Unbeatable Comics From Last Week

Here's a quick roundup of the comics I read last week:

Atomic Robo Presents Real Science Adventures #4 (Red 5) is another fine entry in this anthology series, with a highlight of the continuing Bruce Lee serial, in which the late martial arts master admits recruiting Robo as a pupil because it's hard for a guy like Bruce to find a decent sparring partner.

Batman and Robin #11 (DC) sees Damian continue to work his way through past Robins by confronting Jason Todd (a rare appearance by the Red Hood outside of his own book) while the Terminus gang brands people with the bat symbol.

Before Watchmen: Minutemen #2 of 6 (DC) features the team coming together for the first time and probably sees Darwyn Cooke give more characterization to Silhouette than any previous appearance.  (Perhaps more notable given that Before Watchmen collaborator J. Michael Straczynski did a version of the character in his own epic The Twelve.)

Charmed #22 (Zenescope) makes a little more sense than the last issue for readers who haven't exactly been following the series regularly, especially as concerns the return of Prue and her relationship to the Charmed Ones.

Demon Knights #11 (DC) moves the story along more than some issues, with a huge push from King Arthur and assist from the first appearance of Morgaine La Fey.

Peter Panzerfaust #5 (Image) moves the boys along to Paris, where they discover their Nazi troubles are far from over.

Saucer Country #5 (Vertigo) may be the best issue of the series so far, showcasing the cleverness of Arcadia as she kills two birds with one stone, learning more about what happened to her during a hypnotherapy session without letting on what she actually remembers to a duplicitous psychiatrist.

The Shade #10 of 12 (DC) demonstrates our antihero doing pretty much the same thing against the enemies who set Deathstroke against him in the first issue.

It All Comes To This!

THE MAGDALENA #12 (Top Cow)

I’ve been visiting Comic Book Resources for a couple years now, as it’s become my major touchstone to the major goings-on of the comic book world, and every now again it’ll motivate me to read something I hadn’t previously planned on checking out.  It happened recently with HITMAN, and now again with Ron Marz, who has a regular column there.  When talking about THE MAGDALENA, a series I had no intention of reading (and only had experience with via a one-shot crossover with Daredevil a few years back), he made it just compelling enough to rouse my interest.  I’d previously assumed that it, along with every other Top Cow character, was still basically the flimsy pinup book the whole line was originally conceived as.  Marz has been writing for the company for several years now, but I assumed he was basically slumming it (I retain a great amount of respect for his Green Lantern work).  Also, it was just plain easier to keep on assuming that, as it allowed me to limit my reading pool.  Then he talked about the project like it really meant something to him, and so it seemed like it might mean something to me, too (this is sometimes, but always, the case with passion projects).  Magdalena is a DA VINCI CODE kind of gal, the descendent of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, now a protector of the Church.  Well, it turns out she also fights dragons.  I never really believed that the character’s adventures could be all that religious, because she’s still mainstream.  The art is surprisingly standard (something Top Cow probably switched to years ago).  If this were published by DC, no one would really consider it out of place.  Marz doesn’t really dig very deep into his story, and I don’t say that as someone who couldn’t figure out what was going on having only read the one issue, but rather as someone who read it and figured it to be fairly light storytelling.  One of those not-bad-could-have-been-better sort of deals.  I have no particular regrets, though.  Still worth a look, and I can see where it was probably a tad more interesting for those who read the rest of the series, cancelled after poor readership and many creative delays, unfortunately.  In another reality, I bet I was a fan.

PETER PANZERFAUST #4 (Image)

The latest issue of Peter Pan in WWII sees the erstwhile lost boys laying low with the Darlings and has a great deal of depth to it, a gratifying issue for someone who still wasn’t sure if their faith in the series was unfounded.  Almost every Image book is touted as a creative triumph only Image would have published (the reality is that Image publishes just about anything, and rarely makes sure it’s really going to stand out or amount to something), so there was no guarantee that something that sounded intriguing was actually going to be.  This book is.  I like Peter Pan, yes, and would’ve been interested one way or another, at least to sample, but this is the kind of issue that proves that there was no mistake, that this series really does have something to say, not just about Peter Pan in a different context, or about war, but both, and beyond even that, and that’s what really makes this book work.  This is the issue to persuade anyone to read it, for any reason they like.

