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Reviewed herein: UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED #1 Writer - Mark Waid [RELATIVELY STANDARD FANGIRL DISCLAIMER: This series is written by Mark Waid. As many rac posters know, I am, to put it mildly, a Mark Waid fan. Therefore, I am aware that my usual (heh) objectivity may be slipping here. Please take my comments below with however much sodium chloride you feel appropriate. Thank you. Know, too, that my system went a little bonkers on me halfway through my first attempt at this pseudo-review and I had to log off, so my thoughts may be a tad jumbled as I try to re-create them. All due apologies.] Okay, pretend y'all don't know what I thought of this :), and read on... This is one of the best things Mark has ever written, if not the best. There will always be people who quibble about changes. Especially permanent ones. Especially permanent ones involving death. I'm one of them. I hate killing characters. Well, I despise killing heroes more, but death in general gets my goat. That said, I'm not as upset as I probably should be about Mark's decision to do away with five members of Flash's Rogue's Gallery. (Hoo boy, and just when the "controversy" about Mark not using Bill Loebs' Flash characters was dying down...) Mark's implication here was right - these guys, by and large (and I do make an exception for Captain Boomerang, who has been ill-served by being mostly comic relief of late - between his death and the situation at Belle Reve, I'm not holding out for a SUICIDE SQUAD revival any time in the near future), wouldn't have that much of a chance at real, honest-to- villainhood respect unless they went out in a literal blaze of glory. They weren't bad characters - I don't believe there is such a thing as a bad character, only a badly- written one - but, well, maybe that's it... they weren't bad characters. And the guys in those particular outfits may be gone, but the concepts still remain. Who's to say that a new Mirror Master or Captain Cold or Weather Wizard doesn't lie around the corner waiting to be (re)born? As for Blue Devil... =sigh= I've always had a thing for Dan Cassidy, so I guess it bothers me a bit that he's apparently turning evil. But he's been terribly underutilized for years, hasn't really interacted in any meaningful way with the rest of the DCU and, most importantly, his turn takes a logical progression story-wise. It makes perfect sense to me that a man who's been bitching since Day One about the costume would do just about anything to get rid of it (as Dave van Domelen pointed out elsewhere [on Usenet], a more powerful demon can override the spell a lesser demon has placed on the costume). Additionally, the man works in Hollywood, so he's already sold his soul. :) I think the biggest surprise for me was seeing Luthor reborn, as I've not picked up any of the Superman family of books in quite awhile, and I think his return, while probably necessary to the mythos, will only keep the books at their current mediocre state. But again, there are no bad characters, etc. etc. Plot's out of the way, then, and I can talk about the writing. Which is magnificent. The different voices of all the characters, even the minor ones (like Lou), ring very true to me. Some of the more obscure references (the Marabunda, Gematria) really tickled the heck out of me. I think the Trickster POV is a very good choice, and serves as a more than adequate device to introduce those of us who aren't as up on DC history to the villainous pantheon as well as to Neron himself. The choices made by the various characters were interesting; I especially liked the touch that about half the villains had no interest in joining Neron's cause. There are a few places here and there that seemed a little odd - Neron actually whomping Mongul with fistacuffs prior to swiping his soul, one spot where he cackles with glee which I found rather cliched - but for the most part, this weaves together perfectly. I didn't mind the green ink - I thought it served its purpose well. The panel layouts were tremendous; my goal in life is to someday be able to direct panel layouts like these. All in all, between this and the other fine reads I got this week (including another book Waid offering, CAPTAIN AMERICA, plus the usual high quality of SANDMAN, GROO, BONE and a very, very good AQUAMAN), I'm a happy camper. This has been one of the best comics reading weeks in my recent memory. So (she said, taking a breath and preparing for the worst), what did y'all think? Writer - Peter David Here's what I thought: Just when I think Peter no longer has the power to knock the hell out of me with his writing, he does it again. This makes me smile a lot. :) And he Made Major Disaster Scary. Big whoa. The whole concept is very, very well done. Don't care for the art - don't know if I'll ever care for an Aquaman artist - and the inking is a bit heavy for my tastes, but the coloring is gorgeous. :) And at least Egeland does draw a decent child's face. Mera's still not ringing true to me, but she's been through a lot, I'll cut her some slack. Great diversionary tactic - and it serves Thanatos