written by Charles Soule
illustrated by Goran Sudzuka, Alec Morgan (issue #23)
colored by Matt Milla
In "Running with the Devil" Charles Soule reconciled the ending of Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's bright, cheery run on "Daredevil" with his gritty, noir-inspired status quo, even if it did involve a somewhat liberal interpretation of Purple Man's mind control powers and a fairly convenient plot device (i.e. a power amplifier), and delivered the best story I'd seen from him since he started his run on this book.
Little did I know, however, that he was just getting started.
"Supreme" sets out to answer a series of related questions that I am certain many comic-book fans with even just passing interest in the criminal justice system have asked: what happens after the superheroes have left the crooks with the cops? How are the crooks convicted in court? Do the superheroes testify during the trial? How does the court appreciate their testimony? These are the kinds of thoughts that could even arise from watching the new Spider-Man movie considering (mild spoiler) that after a bad guy is captured, it is mentioned that he is scheduled to go on trial.
The question is also posed in this very story line, and who better to approximate an answer to a hypothetical question that will, of course, never be answered in real life than an actual, honest-to-goodness lawyer? Yup, Charles Soule's legal background is an advantage he has over just about every other prominent writer in DD's history, and he puts his knowledge to good use here writing a storyline which, if Soule's dialogue for Matt is to be believed, has been percolating in the writer's mind since the very beginning.
To make a long story (one that's spanned three issues so far) short, Matt has a grand plan, which he shares with his colleagues and superior at the District Attorney's Office, to make it possible for superheroes to testify in court as to the criminals they've captured...without ever having to unmask and expose themselves. Their test case involves, as a witness, no less than Daredevil himself. The outlandish plan gains momentum by hurdling the trial court and is elevated on appeal. Suddenly, criminals with a lot to lose if this case establishes doctrine, take notice, specifically DD's longtime nemesis Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin.
It's kind of tragic that, even as one of the most interesting superhero stories in recent memory is playing out, Marvel seems unduly preoccupied with yet another line-wide reboot to pump up flagging sales. They couldn't even be bothered to hook Soule up with an A-list artist. I mean, with all due respect to Goran Sudzuka and Alec Morgan, who are entirely competent, this story, at minimum, merits the work of the series' mainstay Ron Garney, and would be much better served by the work of an even higher-profile artist. At the very least they could have stuck with one artist instead of rotating these two. Such an uneven experience with the art really doesn't do the overall story any favors.
Still, the writing is riveting, and the pacing impeccable. Soule walks a tightrope here; it's easy for the storytelling to be dominated by talking heads, which is really the meat and potatoes of the story, but he injects the right amount of action into each issue, with the latest issue featuring a fight with the gangster and Spider-Man bad guy Tombstone and an appearance by no less than She Hulk.
Given the length of the story arcs this series has had so far, this one probably only has two more issues to wrap up, but however this plays out it will have lasting ramifications for the Marvel Universe, and not in some hopelessly contrived, cosmic kind of way but in a very practical, down-to-earth manner. I honestly cannot wait to see how this ends because I don't see any cop-out endings working here.
8/10
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Friday, July 14, 2017
So THAT'S How They Did It: A Capsule Review of "Running with the Devil" (Daredevil Issues #18 to #20)
written by Charles Soule
illustrated by Ron Garney and Marc Laming (issue #19)
colored by Matt Milla and Miroslav Mrva (issue #19)
As much as I wanted to review each of these issues as they came out, life kind of got overwhelming and the hobby had to give way to my obligations. In any case, I write this for anyone contemplating picking up the inevitable collected edition of the "Running with the Devil" story line, which to my mind was one of the very best that Charles Soule has given us since he took over this book nearly two years ago.
The story kicked off with issue #17 (which I reviewed) in which Matt goes to confession to Fr. Jordan, who is basically a sort of plot device that enables Matt to explain to us readers how he went, at the end of the Mark Waid run, from living in San Francisco with a beautiful girlfriend, a multi-million dollar book deal, and a publicly-known superhero identity, to New York, working for government wages in the District Attorney's office, with no more girlfriend, and no one even knowing who he is except for Foggy Nelson.
The good news is that there's no out-of-left-field reason for this happening like a deal with the devil or something equally ludicrous; it's just some good old-fashioned storytelling, using characters right out of DD's library, like the Purple Man, who featured prominently during Mark Waid's run, and his kids, whom Mark Waid and Chris Samnee actually created. While I won't go so far as to spoil what happened in the story, suffice it to say that amplified mind control was involved, and as a result, nobody remembered who Daredevil was anymore, absolutely nobody, including people he didn't necessarily want to forget. Still, as subsequent events have made clear, Daredevil took the opportunity to start off with a clean slate.
