THE DRESDEN FILES: DOWN TOWN #3

Writers: Jim Butcher and Mark Powers
Artist: Carlos Gomez
Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
Reviewer: Lyzard

Now halfway through THE DRESDEN FILES: DOWN TOWN, we are at that point where it shouldn’t matter whether you are a fan or not of Jim Butcher’s book series. Either you like what Dynamite has done with the scruffy wizard or you don’t. If you’ve liked DOWN TOWN up to now, then you won’t be disappointed with the third issue.

DOWN TOWN #3 reminds me of the structure Butcher uses when it comes to his novels. Rarely do we have to wait until the third act to start getting some answers. Instead, Butcher has a tendency of revealing the evil at work around the midpoint as to set-up more drawn out climaxes and complicated resolutions, and boy do we have a final battle being set up for us.

I’m a little bit disappointed in myself that I didn’t see the monster’s reveal coming. Turns out that the magical mucous-like creature that has been wreaking havoc in the Windy City is a golem. In hindsight, it should have been rather obvious to guess, fan or no fan. So now that we know the what, it is time for Harry to figure out the who: who is this powerful wizard controlling the golem? While it seems only Harry and Molly Carpenter have the first half of the answer, Marcone and his henchmen are right on their tail. In an awkward turn of events, the two factions have the same goal: destroy the wizard and protect the town. Too bad neither side sees the good of helping each other out.

There’s little else to say about DOWN TOWN #3, for both the writers and artist have been nothing but consistent, so whatever was working in issue one (such as the snappy dialogue) is still prevalent. Of course, that means whatever wasn’t working in the beginning, like the fact that all the men appear to go to the same hair stylist, remains as well. Regardless of any nitpicks, THE DRESDEN FILES: DOWN TOWN #3 keeps the momentum going on this fun and fast urban fantasy ride.

Lyzard is Lyz Reblin, a graduate student at the University of Texas pursuing a master's degree in Media Studies... which is just a fancy way of saying she plays a lot video games, watches far too many horror films, and then tries to pass it all off as "research."

AVENGERS: ULTRON FOREVER #1

Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Alan Davis
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewer: Masked Man

With the next big Avengers movie only a month away, everything is coming up Avengers at Marvel these days (which is kind of amusing, since whenever it's an X-Men or Fantastic Four movie, they act like they never even heard of it). So last week they actually launched two Ultron projects ( I guess that's showing some restraint): The RAGE OF ULTRON graphic novel and this new miniseries, which is about as poorly named as you can get, since the next issue is entitled ULTRON FOREVER: THE NEW AVENGERS #1 (oui). Anyway, this is a future story in which the Dr. Doom of the future has recruited Avengers from all different timelines to battle Ultron in the future. Kinda reminds me of Brian Michael Bendis' THE HEROIC AGE Avenger story, where it was Kang asking the Avengers to come into the future and fight Ultron. Oh, comic books--ya gotta love 'em.

Ok, let's get spoilery with it. So first we meet our timeline-crossed heroes, starting with Captain America of the near future, who is the grown up baby of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones (the one they never stopped whining about). She brings back old 1960s Captain America's remote control shield (so much for advanced tech in the future). Next is present day Black Widow and The Vision, who debate his humanity ( fu(k, again?). Then very quickly we get the rest of the team, the new She-Thor (though seriously, isn't Thor Thor? It's his frick'n name. She is just the new God of Thunder, right?), the fully armored and bearded Thor from the mid 80s, Jim Rhodes' Iron Man, again from the mid 80s, and then what I guess to be 1960s Hulk. Not really sure--Davis draws him a bit more like a gorilla than the Frankenstein monster Kirby was riffing. Once Dr. Doom, with a bunch of children, convinces these Avengers he's on the up and up, although The Vision seems to know who is really behind the Dr. Doom mask (place yer bets now), they head off on an old Justice League-inspired mission, breaking up into teams and attacking Ultron's bases around the world. The bases are protected by future cyber-slave versions of The Avengers, and things don't go very well at all! The Vision gets Visioned, Thor gets Thored and the Hulk—well, I'm not really sure I buy what happened to The Hulk (to get nerdy, I don't think Cap's shield is razor-sharp, and being made out of vibranium, something that absorbs kinetic energy, everything just seems wrong about that). Also, Davis drew it like a TOM AND JERRY cartoon, so more wtf than omg.

