Legacies, Legionnaires, and lameness! This week… on NMAH.
Employee’s Pick
[DC] Blue Beetle Vol. 7 #1-8
Yes, seven volumes. The first five are from before DC acquired the rights to the BB legacy, and the last was nearly twenty years ago. If the mythical "young comic fan" that DC and Marvel both make repeated attempts to ensnare were to read a Blue Beetle solo book today, they’d likely read this one first, and I daresay they’d prefer this version forevermore. That’s not a knock against Ted Kord, an excellent character and my favorite Beetle. It’s just that Jaime Reyes is a very good character in his own right, and he quickly establishes numerous reasons for having a solo series and adventures outside of the team dynamic. He has a well-rounded supporting cast – family and friends – and powers he’s only starting to understand. There’s also a curious animosity between Green Lanterns and the alien scarab that gives Jaime his powers. There is every reason for this Blue Beetle to stick around for a long, long time.
Our story begins with Jaime finding, seemingly by happenstance, a blue scarab, which proceeds to attach itself to and bond with Jaime. We later learn that this is the same scarab Dan Garrett and Ted Kord possessed, though several new features have been retconned in for the purpose of this series. I’m not sure what the scarab gets out of the bargain, aside from perhaps a host to carry out its agenda, but in bonding with it Jaime gets highly advanced, shapeshifting armor that he can barely control, and an understanding of the scarab’s alien language. Next thing you know, he’s shanghaied into space to stop Batman’s stupid spy satellite, only returning a year later. Naturally, disappearing for a year wreaks havoc on Jaime’s little corner of the universe, impacting the entire cast in appreciable ways. Jaime doesn’t remember at first what happened after going into space, so things are pretty confusing for a while. Or mysterious. Mystery, n. – where the reader has no clue what’s going on until you tell them. Each issue reveals more plot and more backstory, so I can forgive being taken for a ride. It’s a fun ride.
The character interactions are great. The cast are witty and play off each other like… well, like friends and family, which they are. Jaime is, apparently, Mexican, living in El Paso, Texas, not far from the US-Mexico border. It’s a rarity in superhero comics, even in modern times, to see a character of any non-white ethnicity. The writers, John Rogers and Keith Giffen, handle it well; Jaime’s world feels alive and real, and neither he nor his supporting cast ever feel like tokens or stereotypes. Regular artist Cully Hamner’s design for the armor is… not to my liking. But it works. It’s everything it’s supposed to be – namely, alien and bizarre – and has so far been able to adapt to any situation. Hamner doesn’t have the clean, technically superb linework of a John Cassaday or a George Perez, but his art is expressive and he handles comedy, drama, and action equally well. Duncan Rouleau fills in as penciler on issue five and the book doesn’t miss a beat, but it suffers from the crude pencils of Cynthia Martin and Kevin West on issue six. Fill-ins are common, and the better artists tend to have regular gigs, but I’ll never be happy to settle for inferior artwork. Fortunately, the writing suffers no such dropoff with or without Giffen. Should Rogers ever need replacing, however, I’ll be worried.
New-Type Books
[DC] The All-New Atom #15, 17+18
This book appeals to me in so many ways. Gail Simone, Mike Norton, Jetpack Hitler, a floating head whose catch phrases are the ginchiest… So why, until now, haven’t I read it? Well, it was never in the quarter box before, but hell, I left #16 behind when it fell to fifty cents. The truth is, it’s because I’m not Daria. I’m Jake Morgendorffer, without the daddy issues. When you start talking about medical oddities, I think "Sliced Man? Eww…" There’s a whole lot of awesome in ANA, but there’s also some ick. The key is to get me to fall in love before I can run away screaming. So, now that the barely resistible allure of cheap comics has got me in the door, let’s see what we have.
