Catwoman, Ex Machina, the latest Blue Beetle, Icon, Not So New Hawk & Dove, and NMAH’s first full-fledged manga review.
Employee’s Pick
[DC] Catwoman Vol. 3 #20-24
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Pencilers: Cameron Stewart (finished art), Nick Derington (layouts, issue 22), Guy Davis (layouts, issue 23; breakdowns, issue 24)
Road trip! Selina takes her sidekick best friend Holly on a cross-country journey to recover from the recent nastiness with Black Mask. Each issue features a different guest star as the girls hit a new city on their road to recovery and peace of mind. First it’s New York, to meet Ted Grant, aka Wildcat, who begins Holly’s training in hand-to-hand combat. In Keystone City, Selina helps Captain Cold with a heist in exchange for information. Batman chats with Slam Bradley in Gotham in the third issue, while Selina and Holly walk into quite possibly the only diner ever to feature rednecks robbing the local mafia. Then it’s off to Opal City, where they run into reformed Starman villain Jake "Bobo" Bennetti. Their last stop before returning home to Gotham is St. Roch, where Wildcat takes Selina to meet Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and Holly is reunited with someone from her distant past. Along the way, Selina runs afoul of some mysterious Egyptian cultists, providing an excuse for more fight scenes without forcing them into the plot, and starting a new story that carries on beyond this one.
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This is exactly what a trip around the DCU should be. Every guest star feels like a natural addition to the story. If you’ve never met them before, you feel like you know them now, and those who have already are treated to a visit from an old friend. In a way, you get to play the same roles Selina (the old veteran) and Holly (the greenhorn) do, following along on their vacation. In lieu of participating in the events, you get to look at Cameron Stewart’s pretty, pretty art as Holly boxes Ted, Captain Cold crawls through the sewers to steal Jay Garrick’s hat, Slam lands a lucky punch on Batman, Selina falls off a building, and Kendra Saunders teases the uptight Carter Hall.
New-Type Books
[DC] Ex Machina #33
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Penciler: Tony Harris
Finally, action! Mayor Hundred has his showdown with Pope John Paul II, and a chat with god while he’s at it. Seems the big guy has plans for Mitch, and he’s not about to let any scheming Russians interfere. This was much better than the previous three issues. The plot bounced merrily along, punctuated by deadly confrontations, and there was still time to fit in poignant discussions, along with the respectful handling of the ex-Pope. It feels like things are happening again, and when characters pause to chat, they’re saying something more than mildly interesting. I should probably have stuck to reading this series in trades, where the sometimes slow pace isn’t as much of a problem, but when I think of all the series I’m hopelessly behind on because I decided to "wait for the trade," it doesn’t seem so bad.
[DC] Blue Beetle Vol. 7 #25
Writer: John Rogers
Penciler: Rafael Albuquerque
Hell yes. As the song goes, it’s hard to overstate my satisfaction. With this issue, with this storyarc, with this entire series. Jaime Reyes and his partner, the symbiotic scarab that grants him his powers, reveal their master plan to the evil villain. Then the JLI shows up! Sort of. Guy Gardner, Ice, Fire, and Booster Gold pop by to help Jaime fight off alien invasion plot #347-B. And then they have a cookout! For serious!
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Dude. It is so good. This is the culmination of a three-part storyarc, all three parts being stuffed full of action, tension, and witty repartee. It’s also the culmination of Blue Beetle’s origin. You’d think a twenty-five issue origin story would be incredibly boring, but it’s so well paced that it never drags. We get the whole origin, in bits and pieces, learning what Jaime’s powers are, from whence they came, and all the little related details as the conspiracy surrounding the Blue Beetle slowly comes to light. All the while, Jaime fights villains (the Reach, thugs the Reach hire, and unrelated foes), makes new friends, gets his romance on, and cracks wise.
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Unfortunately, the person most responsible for this series being not only good for a teen-hero-legacy-reboot-based-on-a-retcon, but good for a comic book period, writer John Rogers, is off the book indefinitely as of now. Next issue is an all-Spanish story by guest writer Jai Nitz, thankfully with a translation included. Then Will Pfeifer takes over as regular writer until… Well, nobody knows. Or if they do, they aren’t talking. The word is, Rogers is working on some other projects for DC, and those are keeping him too busy for Blue Beetle at the moment. With any luck, he’ll get unbusy before the book gets cancelled for poor sales or Pfeifer finds a way to wreck things. That or Pfeifer/some other writer does a good enough job that the book doesn’t need Rogers to stay worth reading. We’ll see. I’m sticking around for the next two issues at least, and plan to hang around as long as it doesn’t take a turn for the horrendous. I prefer to support writers before characters or titles, but this is my favorite DC comic right now, and relatively few people are reading it.
Back Issues
[DC] Icon #2
Writer: Dwayne McDuffie
Penciler: M.D. Bright
This is a little better than the first issue, but again we have a small amount of plot and the issue ends right before a fight scene, as if to say, "Next issue, something happens!" Not that this one’s without action. There’s plot, too. Icon and his sidekick Rocket fight a S.H.I.E.L.D. analogue – a bunch of special police who are too full of themselves to accept superhelp – and we learn more about the hostage situation they’re trying to resolve. But it’s the same one that started last issue, and it won’t be over until at least next issue, depending on how long McDuffie spends explaining the backstory. It’s a little too slow, too pat, and I still hate the costumes.
