The Irredeemable Ant-Man #10

Written by Robert Kirkman

Art by Phil Hester and Ande Parks

Marvel Comics $2.99

I had no idea Robert Kirkman was writing this newish comic book about a guy on the run from the law, who happens to have a suit that lets him shrink down to the size of an ant. As much as I love Bob’s writing, I still don’t care about this book or the character.

This is probably one of the most useless tie-ins I’ve read. The only reason I can see for having this center around World War Hulk is that they want to show all of the major characters in the Marvel universe taking their turn getting their asses handed to them by Hulk and the warbound. This issue takes place during World War Hulk #1, so it’s three months late, sort of. I don’t really understand why this didn’t come out when the miniseries started, but going back to issue 1 doesn’t make much sense to me. In the end, ant-man almost gets killed in the fight between the hulk-armored Iron Man and the Hulk back at the end of issue one. He manages to survive, but when he wakes up he’s surrounded and told he’s under arrest.

As much as I love Robert Kirkman, don’t buy this unless you have some major loyalty to him or this character.

World War Hulk #3 of 5

Written by Greg Pak

Art by John Romita Jr., Janson, Strain

Marvel Comics $3.99

Well, I hate to side with the nerds, but this issue wasn’t that great. In fact, none of it made much sense. After the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers, Spider-man, Iron man and virtually everyone with a pair tights on the continent fail to stop him, the United States government decides to send in soldiers and shoot the hulk. Incredible.

It did have some redeeming qualities though. The confrontation with Doctor Strange was really good. I liked that he could get into his head, calm him down, but in the end, the Hulk was still so incredibly angry, he broke Strange’s hands. It’s too bad the art was so horrible, it looked horrendous, like a bad cartoon from the 70’s. I wish someone else was drawing this, like the regular Hulk artist, or anyone capable of drawing the Hulk.

Here’s is David Finch’s cover

Really cool.

Here is Romita’s variant cover.

Complete opposite.

Overall, kind of disappointing. I hope this isn’t all coming down to all of issue five being the Sentry and the

hulk fighting. I was hoping it would be considerably more complex than that.

X-Men #201

Written by Mike Carey

Art by Humberto Ramos, Carlos Cuevas and Edgar Delgado

Marvel Comics $2.99

Dealing with Rogue being shot by Mystique, the return of the Marauders, losing the Omega Sentinel and Lady Mastermind to the mental possession of Malice and then having to not be killed by the Marauders as Mystique has ordered, the X-Men divide and..well, they pretty much lose and hide. Meanwhile, back at the mansion, the New X-Men are given another grim prediction by Blindfold and, as Colossus and Kitty Pryde try to figure things out, some hostile visitors show up at the door with threats to kill. Shitty time to have an x-gene.

This issue features the Apocalypse-powered Sunfire, who looks exactly as he did in Age of Apocalypse, which is great. He’s also incredibly powerful, but lately my focus while reading this book is the usually wonderful work of Humberto Ramos. Occasionally his art just looks like silly exaggerated manga, like on the first double spread of this issue, but usually it’s flawless, beautiful expressive cartoon-style art. I can’t get enough of it. I especially like the way he draws faces, they’re colored and shaded perfect, which certainly help, but Ramos has an eye for clean lines and detail without looking too busy or crowded. The backgrounds are always incredibly simple, which make the complex action look even more in your face. I hope he stays on this title for quite awhile.

I was glad to see the New X-Men show up in a more popular title, even if it was in complete defiance to continuity(they are in limbo with demo Illiyana Rasputin right now), just because they are such great characters. It looks like next issue we might get to see Colossus, Pryde and the New X-Men throw down together, which is a rather exciting prospect.

Speak of the Devil #1 of 6

Art and Story by Gilbert Hernandez

Dark Horse Comics $3.50

Val is a popular school athlete, she has great friends and she has supportive parents, even if her over-sexed step-mother is closer to her age than her father’s. Yet, she is unsatisfied and bored with her life. She has taken to wearing a devil mask and black jumpsuit and spying in people’s windows late at night. This kind of activity is much more related to her real interests and she gets a real thrill out of the danger of it.

Everytime I’m in the larger comic shop in Loves Park, I always notice issues of Love and Rockets, the art looks wonderful and it looks like a cute human interest comic, but the cover price is something like seven dollars, so I have yet to pick one up. Gilbert Hernandez and his brother are the minds and hands behind Love and Rockets and, because of this issue, next time I see the comic, I intend to pick up an issue. The art style of this is great, simple, thick lines that form full-bodied women reminiscent of the 1950’s when it was okay for women to eat. While the art certainly stresses sexuality, it would be odd if a comic book about a peeping Tom(or in this case Jane) was overtly pan sexual. It helps that the women are nice to look at, Hernandez knows how to draw an appealing-looking woman in black and white, but the covers for this series are wonderful, the kind of thing I’d love to have a big print of to hang on my wall.