I waited a year and a half for this story, and if I may be honest it was worth the wait. The fact that the reason for the status quo change was nowhere near as radical or outre as I thought it would be actually came as a relief, and the story was written with such fealty to the tone that Mark Waid had established in his old run that it may as well have been written by Waid himself.
Garney, who leaves behind the noir setting he's established in the few issues he's drawn for this book, acquits himself quite well, though with full color I find myself missing Chris Samnee quite a bit. Fill-in artist Marc Laming, who steps in for issue #19, one of the more crucial issues of this four-part series, does a solid job, albeit one noticeably inconsistent with Garney's jagged lines, which makes for a slightly jarring reading experience. I quite enjoyed the sequences in issue #19 that take place inside Matt's head, though, and I think Laming nailed that quite well.
Overall, though, this is some really fine work by Soule, with a great conclusion, which sets it apart from his "serial killer" storyline which ended on a distinctly anticlimactic note. The good news is that I think his very best story is yet to come, as my next review will show.
8.5/10
illustrated by Ron Garney and Marc Laming (issue #19)
colored by Matt Milla and Miroslav Mrva (issue #19)
As much as I wanted to review each of these issues as they came out, life kind of got overwhelming and the hobby had to give way to my obligations. In any case, I write this for anyone contemplating picking up the inevitable collected edition of the "Running with the Devil" story line, which to my mind was one of the very best that Charles Soule has given us since he took over this book nearly two years ago.
The story kicked off with issue #17 (which I reviewed) in which Matt goes to confession to Fr. Jordan, who is basically a sort of plot device that enables Matt to explain to us readers how he went, at the end of the Mark Waid run, from living in San Francisco with a beautiful girlfriend, a multi-million dollar book deal, and a publicly-known superhero identity, to New York, working for government wages in the District Attorney's office, with no more girlfriend, and no one even knowing who he is except for Foggy Nelson.
The good news is that there's no out-of-left-field reason for this happening like a deal with the devil or something equally ludicrous; it's just some good old-fashioned storytelling, using characters right out of DD's library, like the Purple Man, who featured prominently during Mark Waid's run, and his kids, whom Mark Waid and Chris Samnee actually created. While I won't go so far as to spoil what happened in the story, suffice it to say that amplified mind control was involved, and as a result, nobody remembered who Daredevil was anymore, absolutely nobody, including people he didn't necessarily want to forget. Still, as subsequent events have made clear, Daredevil took the opportunity to start off with a clean slate.
I waited a year and a half for this story, and if I may be honest it was worth the wait. The fact that the reason for the status quo change was nowhere near as radical or outre as I thought it would be actually came as a relief, and the story was written with such fealty to the tone that Mark Waid had established in his old run that it may as well have been written by Waid himself.
Garney, who leaves behind the noir setting he's established in the few issues he's drawn for this book, acquits himself quite well, though with full color I find myself missing Chris Samnee quite a bit. Fill-in artist Marc Laming, who steps in for issue #19, one of the more crucial issues of this four-part series, does a solid job, albeit one noticeably inconsistent with Garney's jagged lines, which makes for a slightly jarring reading experience. I quite enjoyed the sequences in issue #19 that take place inside Matt's head, though, and I think Laming nailed that quite well.
Overall, though, this is some really fine work by Soule, with a great conclusion, which sets it apart from his "serial killer" storyline which ended on a distinctly anticlimactic note. The good news is that I think his very best story is yet to come, as my next review will show.
8.5/10
Saturday, July 8, 2017
SPYder-Man, SPYder-Man: A Review of "The Osborn Identity" in The Amazing Spider-Man issues #25 to 28
written by Dan Slott
penciled by Stuart Immonen
inked by Wade Von Grawbadger
colored by Marte Gracia
When Dan Slott and Giuseppe Camuncoli relaunched "The Amazing Spider-Man" in 2015 as a sort of "spy epic" to contrast with Miles Morales' more down-to-earth adventures as over in Brian Bendis and Sara Pichelli's "Spider-Man," I confess I lost interest in the title after having followed it religiously for over a year, and before that, having followed the controversial "Superior Spider-Man" book in which Doctor Octopus took over Peter Parker's body. I also wasn't a big fan of Camuncoli's art, having endured it on the aforementioned titles, and as a result I stopped collecting the title altogether.
