Commentary Track for the Buy Pile, March 18th 2010
NOTE: This is the FIFTIETH blog post for The Hundred and Four site, and also yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. If you can't find something to celebrate in all that, dude, you're wack. Anyhoo, check the new standardized intro ...
Every week I do a column full of comic book reviews as I've done since March 2003 and currently published at Comic Book Resources. Then, after the reviews post, I try to come over to my blog and expand on the thoughts and ideas listed there. Sometimes it's profound, sometimes it's gibberish, but it's always about comics ... let's see what we get this week!
What? This week's reviews ...
It's no secret that I'm not a fan of "event comics." Crossover books -- perhaps born with Jim Shooter's now-legendary Secret Wars -- are too often (in my not-so-humble opinion) a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. As well, I believe that the writing of today's comic industry (where a "hot" book sells less than 200,000 copies, numbers that were considered a death knell in the halcyon days of yore) stinks of fan fiction, of, "ooh, what if Somebody Man came back from the dead ... and he was super badass?" Stories that don't expand the mind or imagination (Stan Lee's tour de force introductions of the Mole Man, Galactus, Black Panther) or tell stories that are worth remembering (Majestic: The Big Chill, Transmetropolitan, Enemy of the State during Christopher Priest's lauded Black Panther run) are just servicing the trademarks or scraping for sales, perspectives that I find all too prevalent.
But yeah, I bought Siege because I finally bought in to the idea of "an event eight years in the making." That may be prorated, given the #1 issue that Jae Lee drew and Marvel delivered in September of 2000. In any case, things seem big and important and loud and explosive and I like that, with gods falling and Norman Osborn making good on the words of Canibus: "raze hell 'till the heavens fall."
I don't fall for the teenaged girl mushiness many feel about Steve Rogers (I always felt his 616 version was indecisive strategically), I don't get moist in the underwear over big splash pages (although there's two pages there that really deserved two pages) but the balls-to-the-wall action with chess pieces well developed (Iron Patriot, the complications of Bullseye, et cetera) is enjoyable.
From the grandiose to the intimate as Hercules really was a good guy behind all his buffoonery. I was a huge, huge fan of the Bob Layton-fueled Prince of Power miniseries and I'm honestly saddened to see the big guy go. However, I'm an even bigger fan of Amadeus Cho, so to see a non-martial arts fueled Asian male protagonist whup ass on brains alone is very intriguing to me.
I'd even go as far as saying Doomwar is as close to the Victor von Doom I would have written as I'm likely to see (somewhere, on a hard drive, I have a pitch for a mini called Doom World Order where I had the good doctor do some very impressive things, heralding the Parker Robbins motif). It also makes T'challa the man I always said he was: the least of Panthers and the most likely to lose it all. As brilliant as he is, his weaknesses will be remembered more than his strengths, at least in Wakanda.
Marvel did a lot right this week, from the tour-de-force performance by the Rhino (the more I think about it, the more I wish I'd have bought it, Peter's unemployment idiocy notwithstanding) to the aforementioned Bullseye doing his best "Michael Keaton in Pacific Heights" impression.
In other books, I'd really like to see more of the adventurous spirit I saw in Siege happening, especially books like Irredeemable, Booster Gold and Executive Assistant Iris. Titles like that are always "kinda good," but not reliably enough to spend money on (not my money anyway).
Then when you get the plodding tedium of a crossover like Blackest Night or the ill-considered goofiness of Fall of the Hulks, well, that can almost tank your week. Almost.
But then Ambrose and Red Riding Hood share a tender moment in Fables and all is right with the world again.
Before I go ...
Image has a hilarious set of spoof ads for something new from Image Comics riffing off of a team name in one of new partner Robert Kirkman's titles. I like that kind of playfulness in marketing, and I am actually curious to see what it all means.
Before I go, I also wanna thank Google Alerts for letting me know about some kind words being said about these reviews on CBR's message boards, as I am grateful for both the praise and the disgust that writing in public exposes one to.
That'll do -- I have work to do, a family to spend time with and a dangerously sexy new smartphone to set up with a word processor. Behave!
