Previously… In Comics (Books Released on 4/6/11)

Last week saw the release of Marvel’s new event book, FEAR ITSELF. I’m not much of a Brian Bendis fan anymore and I’ve been dying to see some of the newer writers at Marvel get a shot at one of these event books. On the top of my list were Jonathan Hickman and Matt Fraction. So I was psyched to see Matt Fraction getting his chance with FI. This week also saw the release of the FI tie-in FEAR ITSELF: THE HOME FRONT. The fifth issue of Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung’s AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE hit shelves. And to keep you from thinking I’m just a huge Marvel fanboy, I’ll also review THE BOYS #53.

FEAR ITSELF #1 $3.99 (Writer: Matt Fraction, Artist: Stuart Immonen): I know the first issue of FI was good because, even with an oversized page count, I was so upset it was over when I reached the last page. This is the first issue, so there’s a lot of set-up here, but it’s certainly not short on action as we get an Asgardian smackdown and a massacre of Nazis. Immonen’s arguably the best artist working in comics right now, sadly he’s been paired with Brian Bendis for a while now, so I haven’t seen any of his work since he left Ultimate Spider-man and I subsequently dropped the title from my pull list. Immonen’s work here is gorgeous. He’s second to none when it comes to pencilling action. His panels appear to have more movement than some animated series. His facial expressions range from utterly hilarious (Steve Rogers annoyed with Volstagg) to truly menacing (the Red Skull’s daughter, Sin, killing everyone in her path). Fear Itself is a perfect pairing of writer and artist, and issue one gives me high hopes for the series.

FEAR ITSELF: THE HOME FRONT #1 $3.99 (Writers: Various, Artists: Various): I had no plans to pick up this anthology tie-in title, but I flipped to the table of contents, saw the first two stories featured Speedball and the Agents of Atlas, and felt obligated to buy it. The main feature, taking up about half of the page count, is a strong Speedball story by Christos Gage and Mike Mayhew. Gage uses a combination of traditional narration and Twitter messages to tell the story. The narration shows Speedball’s remorse for the events that occurred in Stamford, CT at the beginning of Civil War, while the tweets reveal how much Speedball is still loathed by a large section of the public. The tweets as a storytelling device don’t always work perfectly, but it is effective at displaying the fear and hate seeping into the Marvel Universe. Mayhew’s art is stellar here. He has a rare photo-realistic style that doesn’t feel stagnant or overly photo-referenced.

The Agents of Atlas story is the first time I’ve ever seen these characters written by anyone other than Jeff Parker, so initially it was a bit jarring. That’s not to say Peter Milligan does a bad job, he’s written quirky characters like this before in his brilliant run with Mike Allred on X-Force/X-Statix, but the voices of these heroes feel just slightly off. Maybe that’s intentional though, as almost all of the members of Atlas are on-edge. Possibly because of that, a lot of the humor that Parker brought to the Agents is gone here. There is one really compelling element in the story involving Jimmy Woo and his acclimation to modern day (or lack thereof) that gives the Atlas leader much more depth as a character.

The other two stories featured in Fear Itself: The Home Front really aren’t worth talking about. A Fear Itself checklist would’ve been preferable to Howard Chaykin’s one-page J. Jonah Jameson story.  And Jim McCann’s story about the residents of Broxton is quite forgettable.

AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE #5 $3.99 (Writer: Allan Heinberg, Artist: Jim Cheung): Avengers: TCC #4 ended with the return of the founder of the Young Avengers, Iron Lad. Iron Lad is the teenage Kang the Conqueror, and so the entrance of Iron Lad to the story also means the entrance of time travel. Time travel always makes for tricky storytelling, so when it’s done well, it should be recognized. And Heinberg makes great use of time travel in this issue. The Young Avengers travel back to the time of possibly the worst Avengers story ever told, AVENGERS: DISASSEMBLED. Heinberg does tweak continuity with this adventure, but he does so very cleverly. Jim Cheung’s art is stunning as usual. Heinberg’s script gives Cheung plenty to work with, as the issue opens in the midst of a huge battle and then switches gears to some hugely emotional moments. The release schedule of Avengers: TCC has been frustrating but every issue has been full of top-notch storytelling from both writer and artist.

THE BOYS #53 $3.99 (Writer: Garth Ennis, Artist: John McCrea): The Boys is often a mixed bag. Ennis likes to put his characters in truly over-the-top scenarios. Sometimes it works and sometimes it’s cringe-worthy.  The Boys #53 has a little bit of both. This issue is told almost entirely in flashback, as Mallory fills Hughie in on his experience with superheroes in Germany during World War II. Ennis knows how to write war stories and all the military dialogue is quite good. But Ennis’s WWII heroes (two clearly based on Captain America and Bucky) are just too grossly incompetent. I like Ennis’s pessimistic take on what a world with superheroes would actually be like, but if he just toned it down just a notch or two, it would be so much more effective. There’s one bit involving an unsanctioned recon mission involving the flying supes that’s smartly written. John McCrea is by far the worst of The Boys three rotating pencillers, but this issue happens to be the best he’s illustrated thus far.

