Astro City: The Dark Age Book II #1

November 25, 2006

Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: A Cold Wind Blowing (Eyes of a Killer Part One)

Charles and Royal’s story continues in the sizzling 70s!

Writer: Kurt Busiek
Art: Brent E. Anderson
Colors: Alex Sinclair
Letters: John Roshell of Comicraft
Editor: Ben Abernathy
Cover Art: Alex Ross
Publisher: DC Comics/Wildstorm

After too long a break, Astro City: The Dark Age returns. Book Two (subtitled “Eyes of a Killer”) picks up a few years after the first ends. Charles Williams is still a police officer. His little brother Royal, still a crook. But things are changing in the world around them. Heroes are no longer the objects of trust they once were, things are becoming strained between Charles and his wife, and both Charles and Royal are facing real dangers on the job, as it were.

This series starts in 1976, and Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson have done a fantastic job of emulating that 1970s comic book feel. Gleaming heroes like Samaritan, Silver Agent and the First Family are either absent or reduced to cameos, while characters in the kung-fu/pseudo-mystic vein take the forefront. We also see a lot from Street Angel, once a brighter character who has embraced a darker side (not unlike a popular JLA member who underwent a Bronze Age reinvention).

As always, though, Astro City isn’t about the superheroes as much as it is about life in a superhero universe, and the unique difficulties faced by Charles (a cop) and Royal (a criminal). Things feel very ominous for both of them, and you definitely get the feeling this issue that the current state of their relationship, not to mention their lives, will be drastically changed by the time this four-issue miniseries reaches its conclusion.

Brent Anderson, as usual, does a fine job on the artwork, and Alex Ross pulls off a particularly unique cover. While still using his regular linework and techniques, he’s dropped back to a muted color palette, doing the entire thing in shades of blue and pink. It makes for a very eye-popping cover, as well as a very unusual one for him.

This first issue is very promising, setting up a lot of things and showing us yet another invention of the Astro City universe.

Rating: 8/10

Action Comics #820

October 10, 2004

Quick Rating: Average
Title: Wail of the Banshee

The Silver Banshee returns for a face-off with the Creeper.

Writer: Chuck Austen
Art: Carlos D’Anda
Colors: Guy Major
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Eddie Berganza
Cover Art: Joyce Chin & Arthur Adams
Publisher: DC Comics

First, the good news: this is not nearly as bad as the last several issues of Action Comics have been. The bad news, though, is that the reason it’s not as bad is because Superman barely appears in it. This is a Creeper story, with Superman making a cameo appearance as a deus ex machina which, when you consider the number of cancelled series the Creeper has left in his wake, is clearly what the readers were clamoring for.

The Silver Banshee returns this issue, securing a new human host. For some reason, this gives her a tongue longer than Gene Simmons, which she uses for various attempts at sexual innuendo, which has never exactly been a character trait she has exhibited before. She has no particular plan in this return, she just distracts Superman enough that he won’t be bothering her then walks around asking people to be afraid of her, at which point the Creeper shows up and obliges her.

Carlos D’Anda’s guest artwork works fairly well for this issue. He and Guy Major cast a dark, disturbing pallor across the comic that works with the frightening atmosphere the Banshee is intended to convey. They even manage to put Superman in this world without compromising the visual integrity of the character, which isn’t easy. As usual, it’s the artwork that elevates this issue.

In the end we get an epilogue that promises the return of a villain most readers were sick and tired of about ten years ago, and although there appears to be an attempt at putting a twist on him, it’s a twist that has been tried before and failed to make him any more interesting.

I imagine this was the Superman crew’s effort at a Halloween story this year. It could have been worse, but it could have been a lot better, too, which is something I find myself saying quite a bit these days.

Rating: 5/10

Outsiders (2003 Series) #10

March 20, 2004

Quick Rating: Good
Title: A Family Matter (Devil’s Work Part Three)

Captain Marvel Jr. throws down with Sabbac, with the Outsiders for backup.

