August Solicitations. Reviews of new Wonder Woman and Secret Six, old Books of Magic, and North World.
News
Blackest Night – To Buy or Not to Buy?
More Black Lantern reveals. Seems they’re not limited to superheroes. If you’re interested in the Event but don’t want to be a completist, the toughest question facing you is which of the miniseries are worth buying. Let’s look at the three starting in August and make with the guessing.
Blackest Night: Batman – Written by Peter J. Tomasi with art by Adrian Saef. No clue about the latter. If you’ve enjoyed Tomasi’s work of late, you’ll probably like it here. If not, this isn’t likely to be anything special. The new Batman faces some ghost… zombie… thingies from his past. Deadman’s in it – I’d facepalm if they didn’t work him into the Event somewhere – but my guess is this one’s more about Bats than anything the Green Lanterns are up to.
Blackest Night: Superman – Written by James Robinson with art by Eddy Barrows. Yeah… not a fan of Barrows. Robinson’s one of the regular Supes writers, so this figures to fit in well with his current direction. Again, this sounds very personal. One of the Black Lanterns (you can guess who if you’ve paid any attention to the ad campaign thus far) targeting Smallville, trying to make Clark’s life miserable or whatnot.
Blackest Night: Titans – Written by J.T. Krul with art by Ed Benes. Definite pass for me. This is the only mini so far where the writer has nothing to do with the related family of comics. Not surprising, as there currently is no regular writer on either Titans title. Speaking of non-surprises, the cover of this first issue reveals a new Black Lantern, one I haven’t heard guessed before but is blindingly obvious when you take a moment to think about the fact that Blackest Night: Titans exists. It’s the first person you’d expect.
The theme of each series appears to be “dead friends and family of titular character(s) rise up, cue personal conflict that has nothing to do with the overarching plot.” They’re only $3 an issue, cheaper than I expected, but I’d advise leaving them all on the rack unless you’re interested in the character(s). Most likely, you won’t need to know this stuff for the test.
Batman: Widening Gyre
A new Kevin Smith Bat-Mini, this one slated to run six issues at 48 pages and $4 per. Oh, sorry, it’s twelve issues split into two series. Smith says the first six are written, and that there will be a six month break between the two halves. We’ll see whether that’s enough time to stay on schedule.
Batgirl
Yeah… no. I’ve gone into why there shouldn’t be a new Batgirl at length on the forum. Suffice to say I’m highly skeptical, and glad that all signs now point to this being someone other than Babs, though the official position is still that Babs is no longer Oracle. If Stephanie Brown dons the cowl, it could be good. If it’s all a feint and Cassandra Cain keeps her spot, I’ll be relieved but upset at DC for jerking me around. If it’s Misfit… eh, maybe. If it’s a new character… why? Not to say that couldn’t work – it did with Cass – but it wasn’t so long ago that you had a brand new Batgirl. Tossing her aside and saying “this time, we mean it!” would inspire no confidence. Replacing good new characters with more new characters, good or not, is almost as bad as replacing them with old characters. In both cases, you’re giving up, saying you don’t know/care what to do with her, so she doesn’t get to be around anymore.
Imagine if editorial could say “I’m tired of Batman, let’s write him out.” I know he just “died,” but that doesn’t count any more than Superman’s “death” did. Less, even. Everyone at DC could hate Batman and they’d still have to give him four+ ongoing titles and a major role in, like, everything. He’d still have to be Bruce Wayne, too. Lesser characters can be ditched when the luster wears off. Maybe that’s why they do it, because they can. It has to be frustrating not being able to dictate certain things, to marginalize established characters or kill them off. Some writers seem to delight in making up for that whenever they’re let near a mutable cast. Killing sprees, character assassination, blatant favoritism. If they could do that all the time, they might not have as strong an urge to. Or we might have Thomas Wayne coming back to life every couple years to kill Robin, rape Batgirl, and lop off Batman’s hand/gouge out his eye.
