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Catching up with reviews from the Mothership

For some reason, January sucked for posting links to my reviews over at Newsarama so, if you're interested in month-old reviews, here's a bit of what I spent January writing about over there.  Click on the book title to find the full review.

Matt Fraction's writing is surprisingly honest as he paints Stark as someone who's aware of his own self-inflicted problems but is powerless to overcome them. His problems have made him who he is and, in their own way, are bigger than just himself.  As Fraction points out many times in this issue, Stark’s alcoholism is just one of the many weaknesses that Stark faces on an almost daily basis.  The character has taken big steps over the years but his addictive nature is always going to be there. "Drinking, working, women. It was like some kind of self-destructive multitasking,” Stark says, a bit smugly appreciative at his own self-reflection.  That pretty much sums up Tony Stark's life.  His problems are his and he owns them even if he has trouble controlling them.  And even after he’s poured out his heart and talked about all of his own personal issues, in the end you have to ask just what he’s learned in life as we see him about to make familiar mistakes again.

Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1
Over on the art, Keith Giffen is channelling his own inner-Jack Kirby here, striking poses and creating energy right out of an old issue of The Fantastic Four.  Giffen has always worn his artistic influences on his sleeve and his panel compositions here just scream Kirby homage, from the upshots of characters to the poses his characters strike are practically culled from any Kirby book post-1965.  Kirby never drew a Legion story so this annual is the closest we’ll ever get.  Unfortunately Giffen also employs his patented 6 panel grid, the workhorse layout he used during DC’s 52  While there it kept the story unified and running on time, here it dampens Levitz’s story, making every page look the same.  Page after page of 6 panel grids makes everything flow together, giving almost no break or excitement to any individual page or scene.  Everything blends together until the story is just a uniform mass of even-tempered beats and plot points.

While the story feels like an interesting blend of something old/something new for the writing duo, getting John Severin to draw the story makes this issue something special. Over his long and distinguished career, Severin has proven time and time again that he can draw almost anything but the man shines even 60 years after his first EC story was published. Severin has a grit to his drawing, creating heroes and villains through texture and expression. His artwork is the complete opposite of Mignola’s. Where Mignola is moody, dark and hidden, Severin is solid, fluid and descriptive. He takes the world that’s been so established to exist in shadow and secrecy and gives its past a concrete figure. Everything is fully formed and detailed, from the stage coach that brings Grey to Utah to the tracker to helps Grey escape a bar fight.

Even as the art is a new experience, Bastian creates a world that’s simultaneously old fashioned (or what we’d want a Victorian fantasy world to look like and wonderfully modern. The Cursed Pirate Girl herself is an incredibly modern character, filled with a zest for life and adventure. Bastian takes a pirate story, which is almost always a boy’s story, and makes it a fun and exciting story about a girl on a grand adventure to find her father, to share in his own adventures on the seven seas. The Cursed Pirate Girl does not let anything get to her. When she loses an eye, wearing an eye patch is just a rite of passage for a pirate. As she fails to find her father on one ship, she knows that there are other ships out on the sea that he could possibly be on. Everything that happens is just part of the adventure she has to be on as she searches above and below the sea for some clue of where her could be.

For one brief moment in Uncanny X-Force #4 Rick Remender and Jerome Opeña look like they’re going to take the easy way out and fall back on the clichéd optimism that is a staple of X-Men stories, displaying an unearned optimism about the future. Luckily Remember and Opeña show us just why this isn’t your standard, run-of-the-mill X-Men book.

Bunn and Hurtt have built this series for the long haul, creating a rich cast and giving their characters plenty of room to succeed and to fail. The story of the six guns is really still just beginning and I think there’s going to be a lot more dark days for Sinclair and Becky before they are relieved of their burdens.

Luckily, Fraction's modern story are wrapped around his story of the future of the Stark family and that’s where this issue gets really interesting. The fears and worries of Tony Stark in 2011 are the realities of Tony Stark in 2052. Those designs that exist in his mind that no one but him could actually build with modern technology are possible for his enemies to build and control. And if it’s a weapon, someone like the Mandarin won’t just build one of them; he’ll build ten. Providing the balance for the modern-day sequences, we see the reality of Stark’s nightmares and his own failures at controlling them. By playing out this future in Iron Man #500 Fraction shows us why today’s Tony Stark should be as desperate as he is. The future sequences justifies the modern day story in this issue and create something more than just another Iron Man story.

The problem is that as Hopps and Weisman try to show us the downtime in these characters lives, those characters haven’t been built up enough.  We barely know these versions of Kid Flash and Superboy; we haven’t seen enough about them yet.  And while this issue tries to be the “character building” story, we still don’t learn anything more about them.  Why is Kid Flash as impulsive as he is or why is Superboy as brooding?  You don’t have to answer these questions in this comic, but if you’re going to try to show them as “normal” teenagers, you need to show a bit about why they’re not normal -- and it has to be more than “he runs fast” or “he’s Superman’s clone.”  Issues that focus primarily on building characters should show us something more than what we already know about those characters.

Casanova: Gula #1
Fraction’s writing in Casanova: Gula #1 feels more immediate than anything he’s done yet in Iron Man or Thor. While you can see aspects of Casanova in those Marvel characters (the parental issues, trying to figure out how they fit in with a future and world that they didn’t want), Casanova is a much younger character than those, not weighted down by almost 50 years of continuity. He’s building everything in Casanova: Gula and he’s also able to tear everything down. The Fraction who writes Casanova is a dangerous writer, maybe even slightly crazy, if Casanova has been any indication. As this issue shows, he’s willing to demolish everything he built in the first storyline by getting rid of his main character. He’s pulling out some big concepts for his Marvel work, but Casanova has the added weight of being pure Fraction.

Dear Marvel, here’s how you get me to buy all of your comic books in 2011 -- put the flame headed Nikki on the cover.

The first issue was a download of information but this second issue is a feast of story, a fine taste of the story and art that Byrne can still produce.  The original run of Next Men remains one of Byrne’s best comics of the last 20 years and John Byrne’s Next Men #2 feels like he’s picked up right where he left off.

Vision Machine TPB
More than just a cautionary tale, Pak writes an entertaining and thrilling story as three friends face this new digital frontier together.  With RB Silva and Dym on art, Vision Machine is a graphic novel that has a strong story to take on the questions that Pak is asking. As this trio of friends have to figure out who’s really using the iEye technology and who’s looking out for them, Pak and Silva form an alluring future that feels possible and hopeful. This isn’t an idealistic or dystopian vision of our future; it’s something that could be our tomorrow for all of the wonder and horror that idea generates. Pak makes this story for everyone who waits eagerly for the next Apple announcement or who watches all the tech blog, looking for the next gadget that is sure to change our lives.

The art in both stories works with the character designs of the TV show but takes them in different directions. The main story is drawn by Scott Wegener of Atomic Robo fame. He actually stays fairly faithful to the look and feel of the show, aided heavily by Beaulieu’s flat, animated cell-like coloring. If you like the look of the cartoon, you’ll love the look of Wegener’s take on the Avengers. Scherberger uses the character’s designs but fit them completely into his own artwork, creating a story that looks cross between the cartoon and Humberto Ramos. Scherberger’s approach creates a more dynamic and visually exciting story.