This first issue is billed as a Countdown tie-in, which figures, since the previous (Some-Old?) Atom figures prominently in that series. Or, rather, series of series. Oy. I’m staying far away from Countdown, so I barely have an inkling of what’s going on there. With luck, I’ll be just as ignorant after reading this. If it’s too closely knit with the Supermegamaxiseries, I could find myself utterly lost and worse, unentertained. K, this is part four, but there’s a nice recap done in caption boxes on page one. Good times. Ryan gets plucked off the ground by a giant hand, disappears, and is promptly abandoned by his compatriots. Right! That gets that Countdown business out of the way. Moving on…
Oh. My. God. This is gold. GOLD! Oh, gross, monsters tonguing. So, yeah, Ryan saves the town from giant monsters, there is much wittiness, and at the end a subplot about Ray Palmer. Not more Countdown stuff, not really. It’s more about how Ray relates to Ryan, who looks up to his predecessor and doesn’t want to believe anything bad about him. Is there anything bad worth believing? Good question.
I’m kicking myself for not grabbing sixteen now, but it was a fill-in issue, so meh. Seventeen begins a team-up story with Wonder Woman, yay! I don’t think this was mentioned in Wondy’s book, which is odd, but I’m not a big fan of "must-buy" crossovers, anyways. Damn, Giganta is hot. And tall. A bit crazy. Apparently Ryan’s kinda sorta dating her. I would pay so much for a modern-type Giganta build-a-figure. The bigger the better. Ewwwww, removable brain. Man, I love redeemable villains. Giganta’s clearly not going to turn good, at least not now, but maybe later? I’m a sucker for a ray of hope.
So, brain-guy… girl… brain is trying to turn everyone against our man Atom, and doing a fine job of it. Being a brain-thing does that for you, I guess. And now Wonder Woman’s hitting on Ryan. Dude has all the luck. Oh, wait, mob of people trying to kill him. Not so hot, that. And missiles. Helicopters firing missiles. It gets better. Next issue: glowing women, chundering men… It could only mean one thing: subterranean adventure! I am there. Oh, wait, Simone’s not writing it. And issue 20’s her last. Weak.
[DC] Birds of Prey #114
Last issue left us wondering if the Birds had caused the sort of disaster that, in the Marvel U, would lead to a company-wide crossover. We’d all suddenly hate Superman, the big blue jerk, Batman would randomly quit at the end, and somehow more former members of Young Justice and the JLI would wind up dead, insane, evil, or all of the above. This issue doesn’t solve the mystery, but with Babs & Co. hard at work, I’ve no doubt they’ll come up with something. While we don’t see the plot advance by much, BoP does a huge step forward in one regard: fun factor. Sean McKeever makes a clear statement about the book’s quality, showing us that it’s not going to plummet without Simone around. Maybe… maybe, it’ll be even better.
He also adds or advances several subplots, giving the audience plenty to dwell upon while awaiting future issues. Zinda gets a visit from a long lost foe, Oracle starts training Misfit – in classic "merciless master" style – and an old face who first appeared during Simone’s run makes a (welcome?) return. Nicola Scott’s pencils are still oh so pretty, though the pose Manhunter’s captured in on page one looks uncomfortable at best. Not sure the human body can bend that way.
Back Issues
[DC] Inferno #1 of 4
Bit of a curio here, a 90’s miniseries starring one of the lesser known Legionnaires. Your standard "fire powers and a fiery temper" character. To avoid being entirely cliche, she’s a blonde instead of a redhead. Kind of a reddish blonde, actually. Anyways, she’s cute and there’s room to grow. Stuart Immonen does the art for this, and he’s as dependable as ever. Tom McCraw’s colors give the art a bit of an airbrushed look. Not bad, certainly makes the yellows, reds, and oranges pop, but it might’ve looked better in black & white. Immonen also handles the writing chores and does a capable job of it. Inferno’s a thousand years in the past, in our "present" time, alone, and has picked up a habit of waking up in strange places. Namely, a megamall, where she meets a teenage runaway, some girl who wants her to "meet some people," and a mysterious villain who feeds on chaos and confusion. Oh, and a talking giant panda. Not sure what’s going on there.
This is the sort of book that’s usually right up my alley – predominately female cast that isn’t overshadowed by a male protagonist. You don’t get near enough of that. But, eh, it’s nothing special. Inferno’s a jerk to everyone, and while I’m sure she gets better later, I’m not inclined to move past the poor first impression. Plus, I’ve never cared for the Legion. The halfassed futurism, which boils down to having different cuss words and unfamiliar settings, manages to alienate me without being believable. Placing this series in the past removes part of the problem, but we still have lame pseudoprofanity like "spronk" and "grife," and the settings are still unfamiliar. Only now it’s the main character who feels out of place, leaving the reader to deal with the old sitcom standby, "the fish out of water." Like I said, Immonen does decent work with the material he has. If you’re a LoSH fan… Well, if you’re a LoSH fan, there’s about a 75% chance that this isn’t your Legion, and therefore you’ll hate it. If you’re looking for a character-driven story where nothing major happens aside from, most likely, Inferno learning A Valuable Lesson™, you could do worse than this.