Doom Patrol/Metal Men
The first of the so-called co-features to be announced is the last (so far) to start. I’m mentioning it again to reiterate that this is not a strong brand. If you want the series to last, you’d do well to support it from the start. Fight cancellation before the rot sets in.
Wonder Woman: The Circle
Finally finally finally. The first trade of Gail Simone’s run hits in September, collecting issues 14-19 in time for the release of issue 36. What the Hell, DC. If you insist on publishing the HC first, with a safety net to protect the poor value a HC represents, you could at least put those HCs out in a more timely manner. When’s the second one due out, 2010? Maybe get the trade out within six months of that? Splendid!
100 Bullets #1/Vertigo Crime Sampler
One of DC’s better moves, this is another in the line of cheap reprints. $1 for a complete issue, plus previews of Dark Entries (Ian Rankin, Werther Dell’Edera) and Filthy Rich (Brian Azzarello, Victor Santos), and other, unnamed titles, totaling 48 pages (minus ads). Due out in July, oddly enough. Guess they forgot to solicit it last month, or some last minute detail had to be nailed down.
Same deal with Fables #1, which includes a preview of the… prose novel? Peter & Max. Huh. Not sure I’ll get that. Four hundred pages for $23, eight of them comic pages. That’s out in October. Probably end up like 1001 Nights of Snowfall, minus the art. Not essential reading, but good reading. Wonder if they’ll do a softcover…
Reviews
Employee’s Pick
[DC] Books of Magic Vol. 2 #15-20
Writer: John Ney Rieber
Artists: Peter Snejbjerg (issues 15-17), Peter Gross (issues 18 & 19), John Ridgway (issue 20)
Back to six-issue chunks with Playgrounds, which is either five or six parts, depending on how you count the epilogue. In this story, Tim takes Molly to the magical side of his world that he, himself, rarely visits. There he finds rules he’s forgotten and dangers he never imagined.
Barbatos has a scheme to take over the world, and it involves much of the book’s cast. Evil future Tim is strung along for the use of his power, promised that he’ll rule the world and have a new girlfriend to boot. Khara and Nikki are kidnapped to get them out of the way, while Khara’s love, the fallen angel Araquel, is coerced into taking an active role for once. Molly and our Tim get packed off to Hell, where Barbatos reasons the boy magician will be unable to help himself and find no allies. Silly demon, he’s the [s]protagonist[/s] Opener, he’s never without friends or as easily defeated as you’d like.
Piece by piece, Barbatos’ plan crumbles to bits. Initially, things appear to turn from happy to miserable, but they only turn weird before looping back to happy. It wasn’t much of a plan, really. Sow confusion, rely on several unreliable types to do as you wish. If you trick the angel well enough, if your “master” can avoid regaining his scruples without you around to nudge him about, if no one escapes traps that’ve worked on normal people before, you just might pull it off. Except it’s only a variation on manmade plots that’ve met with limited success over the years. You needn’t factor in superheroes, who do but don’t exist in this world, or magicians to doom it.
The chief appeal here is the creativity on display. Tiny tree people, called narls, tsk-tsking pink dinosaurs, miniature MEs, a troll who exacts payment for bridgecrossing in the form of stories, and No One in particular. It could be a movie. Some of the running subplots need context, but it’s basically a complete story about a boy magician, his girlfriend, and their adventure in Hell. At the end, Tim and Molly’s relationship has progressed to a point where you could say “and then they lived happily ever after,” which is all the more tempting to declare since it soon takes a turn for the worse.
Playgrounds treats adversity as an obstacle you grow stronger by clearing. You’d think Hell would be the worst thing any couple could face, but Tim is ever his own worst enemy. So far, this series has been as good or better than I remember. I’m anxious to see how certain developments play out, and whether Tim comes across as a complete buffoon or not. From the promise Tim/Molly shows here, I can see why I held out hope for so long, but was it a tease or do they have a fighting chance?
