Reading Comics 193 "A skip week can be so dangerous..."

Covered this edition: Dark Knight III #5, Blood Feud #1, Steve Rogers: Captain America #2, The Rocketeer at War #4, We Are Robin #12, X-O Manowar Annual #1, and Heavy Metal #280.

Now, the whole point of this edition is that it comes from last week, which was a skip week for DC Rebirth, which meant there were no Rebirth titles published.  I shouldn't even have gone to the comic shop, right?  Well, I did go, and ended up finding stuff anyway...

Dark Knight III: The Master Race #5 (DC)
Admittedly, I haven't made a great effort reading the complete story, but it's always been worth checking in.  It's interesting, this issue, as Batman has been cast as a target the Kryptonians who are running amok (they escaped from the Bottle City of Kandor) trying to be gods consider him an element that needs to be eliminated in order to complete their conquest.  Batman, whether in Miller or Azzarello's voice, describes fear as his greatest ally.  "Fear is why I don't kill.  There is so much that I'm afraid of -- that we all are -- While you?  Just look at you, all -- Fearless.  You Don't stand a chance."  That reads like classic Dark Knight.  The depiction of other characters is excellent, too.  The Flash observes about Superman, "I know you were raised as a human, but every time you say, 'Oh my god,' I want to hand you a mirror."  In that particular sequence, Barry, whose feet have been crushed earlier, has been immobilized, but now he's using his speed to keep up with the Information Superhighway (remember that term?).  Who has ever thought of the Flash that way?  We see Aquaman riding majestically on a giant sea creature (I know there are plenty of people who will never lose the impression of him as a joke, but images like this are made to show us he's anything but).  But the greatest line of the issue belongs, again, to Batman: "I've never wielded an angry mob as a weapon before."  The issues ends as Batman realizes he really can't engage in the fight physically.  But it's okay, because Superman is fighting at his side again.  This really does feel like a necessary closing chapter in the Dark Knight saga.

Blood Feud #1 (Oni)
I got this one (the issue was actually released last October) because artist Drew Moss frequents the comic shop I've been going to, and I actually saw him drawing pages for this series (his editor was calling him to complain about how long it was taking).  I figured I owed Drew at least one issue.  (He just recently scored a new assignment: Jay Faerber's Copperhead, which I've sampled as part of my comiXology adventures, and I can vouch for as a result.)  The writer of Blood Feud is Cullen Bunn.  Having read this, I think I can finally contextualize Bunn for myself: he's another Scott Snyder.  Snyder first rose to prominence with American Vampire, which Blood Feud resembles in several ways, such as tone, and the presence of, well, vampires.  I've never read Bunn's Sixth Gun, the series he made his name on, but his mainstream work has always struck me as unwieldy, as if it were an ill-fit.  And maybe that's exactly what it is for him.  Not everyone is meant to write superheroes. 

Steve Rogers: Captain America #2 (Marvel)
The all-important follow-up to Steve Rogers, Agent of Hydra unexpectedly spells out exactly what's going on, and I can see where people who had no idea what was going on before last issue might not have seen this coming, because even I didn't, because it just seems too simple: it's that Cosmic Cube running around as a little girl, and Red Skull (of course Red Skull).  The issue reads better than the last one, possibly because it's so heavily centered on exposition (I'm not a reader bothered by that sort of thing) and as such the more cartoony elements of characterization are kept to a minimum (although, somewhat unfortunately, the Cosmic Cube girl suffers from it).  It's just unfortunate that this big idea was conceived, as can so easily be resolved, because the bad buy's plans always fall apart, which makes it all the more perverse to have Red Skull declaring that this time he's finally prevailed.  Yeah, right.  I'm not convinced that Nick Spencer is a much better writer than Ed Brubaker (I eventually soured on that run, although conversely acknowledge that it's probably Captain America's best-ever), but at least he gets right to the point.  Brubaker had a whole arc before he got around to explaining the Winter Soldier.  Points for speed, Spencer.

The Rocketeer at War #4 (IDW)
As an Atomic Robo fan, reading this sort of thing is kind of old hat at this point, but the Rocketeer is one of those superheroes that stands out from the pack of everyone outside the Big Two.  He even had his own movie in the '90s!  Although he's a thoroughly retro character, set in the era of WWII, Rocketeer actually dates only to 1982.  His helmet evokes Robo, but it also looks like Iron Man.  This is the character you've been looking for if Iron Man's actual comics have left you disappointed after all those movie appearances, because until recently Marvel never thought to duplicate that.  Marc Guggenheim, a screenwriter who dabbles in comics, and whom I discovered in this medium from his Resurrection, published at Oni, is the writer for this story, which centers as much on heroics as Rocketeer's effects on the ladies.  There's also a prose story, and in IDW's listings for other recent published works, Mark Russell's Apocrypha Now, a follow-up to his God is Disappointed in You.  I became a big fan of Russell from his Prez over at DC.  I will read this stuff eventually.

We Are Robin #12 (DC)
Catching up with this final issue, the group disbands after one last adventure involving a rogue member who's been convinced to participate in burglarizing Bruce Wayne, who's seen a faceless enemy of the people.  Alfred comes to the rescue, and Duke Thomas ends his days as a quasi Boy Wonder.  Some interesting observations to close out the series.

X-O Manowar Annual #1 (Valiant)
Speaking of finally figuring out Cullen Bunn, I think I finally figured out why Robert Venditti was tapped to replace Geoff Johns as the writer of Green Lantern in the New 52, because what Johns did for that franchise, Venditti did for X-O Manowar, and Valiant in general, establishing a bold new vision on which to hang further adventures across a variety of concepts.  It's just, I don't think Venditti was at all prepared to do it all over again.  Hey, not everyone is, especially when he's never left X-O, where he contends with alien armor being sported by a Visigoth who ended up as a superhero on Earth but is seen as a villain by the aliens he got it from.  The full scope of the concept is on display in this annual.  I'm glad I finally had a real look at Venditti's work.  As much as I've gotten into Valiant in the last few years, I never did get around to X-O, because I was disappointed with what I saw in X-O's early issues, and underwhelmed by Venditti's later Green Lantern work.  That's why it's always worth giving something additional chances.

Heavy Metal #280
Kind of the American version of 2000AD, this is a longstanding mature readers comics anthology magazine.  The reason I finally read an issue is because the new editor is Grant Morrison, who is also a contributor.  His story "Beachhead" is an ironic commentary on the relentlessness of military campaigns (aliens come to Earth when life is still at the bacterial phase, and the commander isn't satisfied with that as a reason to rethink his strategy).  The rest of the material is certainly interesting, in a variety of ways.  The one that strikes my fancy the most is the first installment of Mozchops' "Salsa Invertebraxa," which features some sweet poetry.  Besides that, there's Morrison's introduction, in which I have to face, all over again, the full brunt of his personality, which is always more complicated than I sometimes give him credit for.  The idealized version of Morrison, like how anyone imagines their idols, is someone much like themselves.  But Grant Morrison really is pretty wild, although he's not as gonzo as he can sometimes seem, if that makes any sense.  He's someone who's earned the confidence to voice his thoughts exactly as he thinks them, is all, and maybe isn't afraid to cater to the audience he's currently addressing, such as Heavy Metal readers...This feels like an ideal format for someone like Morrison, who's interested in the full possibilities of his chosen creative medium, with few restrictions when the story calls for it.  Not every story here is for mature readers, but none of it is particularly mainstream, without going the full underground that you might otherwise expect from material of that nature.  At any rate, I found myself capable of reading pretty much the whole thing without too much skimming, which is more than I can say for a lot of anthologies.