One thing I constantly b!tch about with current comics is no one seems interested in writing simple fun action adventure comics. It's all gotta be deep, introspective, hip, edgy, and oh please Hollywood look how mature my writing is--ugh. Well, Ewing doesn't go that route here. This first issue is just a fun romp, filled with good characterization and good action. There are a few things here that we've seen too much of, but the overall package is quite well done, especially with Alan Davis' artwork. Just some really nice comic book art here. Giving the story a little tooth is the fear of something happening to one of The Avengers from another one of the Avengers past--as in, what happens if your best friend gets killed in the past before you meet him? A fun concept, but a dangerous one as well as it could easily suck the fun out of the story with too much boring butterfly effect nonsense.

If you’re looking for a good Avengers adventure comic that doesn't require you to read over 43 issues to understand it, I recommend this--and it looks like Ultron is actually going to be in this story, as opposed to the original AGE OF ULTRON.

HELLBOY & THE B.P.R.D. 1952 #5

Writers: Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Artist: Alex Maleev
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Reviewer: Mighty Mouth

HELLBOY AND THE B.P.R.D. 1952 #5 wraps up the account of Hellboy’s maiden field assignment with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense the only way a Mignolaverse comic can--with a very big bang!

Last issue left off with the big red monkey knee deep in trouble (but isn’t he always?). In the bowels of a Portuguese castle, Hellboy and his B.R.P.D. buddies tangle with the madcap German scientist Herman von Klempt. Evidently this mad Nazi has been keeping busy since the end of WW2, making a fresh new batch of super soldiers and smoking simians to boot. This of course leads to an inevitable showdown with HB and von Klempt, complete with a giant monster and a few surprises that tie in nicely with the current B.P.R.D. books.

If the writing team of Mignola and Arcadia demonstrate anything, it’s that they know their audience. Not that I haven’t been enjoying HB’s present-day adventures in the netherworld, but there is something so apt about Hellboy duking it out with bigger than life monsters and stomping reanimated remnants of the Third Reich.

It’s always good when you flip through a comic and get an immediate sense that the artist had just as much fun working on the issue as you have reading it. That’s how I imagine this project must have been for Alex Maleev. His characters are lavishly expressive and his action sequences carry real weight. I especially like how Maleev is able to honor Mignola’s conceptual imagery while keeping his own style equally intact.

While I admit HELLBOY AND THE B.P.R.D. 1952 may not be the most earth-shattering adventure, I think the more intimate narrative serves a dual purpose between providing complexity for some characters’ backstories while planting the seeds for events that are being played out in present tense titles. If, like me, you find yourself weary of umpteen re-launches of characters that’ve been reduced to pale imitations of their former glory, do yourself a solid and give Hellboy a chance.

SKINNED #1

Writers: Jeremy Holt, Tim Daniel
Artist: Joshua Gowdy
Publisher: Monkeybrain Comics
Reviewer: Morbidlyobeseflesshdevouringcat

SKINNED has a great premise: a futuristic world where all physical and emotional ailments evaporate because a program ensures that every individual has the capability to dictate the physical structure of their surrounding environment. No longer do insecurities exist, racism is only a term read of in history textbooks, and faulty infrastructure isn’t even heard of, because everything from time period to skin color is distinct to each person’s imagination. It’s an overly simplistic solution that inadvertently round robins its way back to the issue that the program, occupEYE, is attempting to solve. Throw in a rebellious princess who views it as a prison and a street rat who uses the program as a freedom, and essentially SKINNED is the sci fi version of ALADDIN, with far more political nuances and heavier dialogue. It sounds outlandish, but SKINNED is far from a Disney sing-a-long carpet ride. It’s even better.

Drawn by Joshua Gowdy, occupEYE’s intriguing capabilities are introduced full throttle with the birth of Zara, princess Aldair’s newest baby sister. As the birth of Zara unfolds, along with the arguments of Aldair to refrain from implanting occupEYE into Zara, panels and views alter in time and space. Gowdy adeptly maintains the structural narrative that is occurring while the views of Aldair and her parents go from an AKIRA dystopian future to the heat and sunsets of the Arabian deserts suddenly to something resembling England’s Victorian era.

