Library trades for 3-23: Justice and Summer Blonde

It's a one-two trade review for today! Can you handle it?

Justice
by Kim Krueger, Doug Braithwaite and Alex Ross
collecting the twelve-issue miniseries
(Amazon, $25.86)

A while ago (ie, three years ago) I read the first and second volumes of this. DC made the terrible decision of releasing three four-issue collections, in hardcover. My library had the first volume, as well as the second volume -- if you're looking for a few more scans besides what today's post has to offer, check out those links there. In those three years, I never saw the third and final volume in my library, so I guess I've been deferring this story for a full 1086 days.

It hasn't aged well. Re-reading through this, I remembered the sane. Ralph Dibny stopping Clayface in the sewers, so that Green Arrow and Black Canary can raid Brainiac's place? Epic.

excitement I had, of the Justice League getting thematically overturned by their archnemeses. The likes of Scarecrow and Lex Luthor were working together to create a better world, while the superheroes were painted as gods who devoted their time to keep humanity from moving forward. It's a compelling, realistic take on superheroes, but devolves into a standard save-the-world scenario. Sure, there are beautiful splash pages of superheroes saving the world. That two-page spread of the Green Lantern Corps. hurling Brainiac's nukes into space? In

Trust me, I love seeing superheroes doing their thing. I've spent so many keyboard taps on it. But when you have a hook like you do in that first issue, I expect more. Justice provides some nice things to look at, and like with so many other Alex Ross works, you get new redesigns of classic superheroes. Justice will do for your superhero fix, but it does nothing to move the genre or the medium forward.

Oh, here's an example of the awful binding:

Can you see who that is in the middle? SPOILER: It's Lex. I know there's a lot of thematic strength in putting someone at the very center. But the book's gutter makes it an ordeal just to see who it is. That's a bad, glaring decision to make when it comes to this page.

Again: links for volume 1 (issues 1-4) and volume 2 (5-8).

Summer Blonde: Four Stories by Adrian Tomine

by Adrian Tomine

collecting material originally released in Drawn and Quarterly (I think? I returned the book already)

(Amazon, $16.29 paperback)

So I think the library removed the slipcase for this hardcover -- which is why I decided to scan both the front and back cover. Four Stories tells, well, four different stories of four different people in California's Bay Area. In one of them, a successful writer seeks to reconnect with an old friend, and in another, a socially awkward woman finds ways to fill the time after getting fired from her phone job. Each story is full and packs a punch to the gut. All the main characters feel real, and their struggles feel real.

My favorite story was the third, "Hawaiian Getaway," starring Hilary Chang, a recently-fired telephone service rep. She obtains the number for the pay phone across her complex, and spends her time prank-calling it, until it leads her to meet a guy. She struggles against her inability to communicate, and the story ends with her attending her grandma's funeral, and recalling a childhood memory. It's some powerful stuff.

SCHEDULE THIS WEEK:

Wednesday: The Goon, Batman, Ultimate Comics All-New Spider-Man and more.

Friday: I dunno. Whatever I feel like?

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Digital goodies: 4-20-12

Whoa! Have you guys seen this? Local blogger extraordinaire (and by local I mean he's on the internet) David Brothers is going cold turkey on super-comics, because of the way they've treated their creators in the past. It's a huge decision to make, and his reasons make sense. Read it yourself.

In similar news, Chris Roberson is leaving DC/Vertigo for similar reasons. These things are important, aren't they? Creators' rights are important.

Anyways, enough chitchat. Here are some digital-only free comics that I looked at this past week. Freebies don't get much of attention, so I thought it'd be useful to talk about them. All links go to comiXology, because I have a comiXology account.

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Batman: Night of the Owls Booklet -- The super-crossover in DC's Batman titles started this week. It's called "Night of the Owls," and this freebie convinced me to get a copy of Batman #8. The booklet itself contains a Snyder/Tynion IV/Albuquerque short story about Alfred summoning the Bat-family, which is also the back-up story for Batman #8. The booklet doesn't contain much else besides covers for all the titles tying in to "Night of the Owls."

Harley-Davidson Avengers #1 --  Is this what corporate comics have become? Has Captain America become the Tony the Tiger for Harley-Davidson? Are super-heroes corporate shills now?

