Reviewarama-- 2/16/11
Did you see what I did there?
Review-arama?
News-arama?
Get it?
I'll be here all day, folks. Tip your waitress.
So, onto business. Here are quick excerpts and links to the past week of reviews at Newsarama. As always, click on the books title to go to the page and you may need to scroll down a bit through the article to find my review.
Price writes a quick, fast paced issue. While the first issue concentrated on a small group of people, Magus #2 reveals the true scope of their story, as the story builds around from the characters we found in the first issue, carry all the way to the White House with the President and his wife and carry it back to the beginning of time. But as he creates the vast backdrop for Magus, he rushes through the story, building events and history while brushing past the characters. We hardly know the two main characters at the crux of magic’s return even as we have to assume that they are starting the fight of their life. He does give one nice moment for one character, as we get a good glimpse into his imagination of what he can do and then a few pages later we see just what he really is or isn’t capable of.
As always, Guy Davis pulls everything together. His artwork shouldn’t work but there’s a weight and solidness in his lines that consistently makes B.P.R.D. one of the best looking books.
It’s a whirlwind of action in this issue but it’s like Mark Millar forgot that what made his original Ultimates book successful was the re-imagination of Marvel characters. There’s nothing in these characters in this issue that separates them from their Marvel U counterparts. Captain America is Captain America; Thor is Thor. What was great about Millar’s Ultimates is that the characters were recognizable but different. In this issue, they’re just recognizable.
For Johns, the moral compass of the Rogues has always been Captain Cold. Like Barry Allen, Cold has a set of rules that he lives by. While the Flash is running around trying to solve a murder mystery, the far more fascinating aspect of this book is Cold versus Boomerang. Boomerang needs to prove that he’s still a Rogue and I think that Cold wants him too. Captain Cold wants Captain Boomerang in the Rogues but he refuses to give his old comrade his place back. Johns isn’t just writing villains here; he’s writing brothers in arms. That’s been the best part of his Flash stories (and maybe why Flash: Rebirth feels so stiff— no Rogues in that book.) Sure, the book is called The Flash and it has to star a speedster (does it really matter if it’s Barry, Wally, Jay or even Bart?) but it’s the Flash’s villains and how they deal with the madness of life, death and resurrection that’s far more interesting than the murder mystery being bandied about.
Ollmann comes off completely and bluntly honest in the opening pages. He's funny, painful and deceptively open about how confusing it is to be a 40-year-old man. When he introduces Sherry Smalls into his story, that's where you've got to start wondering how much of this is autobiography. Like John, Sherry is going through her own crisis; mid-30s, single but in an on again/off again relationship more because it's easy than fulfilling. Being forced to choose between who she wants to be and who she's actually becoming, Sherri is actually going through the same turmoil as John. Both characters are going through the same crisis but Ollmann shows how their own life experiences change and affect how they deal with the idea that they’re aging faster than they every expected to.