Reading Comics 218 "Reading the Free Comics from FCBD 2018"

I never did get around to offering my thoughts on all the free comics I got on Free Comic Book Day this year.  Here we go!

Avengers/Captain America (Marvel)

This one previews Jason Aaron's Avengers as well as Ta-Nehisi Coates' Captain America.  Amusingly or not, but Aaron's idea closely parallels the Justice League movie, that same basic parallel it shared with Lord of the Rings, an alliance between disparate factions in the past to achieve an impossible goal that needs to be repeated in the present.  (I don't care what anyone says, I dig the Justice League movie.)  Coates, as always, leans pretty heavily into rhetoric you either agree with or don't, with hardcore American figures depicted as the bad guys.  I never understood how Marvel could've turned Captain America, of all people, into someone who represented anything less than the American ideal.  I get that the popular consensus turned toward cynicism in the Vietnam era, and that Captain America subsequently became a symbol of distrust in government, frequently on the run from the government, most recently in the original Civil War event and its movie version.  But shouldn't he also be capable of depicting a transcendence of such divisive thought?  Wasn't that the point of realizing Secret Empire probably went too far?  I don't know...

Barrier #1 (Image)
The latest concept from Brian K. Vaughan has had trouble connecting with readers since its FCBD preview.  A lot of them think the concept may just be too on-the-nose.  Vaughan attempts to tackle the current immigration troubles by bringing literal aliens into the picture.  He uses Spanish for half of the narrative to drive home his point, without translation, hoping the landscape format and Marcos Martin on art and the by-now trademark Image coloring filter will help sell everything.  What he doesn't seem to realize that all his biggest hits (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, Saga) have always depended on a sensational concept with strong lead characters to anchor them.  If he attempts to forge ahead without first establishing the appeal of the characters, above and beyond concept, he's always going to have a problem.

Marvel Rising #0
This one wasn't really a FCBD release, but it was still free.  Devin Grayson has finally staged her full-time comeback.  She's been drafted into writing girl comics since she started working on it, and that's what we have here, another extension of the G. Willow Wilson/Ms. Marvel era.  I think Grayson has much greater potential than being pigeonholed like this, and I wish Marvel would figure out how to do Ms. Marvel-inspired comics without trying so desperately to outright duplicate Wilson's comics.  But it's still nice to have Grayson back.

Maxwell's Demons #1 (Vault)
This was by far my biggest disappointment from FCBD 2018.  I know writer Deniz Camp from the MillarWorld forums.  He's a big Grant Morrison fan.  Maxwell's Demons is clearly his attempt to write a Grant Morrison comic.  But he's no Grant Morrison.  Sometimes there's a huge difference between being someone's fan and being able to emulate them.   There's a ton that goes into being Grant Morrison.  There's his many inspirations, his background, his early efforts, and how all of that combined to creating someone who thoroughly understands storytelling, even if it sometimes overwhelms readers.  In fact, if you really wanted to emulate Morrison, it isn't really a style but the idea of being so thoroughly immersed in a concept that it will overwhelm readers.  All Camp has is trotting after style.  When I first heard the title of the series, I hated it.  Apparently it plays off a philosophical concept.  But it still makes a lousy title for a comic.  I don't mean to bag on Camp.  I would strongly suggest he go back to the drawing board, come up with his own style, figure out what a Deniz Camp story looks like.  This is something he'd likely resent.  He's got a lot of people who've told him his current results are fantastic.  People lie. 

The Amazing Spider-Man/Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel)
Nick Spencer, hoping everyone quickly forgets the controversies of Secret Empire and how long Dan Slott wrote Spider-Man, previews his run by getting Peter Parker acquainted with his new roommate...the supervillain Boomerang.  There's also an outline of various Guardians of the Galaxy happenings.  For me it was a fun read, but other fans found an outline to be disappointing.

Starburns Presents #1 (SBI Press)
"Starburns" is a reference to Community, now Dan Harmon's second most famous cult creation, after Rick & Morty.  Given that comics came up as part of Community's vast tapestry of quirk, it seems inevitable that Harmon eventually got into them.  I had to see the results.  He and other creators, including Patton Oswalt, deliver what's essentially an underground comics anthology.  I guess that about tracks.

Baby Teeth #1 (Aftershock)
This one was one of the bonus freebies from a prior freebie event, in this instance Halloween ComicFest 2017.  Donny Cates is one of those writers who emerged after I stopped being able to read comics widely, so I never really got to experience him despite seeing his name referenced repeatedly.  Aftershock as a company has sort of been trying to become the new Image, but Baby Teeth sort of reads like a Vertigo comic, which I guess is appropriate, as Image turned into Vertigo after backing off superheroes...

Batman: Halloween ComicFest #1 (DC)
From the same ComicFest as the above, this one's a reprint of Batman #7, an issue written by Steve Orlando rather than Tom King, part of the "Night of the Monster Men" crossover event.

Hellboy and the BPRD 1953 (Dark Horse)
Another Halloween ComicFest 2017 comic.  Mike Mignola didn't just create Hellboy, he created a whole landscape, and a distinct genre of comics, and that's clear every time I read something from it.  I don't think I'd want to read it all the time, but it's always fun to dabble.

Injustice 2 (DC)
This is another freebie unrelated to FCBD, or any other specific event, just promotional material for the Injustice games and comics. 

Lady Mechanika Halloween ComicFest 2017
Joe Benitez is one of the early millennial Big Two creators who opted to go their own way.  He eventually struck on this self-published creation, which shares a lot in common with Mignola's Hellboy, and has been developing a similar cult status. 

Runaways #1 (Marvel)
Another Halloween ComicFest 2017 entry, this one reprints the first issue of Brian K. Vaughan's Runaways, the innovate title that saw young heroes emerge from the shadow of their supervillain parents.  Like the Young Avengers, the Runaways have struggled to move on from their high profile origins, which is kind of a shame.  Probably because it's hard finding the true standouts when you launch a whole team of new characters without singling out a lead character in advance.  For the Young Avengers, it turned out to be Kate Bishop's Hawkeye.   These guys?

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Mirror Broken (IDW)
This is a FCBD comic, but from 2017 rather than 2018.  I wish IDW had been able to maintain its tight creative focus from its first years publishing Star Trek comics.  Over time that focus slipped.  When I first heard there was going to be a Next Generation Mirror Universe comic, I immediately slapped my forehead; we know what this era of the Mirror Universe looks like, thanks to Deep Space Nine, and there really isn't much room for the classic Mirror Universe in it.  Humans have basically become outlaws and slaves.  Mirror Broken skirts this by suggesting there was some kind of Imperial remnant cut off from the rest of the galaxy.  But it feels like an excuse; this comic is clearly written to evoke the "Mirror, Mirror" concept rather than the greater Mirror Universe. 

Star Wars: Darth Maul (Marvel)
Another Halloween ComicFest 2017 comic, it features the dude who officially marked his return in Solo: A Star Wars Story (predated by the Clone Wars cartoons).  This comic uneasily attempts to reconcile the Darth Maul who serves Palpatine with a self-determined dude.

Star Wars Reads (Marvel)
A standalone free preview of various Marvel Star Wars comics.  It didn't take long for Marvel to try and add a major new character of its own to the saga.  But I still have no idea why I should care about Doctor Aphra.  Here she references that she used to work for Vader.  Don't really know how to take that.

The Mighty Thor #1 (Marvel)
One last comic, one last entry from Halloween ComicFest 2017, featuring classic reprint material from Walt Simonson.