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comickal: recently read, girly edition
Girls, they come and they go. They kiss, come, and they go.
Girls 8 (Luna Brothers)
Huh.
So it really WAS a bad idea for Lester to "do" all the Girls, wasn't it?
Well, at least now I have a better understanding of how the story might go on for 20 or so issues.
There will be a LOT of Girls running around, plus it turns out that the outside world is aware that something odd is happening in that area -- it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the people in the hazmat suits actually caused the problem, either accidentally or deliberately. And can you imagine the apology for that one? "Ooops! Sorry. We didn't mean to enclose your town in a giant ovum, or drop in the killer sperm cell from outer space, or get all those libidinous Girls to kill all the townspeople! Our bad!"
Marlene (Peter Snejbjerg, translated into English by the author)
Whoa.
Just ... whoa.
It's a slightly longer than normal black-and-white thriller/mystery/erotic noir comic. Men in this small city keep dying violently, and all they have in common is the woman Marlene. Detective Inspector Michael Joergensen investigates, and, in the best noir tradition, also finds himself drawn to Marlene. Overall, the story turns the typical horror cliche of "woman as victim" on its head. The story is fascinating, and the artwork matches perfectly. (Snejbjerg wrote Definitely worth the price. Now, all that said...
(All that said: the one absolutely perfect line, given the context, is, "Careful, Michael ... don't scrub it completely off." Yes, they do mean THAT. And no, I'm not telling you why. And the very last page is absolutely priceless. Really, go. Run. Buy. Read. Consume. If you like mystery/thriller/horror and sex, and who does not like those things?)
Y: The Last Man 41: Buttons
Normally I don't buy Y as single issues; I wait for the trades, since I started with it so late. Plus, it's a story that I prefer to get in large chunks. That said, I had to know about 355's origin, and I had to know NOW.
And it was so worth it.
Really, I don't have much more to say about it. I would imagine that, like "Hero's Story", it's going to have a payoff in an issue or two, but it's a good standalone.
(Purely a side note: American Virgin, the title previewed in the back of this issue, will either be really good, or kind of horrible, yet in a way that makes you buy it to find out what happens next.)
Down 3 (Warren Ellis/Cully Hammer)
Huh.
Huh.
I'm guessing that Deanna isn't meant to survive this, given that (ENDING TO ISSUE 3 REVEALED BEHIND THE CUT; IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW, RUN AWAY! RUN NOW!) (Unless you're reading this through RSS, in which case ... well, sorry. lj-cut doesn't do a thing for you, does it?)
She just killed an innocent, if revolting, bystander. I guess this is where her history of being raped was meant to come into play; she blew an operation, resulting in the deaths of her own people, to prevent the rape of a drugged-out prostitute in issue 1, and then killed someone making what was clearly not a serious threat to rape her after getting into an accident that was the fault of the driver of the car she was in. She could have made him back off by simply pointing the gun at him, for that matter, she didn't need to shoot him.
I'm beginning to think that Ellis may have made a mistake by doing this as a four-issue mini, unless maybe it's meant to be a series of minis. The idea is that she's under so much time pressure that she has to keep making one bad decision after another, but ... really, this needed to have more character development. Even after three issues, we don't quite know her well enough to buy this.
I'll buy issue 4, of course; after all, there's only one issue left, and I want to find out how it ends. (My own guess is that she either winds up dead, or goes native like the guy she was after.)
Superman: Birthright (Mark Waid, Lenil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan)
So apparently I'm on a kick where the only vaguely mainline DC stuff I read is Superman for people who don't read Superman. So far I've read "Superman: Secret Identity" (Superman in a world where Superman is only a comic book character -- a Busiek book, it's wonderful, you should buy!), I've started "All Star Superman" (and, OK, I'm thinking that having read other Superman titles might be helpful for that one, but not utterly necessary), "Superman: It's A Bird" (which is not, in point of actual fact, a Superman book as such) and now this one, and the next.
The idea behind this seems to be "What happens after Smallville", more or less. What does Clark do after college? What happens to Lex? What happens with Clark's relationship with his family? How would Superman appear in this day and age, where being a cosmic boy scout for boy-scout's sake would just not quite ... work?