Playing (Music): "Forever" by Mateo off his Underneath the Sky Volume 3 mixtape
Every week I do a column full of comic book reviews as I've done since March 2003 and currently published at Comic Book Resources. Then, after the reviews post, I try to come over to my blog and expand on the thoughts and ideas listed there. Sometimes it's profound, sometimes it's gibberish, but it's always about comics ... let's see what we get this week!
What? This week's reviews ...
It's no secret that I'm not a fan of "event comics." Crossover books -- perhaps born with Jim Shooter's now-legendary Secret Wars -- are too often (in my not-so-humble opinion) a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. As well, I believe that the writing of today's comic industry (where a "hot" book sells less than 200,000 copies, numbers that were considered a death knell in the halcyon days of yore) stinks of fan fiction, of, "ooh, what if Somebody Man came back from the dead ... and he was super badass?" Stories that don't expand the mind or imagination (Stan Lee's tour de force introductions of the Mole Man, Galactus, Black Panther) or tell stories that are worth remembering (Majestic: The Big Chill, Transmetropolitan, Enemy of the State during Christopher Priest's lauded Black Panther run) are just servicing the trademarks or scraping for sales, perspectives that I find all too prevalent.
But yeah, I bought Siege because I finally bought in to the idea of "an event eight years in the making." That may be prorated, given the #1 issue that Jae Lee drew and Marvel delivered in September of 2000. In any case, things seem big and important and loud and explosive and I like that, with gods falling and Norman Osborn making good on the words of Canibus: "raze hell 'till the heavens fall."
I don't fall for the teenaged girl mushiness many feel about Steve Rogers (I always felt his 616 version was indecisive strategically), I don't get moist in the underwear over big splash pages (although there's two pages there that really deserved two pages) but the balls-to-the-wall action with chess pieces well developed (Iron Patriot, the complications of Bullseye, et cetera) is enjoyable.
From the grandiose to the intimate as Hercules really was a good guy behind all his buffoonery. I was a huge, huge fan of the Bob Layton-fueled Prince of Power miniseries and I'm honestly saddened to see the big guy go. However, I'm an even bigger fan of Amadeus Cho, so to see a non-martial arts fueled Asian male protagonist whup ass on brains alone is very intriguing to me.
I'd even go as far as saying Doomwar is as close to the Victor von Doom I would have written as I'm likely to see (somewhere, on a hard drive, I have a pitch for a mini called Doom World Order where I had the good doctor do some very impressive things, heralding the Parker Robbins motif). It also makes T'challa the man I always said he was: the least of Panthers and the most likely to lose it all. As brilliant as he is, his weaknesses will be remembered more than his strengths, at least in Wakanda.
Marvel did a lot right this week, from the tour-de-force performance by the Rhino (the more I think about it, the more I wish I'd have bought it, Peter's unemployment idiocy notwithstanding) to the aforementioned Bullseye doing his best "Michael Keaton in Pacific Heights" impression.
In other books, I'd really like to see more of the adventurous spirit I saw in Siege happening, especially books like Irredeemable, Booster Gold and Executive Assistant Iris. Titles like that are always "kinda good," but not reliably enough to spend money on (not my money anyway).
Then when you get the plodding tedium of a crossover like Blackest Night or the ill-considered goofiness of Fall of the Hulks, well, that can almost tank your week. Almost.
But then Ambrose and Red Riding Hood share a tender moment in Fables and all is right with the world again.
Before I go ...
Image has a hilarious set of spoof ads for something new from Image Comics riffing off of a team name in one of new partner Robert Kirkman's titles. I like that kind of playfulness in marketing, and I am actually curious to see what it all means.
Before I go, I also wanna thank Google Alerts for letting me know about some kind words being said about these reviews on CBR's message boards, as I am grateful for both the praise and the disgust that writing in public exposes one to.
That'll do -- I have work to do, a family to spend time with and a dangerously sexy new smartphone to set up with a word processor. Behave!
Playing (Music): "Forever" by Mateo off his Underneath the Sky Volume 3 mixtape
Labels: buy pile, comics reviews
posted by Hannibal Tabu, The Operative at
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