Once again, a pretty hefty dose of comics this week. These past few weeks I’ve come right out at the bell swinging at DC’s “New 52,” which has been tiring for all of us. I thought for a nice change of pace I’d start with a Marvel book, particularly one that’s made me a little grumpy these past few months.
FF 9 continues Jonathan Hickman’s fascination with slowly — some might say imperceptibly — exploring the minutiae of conversations between Reed Richards, Nathaniel Richards, all the other surviving Nathaniel Richardses of the multiverse, Black Bolt (via the first of his five wives, Medusa) and various representatives of alien races. I’ve been unhappy with FF since issue 1. I think Hickman has lost the plot, I think he’s wasted all the excitement and enthusiasm he built in the preceding two years of Fantastic Four by killing off Johnny Storm in a whirlwind of hype, I think he’s mishandled Ben Grimm’s role in the book, and most of all, I feel like he’s been wasting my time and money with his incessant water treading. Issue 9, however, made my stomach drop. There’s a scene where the League of Fantastic Four Supervillians of Days Past turn on Dr. Doom, and he flashes that Doom menace right up until the moment one of the future Reed Richards fastens a brain-destroying technocollar on Doom, telling him that they’re now stalemated. Some day Doom will turn against this Reed, and when he does, Reed’s gonna activate the collar and give Doom massive brain damage. Many months ago, I wondered where this exact version of Doom picked up his brain damage … THAT’S RIGHT. Hickman just dropped the other shoe that’s been hanging in time and space for about a year. Now I begin to see, Mr. Hickman. There’s the long view in comics (a standard six-month arc), and there’s the l-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng view (Hickman’s current feat). Everything about this book just became more interesting not just going forward but RETROACTIVELY. This is how you do an effective time travel story; make the reader experience some chronological distortion of their own.
OK, now we can talk about a New 52 book. The Savage Hawkman 1 (by Tony Daniel and Philip Tan) is the one book in this whole magilla I’ve actually been anticipating. I’m a Hawkman fan, I’ve enjoyed several iterations of the character over the years and I don’t believe any of ‘em have been the definitive Hawkman — at least not for me. Carter Hall has one of the most tangled, Crisis-bollixed back stories of any characters in the DCU. He’s been a Thanagarian space cop, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, a deathless human warrior and DC’s all-purpose yeast (he’s always rising from the dead, you see). The New 52 is a chance to finally pick a Hawkman origin story and tell it. So of course, Daniel starts right off with Carter being a tortured, grizzled vet of a superhero who’s so sick of his Thanagarian Nth metal wings and harness that he burns them in a fire, but soon comes to learn that the Nth metal has bonded with his body and now he can go full Hawky whenever he wants. So is he human or Thanagarian? Dunno. Is he frequently reincarnated? No idea. The bad guy, Morphicus, (terrible name) claims Carter is “not of this world,” to which Carter responds “Born and bred in the U.S. of A.” So he’s both alien and earthling, or unaware of his true origin and long past (the latter implied by Morphicus’ inability to overpower Carter’s “strong lifeforce”). Based on this first issue, Tony Daniel has opted to retain all the clutter and back story of the Old 52 Hawkman, which makes no sense at all. I thought the plan for this restart was that anybody could pick up any DC book and have an idea of who the main character is and why they should care. I’ve read lots of Hawkman stories, and I’m uncertain who this Carter is, and it sure don’t feel like I care. This book better get so great so quickly or so help me, I’ll … um … I’ll … Well, I guess I’ll have no DC books in my rotation.
Take a look at the cover of Amazing Spider-Man 670: J. Jonah Jameson as Spider-Man. Now listen carefully: As awesome and tingly as that cover makes you feel, what actually happens inside is so much better. This is the ultimate Marvel Team-Up story, as Spidey and the man Spidey refers to as Spider-Stache pair up and fight the Spider Island infestation. I know Ultimate Spider-Man has been garnering all the press lately, but this is the Spider book of your dreams. Everything is in this: comedy, tragedy, action, quips, a spittle-flecked rant from JJJ, a giant spider-humanoid with a familiar push broom mustache — all comics should be this much fun. Dan Slott, you have done the impossible with this book. I’m reading and enjoying a comic story that’s so big it comes with an issue checklist.