This book is so good. So very very good. The attention to details is really amazing. For example, when Jonathan and Martha (mostly Martha) are helping Clark to come up with the "Clark Kent" disguise, they make the point that what they need to do is to disguise Clark; for the psychology of what he wants to do, Superman needs to be unmasked. (I point out, purely for the sake of argument, that while disguising Clark in Metropolis is fine, disguising Clark in Smallville is kind of rife with problems. Needing glasses as he gets older is one thing; needing such a severe prescription all at once is something else entirely. And how do you explain to people who watched him grow up how he goes from being this strapping thing to being so hunched over and shy? But I digress.) And, contrary to pre-crisis DC history, instead of Lex going bald because Superboy flying by disrupts an experiment, he pretty much does it all to himself ... and sorta kinda accidentally kills his father in the bargain.
I have to admit, I'd really love to see another out-of-continuity follow-up to this one where Superman has to work with Batman at his most Batmaniac. This Superman would have very different issues with Batman than the normal continuity Superman does ... and in some ways, they'd be even worse. (I've often wondered how boy-scout Superman tolerates Batman, whose methods are, at their best, much much darker.)
Superman: True Brit (Kim "Howard" Johnson/John Cleese, John Byrne, Mark Farmer, Alex Bleyaert)
That ... was frothy, frothy fun. Desperately silly, as befite something that John Cleese had a hand in. I especially liked the bit where Kent Clark's parents keep trying to ... misplace him, shall we say. Doesn't work too wall with a son with superpowers.
Honestly, not a lot to say about it, except that it's fun. It's so frothy that it could just float away (well, OK, except for the guy getting perforated by a superpowered cricket bat, so to speak).
Plastic Man: Rubber Bandits (Kyle Baker)
Huh.
Huh.
You know, now I understand how DC had so many problems figuing out exactly what to do with this title, so that they cancelled it and didn't have to deal with fitting it into the post-Crisis-Crisis universe. It fits extraordinarily badly in to DC continuity. (But then, Plastic Man was a bad fit for the DC universe to begin with -- and why on earth did DC need both Plastic Man and Elongated Man, anyway?) This is a Kyle Baker book to the very tips of its wonderfuly demented fingers, and not even vaguely a superhero book in any reasonable sense of the word. For the most part, it's pitched as an all ages book, with the sort of goofy comedy that might have made it work for DC's children's line ... but then, some of the humor is a little sophisticated for that. And the plain fact is, in that niche, not only would adults not have looked at it -- and I honestly think that, despite the all-ages orientation, adults will like this better than children -- but I think Baker might have felt a bit more constrained.
I tell you what, though: if you're looking for something funny, and it comes down to a choice between "True Brit" or "Rubber Bandits" ... take "Rubber Bandits." WAY more fun.
Daughters of the Dragon: Deadly Hands Special (1977)
The perfect meeting between blaxploitation and the kung-fu movie! Really, it is! And there's a guest appearance by the face of Bruce Lee as the head villain! What more can you ask for?
Misty Knight, former NY police officer, and Colleen Wing, part-Japanese samurai master, go into Hong Kong to find the killers of Colleen's grandfather, who taught her everything she knew. By the end of that story arc, many many many many many many people are dead, the Hong Kong waterfront has been blowed up real good, but Misty's 'fro is still fierce! (Sorry. It's just that all I could think at the beginning was, "Damn! That is some seriously BIG hair!" And yet, there's never a strand out of place, no matter how hard they have to fight!)
Oh, and later on, there's a vampire.
The title was originally a backup to other Marvel titles, and is here being compiled in preparation for the new modern-day "Daughters of the Dragon" miniseries that starts later this year. They've got a teaser for the new title at the end of this one, and it also looks seriously fierce. (That poor, poor car...)
And ... that's as caught up as I'm going to get this time.
Girls 8 (Luna Brothers)
Huh.
So it really WAS a bad idea for Lester to "do" all the Girls, wasn't it?
Well, at least now I have a better understanding of how the story might go on for 20 or so issues.
There will be a LOT of Girls running around, plus it turns out that the outside world is aware that something odd is happening in that area -- it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the people in the hazmat suits actually caused the problem, either accidentally or deliberately. And can you imagine the apology for that one? "Ooops! Sorry. We didn't mean to enclose your town in a giant ovum, or drop in the killer sperm cell from outer space, or get all those libidinous Girls to kill all the townspeople! Our bad!"