Blog-A-Day: Day 2

My Favorite Comic Books of 2008

If there is any “best of” list I feel eminently qualified to write, it’s the one for best comic book series of the year. There are a few rules about my list, mini-series are not included (sorry “Marvel 1985″) and it has to be a series I read in the single issues and not just in the collected trade format (sorry “Y: The Last Man”). If there’s a theme to my list, it’s that it features a bunch of Marvel characters I never cared about as a child. At various points in my childhood, I was obsessed with the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and Spider-man. The one corner of the Marvel universe I could never get into was the Avengers’ books. And now I’ve made a list that includes the big three of those Avengers: Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor. Here’s the list:

1. Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 8 (Writers: Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard. Artists: Georges Jeanty, Karl Moline.): Feel free to scream, “Bias!” Yes, I’m a huge Buffy fan, but if you had ask me to make this list last year, Buffy would not have received the top spot. While the first year was pretty good, there were some growing pains in switching mediums in those first issues. This second year, however, has been near perfect. Goddard’s arc, “Wolves at the Gate”, bounced between hilarious and tragic with ease. And Whedon’s return to the world of future slayer Fray did not disappoint.

2. Captain America (W: Ed Brubaker. A: Steve Epting): Ed Brubaker has to be given credit just for writing a book called “Captain America” for so long without the title character appearing. This year ended the 30-plus issue story arc that started Brubaker’s run on the title and finally introduced us to the new Captain America, Bucky Barnes. Brubaker has a knack for taking absurd villains and turning them into credible threats. There’s actually a robotic bad guy with a television in his chest and a camera for his head. I never knew Cap had such a lame rogue’s gallery, but Brubaker makes it work.

3. Thunderbolts (W: Warren Ellis, Andy Diggle. A: Mike Dedato, Roberto De La Torre.): For the record, I’m choosing to ignore the disappointing Secret Invasion tie-in issues. Warren Ellis’ reboot of T’Bolts was a thing of brilliance. I know hardcore fans of the old Thunderbolts may not love the distortion of the original concept, but the idea of an Avengers-style team of villains worked perfectly in Ellis’ hands. With his noir style, Dedato, who I’m not a huge fan of normally, was the perfect artist for the book. Ellis’ decision to leave the book left me worried, but then Andy Diggle came on board and managed to deliver some of the darkest, most intense issues of the reborn series.

4. The Immortal Iron Fist (W: Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker, Duane Swiercynski. A: David Aja, Travel Foreman.): Here’s another book, like Thunderbolts, where there was a mid-year switch of creative teams and the quality of the book didn’t suffer. Before Brubaker and Fraction started this book, I didn’t have any feeling one way or the other about Iron Fist. After their first story arc, I painted him on my closet door. Duane Swiercynski took over the writing duties and with his first arc managed to continue the momentum started by Fraction and Brubaker. And then he wowed me with a futuristic Iron Fist issue which I’d list as one of my favorite single issues of any comic this year.

5. All-Star Superman/Astonishing X-Men (W: Grant Morrison. A: Frank Quitely. / W: Joss Whedon. A: John Cassaday.): This may totally be cheating, but I can’t give these books separate spots on this list. Combined, five issues of the two series were released in 2008. That being said, those five issues were insanely good. Morrison/Quitely and Whedon/Cassaday were two of the best creative teams over past few years (both their runs are now complete). They also seemed incapable of sticking to any kind of strict release schedule. While both books are brilliant, they couldn’t be more different in terms of structure. All-Star Superman consisted of a series of very elaborately plotted stand-alone stories. While Astonishing X-Men was basically a giant 25-issue story arc driven almost entirely by great character moments. Both series are available in beautiful hardcover formats now, go pick them up!

6. Thor (W: J.M. Stracynski, A: Oliver Coipel.): 2008 was the year of Thor. Not only did he star in this brilliant title, but he also appeared in a great series of one-shots by Matt Fraction. Growing up, I never understood the appeal of Thor. And I certainly didn’t get why a Norse god spoke like a character out of Shakespeare. But Stracynski decided to drop the ‘thou’s, recreated Asgard as a floating city in the Midwest, and transformed Loki into a woman. Stracynski is at his best when he’s creating a new world or recreating an existing one, and he does that perfectly here.

7. The Invincible Iron Man (W: Matt Fraction, A: Salvador Larroca.): More than any other book on this list, I’m recommending Iron Man exclusively based on the writing. I really dislike Larroca’s work here. If an artist is going to rely so heavily on photo reference, why not use reference of the actors from the hugely successful film featuring these characters? Larroca casting Nicole Kidman as Pepper Potts is just distracting. Fraction, however, wrote one of the best Iron Man stories ever in his first arc. And if you were a huge fan of the Iron Man movie, the first trade serves as a great introduction to the Iron Man comic books.

8. Criminal (W: Ed Brubaker, A: Sean Phillips.) If you like noir, this is a must read. Actually, if you like noir, you’re probably already reading it. But even if you’re not a big noir fan, it’s worth checking out. Currently the book is on hiatus while the creative team works on their pulp title INCOGNITO, so now is the perfect time to catch up by reading all the trades.

9. Captain Britain and MI:13 (W: Paul Cornell, A: Leonard Kirk.): I know Marvel publishes a ton of team books. So why should you read this one instead of one the 5 Avengers titles or 6 X-Men titles? Well, first it’s set in Britain, so you get cool British slang. Second, it features one of my favorite underused Marvel characters, Pete Wisdom. Third, it spun out of a huge crossover event (Secret Invasion) and managed not to suck. Fourth, the villains powers are all based in magic, so it has a very different feel than all those other Marvel team books. Fifth, it’s written by a television writer who can actually finish his scripts on time! And sixth, it’s just plain awesome.

10. The Boys (W: Garth Ennis, A: Darick Robertson.): Was is often juvenile? Yes. Did it often enter the realm of bad taste? Absolutely. But Ennis loves to deconstruct the super-hero genre and he does it with great success here with each and every issue. And that’s why The Boys makes my list; it’s like Watchmen with excessive violence and plenty of dick and fart jokes.

Honorable Mention: Ex Machina, Daredevil, Jonah Hex, Booster Gold, Action Comics, Wolverine: First Class