right. Good foreshadowing re: the eventual battle, in the Astounding Years to Come, between AJ and Koryak. Also some interesting revelations in the tunnels tying in with the ATLANTIS CHRONICLES, which makes me a happy camper. Interesting, and telling, comment by Vulko re: Koryak and his predecessor in power, Shalako. Like the knuckle cracking bit. :) So, what did y'all think? Writer - Neil Gaiman Well, here's what I thought... The eulogies continue. Wesley Dodds' probably amused me the most. I was rooting for him to be the one person to wake up and remember. (I certainly didn't remember, when I woke up. <g> ) Desire's was so bitch-queen perfect you know s/he can't deal with things; interesting to note that you'll never really see hir heart. Despair's was marvelous, and a real revelation. I thought Duma was overdone, but then again I guess it's supposed to be. Delirium - oh, heartbreaking. Matthew, very revelatory as well, and the closest, I think, to His Master's Voice. (Er, the master being Gaiman, of course. <g> ) If Death's words make sense of everything, it's a damn shame we don't get to read them. Her silence was unexpected, and a tad infuriating. I think the Absolution of Lyta was my favorite scene. Page 20 was absolutely lovely, and serves to make a very clear delineation between the last (morose) Dream and this (forgiving and thoughtful) one. I loved the conversation among the Endless, waiting to meet Dream. I'm still trying to figure out who was saying what. I think the ragged-edged caption was Death, the fancy writing was Desire, and the plain text was Destiny, and I'm equally sure I'll be corrected. I never thought I'd say this about a comic book - Destruction was cool. So, what did y'all think? [I'm putting the Obligatory Interlac Translation (courtesy of LOTS of other folks in these newsgroups) in here as well, to make it easier for folks to follow things. Wonder who at Starkings is responsible for the upside-down letters?] Writer: Karl Kesel This Issue's Firesign Line: "It's all right - they're speaking Chinese..." Or Interlac, as the case may be. Here's what I thought... I think the Kid ought to start studying more. :) Wonderful bit with SB at school, suddenly realizing things no longer come to him automatically. The Legionnaires arrive as SB is getting out of school, and take a body count. Fortunately, at this point the Interlac is translated. They're either short one or up two. As Triad pulls herself together and the others huddle closer to the hot air issuing from Brainy's explanation of why they're freezing :), Imra notices Jenni's gone to visit her cousin. Brainy tells them to chill (which must not have gone over too well), they'll get her later which will have been before which will... oh, you get the idea. As some other astute person (I think it was Dave) said, the Bill & Ted Theory of Time Travel. Roxy's studying (SB ought to try it sometime), and she and the Kid are having a heart-to-heart about schoolwork when Cham bursts in as a Buzekian stone-borer - don't you just hate when that happens? SB goes after the sandwo-- uh, stone-borer, and we hear the following (*INTERLAC TRANSLATION ALERT* and a tip o' the hat to Erick Hancock) Cos: I should have seen this coming! I have point! (He has point? Interesting expression to have survived a thousand years.) Brainy: Be glad this isn't the 1950's... It was customary to nuke large xenomorphs at that time. (Especially over Tokyo.) Saturn Girl: Oh I'm sure that'll make Cham feel a lot better! A few cute cultural references ensue between SB and Cham (ah, always does my heart good to see references from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL). Cos : No Superboy! Friends! We are Friends! Frie.. Cos : All Right. We'll play this your way Superboy! But Magna-ball champions always win! (Even when there's not a magna-ball in sight? Just some debris he tosses in SB's direction, as a token of their friendship. Guess it never occurred to the Legionnaires to Simply... Stop... Fighting...) Brainy: Finally! Hold him while I put in the telepathic earplug. (Erik's Note: the words "telepathic ear" are upside down) (Elayne's Note: Well, ya see, Brainy's holding it upside down. <g> ) Brainy: Calm down Superboy. I'm not performing a lobotomy and I doubt it would change you very much if I did. (Ooh, good one, B5! This is followed by what I'm guessing is a reference to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Awful Stuff In Your Ear.) Triads: I've got him (And humm-baby, SB doesn't seem terribly upset about this.) Cos: Saturn Girl- Now while he's ... Panel 2 SG: ... Distracted. Yes. I'm already establishing a mental link.... But his thought patterns are ... so different from ours! (Do clones dream of electric sheep? SB is assailed with Imra's thought waves, which he finds alien and probably very splooshy. They certainly look splooshy to me. Roxy tries to take Imra down.) SG: This is ridiculous! It must be the 20th century fight-then-team-up syndrome I've read about! Glad the Legionnaires are immune to it in the 30th - never happens there, does it? ;) Dubbilex comes a'running, bumps into Cham, they lock horns/antennae/whatever and each lets