary. Then there's the two-page splash of Johnny torching a room full of the aforementioned robots. Those two pages would have been right at home in Otomo's AKIRA, and if there's a higher compliment than that for an artist, I don't know it.
And then there's the jibes between the Thing and the Torch, Reed's funny yet smart exposition, Johnny's superhero daydreaming, all in the single leanest, meanest Ultimate issue to date. The last two issues of this book were Warren Ellis writing a Warren Ellis comic. Now he's writing a Fantastic Four comic. And I'm loving it.
SMALL GODS #1
Writer: Jason Rand
Artist: Juan E. Ferreyra
Publisher: Image Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
In his book THE ART OF THE COMIC BOOK, comic historian R.C. Harvey attempts to establish an objective means of judging comic book craftsmanship: namely, the interdependence of the words and the pictures. That is to say, one way to test a comic's quality is to determine if the words and pictures within rely on each other to convey a meaning that neither could in and of themselves. It's not the only test, but it's one I sometimes think of when a writer really weighs down a book with so much verbiage that the art becomes redundant.
Which leads me to SMALL GODS #1.
Detective Owen Young is a psychic cop, generically handsome and sporting a five o'clock shadow that would've been pretty cool in 1985. His world's identical to our own except for psychic phenomena having recently become an accepted fact of life and a moral dilemma for law enforcement. After an opening action sequence that put me in the mind of Spielberg's MINORITY REPORT, we learn all about Young's world in a series of captions that are, quite frankly, a boring history lesson of psychic controversy. The concepts are plausible – I'll give 'em that – but the scene as a whole spectacularly fails Harvey's words/pictures test as the comic becomes little more than a mediocre prose novel for about three pages.
Given that artist Juan Ferreyra is a talented newcomer with a gritty, detailed style somewhere between Rich Corben and Paul Gulacy, this is definitely a bad thing. He'll be one to watch in the future, 'long as he eases up on his gray tones a bit. They're just a tad murky.
But the biggest obstacle to the story is the prosaic writing. After the less-than-rousing opening, we get more of Young's life as a psychic on the police force, and guess what? He's a burnout case. If I went by what I've read and seen in cop fiction I'd think that pretty much all cops are burnout cases, and all psychics too. Put 'em together and it's cliché overload.
And if it's not clichés, it's bad melodrama. A cartoonishly loutish cop chides Young for failing to save the victim in the opening sequence. Do cops really do that? Bust each others' balls to the tune of, "Hey, why don't you try NOT letting innocents die?" Right after the crime, no less? If they do, I hope they're at least a little more sly about it. Obnoxious Cop Guy's comments could practically capped with an obnoxious, "Haw haw!"
Then we get more caption-heavy exposition over an interrogation scene, a glimpse of our hero's hot but underappreciated girlfriend, and scenes of him drinking while he watches TV. By that time, my interest was pretty much dead, though the final third of the book does set up a more exotic case with some crooks who can somehow single out telepaths. Too little, too late.
I'll give writer Jason Rand this: he squeezes a fair amount of story into this first issue. It'd be a lot more refreshing if it wasn't all clich̩s and exposition, but at least he gives the reader some meat in a day and age when you can blaze through some comics in the time it takes to stop at a stop sign. Unfortunately, it's not enough to produce mediocre work and hope it'll stand out as a comic because it's in a genre that's little seen in that format. New creators have to be as good or better than TV, movies, and books if we want the medium to be more than a springboard for Hollywood blockbusters. And SMALL GODS just doesn't cut it Рeven with the superior art.
A final question to the creators of SMALL GODS: how am I supposed to take serious a cop story when an otherwise humorless stakeout becomes an opportunity for visual gags like a drug deal outside the cop car, a purse snatching, and finally, Elvis walking by?
THE SEA-HAWK
By Rafael Sabatini
Published by W.W. Norton & Company
Reviewed by Buhz-el-Maverique
Don't you hate it when this kind of thing happens? Things are going really good for a while, like you're a successful privateer and have really kicked the asses of Spanish shipping and you've made a lot of d'oh. You even get knighted by Her Majesty. You get engaged to the beautiful blonde babe at the neighboring manor (and she's bound to have one of those cool British accents because she's...like British and so are you for that matter). Then everything turns to shit.
First, your babe's dipshit brother tries to pick a fight with you. Him you can laugh off because everyone knows he wouldn't last half a second in a sword fight with you, but her turd of an uncle is another matter, so you immediately challenge him to a duel. Things are still okay because you are able to wound this uncle without killing him and your babe believes that you didn't have a choice.
But then your own dipshit kid brother gets into a fight with your babe's dipshit brother over the town pump and your brother kills your babe's brother, escaping with a bad wound in his own right. You live in cool times when you're allowed to kill jerks as long as you do it in a duel with witnesses, but the two brothers just slashed it out in the snow on their own. And your brother left a trail of blood leading to your manor house.