Late last year, though, Slott managed to lure me back with his five-part miniseries The Clone Conspiracy, in part because he revisited a storyline with which, I felt, I had unfinished business, and in part because his collaborator on that story, Jim Cheung, happens to be one of my favorite artists.
Shortly thereafter, back in the regular "Amazing" title, Marvel did a bit of a "refresh" by pairing Slott with the well-loved and extremely talented Stuart Immonen, and by reintroducing an old enemy of Peter's, Norman Osborn, this time without the Green Goblin persona but with an equally ruthless disposition. The results were, well, mixed, at least in my opinion.
In this story, Spider-Man is tracking down Osborn, who is currently working as an arms supplier for the tyrannical monarch of Symkaria. He finds an unexpected ally in the Silver Sable, whom he had previously believed dead, as well as former Avenger Mockingbird, but the odds against him, even with the resources of Parker Industries at his disposal, are ominous. Furthermore, his plan to invade a country and attack a sitting head of state does not sit well with Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D., which also happens to be Parker Industries' biggest client, so there's the question of what the right thing to do under the circumstances is. Of course, Peter being Peter there's only one way for things to go...
Honestly, I wasn't particularly hooked by the "Osborn vs. Parker" showdown, and in fact I found Norman's last major appearance that I had read, the final issue of "Superior Spider-Man" to be distinctly anti-climactic. Also, I didn't quite get where Peter's sudden wave of rage against Osborn came from, but then, I hadn't been reading the regular "Amazing" book for a while. That shouldn't really have mattered, though, considering that this book was billed as a perfect "jumping on" point for new or returning readers. In setting up a big showdown between a hero and his supposed worst enemy, therefore, Slott's script falls short.
That said, the rather contrived rivalry aside I thought it played out well, with a good blend of intense action and the patented Spidey humor, though things might have gotten a little too goofy towards the end. Immonen is an excellent fit for this book and elevated a story that, had it been illustrated by Camuncoli or another artist of similar caliber, would probably not have really popped for me.
It was a reasonably solid first story for a very talented new creative team, and considering that the next issue pits Peter against the all-new and improved Superior Doctor Octopus, it appears they've got quite a bit in store for the web slinger.
7/10
penciled by Stuart Immonen
inked by Wade Von Grawbadger
colored by Marte Gracia
When Dan Slott and Giuseppe Camuncoli relaunched "The Amazing Spider-Man" in 2015 as a sort of "spy epic" to contrast with Miles Morales' more down-to-earth adventures as over in Brian Bendis and Sara Pichelli's "Spider-Man," I confess I lost interest in the title after having followed it religiously for over a year, and before that, having followed the controversial "Superior Spider-Man" book in which Doctor Octopus took over Peter Parker's body. I also wasn't a big fan of Camuncoli's art, having endured it on the aforementioned titles, and as a result I stopped collecting the title altogether.
Late last year, though, Slott managed to lure me back with his five-part miniseries The Clone Conspiracy, in part because he revisited a storyline with which, I felt, I had unfinished business, and in part because his collaborator on that story, Jim Cheung, happens to be one of my favorite artists.
Shortly thereafter, back in the regular "Amazing" title, Marvel did a bit of a "refresh" by pairing Slott with the well-loved and extremely talented Stuart Immonen, and by reintroducing an old enemy of Peter's, Norman Osborn, this time without the Green Goblin persona but with an equally ruthless disposition. The results were, well, mixed, at least in my opinion.
In this story, Spider-Man is tracking down Osborn, who is currently working as an arms supplier for the tyrannical monarch of Symkaria. He finds an unexpected ally in the Silver Sable, whom he had previously believed dead, as well as former Avenger Mockingbird, but the odds against him, even with the resources of Parker Industries at his disposal, are ominous. Furthermore, his plan to invade a country and attack a sitting head of state does not sit well with Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D., which also happens to be Parker Industries' biggest client, so there's the question of what the right thing to do under the circumstances is. Of course, Peter being Peter there's only one way for things to go...
Honestly, I wasn't particularly hooked by the "Osborn vs. Parker" showdown, and in fact I found Norman's last major appearance that I had read, the final issue of "Superior Spider-Man" to be distinctly anti-climactic. Also, I didn't quite get where Peter's sudden wave of rage against Osborn came from, but then, I hadn't been reading the regular "Amazing" book for a while. That shouldn't really have mattered, though, considering that this book was billed as a perfect "jumping on" point for new or returning readers. In setting up a big showdown between a hero and his supposed worst enemy, therefore, Slott's script falls short.