See, look at this. Incredible Herc 8 is a Spider Island tie-in, and I continue to buy it because my Slott love runneth over. Actually, Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente have some good stuff going on in this storyline. Herc has been infected by the Spider Virus and now has Spidey’s powers, and as we saw last issue, immediately developed an interior monologue that caused him to question the responsibilities of such power in a mortal. Don’t worry, he drowned out the voice with a keg of beer, so now he’s a half-drunken Spider-Herc fighting the X-men as the Spider Virus tries to force him to do bad things. He beats the X-men, too, thanks to a little help from Arachne (of Greek mythology). And then, these two Greek spider-centaurs take a trip to Sexxxytown. Look, this is a Teen + rated book, and I don’t want to sound prudish, but Herc-Spider and Arachne-Spider getting it on in front of Wolverine, Storm and Emma Frost is kinda creepy — Emma being totally into watching isn’t helping any. More superhero stuff and less arachnid sex would be appreciated.
Matt Fraction and Olivier Coipel wrap up their first arc on The Mighty Thor with issue 6. Fraction takes his tale of Galactus and Odin (and Silver Surfer and Thor) fighting over the World Seed and works in the novel idea of using the Destroyer as the problem solver — ha!, no I’m kidding. I’ve seen more Destroyer in the past two years than I did in the previous twenty. He’s approaching Joker levels of overexposure. Anyway, Odin kinda sorta strategizes his way out of the fight, aided by Loki’s trickery (he hides the World Seed in another dimension) and by Pastor Mike of Broxton, Oklahoma. Honestly, for a fight advertised as “Silver Surfer vs. Asgard,” it’s the philosophical discussions between Pastor Mike and Silver Surfer that redeem this book. The pastor’s pleas for non-violence appeal to the Zenn-Lavian buried deep in the Surfer, and he ends up making some huge career choices based on Pastor Mike’s argument. Mike ends up transformed as well. Still, the book ain’t called Surfer/Mike — last issue had Thor doing some serious Galactus bashing, which was appreciated, but I’d have liked the big lug to take a more active role in his own book this month. And what happened to Sif? She just sort of hung around in the background of this one, like she’s bored with saving her homeland. Sif ain’t the shy, retiring type — she also needs to be playing a bigger part in this book.
I wouldn’t consider myself a huge Wizard of Oz fan — I’ve never read a single one of the actual books — but the lady of the house is, so I picked up Marvel’s Wizard of Oz book on her behalf at last year’s Free Comic Book Day, and I ended up enjoying it. Eric Shanower and Skottie Young’s new Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz number 1 is exactly the kind of comic that could make one a fan of the whole phenomenon. Young’s art is vibrant and exciting and captures the magic of Oz, Shanower’s characterization of Dorothy and her second cousin, Zebediah, is charming, the story of Dorothy’s unexpected return to Oz is tension-fraught and interesting — this is a dandy little comic book, and it’s all ages. If you buy it and don’t like it, you can always give it to a nearby kid.
Warlord of Mars 10, by Arvid Nelson and Stephen Sadowski, jumps right into the next Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom novel, Gods of Mars. I don’t like Sadowski’s art as much as I liked Lui Antonio’s run on this book, but this is not bad. Dejah Thoris and John Carter’s son, Carthoris, is a young hatchling trying to clear his father’s name of murder (that’s the Civil War Virginian in him — he’s never even met his father, because John left Barsoom before the kid hatched), and he’s teamed up with Tars Tarkas, who’s quite the badass warrior Thark in this one. ERB’s plots are direct and whip-fast in developing, and Arvid Nelson has ably captured that unstoppable sense of forward motion in this series. Warlord of Mars is not what you’d call a prestige book — it’s all about action and lots of it, and that’s fine by me. In just under a year, Warlord of Mars has become one of my favorite books to see in my hold pile, and for good reason.
So what’s the best thing I read this week? That’s a tough one. Amazing Spider-Man continued its streak of rollicking, feel good comic bookery, but FF made so many seemingly dead-end plot points leap into place and point the way to “HOLY MOLY” that it feels like it has the edge. I’ll say this for FF: After finishing this issue, I wanted to immediately go back and read the preceding two years worth of comics to see what clues I missed. I think that has to be the tie-breaker. Any comic that makes you want to re-read everything up to the current issue has something going for it. From somewhere in the future, FF 9 materialized and immediately became the best thing I read this week. Which is great for me personally, because I was contemplating giving up on this book at the end of the year. Now, the FF and I are good for at least another couple years, or until Hickman leaves.
-Paul
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