Comics Candy: February 2010

Okay, straight up on my soap box to blow a hearty raspberry at Marvel for canning the excellent Sword after only three issues. Three issues!!! How’s that giving it a chance to build at least a bedrock audience? And what does that say about Marvel’s editorial policy if anything a little different (ie. not tied to some massive crossover event or featuring an ‘X’ in the title) is let go because it’s not selling gangbusters?

Uh, so you didn’t see that coming? Surely it’s worth supporting a few lower selling books just to encourage creative diversity. Otherwise all you get is homogenised mass-market books broadly indistinguishable from one another. Sad, truly sad!

Okay, on with the January titles, and the welcome return of Suicide Squad #67 (DC). I don’t imagine Suicide Squad sells a great deal either, but it’s different and dark and sometimes downright odd, and I unequivocally love it. Always have, right from the very earliest (modern age) incarnation.

Anyway, this is a welcome if brief return for the series, a kind of drifting one-shot that picks up the numbering from where it left off back in 1992. Okay, it’s a darn Blackest Night crossover, but I can forgive it that for the fresh chance it affords to relish this collection of homicidal misfits and the marvellous Amanda Waller who, quite literally, calls the shots.

Bring it back! Bring it back!

There weren’t actually many standouts this month, but Angel: A Hole in the World #2 (IDW) is at least a very good comic adaptation of a very good episode of the Angel TV series.

I wasn’t entirely sure how much the world needed an adaptation of A Hole in the World, but the execution by Scott Tipton and Elena Casagrande is top notch, and even if you didn’t know the TV show it works in its own right as a comic. Good set up, nice advancement of the story, some action and a nice cliffhanger-ish ending. In other words, a proper comic! Recommended.

Okay, time for another mini-rant. Kevin Smith is a very talented guy. He makes offbeat, funny films. But his comics… well, let’s just say I’m not as convinced.

Batman: The Widening Gyre #4 (DC) is a very strange beast. For a start, there’s the cover. It’s a great cover, vivid and eye-catching, featuring the Joker in boxer shorts perched on the chest of a prone Batman. Okay, I think, I’ll take a look at that. You got my attention. But… that scene features exactly nowhere in the issue! The Joker himself is mentioned once in passing. Surely this contravenes some kind of comic book Trade Descriptions Act! Really, it borders on the fraudulent, I feel, to slap an eye-candy cover on a comic that’s quite so wholly un-representational of the story inside. Shameless.

Perhaps it was felt the story needed an ulterior boost, and they were right. The oddness continues as we’re treated to an alternate Bruce Wayne/Batman who seems to have developed an unsettlingly dopey, playful edge. So instead of pretending to be a somewhat clueless playboy, he is a clueless playboy who just happens to be Batman too. Eesh.

There’s something curiously unsavoury about the whole undertaking, up to and including the fact that Batman appears, from the art at least, to be having sex with a teenager with her hair in bunches. Euuw.

In fact, the rather sub-par art throughout, with anatomy that suggests the artist has never done any actual life drawing, and has only ever mimicked other comic art, just rounds out this Golden Raspberry award nominee. Avoid.

Better by far is Aliens vs Predator: Three World War (Dark Horse). For a start, it looks great. How wonderful to have Rick Leonardi back (maybe he never went away, but it seems ages to me since I last saw anything from him). The simple yet dramatic economy of his panels really brings the pages to life. And there’s a story, a human character we might actually care about. Oh joy!

It’s baffled me why, of late, the Aliens or Predator comics have been so poorly executed, but this is completely back to the good form of the early Dark Horse AvP titles, probably because Randy Stradley is on script duties.

It sets things up pretty well, with an intriguing plot about rogue Predators who are all about the kill rather than the hunt, and have somehow ‘domesticated’ Aliens they use as the equivalent of hunting dogs. Cool.

Quite decent too is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly #7 (Dynamite). As western comics go, and I’m not the hugest fan, this seemed to tick all the right boxes, as ‘the man with no name’ becomes embroiled in a search for missing loot.

The story reads like an unfolding movie, with a lot of bad people doing bad things to each other for totally self-serving ends. The only real trouble is the incredibly murky colouring, which makes the whole thing difficult to read.

It’s a credit to Geoff Johns’ writing that I can pick up DC's Adventure Comics #509 (or #6, there seems to be some strange dual numbering thing going on) having not read a Superman title for quite some span of time, and still both grasp and enjoy the story.

I was clueless at the start, but Johns drip feeds catch-up information in a sly and unobtrusive way that aids casual punters like myself and doesn’t mean regular readers have to slog through a gruelling rehash.

The issue is well constructed and well paced, and though there’s action aplenty the character interplay remains paramount, thus ensuring there’s plenty of good meat on the bones. The art is gorgeous (just pencils and colour by the look of it) and, as opposed to Batman: The Widening Gyre, the eye-catching dino-action cover IS representational of the story inside.

Mass Effect: Redemption #1 (Dark Horse) tries hard to transition a computer game into a comic book, never the easiest of propositions, and does creditably well.

It plays out like a proper story for a start, with a mystery and a likeable protagonist and a mysterious villain.

It also sets out its stall quite clearly and legibly up front, so if — like me — you’ve never played the game it’s still something you can follow and enjoy in its own right. I can’t say I was blown away, but neither is it in any way substandard.

The same could be said of Robocop #1 (Dynamite). Not bad, quite workmanlike in fact, but not quite enough in there to really grip you and pull you along to issue #2.

On the face of it, Robocop should be a no-brainer to write. The first movie works because it balances the extreme violence and mayhem with sly, deeply dark humour and acerbic social commentary, but if you get that balance wrong, the violence just swamps everything, and you end up not particularly caring.

So a couple of Marvels to finish on: Thor #606 and Siege #1. Gotta say, Siege looks good, but I already don’t care. The whole storyline just seems to have gone on far too long, what with Dark Reign, Dark Avengers et al. And now I just want it to hurry up and end.

At least Thor seems to be using elements of Dark Reign/Siege but still, first and foremost, telling a story of Asgardians. There’s some good, meaty action, but the idea that anyone would trust Loki given his track record is increasingly tough to swallow. Maybe, Balder really just is a dope.