That said, the rather contrived rivalry aside I thought it played out well, with a good blend of intense action and the patented Spidey humor, though things might have gotten a little too goofy towards the end. Immonen is an excellent fit for this book and elevated a story that, had it been illustrated by Camuncoli or another artist of similar caliber, would probably not have really popped for me.
It was a reasonably solid first story for a very talented new creative team, and considering that the next issue pits Peter against the all-new and improved Superior Doctor Octopus, it appears they've got quite a bit in store for the web slinger.
7/10
Friday, June 30, 2017
Daddy Issues: A Belated Review of the Spider-Man/Deadpool Story "Itsy Bitsy"
written by Joe Kelly
illustrated by Ed McGuinness (pencils), Mark Morales and Jay Leisten (inks)
colored by Jason Keith
Between an increasingly busy schedule, the inability to pick up my comic books on time and a general disenchantment with pop culture these days (something I'll explore more in a future post), I've found it harder and harder to review forms of entertainment that used to be a staple of this blog.
In the last couple of weeks, though, I've read comic book storylines that, even though the single issues are several months old, will only just start coming out in trade paperback form lately.
One such story line is "Itsy Bitsy," the second and final story by series creators Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness, which features an old familiar face to Deadpool, and a brand new psychopath cobbled together by infusing an anonymous small-time crook with Spidey's and Deadpool's abilities. Unfortunately this new villain gets it in her head to make the world a better place, by murdering pretty much everyone in sight who, to her mind, is making it a bad place. It's a pretty intense story, one that sees Spidey being pushed yet again to the limits of his own personal code that stops him from killing bad guys, except that what he doesn't know is that this time, someone is counting on him to cross that line. Ironically enough, it's up to the mass-murdering gun-for-hire Deadpool to stop Spider-Man from killing someone.
As much as this book is billed as a team-up, it's really mainly told from Deadpool's point of view. In the first arc he agonized over his contract to kill Peter Parker, which he fulfilled but ultimately undid through some black magic. In this arc, while a lot of focus is on how Peter is basically going off on the deep end, it's Wade that faces the moral quandary of whether or not he should let Spidey cut loose or do everything he can to stop him. The ending can reasonably be described as predictable, but as with most stories nowadays it's the journey that counts, not the destination and both Kelly and McGuinness have given fans a story that, to my mind at least, will go down as a pretty memorable one. Kelly even managed the trick of milking something useful out of the much reviled "One More Day" storyline.
Considering that Kelly has written a number of Spidey stories prior to this one, though, the real star here is McGuinness, who was apparently as excited to draw the character as fans were excited to see him work on Marvel's single most iconic character. I'm so happy he did it that it's actually an item ticked off my bucket list; now all that has to happen is for Jim Lee to do even just a brief stint on a Spidey book.
Following this book over several months was a distinctly jarring experience considering the repeated delays and fill-ins, but it was to Marvel's credit that they didn't let any other artist step in to work with Kelly on this book, and reading the issues from start to finish is a much more pleasant experience, and I'm certain it will look spectacular in trade paperback form. I won't bother grading the individual issues anymore, but suffice it to say that as a whole, this arc is a more than decent read and a good addition to the Spider-Man canon (which the only canon I'm really familiar with as I don't follow Deadpool quite as much).
8/10
illustrated by Ed McGuinness (pencils), Mark Morales and Jay Leisten (inks)
colored by Jason Keith
Between an increasingly busy schedule, the inability to pick up my comic books on time and a general disenchantment with pop culture these days (something I'll explore more in a future post), I've found it harder and harder to review forms of entertainment that used to be a staple of this blog.
In the last couple of weeks, though, I've read comic book storylines that, even though the single issues are several months old, will only just start coming out in trade paperback form lately.
One such story line is "Itsy Bitsy," the second and final story by series creators Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness, which features an old familiar face to Deadpool, and a brand new psychopath cobbled together by infusing an anonymous small-time crook with Spidey's and Deadpool's abilities. Unfortunately this new villain gets it in her head to make the world a better place, by murdering pretty much everyone in sight who, to her mind, is making it a bad place. It's a pretty intense story, one that sees Spidey being pushed yet again to the limits of his own personal code that stops him from killing bad guys, except that what he doesn't know is that this time, someone is counting on him to cross that line. Ironically enough, it's up to the mass-murdering gun-for-hire Deadpool to stop Spider-Man from killing someone.
