Comics Candy: March 2011

Lots of good weird stuff this month, if that makes any sense, as my usual eclectic choice of 10 titles yields some offbeat gems:

Let’s start with Black Terror #14 (Dynamite), which — considering I’d not so much as dipped my toe in the Project Superpowers universe before — felt surprisingly familiar and yet fresh at the same time.

For a start, the ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ are all quirky and different, and the line between them seems neatly blurred. Black Terror himself is a pretty dark character, and could have been one-dimensional, except for the neat plot contrivance of splitting him in two (“my better half”, as Black Terror himself describes his virtuous alter ego).

Eye-catching art and an economical script combine to good effect here, creating something that’s maybe more than the sum of its pulp parts. Always a good sign when I’m inspired to read on and back. My unofficial ‘top of the 10’.

But close behind is Incognito: Bad Influences #3 (Marvel/Icon), a title that bears its pulp roots even more demonstratively. Of course, you know you’re in safe hands with (writer) Ed Brubaker, and you get the sense that Incognito is full strength Brubaker as opposed to the Brubaker-lite you sometimes get when he’s writing ‘company-owned’ characters.

Here, the heroes and villains are virtually indistinguishable from one another, to the extent that Overkill’s quest is to find an undercover agent who’s gone native, and the masked vigilante stalking super-powered quarry is a product of Overkill’s own brutal excesses.

Life is cheap in the world of Incognito and bad stuff happens despite or even because of our ‘hero’, creating a refreshing disequilibrium in the reader. You honestly don’t know where this is going next, and how often can you say that of comics these days?

Also pretty well out of left field is The Mission #1 (Image). I almost groaned aloud when our protagonist, Paul Haskell, is confronted in an underground car park by ‘mysterious stranger’ Gabe/Gabriel, muttering about a “battle between good and evil”. I was prepared to abandon all hope there and then, but actually the rest of this first issue plays out a little less predictably.

Haskell wrestles convincingly with utter disbelief and the end courtroom scene packs a genuine punch. Not quite sure where it all goes from here, but The Mission rises impressively above the sheer, tired predictability of its central premise. Worth watching.

I’d heard a lot of good things about American Vampire, so thought it was high time I saw what the fuss was about. Not sure if I just picked a stumble in the title’s progress, but I struggled a little with American Vampire #12 (DC/Vertigo).

It’s still head and shoulders above a lot of stuff I read this month, but something about this tale of the dead and gone old west felt contrived and staged, like the Wild West show that frames the story.

Maybe it’s to bring closure to one arc before both the story and the lead character, Skinner Sweet, move on. But it just all seemed rather convenient and so didn’t ring true. Not bad, just not as good as I was expecting.

I confess, I don’t know the short-lived, twice-cancelled TV show Jericho at all. But undeterred I picked up Jericho #4 (IDW), and was pleasantly surprised.

Well constructed and self-supporting, the issue paints a compelling picture of terrorist John Smith, who has previously unleashed nuclear holocaust on several major U.S. cities but is nevertheless key to the survival of the reborn republic of Texas.

His rationale and motivations are all the more chilling because you can’t help but feel he’s right, and that the repressive police state controlled by security contractor Jennings & Rall needs disassembling by any means. There’s a lot of intelligence at work here, and the result is a comic of real depth and weight.

At first, I didn’t think the same could be said of Iron Man 2.0 #1 (Marvel), but this is a comic of two halves.

The obligatory ‘War Machine meets Iron Man and they battle a bad guy and banter’ scene is a clanky, redundant affair, the kind of thing you’ve seen done a hundred times (all of them better). The dialogue too falls out of the characters' mouths like lead shot.

But then, suddenly, things pick up. The real story starts, and it’s an intriguing, unsettling one, with a neat new status quo and role for Rhodey/War Machine (why it’s called Iron Man 2.0 is beyond me — and smacks of executive level ‘branding’). The story strands play out like a smart mystery/thriller, and the final scene (and the brief prologue) add another level of intrigue.

Ultimate Thor #4 (Marvel) could be good, if it wasn’t so obsessed with insinuating itself into ‘what has gone before’ (and therefore what we’ve seen already) in the Ultimates.

The actual Thor bits, when you unpick them from the rather pointless reprise of the battle with Ultimate Hulk, are actually quite fresh and compelling, but why not just tell that story? Ultimate Loki, Ultimate Balder, Ultimate Asgard — that’s what I want to read about. Not Ultimate Nick Fury and the Ultimates. Move on!

Legion of Super-Heroes #10 (DC) suffers from a monumental overload of characters. Sure, you take it on board that a team book has to have a broad focus, but with three characters introduced on virtually every page of the issue, it all just made my head spin.

There’s a story in here somewhere, but it’s far too incidental to the character manoeuvres and battle of wits that’s going on elsewhere for my liking. The balance is just wrong.

G.I. Joe Cobra #13 (IDW) does a nice job of juggling the cutthroat internal politics of criminal organization COBRA, as bad people do bad things to each other in an effort to seize power.

Or so you think. But Chuckles isn’t so much trying to grab the reins as pull the horse’s legs out from under it, and the end is a shocker (to compound the shocker from last issue).

It all nicely sets up the COBRA civil war that’s just around the corner. It’s funny, I was never a big G.I. Joe fan, even though I wrote some of the UK equivalent, Action Force, but I’ve decided I am a COBRA fan. Good (bad) fun!

I tried hard to like X-Factor #215 (Marvel), mostly because I really rate writer Peter David and his highly individual style. But I felt that in its efforts to be unconventional this issue’s plot just floundered, became muddy and confused.

I could feel my attention drift, and that’s never a good sign. Hopefully just a blip, though.