Marvel Comics

Writer: Mark Waid & Tom Peyer

Artists: Salvador Larocca/ Danny Miki

Colors: Liquid!

Grade: B

As a concept (the flip-flopping of mutant/ human relations), I feel like I’ve seen it before. Bendis certainly hasn’t gotten the main HoM miniseries off to a swift and exciting start (two full issues of nothing but introductory setting and exposition), but Mark Waid dives in headfirst to bring us enough twists and engaging character interaction that the book doesn’t quite come off as by-the-numbers as it first seems. I mean, this sort of alternate reality tale is ripe with the standard gimmicky clichés featuring villains as good guys, the dead brought back to life, etc. Under the surface of all these golly-gee moments, though, is an interesting and foreboding exploration of racism and the pursuit of fame. There’s some head scratching moments like Peter’s new haircut and the introduction of webshooters to the mutant police force weaponry (seems kind of silly that the mutant population would applaud such an invention -- wouldn’t the police force already be composed ot folks with equal or better powers to use in restraining criminals?) as well as one decidedly creepy interplay between Gwen Stacy and the elder Osborne (a relationship soiled by J. Michael Straczynski’s recent revelations in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN). Larocca’s art is some of his nicest in recent months, but it’s a shame it’s too often overpowered by some awful computer coloring. I’m going to go ahead and predict that this will be the best of the HOUSE OF M miniseries, if only because my faith in Mark Waid remains untarnished while Bendis’ reputation has taken quite a dive after his dismal performance in NEW AVENGERS and the first two issues of HOUSE OF M.

DC Comics/ Wildstorm

Writers: J. Scott Campbell & Andy Hartnell

Artist: Campell/ Alex Garner

Grade: F

It’s a bit false to call this a comic book. I’m reminded more of a slick marketing package designed to be presented as a pitch for some falsely hip cartoon show/ toy line tie-in designed by clueless adults to appeal to brainless kids... in the late 80’s. J. Scott Campbell hasn’t had a new book concept produced since he lost interest in his own fun and titillating DANGER GIRL book about 5 years ago. It’s criminal that in those 5 years, this is the best he and co-creator Andy Hartnell could come up with. Here, the two come off as perpetually dated and lame with cookie-cutter stereotype characters such as the skater technogenius (he’s actually named “Styler”!), the hot cheerleader overachiever, the jock dreamboat, the fat knucklehead who’s always stuffing something into his mouth, etc. The only clever bit that made me smile was the idea of arch villain Tiberius Spydre being a severely disgruntled, technological genius rip-off of Gene Simmons from KISS, but even this concept has a dated and stale feel to it.

To be fair, I can really only judge WILDSIDERZ as a concept as this book has no story to it, just boring character profile pages and a really corny 10-page sequence where Campbell does his best to mimic the cheesiest movie trailer ever complete with astoundingly bad dialogue -- here’s a sample: “If I can replicate the properties of a dragonfly... I can also copy it’s powers!” Yeah? How ya’ figure? And what scientist with enough know-how to replicate dragonfly properties is going to refer to it’s abilities as “powers”?

JSC’s art has evolved a bit since DANGER GIRL, but I’d much rather see him drawing T&A Charlie’s Angels/ Indiana Jones/ James Bond knockoffs than this dreck featuring lame high school kids. These kids are given suits which project hard-light holograms of various animal appendages over their own which allow them to mimic their respective animals’ “powers”. The art effects used to overlay the holographic forms on the characters bodies is poorly done in a (again, dated) bright neon glow that not only overpowers what’s meant to show through it, but it just becomes a blurry unfocused mess so you often can’t make out the detail of what you’re supposed to be seeing. An all-around failure as it’s been presented so far, I truly have no interest in reading any further about this team of WILDSIDERZ (spelled with a “z” cuz that’s what the hip kids are into, fo’ shizzle). The concept is depressingly dull, and what little dialogue and plot elements we’re given here promise an eye-rolling, groan-inducing read once the book gets going. JSC’s art is nice, though, and he seems to have learned a bit about more dynamic composition and motion. Too bad he’s not drawing anything I have an interest in looking at.