As much as this book is billed as a team-up, it's really mainly told from Deadpool's point of view. In the first arc he agonized over his contract to kill Peter Parker, which he fulfilled but ultimately undid through some black magic. In this arc, while a lot of focus is on how Peter is basically going off on the deep end, it's Wade that faces the moral quandary of whether or not he should let Spidey cut loose or do everything he can to stop him. The ending can reasonably be described as predictable, but as with most stories nowadays it's the journey that counts, not the destination and both Kelly and McGuinness have given fans a story that, to my mind at least, will go down as a pretty memorable one. Kelly even managed the trick of milking something useful out of the much reviled "One More Day" storyline.
Considering that Kelly has written a number of Spidey stories prior to this one, though, the real star here is McGuinness, who was apparently as excited to draw the character as fans were excited to see him work on Marvel's single most iconic character. I'm so happy he did it that it's actually an item ticked off my bucket list; now all that has to happen is for Jim Lee to do even just a brief stint on a Spidey book.
Following this book over several months was a distinctly jarring experience considering the repeated delays and fill-ins, but it was to Marvel's credit that they didn't let any other artist step in to work with Kelly on this book, and reading the issues from start to finish is a much more pleasant experience, and I'm certain it will look spectacular in trade paperback form. I won't bother grading the individual issues anymore, but suffice it to say that as a whole, this arc is a more than decent read and a good addition to the Spider-Man canon (which the only canon I'm really familiar with as I don't follow Deadpool quite as much).
8/10
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Truly Worth Championing: A Review of Champions Volume I
written by Mark Waid
drawn by Humberto Ramos (pencils) and Victor Olazaba (inks)
colored by Edgar Delgado
Following the events of Civil War II, three of the All New, All Different Avengers, Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Nova (Sam Alexander) and Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), have all quit the team, disillusioned as they are with their former idols and mentors. Rather than just go their own separate ways, however, at the insistence of Ms. Marvel, the three of them try something else altogether: they form their own team. Together with Totally Awesome Hulk (Amadeus Cho), Viv Vision, daughter of the Vision, and the X-Men's Cyclops (Scott Summers), they are the Champions!
These kids aren't keen on slugging it out with supervillains of the day, though; they fight decidedly more mundane, "real world" threats like human trafficking, religious extremism in South Asia and even small-town racism. Even more notably, rather than just save the day by punching the bad guys, they do something even more remarkable; they help people find the courage and determination to help themselves.
This may sound like hyperbole, but I think I've been waiting for this comic book my whole life.
As much as I loved reading the adventures of Peter Parker and various other Marvel superheroes as a kid, it dawned on me fairly early just how different I was from the heroes whose adventures I read, beginning with the color of my skin as opposed to theirs.
It also occurred to me, early on, that the problems that my heroes faced, while occasionally were the sort of thing I could relate to, like Peter Parker's money problems, were, by and large not really the kind I or anyone I came into contact with on a regular basis faced every day. Over time, while I still enjoyed reading their adventures, the fact that the concerns they faced were far removed from the experiences in the world I lived in made it increasingly harder to read out of anything more than habit.
Also, as I got older I found myself increasingly annoyed by the tokenism I was seeing in entertainment in general, whether it was in the comics I read or the movies or television shows I liked to watch. Asians (when I was growing up) were virtually nonexistent in American pop culture, save for a few Chinese, Japanese, and the occasional Korean character, and it was perhaps this rarity that caused me to gravitate more towards African American characters, and even then, with few exceptions like Will Smith and Denzel Washington in the movies, I observed that entertainment was still largely a white man's world. In comic books, leading black characters were exceedingly rare and the few that showed up in Marvel Comics, like War Machine or Falcon, were usually sidekicks. Asian characters were virtually nonexistent, and the only Filipinos in the comics I read were the ones who drew them. After a while, I just gave up and decided to just read the darned things with no expectations.
In fact, so jaded had I become over the years that, even when Marvel started introducing a more ethnically diverse line of superheroes like the African American Spider-Man Miles Morales, the Latin American Nova Sam Alexander and the Pakistani American Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, I was almost entirely dismissive of them, thinking that they were nothing more than "PC" bait. I was relieved to find that the stories told by creators like Brian Bendis, Sara Pichelli, David Marquez, G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona and Takeshi Miyazawa were quality narratives and about far more than some ham-handed effort at tokenism.