As far as the story goes, I really like it. It’s a fast read and it says a lot to me without being too long-winded. Hernandez seems to making a statement about repressed suburban sexual identities in the sterilized, living in denial style of Christian America. Val’s parents seem to be clones of the Cleaver family from the 1950’s, but the second they’re alone, the fuck like crazy. What’s interesting about Val’s obsession to watch(this includes predominantly watching her father and step-mother have sex) is that she is popular and attractive, obviously capable of actually HAVING sex, yet this seems to disinterest her. I think this says something about our culture, but I haven’t decided what. Hernandez’s Speak of the Devil is a very potent and interesting mixture of repressed sexuality and a refusal to become complacent with the boringness of what is expected of us socially. I’ll be very interested to see where this mini-series goes.

Welcome to Tranquility #9

Written by Gail Simone

Art by Neil Googe, Carrie Strachan, Francisco Paronzini and Leandro Fernandez

Wildstorm $2.99

I think I know what’s coming, and if I’m right, this is going to made of non-stop win. Gail Simone is the writer for both Gen13 and Tranquility and in a move that surprised me, she had the kids from Gen13 seek refuge in the town of Tranquility. I just figured that some characters might interact and maybe she’d do some crossover issues a few times, then move it along, but something much better has been playing out in the last three or four issues of the combined series. The gen-active kids show up in town right as Freddie Host, who acts like some sort of lawyer-looking seed of the devil, shows up in Tranquility looking for debts he’s owed by the senior citizens of Tranquility. He even kills Zeke’s snake.

In the meantime, which is likely not to be a coincidence, the dead start coming back to life in town. Agents of the devil can have that effect on grandpa Tom sometimes. This is interesting, not just the zombie idea, but the concept that this guy that works for the devil gave a whole bunch of people superpowers and said he’d come to collect a debt some time. Decades go by and these people are now sixty and seventy years old, they can’t fight back anymore, and he shows up to collect. And he brings zombies. And the Gen13 kids just happen to be in town. I’m actually really fucking excited about what’s going to play out over the summer. Last month I thought the origins of Zeke the zombie and Tommy’s past were okay, but served as filler, but now this is all starting to connect. Simone’s first Tranquility arc was a murder mystery that went into character observations and gave us a great little sketch of this community for super-powered senior citizens. Now she seems to be building a zombie epidemic caused by the devil(a plot that is virtually never used in zombie movies, in fact, they usually never say why the zombies are there), it’s going to be great. It also helps that she’s a fantastic writer.

In addition, we get introduced to the Coyote Kid, an old man who looks like Clint Eastwood and is a perfect shot. And he also happens to have a personal vendetta against zombies. After a few pages the main part of the issue ends and then something from the first arc comes back that I have sorely missed, the vintage back story. Using an old-looking art style and an old comic book feel to the story telling, Simone and a completely different art team from the rest of the issue tell CK’s story and why he’s going to be sticking around for the fight.

Grimm Fairy Tales #16

Written by Ralph Tedesco and Joe Tyler

Art by Andrew Magnum and Roland Salvidor

Zenescope Entertainment $2.99

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away

Well, that’s how it was when I was a kid. This, of course, is not a story by the Grimm brothers, in fact, no one is sure who wrote the little rhyme that was first published in 1805, in a book titled Songs for the Nursery. Yet, Little Miss Muffet is the title and main focus of this issue of Grimm Fairy Tales.

Sela, the main character of the series, who is given the power to change people’s lives at the beginning of the series(which I missed, this being only the second issue I have read) by telling people who have lost their way and are a danger or annoyance to humanity old stories to fix their lives, has been abusing her power. Giant spiders are sent to chase her down and demand answers, along with zombies, ghosts and other beings you wouldn’t normally see in the comic shop bitching about all those damned World War Hulk tie-ins. We are given a short history of all the people she’s tried to help, but ended up killing, including those nazi pigs(literally) from last month’s issue.

The issue wraps up by showing Sela over a grave, reminiscing about someone she tried to help, but Sela says she couldn’t, in defiance of the cliched old Chinese man who has been reviewing her life for her ever since the spiders tracked her down in the middle of the issue. Over all, not as enjoyable and fun as last month, but it’s trying to add to some larger story(I think/hope). Otherwise, as a new reader, it made no sense to me. In fact, I had to go to Wikipedia -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm_Fairy_Tales_%28comic_series%29 - to get the full story, because I didn’t know there was any continuity to this comic at all. Previous to this issue, I believed the series to be fairy tale themed one shots that use a lot of sex appeal and violence to modernize the old stories. Well, I’m still correct about the latter. This issue stars giant breasts, skimpy clothes, zombies, giant monster-like arachnids and trying-to-be-creepy scenes. It co-stars Sela.

Black Summer #1 of 7

Written by Warren Ellis

Art by Juan Jose Ryp

Avatar Press $2.99

Easily some of the busiest work I’ve seen in a while, his detail has to be respected, it’s great and obviously well thought-out, highly conceptualized, but as sprawling as it can sometimes be, it occasionally feels out of place in this science fiction work. Being an Avatar comic, you get the annoying randomized distribution of several covers, so I couldn’t actually find a scan of the wraparound cover that I have, which is considerably more interesting that the scan above, as well as a good example of his busy style.

That said, I still like the art, I just don’t really know if it is suited for this book. But we’ll see, I anticipate this to be a thoughtful little book, which should wrap up sometime in February with it’s seventh and final issue.