DC Comics/ Wildstorm

Writer: Kurt Busiek

Artist: Brent Anderson

Colors: Joe Sinclair

Grade: A

One of the finest superhero series ever returns in top form after a too-long absence and several postponements. I sincerely hope they can keep this book on the planned monthly schedule, ‘cause it certainly looks like this series is well worth the wait. Busiek again shines at writing heroic tales through the eyes of the man on the street, and while similar events happen in this world and the DC/ Marvel universes (cosmic reality-warping, etc.), Busiek shows us these events through the eyes of the everyday citizens of the city, causing them to seem so much more frightening, eerie and powerful. The population is truly powerless before the titanic struggles of these godlike beings and outside the law vigilantes -- as a result, resentment, fear and foreboding cannot help but creep in when things begin to spiral out of control. As the story is told from the POV of two brothers during the early seventies, we, like the residents of Astro City, don’t get the full story of the heroes struggles, and they can quickly be painted in a darker light of mistrust and suspicion in the world of villainous mind control, alien shapeshifters, robotic dopplegangers and temporal distortions. This series is told from the viewpoint of two brothers on somewhat opposite sides of the law, but Busiek resists the easy route of overplaying this as a Cain and Abel analogy. I understand that artist Brent Anderson may not be flashy enough for those who drool over the deformed and overbaked art of Michael Turner and Jim Lee, but he’s got a solid sense of the basics and he tells the story clearly and competently without the distraction of attention-getting bells & whistles.

Writer: Mike Carey (from Gaiman’s script)

Artist: Glen Fabry

Grade: B

I’ve never read Neil Gaiman’s novel or the miniseries which serves as the source material for this adaptation, so I can’t comment on Mike Carey’s degree of success in translating it to the comic page. I can say that the book fairly oozes Gaiman’s familiar scent, so that’s probably a positive sign. The story is fairly captivating with a just-right helping of poetic prose to lead you into that Gaiman territory where some fantastical otherworld clashes with our own at the place where the shadows meet the daylight. These worlds collide when a sad sack guided by the inertia of everyday life, under the thumb of his overbearing fiancee, and dulled by his meaningless job encounters a gaudily dressed, somewhat alien woman with the apparent power to walk between worlds. His life is instantly thrown into disarray and you get the sense that’s only the beginning of his troubles. Glenn Fabry provides the art and it’s nice to see him do some interiors as opposed to his painted covers (nice as those are). His art is clear, depicting the flow of events rather well, and it reminds me a bit of Steve Dillon’s style if it were injected with some actual life. The coloring is kept nice and simple, conveying a sense of place, light and color without the murkiness of overdone computer colors.

Marvel Comics/ Icon

Writer: J. Michael Straczynski

Artist: Mike Deodato Jr.

Colors: Rain Beredo

Grade: D+

This book, as a concept, is full of exciting potential, none of which is realized in this first incredibly flat issue. It seems rather unclear exactly where this series takes place. It features two cops straight out of an old detective show who respond to calls relating to dream crimes or some such. They drive around what appears to be New York or some other big city in an old car, but it remains unclear whether these guys are patrolling a virtual dreamscape or whether they are somehow responding to dreams that have manifested themselves in the real world and are able to interact with these dream elements and characters. Either way, it’s a serious letdown as we are treated to very standard dreams, which in reality are much more complicated and bizarre than presented here. The cops are first summoned by a nun who shows them the distressingly erotic dream she claims she is currently having. It’s confusing because she is standing there showing them the naked people she is dreaming about as they writhe about on the floor -- so apparently in this world you can call the dream police if you don’t like your dream, or (as seen in a later sequence) if something has gone awry with your recurring dream, or other people can call in response to a runaway nightmare that is terrorizing the city?! What the hell? So, this city is the dreamscape, right? Then, everyone has dreams that take place in this city? There’s just no rhyme or reason to what’s going on here -- which doesn’t seem like it would be necessary for a series about dreams, but when it involves a police force whose jurisdiction is the dreamscape, I’m going to need a bit more of a structure of logic here... or at least a better explanation of how things are supposed to work in this reality. There should be much more bizarre elements presented here and methods of policing that go beyond the standard Dragnet-style detective work. The art and script also appear to clash in places, which may be due to some sort of content restriction placed on the book (though that shouldn’t be since this is from Marvel’s ICON imprint) -- during the erotic dream, we only get partial bits of naked and half naked bodies positioned in fairly commonplace ecstatic poses on the floor, but one of the detectives taking notes calls out a list of things that just aren’t there, including “stimulation devices, racks, swings, whips, jellies, inflatable figures, lingerie...”. Nope -- just naked people on the floor.