[DC] The New Hawk & Dove #1
Writer: Mike Baron
Penciler: Dean Zachary
Oh, 90’s. Don’t ever change. I like to defend the decade. It’s an underdog, the ten-year period in entertainment history that gets more flack than any in the past century, including the 70’s. A lot of good came out of it. Great music, great movies, great comics. This is not one of them. DC needed a new Hawk and Dove, on account of they’re always getting killed or pinch-eviling for Captain Atom (and then getting killed), so Mike Baron came along and gave us this. A career military woman and a punk rock singer happen to meet in a bar, happen to team up to fight some thugs, happen to run off together after (ditching the woman’s date/friend, who is never seen again), happen to have both been experimented on as children by the evil Dr. Avian (I wish I were making that up) because they happened to be dying of some disease or other, and happen to investigate their history at the same time some birdman is breaking into the facility they just broke into. Then they grow wings. It’s a mess of contrivances with the worst dialogue I’ve read in recent memory, as laughably bad as the cover suggests. Reading things like Young Avengers and the new Blue Beetle has taught me that a concept that sounds ridiculous on paper can be fantastically good in execution, but it’s important to remember that bad ideas require extraordinary execution, and that a bad idea combined with poor execution makes for a terrible comic.
Trade
[ADV] Yotsuba&! Vol. 1
Writer/Artist: Kiyohiko Azuma
This is my new favorite thing. I’ve been trying to get into manga for years. I love anime, and I love comics, so logically I should love manga. But until now, I hadn’t read one that flowed as smoothly as a Western comic, that I could enjoy despite differences in culture and format. Whether due to a loss in translation or simple inferiority, most manga I’ve read, including ones that had anime I enjoy based upon them, have been off. They might only be slightly off, but it’s a persistent state that sucks the enjoyment out of reading. Too many manga authors have a tendency to float speech bubbles around in a disorganized manner with little or no indication of who’s saying what, so that you’re forced to rely on context to puzzle out the speaker. Sometimes, there’s not even a character on the page, yet there are two speaking, their words alone in the cold dark. You can’t count on consistent panel placement, either. The switch from reading panels left to right to starting from the right and going left is an easy enough adjustment to make, even when the left-to-right text is telling you you’re doing it wrong. But it can’t be that simple, no. Why flow right to left, top to bottom, when you can bounce around seemingly at random with nothing to indicate that we’ve deviated from regular panel placement other than the fact that things no longer make sense. Reading manga had become something I regarded as a chore. I would expend undue effort to extract some measure of enjoyment from the writing, when I could instead be watching/reading subtitled anime and not feeling like I had to work for my fun, or reading a comic that was originally written in English and not having to deal with the awkward phrasing that too often results from hamfisted translations.
This, though, has restored my faith that all mediums (or genres, or whatever the technical distinction between manga and comics is) have something to offer everyone, if only you look hard enough. There are cartoons that even the most "grown-up" adult can enjoy, comic books for any taste, movies, books, toys, anime, and apparently, manga, too. I rarely felt the least bit confused while reading this, and those rare times when a floating bubble wasn’t clearly tied to a specific character, or the story seemed to jump sideways, I was having far too much fun to mind. I was immersed, sunk deep into the story, coming up only for bouts of raucous laughter, which were frequent enough that I could’ve been literally underwater and still avoided drowning. Even the frequent use of my dread enemy, the manga/anime staple of using cartoonish expressions and superdeformed caricatures to show all but the mildest of emotions, didn’t detract from the experience. Rather, it added to it. Part of that is because I’ve softened my stance on that particular trope over the years – I doubt I could’ve enjoyed this as much if I’d read it when I was first coming around to the belief that the Japanese weren’t horrible people who produced the most deplorable of what could only jokingly be referred to as "entertainment" – but I think more than anything it’s the fact that it’s used properly. Many manga and anime try to combine weighty drama with over the top slapstick comedy, and that rarely works. When it fails, you’re left with an embarrassing mess and a series that is neither funny nor emotionally deep. Here, there’s only comedy, only happiness, only fun. The characters are believable enough, but they don’t go around being harrowed when they aren’t having fun-filled adventures, so you don’t get that disconnect when the same character whose tragic past made you tear up a few minutes ago is growing a large lump on his head thanks to a blow from an oversized mallet and his pupils have been replaced by spirals in case it wasn’t clear that he’s a bit out of sorts over the whole experience.
The idea here is to follow Yotsuba, a peculiar little green-haired girl, as she discovers… Well, everything. Yotsuba is much like your average five-year-old, rude and selfish at times, prone to mimicry, and filled with wide-eyed wonder when faced with anything new. Only she’s much, much more naive than you’d expect anyone, even one so young, to be. She marvels at swings and doorbells, poking and prodding at the world to learn how it works. The title refers to the setup of the book. Each chapter focuses on Yotsuba’s experience with something, so there’s Yotsuba & Shopping, Yotsuba & Rain, and so on. Not everything is new to her, though, nor do the chapters simply hone in on one topic like some dumbed down children’s programming. In the first chapter, Yotsuba & Moving, the protagonist moves into her new home, meets her new neighbors, runs from same neighbors when she realizes they’re technically strangers, climbs a telephone pole, plays on a swing for the first time, and confuses everyone but the reader.
It’s a true all ages title. Simple enough that someone Yotsuba’s age could follow along, with depth that an older, wiser audience can appreciate. Like when Yotsuba discovers global warming, and learns that air conditioners can be both evil and good. There are seven chapters in this first volume, which clocks in at two hundred twenty-four pages, and they’re all good. One of the cutest, funniest comics, Eastern or Western, I’ve had the privilege of reading.
Truncation
Catwoman – A road trip with Catwoman. What’s not to like?
Ex Machina – A step up from the past few issues.
Blue Beetle – A great end to a great storyline. Hopefully, I won’t look back someday and consider this the end of the series.
Icon – Decent, but nothing special.
The New Hawk & Dove – Like unto the defecation of pigeons.
Yotsuba&! – Easily the best of the few manga I’ve read. One of the best comics, period.
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