You're cool, though. You're not going to snitch out your brother and the law is on your side. But your girl won't take your word that you didn't run her bro through! She dumps you! And your brother is worried that you're going to narc on him, so he makes a deal with a pirate to jump you and sell you into slavery.
Somehow, you're caught in an unnecessary plot point in which you're captured by the Spanish Inquisition and you and the pirate-guy both end up as galley slaves. Being a galley slave sucks major ass! You're rowing almost 24 hours a day until you die. That sun is damned hot and sunblock hasn't even been invented yet! You never get to leave the rower's bench, not even to take a dump. P-hew! It's probably a good thing that they give you almost nothing to eat. Then, this big mean motherfucker whips you if you're not rowing fast enough and he hits a lot harder than those chicks who you pay to whip you!
But the guy sharing the oar with you is pretty cool. Turns out he's some Moslem nobleman and given your experiences with the Inquisition, you're not too keen on Christianity these days. He's even cooler when your ship is boarded by Algerian pirates! All you have to do is convert to Islam and you're raiding ships for his uncle, the Basha of Algiers! No problem! Sure, you'll miss the booze but you're not that big a fan of pork anyway! But as Will Ferrell said in the recent stupid movie ANCHORMAN, when in Rome....
See, things can go the other way, too. You're a great pirate...'scuse me, privateer. Soon, you're rich again. The Basha respects you, but he's got a Sicilian babe for one of his wives who hates you because she wants her wimp son to command the fleet and not you. So you're screwed again.
You raid a ship and find the British pirate who shanghaied you into this mess. You get an idea. Instead of hanging him, you force him to be your navigator and you take your crew to the coast of England, the first Arab crew to launch such an attack. You steal into your ex's manor, find her engaged to your weasel brother so you kidnap them both.
Back in Algiers, you're in deep shit because you took a ship and crew to England and all you brought back were two lousy slaves. Sure, the chick is hot, but you buy her for yourself, even though the Basha wants her. You marry her so he can't have her.
Soon, you realize that this chick isn't so bad. She was lied to by your weasel brother, who is now your galley slave. You decide to take her France, where she can get home with no problem. Except that the horny Basha and his wimp son decide to join your expedition.
What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?
Read THE SEA-HAWK by Rafael Sabatini to find out what Sir Oliver would do in your place.
Cheap Shots!
SUPERMAN #207 - Ugh. Superman continues his voyage of self-discovery - really annoying self discovery - while coping with "The Vanishing," Middle East political/war atrocities, and a big Alien/Predator monster-type guy. There is a bit of action with the Alien/Predator monster-type guy, letting Jim Lee flex his muscles a little more than usual in this run, but really, this series continues to be a overwhlemingly self-serious lead brick. - G.S.
JLA #102 - Chuck Austen's JLA arc comes into focus: An All-Bummer Extravaganza!, with each issue focusing on the failure and emotional fallout of an invidual member of the JLA. This time out, it's The Flash. I have to give Austen credit: Flash's attempted solution to his problem was some inspired fantasy wish-fulfillment (Inviso-Text Spoiler: Because he missed the opportunity to save some children in a fire, he installs fire alarms in practically every building in the city - in a flash!), but all the angst seems a little overwrought. Nice layouts and panels from Ron Garney, in a very dark-hued comic. But really, there's no other way to say it: It was a colossal bummer. I mean, just look at that cover - that's what you're in for. On the other hand, comics have a long tradition of superheroes-in-angst, and if colossal bummers are reading for you like thought-provoking explorations these days (in other words, if you're really enjoying Azzarello's SUPERMAN), you may want to check out what's going on here. - G.S.
SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT #12 - Hey everybody, remember BIRTHRIGHT? Mark Waid's 12 issue Superman reboot comes to a close, and I can't help feeling that I'm the only one left in the theatre. Well, that's not exactly true - I've read enough message boards to know that I'm not the only one who stuck around to the bitter end. And really, the end wasn't all that bitter. Sure, BIRTHRIGHT seemed to fade out a bit with readers (whatever mainstream buzz I could see seemed to go south a few issues in, and the sales, always hovering around 35,000 or less, must have been a disappointment to DC), but the series grew on me, mostly because of the characterization and the backstory of Waid's Lex Luthor. That was some nice character work; striking, but never overplayed. Still though, excitement and enjoyment of the series was never able to rise above a certain level, Lenil Yu's art seemed to go from pretty and innovative to kinda grotesque (maybe it just didn't wear well), and the last few issues seemed to be trying to run on energy that just wasn't there. BIRTHRIGHT #12 was The Big Climax; diverting, but beyond that, I just wasn't feeling it. (Late shipping didn't help things, that's for sure.) I will say this: Waid has a denouement on the final pages of #12 that really works. That was one heck of a poignant ending. - G.S.