Jeff Parker and Manuel Garcia attach their names to this sub-standard story of the Avengers riding motorcycles and punching supervillains -- and not even that, the issue ends on a cliffhanger and isn't self-contained. I'm incredibly confused as to who this is aiming towards. The story just isn't smart enough for adults, but if it were aimed at kids, why is the title tied to a motorcycle promotion? Is little Billy meant to read this comic, and then hand it off to his father to try to win a Harley-Davidson?

Why.


Top Shelf Digital Action Pack #1 -- Here's the real reason I did today's write-up. There's a lot of freebies on comiXology, but the only way you can read them now is if you add them to your library (it used to be you could instantly open the reader for the comic, without having to add it to your collection, but those days are gone). That ends up in a whole lotta junk in your library that you don't care about, but Top Shelf has condensed everything into one convenient pack. It's no longer junk, something you read once and never look at again -- it becomes this big collection that you care about. There are full excerpts from titles such as Infinite Kung Fu, From Hell, Superf*ckers and more.

There's more than super-comics out there, and this is a good example why.

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Oh, and before I forget, here's another list of some comics I wanted to index for myself. You can ignore this.
1303
1318
1428 
1535
1637
1695

Trades, serials for today: Saga, America's Got Powers, I Kill Giants and more

I haven't been able to check my gmail in 3 days, so you'll forgive me if I haven't blogged in a while.

The time has been very useful to me -- I get to actually be alone with my thoughts, instead of putting them in the public and then be alone with them, after no one's commented.

Here's a look at the stuff I'm reading. These are actual photos because I don't feel like finding the scans online. Variety is the spice of life, eh?

Saga #2, by Brian k. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

America's Got Powers #1, by Jonathan Ross and Bryan Hitch

Avenging Spider-Man #6, by Zeb Wells, Mark Waid and Marco Chechetto

 

Saga introduces a new bounty hunter, who leaves just as quickly as she came. Nothing really moves forward in the comic, because our unlikely trio are still in deadly peril, but Vaughan's dialogue almost makes the issue worthwhile. It's Fiona's designs that clinch it. The end of the issue solicits a reader survey, and I'm interested in doing this. Anybody else on board?

America's Got Powers: Bryan Hitch is insane. Ross takes a lot of time to build a small world that we're already familiar with, and I'm wondering if the page economy could have been improved. But, Image is doing something different and I'm willing to support it for an issue or two.

Avenging Spider-Man: Leave it to Zeb to nail down three different voices here. You get the idea of who Daredevil is, Spider-Man as well as Punisher and his ally Punisherette. Give them to Chechetto and you get some crazy good super-comics with some crazy good layouts.

I could have spent my money on something else. I could have gotten a milkshake instead. I'm glad I got comics.

But now I want a milkshake.

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura

Transmetropolitan vol. 1: Back on the Streets, by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

Welcome to Tranquility: One Foot in the Grave, by Gail Simone and Horacio Domingues

 

I Kill Giants has some great cartooning in the way of Niimura. Fifth grader Barbara Thorson tries to escape her home life by creating an imaginary world, and with the help of her friend and the school psychologist, she learns that she's stronger than she thinks she is. It's a story that's all-too-rare in comic books, and I'm glad to read it.

Transmetropolitan contains the three-issue debut of the Vertigo comic, and it's a great thesis statement for the series: Spider Jerusalem returns after a five-year hiatus to journalism, and he learns again how messed up the world is. It's a great, darkly humorous piece of cyberpunk. I'll read the next volume if my library has it.

One Foot in the Grave is Gail Simone's continuation of the Wildstorm comic, and it's a bit weaker in its dependence on soap-opera-style dark pasts. With less vintage flashbacks than the first, the story here is still a story, but not one I'll fondly remember.

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Serials for today: Avenging Spider-Man, Chew and more

Avenging Spider-Man #5
by Zeb Wells and Leinil Yu

When I read the previews, it sounded like Zeb and Leinil had something to say about the industry: Captain America used to draw WWII comics! And I was right: the issue's a dedication to Joe Simon, co-creator of Cap himself.

Zeb writes something of a fraternity of Avengers, in which everybody likes to rib around with each other -- beating up the bad guys is merely a formality to these guys. The meat of the issue is Peter Parker fawning over Captain America, because he realized that Cap was a "nerd," just like him. What follows is something like a little dog jumping around to impress the bigger dog. It's sweet and shows a side that super comics doesn't show a lot. Zeb has a knack for character writing, and this is a team-up story that'll be a good team-up story years from now, no matter Spidey's status quo.