RASL #14 (Cartoon)

Hard to believe there’s only one issue left of this Jeff Smith series.  Smith is best known for BONE, the novelty that turned into epic fiction and one of the biggest cult hits in comic book history.  I tried to argue with Tim at Heroes & Dragons my disappointment that RASL hasn’t gotten anywhere near the kind of interest BONE garnered.  He didn’t really seem to understand what I meant, but I can be a little obsessive about quality projects getting their due (which may be why I can never seem to focus on any one quality project, because I identify too many of them for my own good).  I originally believed that fans who loved BONE loved Smith enough to embrace, even at a diminished capacity, his next project, but that simply hasn’t been the case.  Perhaps RASL is a little too different, a little more ambitious than those fans were anticipating.  Then again, who seriously believed that someone like Smith had another great big idea in him?  It’s not uncommon for creators to have only one sure thing in their arsenal, and it’s just as easy to assume that this really is all there is to believe.  And maybe that’s something of what’s happened to RASL (or maybe I’m simply jumping the gun, and its popularity will rise in the collected edition, much as what happened with BONE).  Anyway, it’s a tale of science gone amok, parallel worlds, Nikola Tesla, and a guy’s enduring love for the woman he lost, and found again.  All that’s coming to a close, and this issue sort of suggests how.  I will leave concluding thoughts for the final issue.  

Many Happy Returns

ATOMIC ROBO PRESENTS REAL SCIENCE ADVENTURES #2 (Red 5)

I haven’t read a new Atomic Robo adventure science Free Comic Book Day.  Excuse me, let me clarify, FCBD 2011.  I didn’t read this year’s installment, because for the first time in five years, I missed FCBD.  Heroes & Dragons doesn’t participate.  I may ask them if they can at least get me copies of the free comics I wanted (the annual Atomic Robo offering, plus my regular dose of free DC).  Anyway, back to the matter at hand, I’ve just read Atomic Robo, which I’ve enjoyed doing for four years, give or take, now.  His adventures have been among the most clever material I’ve ever read in a comic book, as if BONE had never gone into deep fantasy, and remained lighthearted.  It’s primarily been the work of writer Brian Clevinger and artist Scott Wegener, but the distinctive appearance of the character has long inspired fan art, and so it was only a matter of time before Wegener actually gave way to other artists.  REAL SCIENCE ADVENTURES is essentially an anthology title that accomplishes exactly that, Clevinger delivering exactly the same kind of witty, sparse storytelling, and our first chance to see variations on the basic style already well-established (there are six paperback collections if you’d like to see for yourself).  There are clear parallels between Robo and Hellboy, but whereas Hellboy is involved in fairly steep mythology and franchise at this point, Robo is still his trademark blissfully carefree self, like the most pure form of what a comic book should be.  In fact, if that’s how you want to consider Atomic Robo, then I would encourage and endorse that view!

AVENGING SPIDER-MAN #7 (Marvel)

At the start of the year, I rather pithily dismissed the launch of this series, but now I get to benefit, so I’m going to quickly and quietly reverse my position, if only for one issue.  I’m a big fan of Stuart Immonen (and his frequent collaborator and wife, Kathryn), but until this issue I haven’t seen the Marvel version of Stuart Immonen compare favorably to the transcendent version I enjoyed at DC at the end of the last millennium.  I would go so far as to say that version of Stuart Immonen as one of the best creators of his generation, both as writer and artist.  The Marvel version of Stuart Immonen has tried a variety of ways to be the exact opposite of that Stuart Immonen, and suffice it to say, I really don’t see the point.  So it was with great pleasure that I saw this issue, which features Spidey teaming up with She-Hulk in a throwback adventure in so many ways.  It’s at once an argument that Stuart should do Peter Parker (he did Pete once before, in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, but that was Bendis Spider-Man, not Immonen Spider-Man), and that maybe he wouldn’t be such a bad fit for She-Hulk, either (and yes, I acknowledge that Kathryn was the writer of this tale and not Stuart, but for me, when Stuart’s art is the art I best associate with Stuart, the whole story becomes associated with him).  So, Marvel, take note, or if you don’t, then at least let Stuart notice that at least some of his fans are.  This might have been a random issue of a series that doesn’t really seem to have a coherent point to it, but its significance is greater than you can imagine.

