Batman and Robin #23.1 (DC)
Part of the 2013 Villains Month, that year's version of the annual tradition DC has of celebrating each September as an anniversary of the New 52 launch from 2011. This one was a tie-in with Forever Evil (surprisingly I had avoided such issues from the month previously), but I wanted to have a look because it was Pete Tomasi writing. On the cover Two-Face is billed as the star, and what's significant about this is that at the time, Tomasi was gearing up for the Batman and Two-Face arc, "The Big Burn," a detour from the Damian arc that will, post-Convergence, fall to Patrick Gleason to continue solo in the pages of Robin, Son of Batman. As a visual storyteller, I have full confidence in Gleason. Hopefully he have as good a grasp with the narrative, because so much has been done in the past year.
Grayson #1 (DC)
Okay, so now I've finally read the first issue! This was something that initially sold out at the shop, so by the time it was restocked I had a chance to start second-guessing how interested I was in the series. In subsequent months I've come to various conclusions, but the truth is, Grayson is pretty good. There's a whole underpinning arc to what Tim Seeley and Tom King are doing in the series, that level alone makes the proceedings intriguing. It has the proven potential for great individual stories. But history may be getting made in other ways, too. More as things develop. Also, the post-Convergence landscape has already proven one element of Grayson to have borne fruit: a new Midnighter series, after the WildStorm character served as a primary element in Seeley and King's early stories.
John Byrne already has an assured place in comics history. He's been working at one in Star Trek history as well. His previous, hand-drawn work has been impressive enough (Assignment Earth, McCoy, and Romulans), but lately he's been working on comic book photo-novels. This is the first time I've read one of these efforts myself. (Although the original Star Trek photo-novels are some of what helped me become a fan in the first place.) The results are impressive. "Strange New Worlds" functions as a sequel to Captain Kirk's first adventure, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second pilot of the original series. The fact of its place in canon, first Kirk but also featuring some characters who wouldn't appear in subsequent episodes such as Dr. Piper, is Byrne's effort at turning "Strange New Worlds" into a kind of "Menagerie," the two-part episode that repurposed the first pilot "The Cage," which also featured a different set of characters (Spock is the only one present in all casts). As in "Where No Man," "New Worlds" features the problem of Gary Mitchell, who accidentally develops god-like powers. Mitchell was Kirk's close friend, and having to eliminate his threat was a considerable challenge on multiple levels. Byrne presents a deepening of the whole experience, a good one. There's an essay on the art of photo-novels included, as well as interview with Byrne.
In conjunction with last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel put out numerous special comic book releases reprinting Star-Lord's past appearances. The last time I sampled one of them featured Peter Quill's earliest adventures, which were generic and as such, to me, terrible. Thankfully I gave these things another shot. I just read my digital copy of how the whole Annihilation thing began, so I have some context, but it hardly matters. This is the only context necessary: Annihilation - Conquest is the secret origin of the Peter Quill and pals everyone fell in love with in the movie. What a discovery! And now it only figures that Keith Giffen wrote Annihilation itself, because his more familiar imprint is all over Conquest. Brian Michael Bendis is generally credited with a lot of what Marvel has been doing at the movies, and rightly so. He's the one who took up the Star-Lord ball most recently, but without Giffen, he probably would never have thought of it. Conquest features a somewhat different team line-up, though Rocket and Groot are present and accounted for (second most surprising revelation of Conquest: at least for these specific circumstances, Groot does not only say, "My name is Groot"). This is seriously good stuff, a great, great find.
Action Comics #23.3 (DC)
This is a Villains Month release featuring Lex Luthor! You'd think there would have been a little more attention given it, given how significant Luthor was in Forever Evil and later, Justice League. And what's all the more interesting still is that it's written by Charles Soule. The Luthor here seems far less redeemable than the one in Justice League (as depicted so far), a diabolical one that tracks well with the past and present of the character. It's also nice to see Lex Luthor star in an issue of Action Comics again, after the Paul Cornell run that helped signal the character's future potential...
Superman: Doomed #1 (DC)
The "Doomed" arc, naturally, features Doomsday, and represents Scott Lobdell's last hurrah writing Superman, working in conjunction with Charles Soule (who had featured the monster in the pages of Superman/Wonder Woman) and Greg Pak. I still don't get the massive opposition to Lobdell. I think he does a great job building on existing concepts. In the post-Convergence landscape, he's got a chance to expound further on his ideas in a whole Doomed series, which speculation must suggest has some relation to this arc and/or Doomsday. What I read in this issue looked pretty good, a modern take on the Doomsday issue that takes Superman himself to another level. How exactly the whole infected-with-Doomsday thing played out, is another thing I'll have to find out...
Swamp Thing Annual #2 (DC)
Charles Soule and Swamp Thing. There's a lot that I need to catch up on, but the bits and snatches I've caught...this stuff is brilliant. It's almost as if Soule has taken the idea of the avatars Geoff Johns used in Green Lantern and took a more deliberate, intimate approach to them. Of course, not the Green Lantern avatars themselves, but various elemental ones as related to Swamp Thing. And it's always fascinating. I have no idea why I wouldn't have become dedicated from the moment I read it the first time. This annual explores more about the history of the avatars, and how they affect Alec Holland's future. I will continue reading more and more of this...
Trinity of Sin: The Phantom Stranger #14 (DC)
This is the the one I most picked up on a lark. I like the Trinity of Sin concept. As far as I can tell, it became less interesting when the three characters were finally merged in a single series. Yet this issue of Phantom Stranger proves it can work. Good to have in my collection.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.