Review Date: 12/12/2008
Welcome back to the Good Kingdom!
Due to an unforeseen computer glitch, our Uncanny
X-Men 504 review wasn't included in last week's column,
so we begin with that review below, followed by reviews
of two DC comics each scripted by the team of Palmiotti
and Gray, then finishing-up with an unexpected new
comic from the pen of Jeph Loeb:
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Uncanny
X-Men #504
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Matt Fraction: Writer
Terry Dodson: Penciler
Rachel Dodson: Inker
Justin Ponser: Colors |
The latest Uncanny X-men issue is written
by Matt Fraction with art by the team of Terry and
Rachel Dodson. I hadn't read an X-Men comic
in a long time and the cover featured five beautiful
women, so I immediately decided to make it an all-Marvel
comic book review week!
This is the first issue of a new storyarc entited
"Lovelorn." Page one of this issue gives the reader
a nice, quick summary of recent X-Men activities;
they've relocated from Westchester to San Francisco,
where they've recently been battling the Hellfire
Cult, a street gang led by a psychic Mutant named
Empath.
There are three alternating sub-plots in this issue.
In one, a heartbroken Colossus is moping around
the city and unexpectedly discovers that a mutant
who we learn in flashbacks tortured his father (and
possibly Colossus) is alive and dangerously-well is
San Francisco. In the second plotline, Scott
a.k.a. Cyclops allows Emma Frost to enter his subconscious
to try and learn what's bothering him. We learn
in the first page summary that in the previous battle
with the Hellfire Cult, he discovered that his ex-wife
is still alive, and he's obviously keeping this information
to himself. What Emma discovers when she pokes
around in Scott's psyche lends new meaning to the
phrase "boxing-up your emotions," to say the least.
The third plotline gives us The Beast and Angel
visiting Argentina to try and recruit a Dr. Bradley,
co-creator of the original Human Torch, to join the
X-Men. This is an entertaining X-Men issue, although
the sub-plots differ very much in quality. The
Emma-Scott subconscious journey is funny and the most
interesting, as Emma finds our hero's subconscious
structured as an elegant hotel, with staff and guests
consisting of every gorgeous woman that Scott ever
met-I wonder what Sigmund Freud would make of this
guy!
The Colossus sub-plot is somewhat confusing. From
reading this issue alone, we have no idea why he's
so heartbroken, a key story element that really should
be referred to at least once in this issue for clarity's
sake. I found the third storyline's Dr. Bradley
to be a fascinating scientist-adventurer character
right out of a 1930's pulp magazine world. I
think it will be very interesting to see how he fits,
or doesn't fit, in working with the X-Men through
this storyarc. Perhaps regular X-Men readers
are more familiar with him, but as a sporadic reader
I had never seen him before, and writer Matt Fraction
succeeded in presenting him in a colorful and mysterious
way that hooked me into wanting to know more about
this historic throwback who functioned in the early
superhero pioneer days of the Marvel Universe.
So while the Colossus storyline gets
off to a weak start, the Emma Frost-Cyclops and Dr.
Bradley stories are top notch and carry this issue
very well. It's well worth checking this issue
out and following the rest of the storyarc to see
where this Uncanny X-Man adventure takes us
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Maelstrom
#1
Publisher: DC Comics
Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray: Writers
Phil Noto: Artist
Rob Clark, Jr.: Letters |
DC began a new Superman/Supergirl 5-issue
mini-series this week with the issuance of Maelstrom
#1. The comic is written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin
Gray, with art by Phil Noto.
Maelstrom refers to a new villainess being introduced
in this mini-series. She's a common laborer
from Apokolips who is in love with Darkseid (yeech!)
and travels to Earth with a plan to kill Superman
and bring his head back to Darkseid in order to gain
his affection and become the new Queen of Apokolips.
What a romantic, Hallmark Moment of a
story!
All kidding aside, its an interesting and fresh take
on Jack Kirby's Fourth World section of the DC Universe
interacting with the Superman Family. Major
elements of the plot line include three sub-plots:
learning about Maelstrom and her homey little corner
of creepy planet Apokolips, a detailed kick-off battle
between Supergirl and Maelstrom in which Supergirl
is stomped-on very badly and almost dies, and an extensive
follow-up dialogue scene between Superman and Supergirl
in which Superman plans a new strategy and training
effort to re-build the Girl Wonder's shattered confidence
and improve her battling ability against the Apokolips-level
foe.
One of the major pluses of this comic is Phil Noto's
art, which ranks high up among the best over the past
several years among the various Superman family comic
lines. Noto's also known for the high quality
art that he's produced in the past with Palmiotti
and Gray on the Jonah Hex western comic line (see
the following review below), and this is his first
major superhero comic art project. The nine-page battle
scene here in issue #1 between Maelstrom and Supergirl
is breathtaking; Noto's portrayal of cars tossed through
the air and building's being crumbled is cinematic,
with the action literally leaping off of the page
at the reader.