Gowdy’s art has depth, and from the challenges he’s forced to encounter with the story itself is able to keep SKINNED incredibly engaging, but unfortunately it isn't without flaw. The anatomy is terribly stiff--Barbie-like really, especially the hands. Facial proportions seem to vary from panel to panel. The lettering itself is also a bit jumbled. Dialogue is tightly condensed within each bubble, appearing cramped and awkward.

It’s the compositions of the panels and characters that undoubtedly make up for these casualties. The coloring throughout the comic is also phenomenal, in that the entire palette for SKINNED holds within a warm range but varies from time period to period, differentiating each period while still maintaining a universal tone to bring it all together.

Plotted by Jeremy Holt and Tim Daniel, SKINNED’s characters, for me, are what truly deters from even noticing any said blemishes. Fresh, vibrant, and smart, nothing about the way the characters talk or interact is campy or heavily reliant on character tropes. Buoy, the street rat who becomes nominated to be engaged to Aldair, is full of spunk and charisma, but doesn’t exude an overly extroverted boy looking to, no pun intended, save the princess. Adair also contains some of her own charms without being boisterous or being firmly placed into the ‘tough girl’ act. She’s also got the most adorable scar on her face.

SKINNED undoubtedly has its flaws, but also maintains a superb narrative integrity through great characterization, plot, and a well-thought-out color palette that is beautiful and heightening.

SOUTHERN BASTARDS #8

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Jason Latour
Publisher: Image Comics
Reviewer: Humphrey Lee

When this second, flashback-centric story arc of SOUTHERN BASTARDS began, both the creative team and myself in this same space both said that this was not a redemption or sympathetic piece for series villain Coach Boss. And it was not – or I should say has not – been one to this point, but at the same time you could not help but appreciate the indomitable spirit of the young Boss as he literally beat himself bloody on the practice field just to be a part of a Runnin’ Rebs football team that had no interest in the runt with a lowlife father. Obviously we know he’s a domineering sociopath to the highest degree, but still, we see just how determined and driven a domineering sociopath he is at his core, and it’s actually admirable to a nearly psychopathic degree. And then that perverse passion reached a pretty goddamn stratospheric height with this newest issue…

What this issue of SOUTHERN BASTARDS really does is drive home two main points: Football is everything, including mostly being a metaphor for obsession, and this comic book could be more accurately titled DADDY ISSUE MURDER TIME in a setting where all our lead characters and their patriarchal relationships make your average “Game of Thrones” episode look like fucking “Family Ties.” Both of these themes come to a head here, though, as the young man to become Coach Boss is shown in the process of claiming that title and it is every bit upper tier fucked up and hardcore as you’d come to expect from Euless Boss, the runt who became star of the Craw County Runnin’ Rebs and was spited and humiliated out of a future in college ball because of his shitbag father.

Honestly, even I didn’t expect Boss’ rise from the previous issue’s fall to culminate in the way it did here, but that’s another aspect of SOUTHERN BASTARDS’ beauty--that the unexpected on these paneled pages is to be as expected as any given sixty minutes on the gridiron. When we are given the reason as to why Euless’s football career was not proceeding to the next collegiate level I expected blood, rage, and more blood to fill the creeks and woods of Craw County, and they did too, but to a means and end that I never even considered. Showing just how measured and vicious he has become, the former ninety pound sadsack weakling that used to be Euless Boss finally confronts the father that he always just wanted to be less pathetic and more loving to (brain spreadingly) explosive results. One Boss dies and another is reborn and SOUTHERN BASTARDS shows you why you were being a silly, silly goose to even consider for a second that a linebacker that came to have an entire county under his thumb was even for a second an innocent bystander to life.

