I’m going to share with you the secret of successful comic reading. Every week I push the book I’m most excited about to the bottom of the pile, so I end on a high note. But I’ve recently started reading See You Next Wednesday before I read anything else, because it’s important to begin the stack on a high note as well.
Mike Harvey’s eight-page exercise in endurance is like walking across a short bridge into another world, and it always leaves me primed to read more comics. This week’s issue is about an anime-style battle between two strangers in a sandwich shop, but quickly unravels to reveal the psychic toll the weekly deadline is taking on Mike. There’s a bit of obvious self-referentialism in this one, but there’s also something more subtle going on: The issue is called “Power Up” and yet it ends with Mike exhausted and bemoaning having to make another 20-something issues after this one. I like to think this is Mike’s subconscious telling him to suck it up and keep going, and that his drive to succeed is so strong it’s leaking into the world visibly, in minicomic form. Weekly comics are a cruel mistress, but Mike keeps on keeping on.
I’m far less certain about the greatness of Silver Surfer 5. On the one hand, Silver Surfer is actually Silver Surfer again — I consider that essential for any Silver Surfer comic — and Galactus rises smoking from the heart of the sun like a great, purple Pop-Tart, which is always a plus. But the Surfer is also as emo as a teenager off his meds; apparently, in the space of one afternoon, he’s become emotionally “bound” to Suzi Endo for “forever.” That’s a bit hasty — what will Shalla Bal, love of his life for the past 50 years, say? His emotional outpouring may be because he’s briefly been human again, and according to the dialog, he’s never had any emotions while he was all silvered up — how then to explain his series in the 1970s, when all he did was feel things, and also his pining for the aforementioned Shalla Bal, lo these many years? I’m also not certain if his touchy-feeliness is permanent, like a bad tattoo, or if it was a passing fad, like the fauxhawk. And you know what else? I’m not sure I care. This limited series was kind of all over the place after the first issue, and not in a good or satisfying way.
Silver Surfer also pops by The Mighty Thor 3, another book for which I run hot and cold. Olivier Coipel draws a fine Surfer, and colorist Laura Martin practices a much-appreciated restraint on the silvering effect. Matt Fraction gives us all the gift of Thor head-butting the Surfer partway across ruined Asgard, but then spurns my goodwill with some clumsy dialog — would Odin really know enough of Quentin Tarrantino’s oeuvre to make a Gimp joke about the Surfer? I say thee, “nay.” Volstagg the Mighty argues theology with the preacher from last issue (he seems quite a bit more malicious this month, by the way), and then everybody prepares to go to space to fight Galactus. Every other page of this book makes me roll my eyes, and yet I keep buying it. It may just be because I like having a Thor comic in my life. I don’t know that I’d recommend this to anyone as an enjoyable comic unless they also feel obligated to have a Thor comic in their life, and even then it feels more obligatory than entertaining.
Boom Studios’ Planet of the Apes 3, however, is actually far more entertaining than I suspected this series was going to be. Carlos Magno’s art is very nice, and Daryl Gregory’s script weighs the human characters and the apes and finds them both to have flaws and redeeming qualities. Sullivan, the pregnant woman in charge of the humans, takes a long view of human/ape relations, which is detrimental to her ability to listen to the complaints of the impetuous young, who lack perspective and are also going to have to live with Sullivan’s decisions a lot longer than she is. Alaya, the new ape leader, is out for vengeance but recoils in horror when she actually encounters violence. Now that the Lawgiver is dead and his killer is hiding amongst the humans, both women’s flaws begin to dictate their decision making. The addition of the cunning and violent gorilla commando, Nix, insures that the worst possible outcome is the most probable. I may be human, but I’m an ape sympathizer from way back, so I would dearly love to see some carnage in this book — but Gregory and Magno have made it so I’ll probably feel pretty bad if Sullivan gets herself killed. Probably.
I don’t often say this, but there wasn’t nearly enough violence in Conan Road of Kings 6, or the series as a whole. Mike Hawthorne’s pencils are so cartoony and pedestrian that all the fun was sucked out of this arc, and while I would swear up and down on a stack of Sandman hardbacks that I’m a story first/art second kinda guy, I must admit that terrible art greatly diminishes the impact of any book. Roy Thomas is a comics legend and I believe that as a prose story, this would have worked fine as a Conan pastiche, but all the various plots wrap up so quickly that I wonder why this was six issues rather than four. Conan doesn’t really do much here; he throws an axe, he duels — in a lackluster fashion, I might add — Gamesh, the assassin with the Snap-On sword arm, and he eventually beats Gamesh through wits and not brawn. Actually, Gamesh is the most interesting thing about this story, but not for actually being an compelling antagonist. Something in that duel jogged my memory, and after a bit of brain wracking, I had it. That sword arm reminded me of Captain Bor’aqh Shoraq, a horrible Darth Vader manqué created by Michael Fleisher in Savage Sword of Conan 75; you’ll find the pertinent issue in Dark Horse’s Savage Sword of Conan Volume 7 omnibus. Anyway, back to the issue at hand: The editor’s note on the letters page says the series continues in August with “Roy and co.” I sincerely hope that “co.” is an encrypted phrase that means “anyone but Mike Hawthorne.”
Dark Horse Presents 2 was a welcome sight, partially because I didn’t expect to see another issue so soon after the first (the glacial scheduling of DH’s Savage Sword lead me to believe I wouldn’t see this until autumn), and partially because I just plain love an anthology book. I also love the work of Neil Adams and Howard Chaykin, but neither of them has a winner on their hands at the moment. Adams’ “Blood” is an incomprehensible mess of Templar apocrypha, mafia whatever and Bible stuff. Chaykin’s working another crime story about a schlubby guy who has a lot of sex in “Marked Man” — it’s kind of Chaykin by rote at this point. Michael Gilbert’s “Mr. Monster” is much more welcome, being a classic Marvel monster comic homage with an actual sense of humor, and Patrick Alexander’s ultra-cartoony “The Wraith” lays out everything I hate about modern Batman in six wordless, silly pages.
Even more surprising is Sanford Greene and Chuck Brown’s “Rotten Apple,” the first chapter of a post-apocalyptic zombie story that actually makes me interested in a post-apocalyptic zombie story. It’s more about San Gee, a mercenary who appears to be a teenage girl, than it is about zombies, but they play a part. San Gee’s latest mission is going to put her in conflict with a mercenary team comprising a Frankenstein, a bird-headed guy, a devil and the tiniest, deadliest minotaur you’ve ever seen. After witnessing the minotaur tear up a zombie street gang, I can’t wait to see where this story goes. $8 is a lot to pay for a comic, but DHP makes it worth your while, even when a couple of the stories are duds — but that’s they way anthologies work. I have many issues of the original DHP from the 90s, and way too many of them feature Concrete, a character I just don’t care about or for — but I’d never give those books up. Heck, this issue features Concrete, and I still don’t care about him, but look at me claiming that DHP is the best thing I read this week. Variety truly is the spice of life.
-Paul
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
One of my favorite bookstores in St. Louis. Star Clipper offers not only the best selection of comic books and graphic novels in the city, but also a cornucopia of art, design and pop-culture related books and magazines. 