My one constructive criticism of this mini-series
is a cautionary concern that the creative team doesn't
get too caught-up in the usual Supergirl angst and
self-doubt regarding her ability to win confrontations
with villains and do good for the folks of Metropolis.
While I know that it's a necessary element in
most Supergirl storylines, given that she's just an
insecure teenager, its so prominent and overly familiar
a story element in Supergirl stories these days that
the five pages of self-doubt in this issue #1 feels
somewhat tedious and overly drawn-out.
But that one item aside, there's enough
great art, fun action and fresh story details regarding
this new DC villain and our superhero duo cousins
to make this an excellent and recommended start to
a new five-issue miniseries.
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Jonah
Hex #38
Publisher: DC Comics
Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti: Writers
Jordi Bernet: Art & Cover |
DC is currently up to issue #38 of
its current run of Western character Jonah Hex. For
the uninitiated, Jonah Hex first appeared in 1972
in All-Star Western as a Clint Eastwood-type anti-hero.
Hex was an ex-Confederate soldier who after
the Civil War headed West for many a comic book adventure.
The right side of his face was severely scarred
from pre-Civil War days. Throughout the 1970's
and well into the 1980's, Hex was a staple of the
DC Universe, eventually in the 1990's even being creatively
written into more futuristic science fiction and fantasy
storylines.
The current Hex comic series is up to issue #38, and
is written by the Jimmy Palmiotti-Justin Gray team
that's currently scripting the Maelstrom mini-series
reviewed above, with art by Jordi Bernet. The
one-issue storyline, entitled "Hell Or High Water,"
mainly consists of a detailed flashback about a Western
sheriff whose life went bad for many reasons as detailed
in this comic. The sheriff blames Hex for his
life's failures and is telling the flashback story
after having just beaten Jonah Hex in a fistfight.
He plans on killing Hex, for reasons detailed
in the flashback. How Hex gets out of this predicament
would ruin any suspense, so I won't include it in
this review.
This is a decent Western comic, of a genre that was
much more popular in the Golden and Silver ages of
comics and is rarely seen today. The writing
here is very strong, following the traditional Western
fiction story structure of lots of characters interacting
with each other both in action sequences and in scenes
of basic Western-style dialogue. Unfortunately,
Bernet's art here is not very good, or at least not
to my taste for a comic book; it's too cartoony and
sketchy in style, feeling unfinished and rough. If
the reader has no background understanding of the
Jonah Hex story, one wouldn't even notice his facial
scarring with Bernet's particular style.
While the below-average art keeps this
comic from being of high quality, the writing is so
well representative of the western fiction genre that
this comic is still a thumbs-up, and thus recommended
to modern-day fans of the underrepresented Western
comic genre.
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Ultimatum
#1
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Jeph Loeb: Writer
David Finch: Artist
Danny Miki: Inker
Steve Firchow: Colorist |
Jeph Loeb is scripting a new five-issue
Marvel Mini-Series entitled Ultimatum, so I thought
I'd end this week's column with a fourth comic book
review, of issue #1 of this series.
The plot focuses on a sudden massive storm and wall
of water that quickly submerges Manhattan. After
introducing this flood of Biblical proportions, Loeb
spends the entire comic showing just where each major
Marvel superhero team (Fantastic Four, Avengers, etc.)
was at the moment of the catastrophe and how it initially
affected them, ending in a cliffhanger introduction
of the villain behind the disaster.
This is an interesting approach to superhero storytelling,
in that Loeb is attempting to substantially feature
quite a few Marvel Universe teams in a brief five-issue
story arc. He does manage to well-balance everyone's
involvement in this introductory issue, at least setting
the stage for this large cast of characters to play-out
equally in the plot.
In contrast to the expected high quality scripting
from Loeb, the art quality badly stumbles, here. While
David Finch's penciling is fine, reminiscent of the
late great Michael Turner's style, Danny Miki's inking
is overly drab and dark to the point of annoying distraction.
The two-page spread of the storm and flood hitting
Manhattan is so overly dark that it robs the scene
of any dramatic effect. If you're an avid fan of the
various Marvel superhero teams assembled in this series,
then I'd recommend checking this storyline out. However,
if you're a casual Marvel fan like I am, find a Marvel
comic that doesn't make you squint to make-out the
scene details and enjoy your weekly comic reading
time.
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ONGOING CONTEST REMINDER!
Well, folks, after extending our most recent
contest deadline by an extra week, we still didn't get any
entries for our latest challenge, to submit your favorite
work of written fiction on the subject of comics or the comic
genre. As such, by Royal Decree, our Good King Leonardo
declares the contest null and void, and calls for all good
citizens and visitors to The Kingdom to assemble here next
week in Bongo Congo for our next contest announcement. So
e-mail an entry to Gordon_A@msn.com, again no later than midnight
on Wednesday, December 17. See you back here next Friday!
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