I never expected to like or feel as though Euliss Boss’s tragic past had earned him a little share of pity or what have you – and I still don’t – but goddamn, I actually respect him a bit now. Okay, I pity him too, not because of the father that didn’t love him or the football career he did not have, but because with all that drive and determination and desire all he wanted out of life was football in some way shape or form, and he became an obsessed tyrant. I pity the lost potential but, fuck it, the man wanted a life revolving around the ol’ pigskin and he got it in one of the most cold-hearted ways a man could get a permutation of his dream. And that’s the beauty of SOUTHERN BASTARDS: it makes your worldview and standards bend to its whims. Its heroes are cracked pillars looking to regain their strengths, and its villains are the pinnacles of willpower. If this exemplifies of the standards of life and justice in Craw County, than the upcoming battle for its soul is going to set new standards in viciousness, and it should be absolutely enthralling to see what the duo of Jasons unleash upon the stands.

Humphrey Lee has been an avid comic book reader going on fifteen years now and a contributor to Ain't It Cool comics for quite a few as well. In fact, reading comics is about all he does in his free time and where all the money from his day job wages goes to - funding his comic book habit so he can talk about them to you, our loyal readers (lucky you). He's a bit of a social networking whore, so you can find him all over the Interwebs on sites like Twitter, Facebookand a blog where he also mostly talks about comics with his free time because he hasn't the slightest semblance of a life. Sad but true, and he gladly encourages you to add, read, and comment as you will.

THE X-FILES: SEASON 10 #22

Writer: Joe Harris
Artist: Matthew Dow Smith
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Reviewer: Masked Man

How can you not be excited about THE X-FILES returning to TV? Personally, I'd be happy with just a TV movie, but hey, I'll watch a miniseries too. This is going to be rather interesting as well, as I believe it will be the first 'Season #' comic book series that is actually going back into TV production. So, Chris Carter, are you actually treating this like Season 10, or are you just collecting an easy paycheck, and going to ignore it all?

Last time I reviewed this series I pointed out how boring it was, and how it wasn't really doing anything. It had one cool concept, which allowed dead characters to come back to life and cause trouble, but it never really had a storyline that could match that concept--that is, until now. Harris finally seems to have something interesting going on here. Here come some spoilers, folks: With the help of these temporary clones, The Syndicate has been putting itself back together again. But now, someone is trying to take over The Syndicate—heck, he might even be the one putting The Syndicate back together for some reason. This person is Gibson Praise, the mindreading chess prodigy, who is all grown up and starting to take charge of things. But is he a force for good or evil? We have yet to learn. So yeah, Harris, you finally got me to sit up on the couch here. And this all leads to the main question about the new TV show: will this version of The Syndicate, with all the clones, be what we see?

Another interesting thing about this story arc is the outing of the X-Files. A big shootout exposes the X-Files to the media, and now the press wants to know how much of our tax dollars are going to fund Fox Mulder’s paranormal discovery campaign. Unfortunately, Harris also hits the recycle button with the old “Mulder is missing and being investigated by the FBI for stuff he didn't do as some indecipherable power struggle of forces you can't understand is taking place behind the scenes” plot. Though seriously, after all the $hit we've seen (and I mean that in a good way), what the hell could we not understand now?

Matthew Dow Smith has returned to draw this story arc, and I think he is getting much stronger with his actor likenesses. His overall style is quite, how should I say, ugly. But I think it fits a concept like the X-Files. Still not a fan of Jordie Bellaire's coloring, though. She does amazing work in other books, but here it's just flat color. She gives a hint of tone and depth at times, but for the most part it looks like she didn't have access to Photoshop when she colored it.

I kind of forgot to mention this is the second issue of the latest story arc, “Elders”, and there are three more issues to go, at which point IDW pulls the curtain down on Season 10 (after three years-ish) only to relaunch again with Season 11. Now considering the choppiness of story arcs, we didn't get anywhere close to the 20-25 episodes you'd expect to get if this was a television season (about 10 including the issue stories). So I'm curious why they are changing things to Season 11, or at all really--that is, aside from the current comic book mandate that everything must be relaunched with new a #1 issue as fast as possible. Either way, disenchanted X-Files fans might want to give this last story arc a shot, as I feel the series is finally delivering.

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AICN COMICS Reviews: AVENGERS: ULTRON FOREVER! SOUTHERN BASTARDS! X-FILES SEASON 10! HELLBOY & THE BPRD! & More!