out a bit of a scream, before Krypto distracts Cham, who turns into Krypto II just for the hell of it. Funny gag. Explanations are then given all 'round, before we cut to Knockout, which interests me not. Lu-purple flirts with SB. As an unrepentant sometime flirt myself, I loved this. It was incredibly neat to me. More explanations are exchanged re: that happened to Valor, Imra links up SB with B5 to pass on all knowledge except how to plug something in (another fun gag), and VWOMP!, there something is... guess they're back in the 30th century. And Knockout's back at SB's pad. Gentlemen, start your cold showers. Ho hum. I like Kesel's writing (and love McCraw's coloring), and of course the guest appearances were fun (esp. SB and Lu's interaction), but this kinda left me shrugging. Most of it played as a means to an end. But there are, as I pointed out, a few cute bits, and the plot moved along. So, what did y'all think? YAAAAA! I have to get to work, yadda yadda yadda... [It's kinda weird reading #103 after looking at #104 (and even #107), but such is the nature of things sometimes. I'm sure the fact that none of the events surprised me may have something to do with the following review. That's my only disclaimer for the moment.] Writer-Artist: John Byrne Firesign Line This Issue: "One of the two Greatest Guys in the Universe..." (Whew, that took a long time to think up. Good thing I have the script books...) Here's what I thought: Art-wise (gad, I'm really going to talk about the art first, I can't believe it), I love John Byrne's attention to detail, and I really like the way he does Darkseid. I mean, page 13. That's great stuff. And there are actually panels wherein the size of Diana's waist is larger than that of either of her thighs. And that's A Good Thing. I think when Byrne doesn't quite show that, he does tilt his "camera" on a bit of an up angle so at least he can play with perspective that way. So the art is a little more fun for me. But I don't know if I ought to be more intrigued by what's to come (pp. 14-16) than by the story of the moment. Because the story's mostly fighting. But hell, she's an Amazon, I can deal. I'm starting to actually like this title. John Byrne does Nice Cosmic, at least Cosmic the way I want to read it. Every now and then the dialogue makes me wince - every now and then Kirby's dialogue made me wince too, but I still liked it. Nice coloring, Trish. Good job on the Boom Tube. And, as always, on Diana's hair - you have a flair for that. Not once during this review have I mentioned whether or not I agree with the specific plot. I think I'll keep it that way. I felt Diana was "in character" - so sue me. So, what did y'all think? (she asked, as if she didn't know) Writer: Kurt Busiek This Issue's Firesign Line: "When there's news, there's never enough..." Here's what I thought... This issue has much more of a MARVELS feel to it than the last one did. Whereas ASTRO CITY #1 dealt with "a day in the life" introspection, this time our narrative is a bit more conventional, taking the form of a story imparted by Eliot Mills, the editor of the Astro City Rocket, to a new (unnamed) employee who asks about an unusual press clipping he sees on Mill's wall. "That's a story I usually tell over lunch," says Mills, but since "we've got a few minutes before it's time to head down," he might as well impart the point of the press clipping while he's at it. On the way to this point is a pretty nifty tale, which takes place in 1959 (intriguingly, "a dozen years since the city was rebuilt" from some apparently Golden Age-era disaster), where men (and boys) wore hats, billboards featuring other (apparent) heroes smoked and fineries could be had at Toth's, Maneeley's, Tripp's or Briefer's (I got Toth, but I wouldn't mind someone filling me in on the others, as my SA knowledge is a bit weak). Mills tells about his first sighting of the Silver Age-nt (great pun, Kurt, even better than the Asa Martin anagram) foiling a bank robbery that became another reporter's story (since he was just starting out, and the other guy had, after all, been in the bank). Mills bemoans his bad luck at The Deadline, one of those cool bars I'm sure existed in the bad ol' days (Jimmy Breslin goes on about this stuff all the time) but never really saw outside of movies, the kind of place that set out typewriters on its table for reporters enterprising enough to squint through the cigarette smoke and tune out the noise and the smell of alcohol. I was, frankly, shocked to see A Woman in this place that's "gone the way of the chain-smoking, hard-drinking reporter" (and hey, it's romantic, but good riddance), but it's okay, she's Eliot's girlfriend. Whew. She sympathizes, kisses him goodnight by her rooming house door later that evening (hey, watch those tongues, kids!), mentions a couple words about her career and leaves Eliot in the dark, sensing a story and deciding to follow a hooded character. Naturally, the guy in the hood turns out to be a conjurer, and things get really weird from there. The lettering committee does a nice job on his incantation balloons (as well as his whispering, fading the letters just enough), and