There was something different about Wilson's Ms. Marvel stories, though. As a female Muslim-American, Kamala Khan represented two key demographics that were not only underrepresented in mainstream comic books, but who continue to suffer a great deal of discrimination in the real world. Her stories, to my mind, even if they weren't about racism or Islamophobia or hate crimes, paved the way for a book that could address these questions head-on. Her character had the potential to be a lightning rod for controversy, but because of some really quality storytelling by Wilson and her team of artists, she instead became a rallying point for the kind of superhero fans didn't realize they needed: a non-WASP, non-male protagonist.
For all of that, though, her stories stayed conspicuously safe.
Leave it to comic book veterans Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos to finally grab the bull by the horns and tell stories that, all things considered, can only really be effectively be told with this cast of characters.
In the Trump era of reinvigorated racism, this book is as important to the pop-culture landscape as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's X-Men were to the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s. Waid is surely aware of the era he's evoking, here, as I have a feeling his inclusion of Cyclops in the lineup is a nod to that earlier advocacy. Sure, the stories being told here are a bit of a blunt instrument, but considering how dim a lot of Trump-loving comic book readers are, these stories may be exactly what the doctor ordered. Yes, the stories are preachy and without any subtlety whatsoever. No, this isn't Waid's best work by a long shot, but it is some of his most ballsy.
And yes, Ramos' work here is, well, as can be expected. It seemed to me that he was trying to refine his approach to Spidey when he rebooted The Amazing Spider-Man back in 2014 with Dan Slott, but here he's pretty much gone back to the big-eyed, gangly figures for which he's best known. The good news is that when he draws kids this way, as he did back in 2008 when he did a stint on Runaways, it works somehow. I'm still not a fan of his dubious take on human anatomy, but I must say he's got a good storytelling sense here.
I applaud Marvel for putting this book out every month. I'm glad they've decided to roll the dice with these characters, and that they've rankled the fanboys who think comics should be the way they always were.
I don't know how long Marvel will be able to continue publishing this title, but as long as they're publishing it, I'm buying it.
8/10
drawn by Humberto Ramos (pencils) and Victor Olazaba (inks)
colored by Edgar Delgado
Following the events of Civil War II, three of the All New, All Different Avengers, Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Nova (Sam Alexander) and Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), have all quit the team, disillusioned as they are with their former idols and mentors. Rather than just go their own separate ways, however, at the insistence of Ms. Marvel, the three of them try something else altogether: they form their own team. Together with Totally Awesome Hulk (Amadeus Cho), Viv Vision, daughter of the Vision, and the X-Men's Cyclops (Scott Summers), they are the Champions!
These kids aren't keen on slugging it out with supervillains of the day, though; they fight decidedly more mundane, "real world" threats like human trafficking, religious extremism in South Asia and even small-town racism. Even more notably, rather than just save the day by punching the bad guys, they do something even more remarkable; they help people find the courage and determination to help themselves.
This may sound like hyperbole, but I think I've been waiting for this comic book my whole life.
As much as I loved reading the adventures of Peter Parker and various other Marvel superheroes as a kid, it dawned on me fairly early just how different I was from the heroes whose adventures I read, beginning with the color of my skin as opposed to theirs.
It also occurred to me, early on, that the problems that my heroes faced, while occasionally were the sort of thing I could relate to, like Peter Parker's money problems, were, by and large not really the kind I or anyone I came into contact with on a regular basis faced every day. Over time, while I still enjoyed reading their adventures, the fact that the concerns they faced were far removed from the experiences in the world I lived in made it increasingly harder to read out of anything more than habit.
Also, as I got older I found myself increasingly annoyed by the tokenism I was seeing in entertainment in general, whether it was in the comics I read or the movies or television shows I liked to watch. Asians (when I was growing up) were virtually nonexistent in American pop culture, save for a few Chinese, Japanese, and the occasional Korean character, and it was perhaps this rarity that caused me to gravitate more towards African American characters, and even then, with few exceptions like Will Smith and Denzel Washington in the movies, I observed that entertainment was still largely a white man's world. In comic books, leading black characters were exceedingly rare and the few that showed up in Marvel Comics, like War Machine or Falcon, were usually sidekicks. Asian characters were virtually nonexistent, and the only Filipinos in the comics I read were the ones who drew them. After a while, I just gave up and decided to just read the darned things with no expectations.