HISTORY OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE (Marvel)

One of Marvel’s periodic attempts to chronicle its own fictional history in a journalistic fashion, this comic is also evidence that Marvel has produced many, many stories with a bare minimum of coherence, which may be fun to read at the time, but don’t actually make up a history that inspires a lot of confidence.  This is what people think of when they think of comic books, and maybe that helped THE AVENGERS wildly succeed as a movie, but it’s not a lot to take seriously, unless you don’t look very closely.  A DC version of this would read differently, is all I’m saying.  I know that MARVELS managed to make this kind of history lesson look remarkably impressive, and maybe the same thing could be done today with the same effect, but to see how many times Marvel has changed characters and attempted to kill them off, only to backpedal and still pretend that every single story its ever told actually exists in continuity, well…to a perpetual skeptic who can still appreciate the odd story, it just beggars the mind.  Fans really prefer, on general majority, Marvel to DC?  Maybe it’s because Marvel does the cliché comic better than anyone, I don’t know.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but every now and again, it’s probably worth living up to the hype instead of coasting on reputation.  Just saying…

JUSTICE LEAGUE #9 (DC)

Speaking of which, this is a book that many fans seem to assume is doing exactly that, when it’s doing anything but.  Geoff Johns has been building a coherent story since the launch, and this is an issue that really rewards faith in that, even if you haven’t always been, pardon me, a true believer.  His angle has from the start been about the world’s perception of the League which is why Steve Trevor is relevant as a character for the first time in decades, and why a new villain named Graves (for the moment?) may be the most significant new adversary for the team since Prometheus, emerging first as an anonymous cheerleader who literally wrote the book about the team, and then became embittered and disillusioned, an arc Mark Waid tried to do in THE KINGDOM, but which here may actually work.  The best comic book stories in this millennium will always tell stories on at least two levels: 1) from the ordinary perspective of the characters involved, and 2) from the greater perspective of how that story relates to the world the characters live in, which more or less means they work on objective and subjective levels.  There are many ways to do this, and Geoff Johns has perfected his, first with Green Lantern, and now with the Justice League.  Sit back and enjoy the ride.

NIGHTWING #9 (DC)

Random attacks by the Talons in “Night of the Owls” continue, and for Nightwing, they’re surprisingly personal.  Kyle Higgins continues to exploit his opportunity to give the Grayson family line the same amount of depth writers have been giving the Waynes for years, so that Dick Grayson is no longer just the orphaned son of circus performers who served as a useful surrogate for Bruce Wayne’s war on crime, but rather someone with a rich history of his own.  In fact, Scott Snyder seems to have unwittingly ceded the most relevant part of his epic to his partner in crime.  This issue reveals both the strengths and the weaknesses in the concept of the Court of Owls, how random an opponent they really are, and how convoluted it is to make them relevant in the way they’re supposed to be.  Higgins, though, makes it work in surprising fashion, and it would do well for future Nightwing writers to remember this issue.  This is a greater concern than you’d think, because most new Nightwing writers tend to ignore what’s come before them (there are exceptions, but then if there weren’t, there wouldn’t be a rule).  What Higgins is really doing here is establishing once and for all that Dick Grayson is a viable character in his own right.  I for one hope that Higgins remains onboard for many years to come.

PETER PANZERFAUST #3 (Image)

I’ve been intrigued by this title ever since I learned of its existence.  This is the first issue I’ve actually been able to read, but I’m still infinitely glad and gratified.  Peter Pan as a cultural icon is fascinating, the first time in pop entertainment where a child is held up as an ideal, even if he’s a deeply flawed one, suggesting that youth and experience are not always mutually exclusive in surprisingly profound ways.  Of course, one of the distinctions in the traditional story is Peter’s relationship with Wendy, and by sheer coincidence, this issue of PETER PANZERFAUST, a vision of the character by Kurtis Wiebe that recasts him into WWII, is the introduction of Wendy into the narrative.  Sometimes luck really does work that way.  I don’t know how long this series can last, but I’ll be a faithful reader for as long as possible.

SAUCER COUNTRY #3 (Vertigo)

Not surprisingly, this is going to be a series that deepens its own mythology with every new issue, exploring and meditating on the same themes as they unfold, one narrative and vision, which just so happens to be pretty profound.  What is the proper relationship one should have with fringe experiences?  Like the TV show FRINGE, SAUCER COUNTRY does not have easy answers, but Paul Cornell wastes no time getting beyond that and plunging deeply into his story.  Maybe things won’t happen very quickly, but they’ll be interesting.

THE SHADE #8 (DC)

I’m still shocked that most fans have skipped out on this one, but pleased that DC saw fit to give James Robinson a full year to explore one of the more fascinating elements of his late, critically acclaimed STARMAN series, a reformed villain with a rich history and a thorny future, all of which is intertwined in this story.  I’ve missed three issues since the last time I was able to get my hands on THE SHADE, and you’ve got to know that ensuring I didn’t miss the rest of it was one of my primary concerns in opening a box at Heroes & Dragons. So then, here we go again.