Writer: Judd Winick
Pencils: Tom Raney
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: Gina Going
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Eddie Berganza
Cover Art: Tom Raney
Publisher: DC Comics

Last issue the Outsiders and Black Lightning faced off with the all-new, all deadlier Sabbac. At the last second, Captain Marvel Jr. showed up to help take down the villain who killed his old foe.

This issue, although it still says Outsiders on the cover, is mostly Marvel’s show. He faces Sabbac almost solo as the Outsiders mix it up with an army of lesser demons and the father-daughter duo of Black Lightning and Thunder learn some very important things about each other. People who like the Shazam! family less than I do will find these scenes the best parts of the issue, as those are the only segments that really develop the stars of this book at all. I like any screentime Captain Marvel Jr. gets, but to be fair, this isn’t his title and he really hogs this conclusion of the “Devil’s Work” story arc.

Tom Raney steps up where Judd Winick stumbles here. The artwork in this issue is just plain beautiful. Raney has a rare talent to draw a lot of costumed types in a jam issue without anyone really overshadowing the others and making every character really good. The art team also does some nice work with Black Lightning, giving his electrical powers what must be a computerized effect that makes his lightning bolts almost three-dimensional. You can really picture the arcs of lightning leaping from his hands to shock the heck out of Sabbac’s demons.

While I’m still not of fan of the behavior Black Lightning has distributed since Winick started writing this title and Green Arrow, in this issue he is at least consistent with the current version of the character and gets some nice development, including a scene at the end that took me by surprise. Every so often in a book that’s part of a shared universe, you get a little reminder that events aren’t taking place in a vacuum – this is one of those instances.

This is a solid superhero title, but not a great one. Not yet, anyway. Still, it’s built an audience and that audience won’t be disappointed in this issue.

Rating: 7/10

Astro City: Samaritan #1

July 24, 2006

Quick Rating: Great
Title: The Eagle and the Mountain

Samaritan faces his arch-enemy Infidel… for dinner?

Writer: Kurt Busiek
Art: Brent E. Anderson
Colors: Alex Sinclair
Letters: John Roshell of Comicraft
Editor: Ben Abernathy
Cover Art: Alex Ross
Publisher: DC Comics/Wildstorm Signature Series

Boy this one was a long time in coming. Many years ago, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross did a special feature for Wizard magazine to demonstrate how an Astro City character was created. The result of that feature was the Infidel, arch-enemy of Astro City’s premiere hero, Samaritan – and Astro City fans have been waiting for Infidel to show up ever since. Since we’ve been promised a standalone special in-between arcs of The Dark Age, this seems a great time to bring him in.

As Samaritan and the Infidel meet for their annual dinner together, the Infidel reflects on his own origins and how they brought him so deeply in conflict with Samaritan, eventually culminating in their unique understanding. Now the idea of a hero and his arch-enemy meeting for a truce periodically isn’t exactly new – I seem to recall a Fantastic Four story about Reed Richards and Doctor Doom meeting for a drawn-out chess game, for instance – but like all great Astro City stories, Busiek takes a convention of the superhero genre and gives it a nice twist. The reason for the meetings between Samaritan and Infidel are pretty clever, as are the conclusions reached at the end of this special. And if you’ve never read an Astro City comic before, fear not – this issue is totally standalone, and the archetypes are so familiar there’s no way any comic book fan could get confused.

Anderson steps up yet again with his classic artwork. His art style has a real timeless quality to it – there are Silver Age elements, to be sure, but nothing that looks out of place in a modern comic or a superhero tale of any genre – sci-fi, fantasy, horror… his style works with everything. Alex Ross contributes his usual snazzy cover, with a nice design to it that harkens back to a classic pulp magazine in a way that I like very much.

You can’t go wrong with Astro City, gang. Pick this one up.

Rating: 9/10

Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin #2

October 2, 2007

Quick Rating: Good
Rating: A

Iron Man faces the Mandarin in their first battle!