In fact, so jaded had I become over the years that, even when Marvel started introducing a more ethnically diverse line of superheroes like the African American Spider-Man Miles Morales, the Latin American Nova Sam Alexander and the Pakistani American Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, I was almost entirely dismissive of them, thinking that they were nothing more than "PC" bait. I was relieved to find that the stories told by creators like Brian Bendis, Sara Pichelli, David Marquez, G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona and Takeshi Miyazawa were quality narratives and about far more than some ham-handed effort at tokenism.
There was something different about Wilson's Ms. Marvel stories, though. As a female Muslim-American, Kamala Khan represented two key demographics that were not only underrepresented in mainstream comic books, but who continue to suffer a great deal of discrimination in the real world. Her stories, to my mind, even if they weren't about racism or Islamophobia or hate crimes, paved the way for a book that could address these questions head-on. Her character had the potential to be a lightning rod for controversy, but because of some really quality storytelling by Wilson and her team of artists, she instead became a rallying point for the kind of superhero fans didn't realize they needed: a non-WASP, non-male protagonist.
For all of that, though, her stories stayed conspicuously safe.
Leave it to comic book veterans Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos to finally grab the bull by the horns and tell stories that, all things considered, can only really be effectively be told with this cast of characters.
In the Trump era of reinvigorated racism, this book is as important to the pop-culture landscape as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's X-Men were to the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s. Waid is surely aware of the era he's evoking, here, as I have a feeling his inclusion of Cyclops in the lineup is a nod to that earlier advocacy. Sure, the stories being told here are a bit of a blunt instrument, but considering how dim a lot of Trump-loving comic book readers are, these stories may be exactly what the doctor ordered. Yes, the stories are preachy and without any subtlety whatsoever. No, this isn't Waid's best work by a long shot, but it is some of his most ballsy.
And yes, Ramos' work here is, well, as can be expected. It seemed to me that he was trying to refine his approach to Spidey when he rebooted The Amazing Spider-Man back in 2014 with Dan Slott, but here he's pretty much gone back to the big-eyed, gangly figures for which he's best known. The good news is that when he draws kids this way, as he did back in 2008 when he did a stint on Runaways, it works somehow. I'm still not a fan of his dubious take on human anatomy, but I must say he's got a good storytelling sense here.
I applaud Marvel for putting this book out every month. I'm glad they've decided to roll the dice with these characters, and that they've rankled the fanboys who think comics should be the way they always were.
I don't know how long Marvel will be able to continue publishing this title, but as long as they're publishing it, I'm buying it.
8/10
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Late to the Party: A Review of Black Widow #12
co-written by Chris Samnee and Mark Waid
drawn by Samnee
colored by Matt Wilson
This review is over a month late, but I'm posting it anyway for some sense of closure.
Last March Chris Samnee and his co-conspirators that included writer Mark Waid, colorist Matt Wilson and letterer Joe Caramagna delivered the last issue of their twelve-run on Black Widow, which will probably be rebooted in a few months' time after the whole "Secret Empire" business has worked out. The last issue saw Natasha Romanov's deadly rival Recluse bring her six young recruits to destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. at a remote facility, and this issue resolves everything. At the risk of sounding spoilery, suffice it to say that this issue, and the series in general, does not upset any character's status quo, which should give you an idea of how this ends.
When Samnee and Waid set up the climax to their year-long story with a threat to the very existence of S.H.I.E.L.D. I groaned out loud, and this issue is really no different as they trot out yet another well-worn story trope to wrap up all the loose ends.
As an exercise to help Chris Samnee get his feet wet with the whole writing thing, I think this series was definitely worth picking up. His art is better than it's ever been, and doing his own plotting has given him a degree of freedom I don't think he's ever had before. As a visual storyteller, this guy is right up there with the best of them, though I confess I am not a fan of the story he put together.
All told, I end the series with no regrets, but at the same time I hope that Samnee's next creative endeavor is something that manages to achieve the narrative as well as visual heights of his work with Waid on Daredevil.
6/10
drawn by Samnee
colored by Matt Wilson
This review is over a month late, but I'm posting it anyway for some sense of closure.
Last March Chris Samnee and his co-conspirators that included writer Mark Waid, colorist Matt Wilson and letterer Joe Caramagna delivered the last issue of their twelve-run on Black Widow, which will probably be rebooted in a few months' time after the whole "Secret Empire" business has worked out. The last issue saw Natasha Romanov's deadly rival Recluse bring her six young recruits to destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. at a remote facility, and this issue resolves everything. At the risk of sounding spoilery, suffice it to say that this issue, and the series in general, does not upset any character's status quo, which should give you an idea of how this ends.