New-Type Books
[DC] Wonder Woman Vol. 3 #31
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Bernard Chang
Suddenly, all my doubts about this storyline are laid to rest. Achilles makes his first full appearance, all walking and talking and flying around on two-trunked, three-eyed elephants. He clashes with Wonder Woman briefly. Not much of a fight, too early for a real brawl. This is the warmup to establish that he’s in her weight class, so to speak. I count four character-specific subplots advancing this issue. Maybe only three; Tom is around, but only to chat and deliver exposition. The others all have significant developments. There are at least three supporting characters whose stories don’t advance this issue, which tells you how many irons Simone has in the fire with this series. Personally, I’m eager to see what happens next in every case.
You could argue the cast is too big, but most of the minor players rotate as needed. One in this issue hadn’t been seen in a while, as she wasn’t important to anything. I figure the core cast consists of Diana, Etta, and Tom. Hippolyta, the Battle Gorillas, and various Greek Gods are frequent guests, but often left out entirely. Steve Trevor probably counts as a frequent guest now, as Sarge Steel did before him, but both are absent here. There are also several enemies/allies, the Amazons in general, and Diana’s many friends and teammates, most notably the two Wonder Girls. I’d like to see more of Cassie and Donna, the Battle Gorillas are always welcome, and having the next major storyline focus on the Amazons would be great. Basically, the only thing I don’t like is that Diana’s still futzing around with the DMA. Doesn’t bother me as much as it does some, and I’d like to keep Etta and Tom around as regular cast members, but Diana’s direct involvement is pretty dull. Don’t much care about Trevor or Steel, and Diana’s handpicked team of agents from a few issues back haven’t been fleshed out (or been visible, period) enough that I’d miss them.
For my money, this is Chang’s best issue yet. I usually dread his fill-ins because, while he’s far from bad, he’s a noticeable downgrade from Lopresti. His Wonder Woman is especially off. Not so here. If he starts drawing this well all the time, I won’t mind him filling in every two or three issues. He’d be a solid regular penciler if Lopresti had to leave, though I imagine a monthly schedule would rush him, putting us back to square one. I’m not sure whether he’s improved or changed his style or taken more time drawing this issue. You can tell it’s Chang by the noses, but for the most part, there’s not as pronounced a stylistic difference between his and Lopresti’s work. The most notable exception is a closeup shot of Diana’s reaction to one of this issue’s big reveals (there are, like, three huge ones). She has that plain housewife look to her, with the long nose and too-straight hair.
We finally learn who Genocide is. I… did not see that coming. Makes sense, but I’d have guessed pretty much everyone before her. I wonder who all knew about it, and if Cheetah knew, how she managed to keep quiet. You’d think she’d shout it out loud every chance she got.
[DC] Secret Six Vol. 4 #9
Writer: Gail Simone
Penciler: Nicola Scott
A Battle for the Cowl tie-in. That can’t hurt sales, even if it is yet another nonevent. This one’s a real crossover, and a natural choice with Bane and Catman in the cast. Probably the best comic under the BftC banner, for what it’s worth.
Batman’s “dead,” and there’s a scramble to take up his mantle. This issue is less about whether Bane or Catman could fill Bruce’s shoes and more about why they can’t. Not that they want to. No, perish the thought. Technically speaking, if you want the whole BftC story, you don’t need this. It’s important to this series, the way Batman’s vacation affects the book’s cast, but you aren’t going to learn anything new about the Bat-Fight here. It’s your regular old, run of the mill, amazingly good comic.
Terrorists are kidnapping kids, Bane wants to stop them, Catman and Ragdoll tag along for their own reasons. It’s a throwaway plot, an excuse to get the characters into Gotham and explore their motivations. It also serves to bring Bane fully back into the cast in a relatively sane capacity. That and give Ragdoll a bevy of choice lines. I love him so.
This makes two standalone issues in a row, each featuring half the team, with Ragdoll pulling double duty for comedy purposes. I’d like to see a similar structure continue. Long, major story arc followed by one or more breather issues. One of the best ways to plot a series.
Back Issues
None this week.
