Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde #1 (Marvel)
From September 2015
writer: Sam Humphries
artist: Alti Firmansyah
The benefit of all the Secret Wars nuttiness is that it opened opportunities for some unexpectedly good storytelling. I mean, the best thing to come out of Secret Wars was definitely the Secret Wars version of a sequel to Civil War, but there was other good stuff, too, even stuff that fully embraced the nuttiness, like Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde.
Listen, I had no idea these two had any kind of history together. It probably happened when Brian Michael Bendis was writing both Guardians of the Galaxy and All-New X-Men. Anyway, thanks to Secret Wars nuttiness, not only do they get a reprise, but only one of them knows their history together, and Star-Lord gets to do a lot of crazy stuff along the way, too.
Such as: Calling himself Steve Rogers. Singing Disney songs (corporate synergy, thy name is Marvel!). Especially singing Disney songs. Because in the reality where Star-Lord finds himself, Disney songs don't exist. (Never mind that people usually love to hear music they already know.)
This is the kind of nuttiness that works because it thoroughly embraces its nuttiness. Not in a Deadpool way, that doesn't take anything seriously. Or any other wacky Marvel character currently embracing the Deadpool conceit (there's lots of them, folks). No, this is good old-fashioned storytelling.
And I'm absolutely not surprised to see Sam Humphries writing it. Granted, my experience with Humphries is still fairly limited and recent, but this totally makes sense as a Sam Humphries project. He may vary considerably in tone, but the Humphries pattern begins to emerge: he totally embraces whatever it is he's writing. This is a very, very good thing.
Even when it's complete nuttiness.
Showing posts with label Star-Lord. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star-Lord. Show all posts
Monday, October 3, 2016
Monday, February 16, 2015
Reading Comics 154 "Blasts II"
My local comics shop tricked me into buying more comics. Yeah, tough gig. They were holding a sale on the bins they've been filling with recent comics that needed to be removed from the shelves in order to make room for more comics. These comics were already discounted. They told me the discount increased, and so I took another deep dive. The results:
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.
Star Trek New Visions: Annual 2013 "Strange New Worlds" (IDW)
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.
Star-Lord: Annihilation - Conquest (Marvel)
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.
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.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Reading Comics #123 "Paging John Carter"
 |
| via Wikipedia |
No, not that John Carter (Noah Wyle's doctor from ER), but this one:
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| via Gonzo Geek |
Now, as a comics fan I'm more familiar with this concept when it comes in the form of Adam Strange, a DC character who has never really been a major part of that landscape but has been prominent enough that anyone who knows DC should at least be familiar with him. As the lead character in Guardians of the Galaxy (both the upcoming movie and in the comics), Star-Lord...has not exactly been the Marvel equivalent, though a lot of people want you to think so. He was completely obscure until a few years ago, when Brian Michael Bendis dug him out of the archives to lead the current Guardians initiative.
Tears for Heaven is one of those periodic reprint one-shots that Marvel does, collecting some older material that wouldn't necessarily suit a trade collection. I got a couple Thanos releases this way from stories that weren't Infinity [Fill-in-the-Blank], and those were all worth reading. I assumed this would be, too. I figured, if Marvel has such faith in this character, maybe he's got some hidden gems behind him.
He really doesn't, apparently.
I would've used some art from the interior, as I've been doing lately, but this misleading cover is as good as that gets. It's not the fact that some of the stuff inside is black-and-white, but that it's completely generic material. Maybe I reread this stuff later and derive some actual enjoyment from it, and maybe it remains..."meh" material. That's really disappointing to discover.
Tears for Heaven is one of those periodic reprint one-shots that Marvel does, collecting some older material that wouldn't necessarily suit a trade collection. I got a couple Thanos releases this way from stories that weren't Infinity [Fill-in-the-Blank], and those were all worth reading. I assumed this would be, too. I figured, if Marvel has such faith in this character, maybe he's got some hidden gems behind him.
He really doesn't, apparently.
 |
| via Previews World |
Included is a typically overblown Marvel write-up of how awesome Star-Lord is supposed to be from a previous reprint special edition, plus covers from '90s attempts to revive him, among other bonus material. There are a couple of other Star-Lord reprint specials from this Guardians push. I wonder and/or hope they have better material, but I've been scared off. This may be why the majority of people who watch comic book movies don't read actual comic books, because they're afraid the source material is exactly like this.
Fortunately, I had another Not John Carter/Not Adam Strange moment in Mark Millar's Starlight. At the same time Marvel was relaunching the Guardians comic, they were also relaunching Nova, which is kind of Marvel's Green Lantern (or perhaps Darkstars). The first issue of that relaunch (one of precious few written by Jeph Loeb) was one of the best comics I read last year. Easily.
Starlight, as it turns out, is a lot like that issue, but expanded.
Both Nova #1 and Starlight are about the John Carter/Adam Strange/Star-Lord experience years after the fact, when the cosmic adventurer has returned home and is just another human again, and no one (in Nova's poignant case, the guy's own son) particularly believes he really experienced all those cool things. I was disappointed when the second issue of the Nova reboot dropped the drama in favor of fairly generic cosmic adventuring (kind of the new version of what I found in Tears for Heaven, then), so to find something like Starlight is very, very welcome.
 |
| via Comic Book Movie |
The writer is Mark Millar. This is apparently the first time he is going to be a label here at Comics Reader, but this isn't the first time I've read him. Chances are you known him best from the Kick-Ass comics and/or movies. He was also responsible for the Wanted comics that...bear no real resemblance to the later movie, and at one time had a close working relationship with Grant Morrison (they collaborated on Aztek and The Flash among other projects). Lately, thanks to the huge success of Kick-Ass, he's been working virtually exclusively (okay, pretty much exactly exclusively) on his Millarworld comics.
The whole reason I looked at Starlight at all is because I haven't really read a lot of these efforts, and I figured they were worth it. This one was definitely worth it. Another recent Image series (lately he's been releasing most of his comics through Image although he still has some, like Kick-Ass, over at the Marvel imprint Icon) I've been enjoying in recent years is another space comic, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga. If you like Saga you'll like Starlight, too, which is saying something because Saga has been one of the best comics being published since it debuted.
Usually when I sample a comic I don't pick up more than one issue at a time. I looked at Starlight long enough where I figured it was worth the gamble of snatching up the first two at the same time. It really was. It's really good. Best new comic of the year kind of good.
The whole reason I looked at Starlight at all is because I haven't really read a lot of these efforts, and I figured they were worth it. This one was definitely worth it. Another recent Image series (lately he's been releasing most of his comics through Image although he still has some, like Kick-Ass, over at the Marvel imprint Icon) I've been enjoying in recent years is another space comic, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga. If you like Saga you'll like Starlight, too, which is saying something because Saga has been one of the best comics being published since it debuted.
Usually when I sample a comic I don't pick up more than one issue at a time. I looked at Starlight long enough where I figured it was worth the gamble of snatching up the first two at the same time. It really was. It's really good. Best new comic of the year kind of good.
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