When Samnee and Waid set up the climax to their year-long story with a threat to the very existence of S.H.I.E.L.D. I groaned out loud, and this issue is really no different as they trot out yet another well-worn story trope to wrap up all the loose ends.
As an exercise to help Chris Samnee get his feet wet with the whole writing thing, I think this series was definitely worth picking up. His art is better than it's ever been, and doing his own plotting has given him a degree of freedom I don't think he's ever had before. As a visual storyteller, this guy is right up there with the best of them, though I confess I am not a fan of the story he put together.
All told, I end the series with no regrets, but at the same time I hope that Samnee's next creative endeavor is something that manages to achieve the narrative as well as visual heights of his work with Waid on Daredevil.
6/10
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Anticlimax: Black Panther #11 and #12
written by Ta Nehisi Coates
drawn by Chris Sprouse, Brian Stelfreeze
For the most part I genuinely enjoyed Ta Nehisi Coates' overtly political take on the Black Panther series, largely because of Brian Stelfreeze's distinctive art, and also because of Coates' discussion of government and of the deceptiveness of revolutionary movements. It felt like heady stuff for a comic book, and even though the discourse often got in the way of effective story pacing, I was willing to see the arc through.
Well, with issues 11 and 12 the revolution comes to a head as T'Challa and his allies, who include his newly-resurrected sister Shuri, Australian ex-Avenger Manifold, and Stateside recruits Storm, Luke Cage and Misty Knight, go head to head with insurgents Tetu and Zenzi and their army of insurgents. T'Challa has also won over, through the intervention of Shuri, his two rogue Dora Milaje Aneka and Ayo. Issue #11 presents the climactic confrontation, and in issue #12 the characters take stock of how it all went wrong in the first place, and what needs to be done from here. Some loose ends are left hanging, clearly baiting readers for the next story line.
I have to say, for a series that started with such promise and which contained genuinely interesting ideas, the climax it presented disappointed me quite a bit, both visually and thematically. The normally talented Chris Sprouse presented a rather subdued set of action sequences, and even Coates didn't bother to stage anything particularly dramatic, which is the sort of thing that would certainly be appropriate to close out a year's worth of stories with.
Issue #12 fares somewhat better than issue #11, as Brian Stelfreeze returns to help tie up the series' first "season," but I really couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed by such a muted conclusion to something that started with much fanfare. Still, even though Coates action narrative falters, his commitment to the conversation he started stays the course, and for that he deserves some credit, even though I, as a reader, have pretty much shown myself the door as far as collecting this series on a monthly basis is concerned. Maybe I'll come back for the trades, but for now, I'm done with this book.
6/10 issue #11
7/10 issue #12
drawn by Chris Sprouse, Brian Stelfreeze
For the most part I genuinely enjoyed Ta Nehisi Coates' overtly political take on the Black Panther series, largely because of Brian Stelfreeze's distinctive art, and also because of Coates' discussion of government and of the deceptiveness of revolutionary movements. It felt like heady stuff for a comic book, and even though the discourse often got in the way of effective story pacing, I was willing to see the arc through.
Well, with issues 11 and 12 the revolution comes to a head as T'Challa and his allies, who include his newly-resurrected sister Shuri, Australian ex-Avenger Manifold, and Stateside recruits Storm, Luke Cage and Misty Knight, go head to head with insurgents Tetu and Zenzi and their army of insurgents. T'Challa has also won over, through the intervention of Shuri, his two rogue Dora Milaje Aneka and Ayo. Issue #11 presents the climactic confrontation, and in issue #12 the characters take stock of how it all went wrong in the first place, and what needs to be done from here. Some loose ends are left hanging, clearly baiting readers for the next story line.
I have to say, for a series that started with such promise and which contained genuinely interesting ideas, the climax it presented disappointed me quite a bit, both visually and thematically. The normally talented Chris Sprouse presented a rather subdued set of action sequences, and even Coates didn't bother to stage anything particularly dramatic, which is the sort of thing that would certainly be appropriate to close out a year's worth of stories with.
Issue #12 fares somewhat better than issue #11, as Brian Stelfreeze returns to help tie up the series' first "season," but I really couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed by such a muted conclusion to something that started with much fanfare. Still, even though Coates action narrative falters, his commitment to the conversation he started stays the course, and for that he deserves some credit, even though I, as a reader, have pretty much shown myself the door as far as collecting this series on a monthly basis is concerned. Maybe I'll come back for the trades, but for now, I'm done with this book.
6/10 issue #11
7/10 issue #12
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