Archive for August 26th, 2007
Batman #667 & 668
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by J.H. Williams III and Dave Stewart
DC Comics $2.99
Grant Morrison has made a name for himself in mainstream comic books by taking old ideas that many people have forgotten about, revamping them, exploring old characters and concepts and making them very VERY relevant and fresh to the modern reader. I’ve noticed that there are a few creators who are interested in old ideas who make them incredibly interesting again. Alex Ross would obviously be an easy name to come up with when talking about old ideas being recreated. Morrison’s work on Batman is no different, as far as resurrections of the past, than his work with Uncle Sam or Metal Men. It’s different, great and pretty fucking entertaining.
Revisiting the Batmen of all nations in what would seem like a weekend getaway for Batman, Robin and a handful of “second rate wannabe Batmen” as Robin put it, Morrison turns this three part arc into a murder mystery weekend with a bunch of incompetent heroes who are past their prime and incredibly suspicious of each other. It’s incredibly entertaining to see all of the various Batmen from different countries and how some of them resent Batman’s success, but they all have to work together, as they’re trapped on an island with a murderer on the loose.
Williams’ work is immediately satisfying and only gets better upon multiple viewings. He’s particularly successful at rendering costumes that look like cloth, instead of the weird porno-spray painted bodies that usually dominate superhero comics. He has a firm grasp on shadows and dark/light balances, which is great because most of this story takes place at night in a big mansion full of old relics and costumes.
Meanwhile, boring comic book nerds everywhere are crying because this story doesn’t have any typical villains and its’ not formulaic enough. I think it’s fantastic and I think I see where this is leading and if Morrison is planning on a big family get together, it’s going to be one hell of a summer-ending arc. I’ll also be excited if they keep cranking out two issues a month like this, it’s great for a manic reader like myself.
THE SUNDAY HANGOVER
So what do we know today that we didn’t know last week? Well, there’s members of the Quebec police posing as demonstrators in order to kick up a ruckus and create an excuse for their uniformed comrades to go into the otherwise peaceful protestors with batons. The Quebec police, caught red-handed, openly admit they did it, with a “and what the fuck are you going to do about it, Anglo peegs?” attitude. Which would be new, if most people didn’t already know that French Canadians are among the most unpleasant mammals on the face of the planet. I couldn’t give a fuck how many soldiers they send to serve with the United Nations — if Canada wants to impress me, it needs to saw off the French bit and float it out of the Cabot Strait and into the North Atlantic. Let’s see how long those shiteaters last when they only have each other to sneer at.
What else? Ah, yes: it turns out that a company hired at great expense to take on dangerous and difficult demolition work at Ground Zero in New York City doesn’t actually… exist. This is a wonderful story. This company has no records to speak of, its president is contractually prevented from talking to the press or anyone else, and very few people in the architecture and engineering trades have actually heard of it. Which may possibly explain how, on Friday, one of their workers lost control of a pallet jack — not the most complicated bit of apparatus you ever saw — while working on the 23rd floor of the building, managing to somehow drop it on a temporary shed and all but killing the two guys inside it. And it was the third incident there this summer to harm or kill firefighters. The name of this operation? The John Galt Company. Who is John Galt? That’s the question that runs through mad-as-arseholes Ayn Rand’s novel ATLAS SHRUGGED, wherein he appears as a mysterious character hellbent on destroying the world that terrible leftie types made. He’s a fake engineer. And John Galt Co would appear to be a fake company, insofar as they don’t seem to have done anything but make the area more toxic and kill even more people. People on the net, of course, are already asking if John Galt Co are a shell or storefront company for the CIA. Which sounds like bullshit at first blush, but, really: who could invent the idea of a fictional company actually named for a fictional character getting hired to clean up Ground Zero and doing nothing but making more mess and killing more firemen?
And, apparently, a great Cosmic Nothingness has been found. A void in space that’s a billion light years across – a significant chunk of the visible universe, in fact. Right now, as I type this, cosmologists and technologists are developing a perfect explanation of why we have dragged ourselves from the amniotic muck of early time, through a history rank with blood and horror, into an age of scientific marvels, striving to see through millions of years of old light and across the immense and jeweled universe itself – to look at a fucking great hole.
See, this is why I don’t have a fucking jet pack. “No, no, we need umpty million quid to look for fucking great holes, why on earth would we want to cure cancer, the common cold or Frenchness?” Bastards. Happy Sunday morning. Now fuck off.
Living with the Dead #1 - (add) - page 20
The Umbrella Academy - #2 (add) - page 41
DC Infinite Halloween Special #1 - (1) - page 76
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #2 - (add) - Page 76
Simon Dark #1 (1) - page 79
Batman Confidential #10 (1) - page 80
Metal Men #3 - (add) - page 90
Wonder Woman #13 (1) - page 92
The Vinyl Underground #1 - (add) - page 119
Glister #2 - page 153
Gargoyles #3 - page 220
Gargoyles: Bad Guys #1(add) - page 220
The Trouble with Igor GN - page 222
Doktor Sleepless #4 (add) - page 241
Black Summer #3 - (add) - page 241
Streets of Glory #1 (add) - page 241
30 days of Night Sourcebook - page 31
Star Trek Alien Spotlight: Vulcans - (add) - page 313
Zombies Vs. Robots Vs.Amazons #2 (add) - page 314
My Inner Bimbo #1 &2 (add) - page 329
Yearbook Stories 1976-1978 - page 354
Weird Tales Magazine #347 - page 382
Written by, drawn by and cover art by Sam Kieth
DC Comics $5.99
YES!