Trade
[Oni] North World Vol. 1: The Epic of Conrad
Writer/Artist: Lars Brown
I suspect I’m missing something. That or this is as bad as it looks. One of those stories that starts out in a direction so misguided it has to be misdirection, except it’s not. I kept reading and reading, expecting the curtain to rise and reveal that these people are playing an RPG in the real world, and that’s why the characters, settings, and plot are so shallow. All of this could easily be explained by a players’ Gamemaster who lets his PCs powergame. You keep the game in the background as a bit of quasi-fantasy, and go about telling a proper story with three-dimensional characters. Not that fantasy characters can’t be 3D, their world deep and their troubles as grave as anyone’s. But that’s not the setup here, and my first thought was to give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume he had a story worth telling.
Once it became clear that he didn’t, I stuck with it to see if the main character was the unlikeable Marty Stu he seemed to be. The answer: pretty much, yeah. You could argue that Brown has a slow burn character arc in mind, where the flat protagonist whose entire world revolves around him eventually gives us a reason to like him as much as most of the other characters. I’m sure George Lucas would agree this deserves more than one volume. To be fair, there are people who dislike him, and he has genuine, glaring flaws. Flaws are nearly all he has, so I couldn’t seriously call him a Stu.
Still, he has this bizarre aura around him that makes most people nice to him for no reason. One scene has him tackle a guy to the ground, tie him up, and accuse him of plotting to summon a demon. No apologies and one panel later, the guy offers him coffee and jumps at the chance to help him find the real demon summoner. Are we meant to see this guy as hopelessly pathetic? Because I do. Same with the novice adventurer who follows our hero, Conrad, around in the opening, proclaiming how “awesome” he is when Conrad isn’t doing so himself. They initially seem to be partners, but the novice takes no part in the action, helpfully points out that he’s only there for Conrad to impress, isn’t the least bit bothered by this fact, and is never seen again.
Let’s look at the world again. It’s meant to be an RPG – there’s a character sheet in one scene, one of several allusions – but without the ties to reality. There are several ways to make that work, most of them involving humor, but Brown chooses to play it straight, using the RPG setting as an excuse for inconsistent technological levels. There are ham radios (used by hobbyists) but no telephones, swords but no guns. Cars, streetlights, gas stoves, sci-fi novels… Basically, it’s modern society except when it’s more convenient to the story not to be. Towns are perfectly normal, but a feudal government is implied. Communication is limited since cell phones and video cameras would screw up that whole mysterious legend thing with bards singing your praises and your tale growing in the telling.
After four chapters, Conrad begins to flash what might be character growth, and Brown seems to realize that several supporting characters have more to them than the paper-thin protagonist. However, any growth is called into question by the demon summoner’s claim that he’s influenced Conrad with bad vibes. Whether Conrad’s questioning of his life comes from within or has merit regardless is rendered moot by the ending. First, his ex-girlfriend, who is far more together than him and set to marry a guy who’s also more together than him, throws herself at him because, um… adventure? He pushes her back to her fiance, ’cause he’s better than that. He’s also better than the local tough guy, who comes picking a fight on the next page. Conrad tells him so, in so many words, claiming “I’m not gonna fight you.” Next page, they’re fighting.
There are moments where I think maybe this could work in retrospect. With enough apologizing, filling in the blanks, and subsequent superior volumes, you could make a passable argument for this being readable. Competently done, it’s still unremarkable. A hamfisted mesh of a stock fantasy world and modern reality, where one of the worst characters (and not in an interestingly evil way) is the star, and no one does anything without it relating to him, as though they’ve no lives or purpose outside of their part in Conrad’s life.
Truncation
Books of Magic – Full of fun ideas, with a cinematic feel and pacing that allows for a story that’s as self-contained as it can be while tying into the rest of the series.
Wonder Woman – Exceptional fill-in art and several welcome plot developments. This arc continues to fire on all cylinders.
Secret Six – It’s awesome. Feign surprise.
North World – Terrible. No, worse than that. Forgettable.
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