Writer: Joe Casey
Pencils: Eric Canete
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Stephen Wacker
Cover Art: Eric Canete
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Joe Casey’s career path seems to have lead him to a comfortable niche in the past, telling stories of the early years of various Marvel characters, and Enter: The Mandarin is proving to be a quite worthy addition to that line-up. This issue, Iron Man meets his arch-foe, the Mandarin, for the first time, and the battle doesn’t necessarily go the Golden Avenger’s way.

The story isn’t bad (although, like I mentioned last month, I still question the real need for a Mandarin miniseries), but for me, the artwork is the real selling point. I really like Canete’s work – beautiful, fluid and full of energy. He has a distinct retro feel, but whenever he brings in modern elements like Tony’s high-tech lab, or even the series of e-mails he trades with Pepper Potts, it doesn’t feel out of place.

While it’s unlikely that anyone but serious Iron Man fans (if there are any left) will pick up this miniseries, it’s a fun little book that’s worth looking at for anyone who enjoys a book with a nice Silver Age/early Bronze Age feel to it, and particularly satisfying for those of us unhappy with the way Tony’s being portrayed in the modern comics these days.

Rating: 7/10

Superman (1939 Series) #712

June 23, 2011

Title: Lost Boy: A Tale of Krypto the Superdog

Writer: Kurt Busiek
Pencils: Rick Leonardi
Inks: Jonathan Sibal
Colorist: Brad Anderson
Letterer: Comicraft
Cover: Carlos Pacheco, Jesus Merino, Dave Stewart
Editor: Matt Idelson         
Publisher: DC Comics

Well… this is odd. With just three issues left in this run of Superman, DC decided to pull the scheduled story for this issue, and instead replaced it with the long-lost but never-seen Krypto story that Kurt Busiek and Rick Leonardi write about five years ago. This issue is set shortly after the events of Infinite Crisis. Superboy is dead, and Superman is coping with the loss of his powers. Back in Smallville, the last superhero from the Kent farm, Krypto, is in mourning.

This is actually a really good issue. It’s mostly wordless, showcasing Krypto’s true loneliness. I wasn’t really big on Rick Leonardi’s previous work with the Superman family, but he absolutely nails this issue. He draws a great Krypto, first of all, and ha manages to get across the emotional impact of his loss. You look at this poor dog and feel the pain, the agony that he’s left in, with both of his masters gone. The final panel is one of the saddest moments ever drawn into a comic book, and the fact that it feels so sad is exactly what makes it so good.

But man, it’s an odd choice to put here. First of all, why didn’t they run this five years ago, when it would have still been relevant? And second, why run it now at all? As much as I enjoyed it and as much as I’m glad we finally got to see it, it still feels oddly out of place.

Rating: 8/10

Action Comics #819

September 5, 2004

Quick Rating: Awful
Title: Sodom and Gomorrah

Clark and Lana have a little heart-to-heart.

Writer: Chuck Austen
Pencils: Ivan Reis & Joe Prado
Inks: Marc Campos & Jon Sibal
Colors: Guy Major
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Eddie Berganza
Cover Art: Arthur Adams
Publisher: DC Comics

The two most frequent complaints you’ll hear about Chuck Austen’s writing is that 1) it is repetitive and 2) his characterization of women is, shall we say, one-sided? People make these complaints over and over again, and I’m a bit reluctant to say it some times. But after this issue, which is a textbook example of everything that could possibly be done wrong with these two characters, I feel that sometimes you’ve just got to call ‘em like you see ‘em, without any effort at sugarcoating.

This issue Superman, still recuperating from the beating he’s taken over the last few issues, is being “nursed back to health” by his old girlfriend, Lana Lang. However, this is not the Lana Lang we have read about in every comic book since the Superman revamp in 1986. This is a Lana Lang who wears short-shorts and belly shirts, takes childish, petty pot-shots at a woman who isn’t around to defend herself, and throws herself at a married man who has made it clear for years that he is not interested. This is the worst part of this issue, Chuck Austen is tearing two decades of characterization to shreds for the sake of a trite, clichéd plotline that would seem dull and redundant in an episode of Days of Our Lives, let alone in a Superman comic book.