Okay, so I was really excited when I saw this in my pile on Wednesday. First of all, I was obsessed with Kieth’s The Maxx when I was younger. I stopped reading comic books around the age of 16 when I started to become obsessed with music, but I continued to reread the Maxx series and eventually ended up buying a bootlegged version of the television series from Ebay. It was well worth it. I had noticed though, in my previous two years of rediscovering comic books, that Sam Kieth seemed to be missing entirely from the scene, but Jim Lee, the Kuberts, Chris Claremont and most of the people who were making my favorite books in the nineties.
So, again, I was seriously fucking jazzed when I saw this in Previews a few months back. It comes at a time when I’ve been reading Grant Morrison Batman for almost a year, so I feel like I’m not at a point where Batman is strange territory for me. Another great writer/artist on a character I’ve come to like quite a bit. Excellent.
So, Sam Kieth, Batman, Lobo, Spaceships, Alien disease that makes women turn into homicidal maniacs, explosions, lots of guns, aliens. As long as you aren’t expecting a super serious Batman story, this is made of 100% win. Batman, against his will, is brought to a spaceship light years from earth to stop a disease that makes women act out and go on insane killing sprees. All the men have left the ship and so all of these women are being killed. Kieth’s women are, of course, beautiful and the story is fun as well as morbidly funny. Of course, Lobo just happens to be there for some reason, trying to make some money.
Although this is only a two issue series, it’s being published in the prestige format, so each issue is 48 pages. That means this won’t be a short little story, it will be almost 100 pages, easily the size of four or five issues published as a regular comic series. I think it’s going to be a blast.
comic book day
It’s been nearly a week without posts as I adjusted to a new job, so sorry about that to anyone who’s reading regularly. You should feel free to say hello. But now I’ll be picking up comics on every Wednesday when they come out and this blog should be a bit more regular. This past week I went down to my local comic shop and picked up the following.
Astonishing X-Men #22 - Joss Whedon(w), John Cassaday(a)
Batman #668 - Grant Morrison(w), J.H. Williams III(a)
Batman/Lobo: Deadly Serious #1 of 2 - Sam Kieth(w & a)
Black Summer #2 of 7 - Warren Ellis(w), Juan Jose Ryp(a)
Cat Woman #70 - Will Pfeifer(w), Lopez, Lopez & Hughes(a)
Supernatural Law #3 - Batton Lash(a & w)
Tales From the Crypt #2 - Neil Kleid, Fred Van Lente(w), Steve Mannion, Mr. Exes(a)
Walking Dead #40 - Robert Kirkman(w), Charlie Adlard, Rathburn(a)
World War Hulk: Gamma Corps #2 of 4 - Tieri(w), Ferreira, Florea & Quintana(a)
World War Hulk: Gamma Files - way too many to list
X-Men #202 - Mike Carey(w), Humberto Ramos, Cuevas(a)
Written by Will Pfeifer
Art by David and Alvaro Lopez
Cover art by Adam Hughes
DC Comics $2.99
Checking out a new book is incredibly fun for a few reasons that don’t really transfer to an old favorite. First off, you don’t actually know what you’re getting into. If you’re familiar with the writer, in this case, Pfeifer is the lead writer of the wonderful DC mini-series that wraps up next week, Amazons Attack, which I’ve been reading. So I had an idea what I was getting into, strong characterization based around solid action scenes and a script that relies on a well-balanced mix of dialog boxes and scenes that make effective use of an action-based story. I also knew David Lopez from the first 20 issues of Fallen Angel, back when it was being put out by DC Comics. I knew his pencils were a good match for a strong writer because they tend to be mild and mellow, instead of screaming for attention, they add to the overall story without really grabbing the reader with the tackiness that some pencilers for superhero books tend to use. So, I had an idea that this book had the potential to be pretty entertaining. Plus, this Adam Hughes cover didn’t hurt.
I really love that cover, it’s beautiful and the simple background makes her stand out even more. That image is from the official DC page about the comic, which is slightly different from the final product that actually appears on the issue I have. But you get the picture. I went and looked up Adam Hughes and realized I have a whole bunch of covers by him and I generally really enjoy his work. And he has a thing for big breasts, in case you didn’t notice. I really like the shades of light reflecting off of the costume, so you can tell it’s leather and not spandex, the detail of the zipper, the goggles and the fact that there’s actual detail to her face, which makes her look like a real person, not just a thieving sex symbol.
The issue ended up being an Amazons tie-in about Selina’s workings with the Bana, the Amazon offshoot terrorist group. It was really good. I found out that she had a kid and had semi-retired from crime, had become friends with Batman and had allied herself on the side of the heroes since the Amazonian war had begun in the states. The issue relied heavily on dialog boxes and let Selina narrate the story in reverse, which was an interesting change. I liked it enough to go out and pick up the issue before, which was also good and featured all of the same talent, down to another Hughes cover.
I think I’ll be reading this on a regular schedule if this book continues to be as entertaining for a few more issues.