[DC] The Ray Vol. 2 #0
I’m a big Christopher Priest fan. I think he’s gotten a raw deal over the years from several companies. He revamped Black Panther for Marvel, turning T’Challa into one of that company’s premier badasses, if only in theory. Priest and MD Bright’s Quantum & Woody is one of the funniest comics you’ll ever see, and what little I’ve read of The Crew has been good. He’s not always on, though. His Deadpool run was forgettable, and there’s this. Ray Terrill, son of the Golden Age Ray, inherited his father’s vast light-based powers and was made a shut-in for the entirety of his childhood, told that exposure to natural light could kill him. And it’s not even his father who tells him, but his uncle, who had years ago agreed to pose as Ray’s father in his brother’s stead. It’s a long story. This issue recaps it all, and it’s a good read, especially the Martian Manhunter guest spot in the beginning. You wouldn’t think the regular series would be so… blah. But it was plagued by awful slang and all too frequent crossovers with Priest’s Justice League Task Force that left gaping holes in the story for those who didn’t read both titles. Ray spent over twenty issues doing little other than fighting the same villain, an AI program that Ray mistakenly brought to life with his powers (sort of; long story), and then… time travel. *shudder* The art got a little better once Howard Porter took his 90’s house style, over-shaded pencils over to JLA, helping to make that book thoroughly mediocre. Porter’s in full effect in issue zero, doling out furry eyebrows and hatching aplenty.
Trade
[Top Shelf] The Perfect Planet and other stories
Two other stories, to be exact, making this a collection of three by the multitalented James Kochalka. First up is the titular tale, starring Kochalka’s self-insert, Magic Boy, as a teenager in an artificial world. Magic Boy meets ants, fish, friends, family, and a fairy, interacting normally with the people but torturing and killing the rest. The story then devolves into surrealism, as the artificial sun falls from the sky and the "perfect planet" is destroyed. The artificial people gone, Magic Boy is kinder to the animals in the last few pages. A little too kind. The story’s framing sequence, wherein Kochalka lays out the dangers of misanthropy, works better than Planet itself. Or maybe the whole thing’s too satirical for my tastes.
Nonironic Futuropolis gets off to a promising start. There’s the catchy title, and ooh, kitty! This one’s somewhat surreal as well, with a cat and a snowflake who talk mixed in with mundane events like raking leaves and grocery shopping. It’s a fun read, full of childlike imagination, much more enjoyable than what the book led off with.
Frog & Fly is about… Exactly what it says. Frog the frog and Fly the fly are best friends, in gleeful defiance of nature’s so-called laws. They run afoul of evil toadstools, meet a big-eyed frog who’s searching for god, and… that’s about it. It’s fairly long considering how little happens; feels like stream of consciousness, one idea tacked onto the next in a quasi-natural order. All the basic trappings of a story are here – rising action, climax, falling action, conclusion – and it never gets too silly, but it’s nothing special.
If you’ve seen Kochalka’s art before, you know what to expect. It’s crude, but it works. At least, it does with an interesting story. Nonironic Futuropolis is nice enough (and fun to say!), but the others are two parts boring, one part disturbing. Even Futuropolis will only appeal to people who enjoy autobiographical slice of life-type stuff. Escapists should steer clear. Really, I don’t recommend paying cover price ($15) for this to anyone, but if you can find it cheap, it’s worth a look.
Truncation
The new Blue Beetle is the best shouldn’t-work-but-it-so-does comic since Young Avengers, perhaps better. Give it a chance.
All-New Atom – Have enjoyment or have death!
Birds of Prey – Fears: allayed. Confidence: renewed. Outlook: shiny.
Inferno – Eh. S’ok.
The Ray – deceptively mediocre.
The Perfect Planet – Disappointing, but not a total loss.
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