Everything touched upon in this issue, every single character point, is something that has been discussed ad nauseum for years now, and has been resolved for a very long time. Lana has grown up, Lana has moved on. Anybody else still obsessing over a high school boyfriend this many years later would be told to go to therapy, not presented as a sympathetic heroine. This smacks of a writer artificially generating storylines by dredging up things that others have already done – and better – because nothing else is coming to mind. Lana in this issue is spiteful and petty, spitting out specious arguments about Lois Lane and putting forth reasoning that anybody who has actually read the storylines where these characters’ relationships were defined would know is completely untrue.

The book is intercut with a fight scene with the two cleverly-named adversaries Sodom and Gomorrah, a fight made more difficult by the fact that Superman’s powers are fluctuating uncontrollably, as predicted by the doctors at S.T.A.R. Labs (which is a pretty impressive feat, seeing as how two issues ago they were complaining that they didn’t know a bloody thing about Kryptonian physiology).

Even the artwork, usually the saving grace of this title suffers this issue under guest-penciller Prado, who seems to handle the Clark/Lana scenes while Reis does the fight scenes. Reis’s scenes are fine, but Prado’s are half cheesecake.

If I wasn’t reviewing this issue, I don’t know if I could have read it through to the end. By the time I got to the eight-page Bionicle ad section in the middle, I was begging for it to be over. These aren’t the characters I love. These aren’t even characters I like. These are boring, petty people, and I’m tired of seeing them in this book month after month.

Rating: 2/10

Superman: Birthright #12

July 25, 2004

Quick Rating: Excellent
Title: Birthright Chapter Twelve

Superman stands against Lex Luthor’s fake Kryptonian invasion… and a Man of Steel is reborn!

Writer: Mark Waid
Pencils: Leinil Francis Yu
Inks: Gerry Alanguilan
Colors: Dave McCaig
Letters: Comicraft
Editors: Tom Palmer Jr. & Eddie Berganza
Cover Art: Yu & Alanguilan
Publisher: DC Comics

Wow.

It is not an exaggeration to say I have been waiting two years to read this comic book. Ever since it was announced at the Wizard World Chicago Con in 2002, I have been anxious to see exactly how Mark Waid was going to reimagine the origins of my favorite hero. Honestly, I never really thought it needed reimagining – I was a fan of the John Byrne Man of Steel version. Along the way, though, this storyline has filled in the gaps, created a bridge to the most popular media property currently featuring the character (namely Smallville), and told an absolutely fantastic story.

Superman, wounded by not out, has gathered his strength to confront Lex Luthor’s fake Kryptonian invasion of Metropolis. Lois Lane, meanwhile, has confronted the villain in his own den, putting herself right in the line of fire to get out the truth.

This is an almost all-action issue, a massive battle scene between Superman and Luthor (or Luthor’s forces). This is your classic “final battle,” which of course is given an interesting perspective since we all know this is really the first “final battle” between these two legendary foes.

Waid adds a few nice little twists in this book, little boosts to the classic origin that make it his own and make it work beautifully. Luthor’s Kryptonite has juiced him up and powered Superman down, evening things out nicely for this really epic fight. The full scheme is exposed, and the depth of Luthor’s knowledge about Krypton really comes to light. It all works wonderfully, fitting together like a perfect jigsaw puzzle.

Leinil Yu and Gerry Alanguilan’s version of Superman is really unique. There are very few artists who can do a “grittier” version of the character without making him seem totally out of place, but they’ve pulled it off perfectly. The fights are well-staged and the sci-fi effects are fantastic.

All in all, I have absolutely loved this miniseries. Fantastic writing, fantastic art – it all came together here, letting Superman finally shine the way he deserves. Comic books, movies, television… this may well be the greatest interpretation of Superman’s origin ever told.