One nitpick: here's a shield scene from Leinil:

It's not very good. I can see where the shield starts, but where does it go? Who does it hit first? Is this a quantum shield, that exists simultaneously across different space?

What I'm trying to say is, the shield goes from point a to point b, and the art does a poor job of showing how it gets there.
 

Atomic Robo: Real Science Adventures #1
by various

Five stories! Four pages each! I love anthologies; if you don't like a story, there's four more you can look at. This issue is the platonic ideal of serialized fiction: you're meant to get a full reading experience from one piece, and that's what three of the five stories do. The other two are the first of six-parters, and tell their own self-contained stories.

I'm not sure if I can recommend this to people unfamiliar with the characters of Atomic Robo, but here's a velociraptor cackling as he hijacks a lab in India:

I like Atomic Robo, and if it so happens that you're curious, you can check out the preview.


Chew #25
by John Layman and Rob Guillory

It's the conclusion to "Major League Chew"! And it's a doozy. Amelia takes over the issue, but we still manage to see what every other side character is up to. She does some top-notch sleuthing to save Tony, and it's a sight to see.

Here's a page about Amelia. I think it speaks for itself about the quirky world that Chew's built and what a joy it is to read. If you like good comics, give Chew a try.

Secret Avengers #24
by Rick Remender and Gabriel Hardman

The Secret Avengers make a bigger mess as they try to rescue a mutant's son from the Adaptoids in their own world. Beast gets shot in the chest, both he and Hawkeye are captured, Valkyrie and Black Widow are besieged by Adaptoids, and Captain Britain and the Human Torch (the android version) don't know what to do.

It's a per-diker-ment that's compounded with a killer cliffhanger. Remender's telling an exciting storyline with Marvel characters, and Hardman's drawing it intensely. Check out this one panel here:

It's less than an inch tall, and occupies less than an eighth of the comic page. Look at the detail! There's more detail here than there are in some whole pages in comic books. It's crazy.

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Library trades today: Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimatum and Welcome to Tranquility

The clerk at the library was so awful last weekend. He literally opened up his phone to check the time, as I handed him my books to check out. Where has the courtesy gone?

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 22: Ultimatum
by Brian Bendis, David LaFuente and Stuart Immonen
collecting Ultimate Spider-Man Annual #3 and Ultimate Spider-Man #'s 129-133
(Amazon, out of print)

This paperback contains the final annual and the final issues of Ultimate Spider-Man before any reboot nonsense. There are two stories: in the annual, Mary and Peter's relationship moves forward in that awkward way that teenage relationships do, and a "Mysterio" is hinted at. The payoff for his introduction isn't in this trade, so that hurts the reading experience for this trade.

The second story is the five-part "Ultimatum," as Peter tries to save New York from Magneto's tidal wave, and teams up with the Hulk to save it. Here's a super-sweet spread from Immonen and friends:

Ultimate J. Jonah Jameson realizes that he made a mistake about Spider-Man: as NYC is engulfed in the tsunami, he types one last article, on the goodness of Spider-Man. Immonen and Bendis make a nice send-off for Ultimate Peter, and there's a small interview with Bendis that wraps up his run on Ultimate Spider-Man. Plus, the final page is a thank you page to everyone involved, including you, the reader!

The finality of these sentiments are a little weakened in retrospect, because any well-read Spider-fan knows that there was a whole new volume of Ultimate Peter, from Bendis and LaFuente, before Peter actually died. I'm sure it read pretty dramatic at the time, but to really enjoy this, you're gonna have to wipe your brain of some spider-history, that I don't think is worth doing. This volume is only for completists, or people who don't know better.

Welcome to Tranquility
by Gail Simone and Neil Googe
collecting Wildstorm's Welcome to Tranquility #'s 1-6, plus Worldstorm #1
(Amazon, out of print)

Here's a little gem that you haven't heard of. Simone excels at building the world of Tranquility, a retirement community for silver-age-esque superheroes. The first issue introduces a murder mystery that unravels a lot of problems simmering under the skin of Tranquility, and it results in a clash of generations and of superheroes. Rose-colored flashbacks are told alongside a less optimistic present that challenges a few of the ideas that are embedded in super-comics. If you take the time to learn about Tranquility and its inhabitants, you won't regret it.

Welcome to Tranquility had a sequel! We'll read this next week.

This Wednesday: Secret Avengers, Chew and others.

See you there!

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