Marlene (Peter Snejbjerg, translated into English by the author)
Whoa.
Just ... whoa.
It's a slightly longer than normal black-and-white thriller/mystery/erotic noir comic. Men in this small city keep dying violently, and all they have in common is the woman Marlene. Detective Inspector Michael Joergensen investigates, and, in the best noir tradition, also finds himself drawn to Marlene. Overall, the story turns the typical horror cliche of "woman as victim" on its head. The story is fascinating, and the artwork matches perfectly. (Snejbjerg wrote Definitely worth the price. Now, all that said...
OK, this is my own pet peeve, and it's particularly a peeve with Marlene and Purgatori issue 2 (about which more in another entry). I like reading indie books, small publishers, I really do. But they keep doing the same stupid thing: they don't flag mature content on the covers of their issues. Mind, I hated the way the idea came about for various media, as a result of conservative pressure groups ... but that said, it truly doesn't strike me as objectively unreasonable. And with Marlene, people could get seriously blindsided. OK, yes, there is a sort of naked woman on the cover ... but she's wearing a lot of strategically placed reptile, in fact. Inside, on page 4, we have not only nekkid bosoms, but also a pudenda-eye-view of intercourse, with public hair and ever'thang. On pages 8-9, we got a lot of naked Marlene (not gratuitous, in that situation). On page 11, we have full frontal naked detective. On page 13, we have full frontal naked detective with an erection and an erection-eye-view of a blowjob. On page 14 ... well. You take my point. As Snejbjerg himself puts it: "Marlene is an erotic horror story, and that means not for you, junior! Go surf the Disney sites."
That said ... there are probably stores that picked this up that wouldn't have with a mature readers warning, and there may be a lot of people who are mature enough who will therefore be able to read and enjoy this who otherwise couldn't, so I'm not sure what the solution is. Thankfully, Chicago Comics will take pretty much anything, warning or not (they have a porno comics section, in fact), so that's not an issue here. But still.
(All that said: the one absolutely perfect line, given the context, is, "Careful, Michael ... don't scrub it completely off." Yes, they do mean THAT. And no, I'm not telling you why. And the very last page is absolutely priceless. Really, go. Run. Buy. Read. Consume. If you like mystery/thriller/horror and sex, and who does not like those things?)
Y: The Last Man 41: Buttons
Normally I don't buy Y as single issues; I wait for the trades, since I started with it so late. Plus, it's a story that I prefer to get in large chunks. That said, I had to know about 355's origin, and I had to know NOW.
And it was so worth it.
Really, I don't have much more to say about it. I would imagine that, like "Hero's Story", it's going to have a payoff in an issue or two, but it's a good standalone.
(Purely a side note: American Virgin, the title previewed in the back of this issue, will either be really good, or kind of horrible, yet in a way that makes you buy it to find out what happens next.)
Down 3 (Warren Ellis/Cully Hammer)
Huh.
Huh.
I'm guessing that Deanna isn't meant to survive this, given that (ENDING TO ISSUE 3 REVEALED BEHIND THE CUT; IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW, RUN AWAY! RUN NOW!) (Unless you're reading this through RSS, in which case ... well, sorry. lj-cut doesn't do a thing for you, does it?)
She just killed an innocent, if revolting, bystander. I guess this is where her history of being raped was meant to come into play; she blew an operation, resulting in the deaths of her own people, to prevent the rape of a drugged-out prostitute in issue 1, and then killed someone making what was clearly not a serious threat to rape her after getting into an accident that was the fault of the driver of the car she was in. She could have made him back off by simply pointing the gun at him, for that matter, she didn't need to shoot him.
I'm beginning to think that Ellis may have made a mistake by doing this as a four-issue mini, unless maybe it's meant to be a series of minis. The idea is that she's under so much time pressure that she has to keep making one bad decision after another, but ... really, this needed to have more character development. Even after three issues, we don't quite know her well enough to buy this.
I'll buy issue 4, of course; after all, there's only one issue left, and I want to find out how it ends. (My own guess is that she either winds up dead, or goes native like the guy she was after.)
Superman: Birthright (Mark Waid, Lenil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan)
So apparently I'm on a kick where the only vaguely mainline DC stuff I read is Superman for people who don't read Superman. So far I've read "Superman: Secret Identity" (Superman in a world where Superman is only a comic book character -- a Busiek book, it's wonderful, you should buy!), I've started "All Star Superman" (and, OK, I'm thinking that having read other Superman titles might be helpful for that one, but not utterly necessary), "Superman: It's A Bird" (which is not, in point of actual fact, a Superman book as such) and now this one, and the next.