Rating: 10/10

Wolverine (2003 Series) #52

March 26, 2007

Quick Rating: Okay
Title: Blood on the Wind Chapter Three
Rating: Parental Advisory

Wolverine and Sabertooth fight each other… in Wakanda!

Writer: Jeph Loeb
Pencils: Simone Bianchi
Inks and Washed Halftones: Simone Bianchi & Andrea Silvestri
Colors: Simone Peruzzi
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Axel Alonso
Cover Art: Simone Bianchi
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Previously in this title, Wolverine and Sabretooth fought. This issue: Wolverine and Sabretooth fight… in Wakanda. A subtle difference, to be certain. Apparently the new queen, Storm, summoned Wolverine there to show him something they found at an archeological dig, and his slugfest with Sabretooth simply continued along the way.

Honestly, I don’t know how to feel about this story. Ostensibly, this will finally settle the question of the relationship between the two characters once and for all, but so far we haven’t really seen much other than fighting, flashbacks to previous fighting, talking about fighting, and fighting. Okay, when you’re dealing with Wolverine, especially with Sabretooth in the mix, you’ve got to expect some fighting, but there has yet to be any real substance to go with it. The Black Panther and Storm are pretty incidental to this story, and only seem to be included because of the reveal at the end, which was found in Wakanda, which could have been placed at virtually any other point on the globe except that the creators wanted to include the Black Panther and Storm.

Simone Bianchi’s artwork is… okay. Frankly, I think the art style works far better on covers rather than in sequential storytelling – it makes for a good piece of art, a good static image, but there are several scenes where I feel it simply doesn’t tell the story that well.

I’ve heard mixed reactions on this storyline – a lot of fans seem to love it, a lot seem to hate it. I fall squarely in the middle – it’s not terrible, but it’s not really crying out for a recommendation either.

Rating: 6/10

New Thunderbolts #2

November 24, 2004

Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: The Games People Play

The Thunderbolts get a new member – and the readers get a deeper mystery.

Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Gamesmaster: Kurt Busiek
Pencils: Tom Grummett
Inks: Gary Erskine
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Cover Art: Tom Grummett, Gary Erskine & Chris Sotomayor
Publisher: Marvel Comics

The second issue of New Thunderbolts jumps right back in to what made the first issue so much fun: plots, mysteries, backdoor deals and a true love of the Marvel Universe. The new Thunderbolts are on their second mission, taking down the Wrecking Crew, when an old associate of Mach-IV’s shows up and declares his intention to join the team.

Mach-IV suspects the hand of his mystery financier, Baron Strucker, unaware that Strucker has some allies of his own behind the scenes. The whole world is wondering what happened to Captain Marvel, (well, the whole world minus Atlas) and the ‘bolts wind up in a scuffle with Namor and Mr. Fantastic on the floor of the United Nations!

Sound like a lot? Well, it is. Even taking away the fact that most comics these days could turn a dental cleaning into a six-issue story arc, this comic is packed with plot. More happens in this issue than in the average year of Ultimate Spider-Man, and it’s all interesting, and there are dozens of questions waiting to be answered.

If there’s any drawback to this title, it may be its total adherence to continuity. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I also know a new reader may be confused. Not to say this book is inaccessible (it features the usual “previously” page, disguised as a news report”), but even with all of the necessary details filled in, they may feel a little left out not knowing the nuances of thinks like Mach-IV’s onetime partnership with Speed Demon (anyone remember the Deadly Foes of Spider-Man miniseries?) Still, in its previous incarnation, this was a book for real fans people who have been reading for years, and the same seems to hold true here.

The artwork by Grummet, Erskine and Sotomayor continues to be a treat. I’ve always enjoyed Grummet classic superhero art style, and he’s got a color and ink team that make his pencils jump off the page. This is a book that requires them to draw a lot of superheroes, and they make them all look great.

I loved the original Thunderbolts, I think it was the best title Marvel launched in the bleak wasteland of the 90s, and I’m ecstatic that they’re back on the racks and back in form.

Rating: 8/10