Comics Candy: February 2011

Once upon a time, there was Avengers, pure and simple. And that kind of meant something. It was a cherry-picked assemblage of Marvel’s mightiest heroes, all in the same book — pitted against the biggest and baddest villains.

Then they diversified, got a West Coast division, and the next time I look there are more Avengers teams (and books) than you can shake old Don Blake’s stick at. Dark, Secret, Young, Dead, Dodgy (well, I made that last one up)… it goes on and on. And now it seems everyone’s an Avenger, even members of the Fantastic Four! Uh?

But, never let it be said that I won’t or don’t judge each title on its own merits. And so, armed with a trio of current Avengers books, I sat down to consider whether the core concept — diluted as it is — still packs a punch.

The Avengers #9 (Marvel) fell way short of expectations, featuring 22 pages of people standing around in the cold and talking. Seriously, there’s not one action beat in the whole issue. It’s all set-up, and pretty dull set-up at that.

So everyone now knows there’s this Illuminati mob. Fine, okay, move on. Get to the meat of the story. But no, everyone just offers opinions on the problem at hand, namely this B-villain called The Hood who’s got his hands on two of the Infinity Gems, and then does nothing about it. Even the Hood’s story unfolds in a painfully slow series of flashbacks.

Will anything happen next issue? Frankly, I couldn’t give a damn.

Much better was Secret Avengers #9 (Marvel). Although it suffers from yet another super-solider we never knew about. It was always like Cap’s this one-off. But, oh, now he’s not, there’s another one… and another one. Sigh.

Still, the story at least moves with a solid lick as Shang-Chi (yay!) sacrifices himself to save Sharon Carter from the Shadow Council. Shang-Chi’s dad, no longer Fu Manchu, is back from the dead and being slowly reanimated, and Cap (sorry, Steve Rogers) has to stop it happening.

Meaty action and plenty of bubbling character threads, plus a seriously bad (in a good way) villain. Clearly, Secret Avengers is showing ‘The Avengers’ how it should be done.

But, even though I quite enjoyed it, The New Avengers #8 (Marvel) felt like an Avengers book too far. Maybe they should call it the Also-Ran Avengers, because that’s what it felt like. Kind of a dumping ground for everyone else who isn’t already an Avenger in one of the other books.

The extended dinner/date scene with Luke Cage and Jessica Jones felt like one of those exercises in look at my naturalistic, people-actually-talk-like-this dialog. Strangely, I don’t want that in a comic book. What I love about comic books is people don’t talk in the that drawn out, meandering, criss-crossing way that movie-makers like Tarantino would have you believe is the way people really talk.

Anyway, once it gets to the action it all livens up, but strangely offers little in the way of a compelling, must-read-next-issue conclusion, going out on yet more Cage/Jones sassy/playful bickering.

Is it me, or does DC just seem to be the only company doing ‘proper’ super-hero comics these days? Y’know, with spandex and extended fights and overblown, end-of-the-world-is-nigh dialog.

Certainly Shazam #1 (DC) ticks all the boxes. Conflicted hero (or in this case hero collective) — check. Seriously powerful big bad — check. Big fight, with heaps of collateral damage — check. Overblown plot twists — check. The closing, it’s about to get a whole lot worse, moment — check.

In short, this is pretty much the comic I wanted/expected to read amongst the Avengers books this month and didn’t get. Sure, it’s not perfect, I could nitpick, but it was sure entertaining. Hallelujah! My top of the 10 for the month.

Also pretty good is Titans #31 (DC), a little gratuitously violent for my taste, as if the abandonment of the (long defunct anyway) Comics Code has precipitated a sudden deluge of gore and decapitations, but interesting nonetheless.

I’ve always liked the Slade Wilson/Deathstroke character and I don’t mind a team of villains as the focal point of an ongoing series, but I feel there needs to be a fragment of a redeeming feature to be had somewhere.

That wasn’t on show here, but neither were people just sitting back and talking about what they should or shouldn’t do. Instead, they were doing it! Points for that.

The third of my DC trio was Green Arrow #8 (DC), which has a great central concept/conceit in the shape of this enchanted forest in the middle of Star City.

But somehow the issue failed to remember that the title of the book is ‘Green Arrow,’ not ‘The Demon’ or ‘Galahad,’ who get all the real character/action-driven meat of the issue. Green Arrow comes across as a distinctly supporting character in his own book.

And then, just in case GA was on the verge of some gasping space, in comes The Phantom Stranger to elbow him out again. What’s going to kill a book for sure is if your main character is constantly sidelined. Surely there’s more to be done with Green Arrow than this!

Marineman #2 (Image) was a light, bright breath of fresh air in an otherwise slightly staid and stodgy month.

Everything from story, to art, to colour — even the lettering — is vibrant and eye-catching here, and it’s hard not to get swept along by the sheer old-fashioned joie-de-vivre on display.

Sure, if you stop and analyse Marineman, it’s a little light on real incident or character development, but I didn’t care. I thoroughly enjoyed my dip into Ian Churchill’s ocean, and while Marineman isn’t overtly a ‘superhero’ book it obeys a lot of the genre conventions. And mercifully it doesn’t belabour its eco-friendly undercurrents. One to watch for sure.

The New York Five #1 (DC/Vertigo) is another one of those bold and defiantly different comics that, sadly, doesn’t quite come off.

The narrative is so bitty and fragmented, so rather knowingly indulgent, that you almost feel as if it was never intended for an audience, and it was just something the writer needed to get out of his system.

Strangely, it feels more about the setting (New York) than the (Five) focal characters, who comes across more as tactically placed set dressing then real, involving individuals.

Infestation #1 (IDW) is more promising than I had any right to expect, given my zombie fatigue of late. A lot of that’s down to writers Abnett and Lanning, who manage to give the crossover concept real weight and gravitas, while leavening the seen-it-all-before feeling with some bold strokes of dark humour.

Of course, amidst all the blood and bodies, characterisation is the main casualty and it’s hard to care about any of the main players and so about what’s at stake. Zombies, vampires and robots are all well and good, but without an emotional core this venture is likely to sink under its own weight. Still, entertaining enough.

Which cannot be said of the Magneto one-shot (Marvel). You just can’t believe this drivel is by the creator of American Flagg. It’s beyond poor and accomplishes nothing except to make Magneto appear rather camp. Avoid.