The idea behind this seems to be "What happens after Smallville", more or less. What does Clark do after college? What happens to Lex? What happens with Clark's relationship with his family? How would Superman appear in this day and age, where being a cosmic boy scout for boy-scout's sake would just not quite ... work?
This book is so good. So very very good. The attention to details is really amazing. For example, when Jonathan and Martha (mostly Martha) are helping Clark to come up with the "Clark Kent" disguise, they make the point that what they need to do is to disguise Clark; for the psychology of what he wants to do, Superman needs to be unmasked. (I point out, purely for the sake of argument, that while disguising Clark in Metropolis is fine, disguising Clark in Smallville is kind of rife with problems. Needing glasses as he gets older is one thing; needing such a severe prescription all at once is something else entirely. And how do you explain to people who watched him grow up how he goes from being this strapping thing to being so hunched over and shy? But I digress.) And, contrary to pre-crisis DC history, instead of Lex going bald because Superboy flying by disrupts an experiment, he pretty much does it all to himself ... and sorta kinda accidentally kills his father in the bargain.
I have to admit, I'd really love to see another out-of-continuity follow-up to this one where Superman has to work with Batman at his most Batmaniac. This Superman would have very different issues with Batman than the normal continuity Superman does ... and in some ways, they'd be even worse. (I've often wondered how boy-scout Superman tolerates Batman, whose methods are, at their best, much much darker.)
Superman: True Brit (Kim "Howard" Johnson/John Cleese, John Byrne, Mark Farmer, Alex Bleyaert)
That ... was frothy, frothy fun. Desperately silly, as befite something that John Cleese had a hand in. I especially liked the bit where Kent Clark's parents keep trying to ... misplace him, shall we say. Doesn't work too wall with a son with superpowers.
Honestly, not a lot to say about it, except that it's fun. It's so frothy that it could just float away (well, OK, except for the guy getting perforated by a superpowered cricket bat, so to speak).
Plastic Man: Rubber Bandits (Kyle Baker)
Huh.
Huh.
You know, now I understand how DC had so many problems figuing out exactly what to do with this title, so that they cancelled it and didn't have to deal with fitting it into the post-Crisis-Crisis universe. It fits extraordinarily badly in to DC continuity. (But then, Plastic Man was a bad fit for the DC universe to begin with -- and why on earth did DC need both Plastic Man and Elongated Man, anyway?) This is a Kyle Baker book to the very tips of its wonderfuly demented fingers, and not even vaguely a superhero book in any reasonable sense of the word. For the most part, it's pitched as an all ages book, with the sort of goofy comedy that might have made it work for DC's children's line ... but then, some of the humor is a little sophisticated for that. And the plain fact is, in that niche, not only would adults not have looked at it -- and I honestly think that, despite the all-ages orientation, adults will like this better than children -- but I think Baker might have felt a bit more constrained.
I tell you what, though: if you're looking for something funny, and it comes down to a choice between "True Brit" or "Rubber Bandits" ... take "Rubber Bandits." WAY more fun.
Daughters of the Dragon: Deadly Hands Special (1977)
The perfect meeting between blaxploitation and the kung-fu movie! Really, it is! And there's a guest appearance by the face of Bruce Lee as the head villain! What more can you ask for?
Misty Knight, former NY police officer, and Colleen Wing, part-Japanese samurai master, go into Hong Kong to find the killers of Colleen's grandfather, who taught her everything she knew. By the end of that story arc, many many many many many many people are dead, the Hong Kong waterfront has been blowed up real good, but Misty's 'fro is still fierce! (Sorry. It's just that all I could think at the beginning was, "Damn! That is some seriously BIG hair!" And yet, there's never a strand out of place, no matter how hard they have to fight!)
Oh, and later on, there's a vampire.
The title was originally a backup to other Marvel titles, and is here being compiled in preparation for the new modern-day "Daughters of the Dragon" miniseries that starts later this year. They've got a teaser for the new title at the end of this one, and it also looks seriously fierce. (That poor, poor car...)
And ... that's as caught up as I'm going to get this time.