Another minus is that there is nothing interesting or engaging about the dream police themselves. They seem to have been ripped from some 1950’s film and they’re both basic by-the-book, straight-laced and somewhat interchangeable stiffs. They don’t necessarily lack personality (it’s just extremely dull), but there’s nothing to endear them to the reader or distinguish them from the cookie cutter mold they seem to have come from. There are a few bits of humor (such as the solution to the nightmare case), but the book is fairly one-note, presenting nothing that makes me want to come back for more. In fact, this seemed more like a one-shot, rather than an introduction to a new series, as there are no dangling plot lines or presentation of any ongoing crisis to be dealt with other than the steady stream of pedestrian dream investigation -- which is all fine with me, because I’ve absolutely no interest in reading more of this sort of thing.

Image Comics

Writer: Mike Baron

Artists: Mike Norton/ John Rauch

Grade: B-

Oh great, I thought -- another zombie book! Enough already! Not so fast, me! Like the previously reviewed DEADWORLD, this book brought enough fresh ideas and well-crafted dialogue to the table that it stands out as worth further investigation. The book centers around two brothers who believe they’re fighting Satan and his demons in a small town and two teenage runaways who stumble into the midst of the whole scenario. There are some nice interesting and enigmatic characters presented here, not to mention the fact that the zombies don’t seem to be mere reanimated corpses, but it appears there’s some demonic intervention going on here. There’s a screwy apocalyptic and foreboding atmosphere that we’re suddenly thrown into the midst of with the two runaway characters who seem to accept what’s going on a bit too easily. We’re not really given a good sense of why things are the way they are here and apparently nowhere else. There’s obviously some sort of supernatural sway here, but the characters act like they’re cut off from the rest of the world, all of which could just be part of the unrevealed supernatural mystery of the book. The art is decent and straightforward with some nice coloring that comes off as dark without falling into the murky and obscuring trap. Even if zombies aren’t your bag, you’ve gotta give points to a book which features the line “Jesus gonna !@$!@ you good!”

Devil’s Due

Writer: Joe Casey

Artists: Stefano Caselli/ Sunder Raj

Grade: C-

Hey, it was good for $0.25, but as an lead-in to the “new” G.I. Joe ongoing series, it fell kind of flat. I applaud the idea of slimming down the Joe team to a permanent core with rotating specialist individuals brought in when the need arises, as well as streamlining the concept as a whole, but as an introduction for someone who hasn’t kept up with the previous Joe series, I was a bit disappointed. A recap/ synopsis page detailing what had come before would have been nice -- obviously the Joes are getting over some rough stuff (the death of a team member appears to be one of them), but we get no real sense of what these guys have just been through, and it’s not really much of a setup for where they’re headed (am I supposed to recognize the character revealed on the last page?). Id’ve thought Joe Casey would be a good choice to handle this relaunch, but it probably would help if he had a connection to these characters in the first place. He’s talented enough to pull it off anyway, but a recent interview revealed that he never really cared for the Joes, even as a kid, and was sent the entire Devil’s Due run of the comic to inspire him. This disappointing first outing makes me suspect Casey is merely taking an easy paycheck as opposed to his being genuinely inspired to bring some glory to the faded and worn Joe concept. Caselli’s art is mostly good, though it already shows disturbing signs of slacking off and shortcutting (he hasn’t really passed the “monthly deadline” gauntlet yet) -- it even appears that the art team is going the Dreamwave route by having a separate background “painter”. Anyway, for 25 cents it’s certainly not going to be a waste of money, and I’ll reserve a more permanent condemnation until a few more issues have arrived, but I’m certainly not thrilled by the Joe’s “reinvigoration”. Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

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