although the SA arrives he cannot stop the appearance of... SHIRAK THE DEVOURER! Yep, that lettering committee (as well as the coloring one) did a nice job here, this stuff was fun. Good thing the SA brought along Honor Guard reinforcements as well, including the Silver Age Cleopatra (a white gal at that time), Leopardman and KitKat (hope we get to see a female hero and male sidekick soon! ;) ) and a few others. Zany fighting ensues, of courese. All seems momentarily lost, when the Old Soldier fades back onto the scene with arcane knowledge of Shirak's power source, which the SA shuts down. Eliot finds himself back in the Iger Square station the next afternoon (wait a second, he's been moved in place too, he started out on Elias Street, didn't he), way after the subway trolleys have started running again (one apparently narrowly misses him) and stumbles back into daylight across from Feldstein's Bar & Grill, ending up in a daze at The Deadline. Buy that man a drink. This was where it got cool for me. :) Eliot's editor refuses to run the story he frantically types up at The Deadline (while disbelieving fellow reporters look on and mock him). "Stick to the facts you can back up," he tells him. One neophyte reporter as eyewitness to this kind of stuff... well, it ain't gonna fly with the reading public in this pre-tabloid age. Mills is made to rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite (sounds like the story of my life this past couple weeks) until the article contains Just The Facts, Ma'am. Which of course, punch line, turns out to be a very ordinary tale about "a six-foot frozen shark" having fallen on trolley tracks, seemingly out of nowhere. Back in the present, the new hire is flabbergasted that Mills didn't get to print the truth, that he was stymied by "hidebound editing." Mills straightens his tie, puts on his jacket and, walking the new guy out the door, imparts his Point - that reportorial integrity, what the Rocket stands for, is more important that unsubstantiated facts (which may very well have happened, but without corroboration Truth is just Hearsay). "Here at the Rocket, we print what we can prove." There's plenty of headline page 1's tacked up on the wall with the more sensational-sounding stuff to tease those of us looking forward to future issues of KBAC, but it's always been provable stuff. Which is, after all, what makes the ordinary extraordinary, and vice versa. Neato, Kurt. Pretty Alex Ross cover, of course... The letters column was a bit hard to read over that background, but it's one of the ones I'm going to remember to peruse in the future (I'm not big on letter columns, myself). Next issue looks intriguing - a villain's POV... wait a minute, that sounds familiar... :) Nice looking cover for #3, too. Creeps me the heck out. So, what did y'all think? Creator/Writer/Artist: Jim Valentino This Issue's Firesign Line: "[She's] got a balcony you could do Shakespeare from!" As if you couldn't tell by that foreshadowing, here's what I thought: I've known Jim Valentino for a long time. Pre-Marvel. Pre-normalman. Back when he was doing these nifty autobiographical minicomics. I seem to recall he had very little trouble with female anatomy in those days. What happened? Pages 1 through 3 are little more that an extended excuse for in-our-face T&A, punctured here and there by word balloons and plot. The plot's just fine, although it plods a bit (there's a nifty "Our Story Thus Far" catchup in the Image "i" on the inside front cover), but gad, that artwork. Once upon a time, Jim remembered that a woman's thighs are never, ever bigger than her waist. Oh well, I obviously know so little about Dahnaian anatomy, maybe they're all built like an adolescent boy's wet dream. Nope, the Dahnaian guy, the lightning one, pretty much looks like a clothed human hero with a typical Valentino face. Ah good, a shower scene. In the panel right after the Gorasion girl announces she's an adult at 14 and we get to see her pink panties. I think I'm gonna puke. Nice panel layouts overall, otherwise. Decent plot. Even potentially interesting villains - and, oh look! That villain woman's wearing, well, just about nothing! Goody! And that other villain woman in two strips of green and fishnet, her name is Harlot - wow!! (*retch*) Boy, I'm trying hard to like this comic, but Jim doesn't make it easy. It has really nice potential to be a good space saga, but I can't get worked up about the differences in planetary rotations with all this exploitative crap thrown at me. And it doesn't quite make up for it to hear one of the female heroes say "Nice tush" to one of the male ones (especially considering we don't see the tush in question, just full body armor). Once, just once, I'd like to see fully clothed or armored women and near-naked men. This is not too much to expect from Jim Valentino. Well, maybe it is, nowadays. I should have sensed trouble when every character on the front cover has their mouths wide open as if they're looking to catch flies. I mean, really. B for plot, B+ for panel layout, D- for creeping (and creepy) sexism. So, what did y'all think? |
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