Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Wednesday's Loot - 31 May 2006

Mouse Guard #3
This book sits on the shelf calmly laughing to itself at the vast majority of other comics. It combines great action with intrigue and great art with fun characters. You’re either very happy you’re getting this or complaining about how comics suck. In this issue we find the three mice guards from the first issue arriving in the city of Barkstone and uncovering “The Axe” which is an underground group dressing as a combo of samurai armour and the bandits from Fable. We get to know the three mice a bit more and simply enjoy the wonderful art that consistently reminds me of Beatrix Potter if she wrote Peter Rabbit as The Hobbit.
I rate this comic: A pure delight.

Godland #11

Like most people getting this book I’m finding it hard to come up with praise for it each time it comes out. There is even more fantastic and fantastical characters introduced including The Never who makes the impossible possible and more of Freidrich Nicklehead getting groovular and evil. We have Angie Archer trying to show the descendant of Janus that he and his flying face pyramid messed with the wrong anarchist. She witnesses the smell of impossibility. There’s a glue monster blob thing. And there’s a riff on 2001: A Space Odyssey. This comic is good for the exact opposite reasons Mouse Guard is good. Whereas Mouse Guard is stripped down and the art is a bit more high-end, Godland is crammed with as much kinetic storytelling as possible and the art is pop-art Kirby-retro.
I rate this comic: Consistent mind blowing fun.

52 Week 4
Okay it has been a month and I won’t be reviewing all the issues here. I may do that this weekend or something. Well things seem to have gotten a bit more interesting. And yes there is some gore and we see Alan Scott’s bloody eye socket but it’s not a close-up or anything. A few of the heroes from space go through that episode of Star Trek when the transporter messes up. As the cover shows this issue focuses on Renee Montoya and The Question. There’s some character moments that show us how they compliment each other as far as drive and sass are concerned. The cover sort of happens but the thug looks a bit different inside. If I was intrigued by Steele before, I’m even moreso now. I’m guessing this reemergence then collapse of the unstable multiverse has had a few unknown repercussions that 52 will be exploring kind of like Grant Morrison did in his Animal Man run. It may be a bit familiar since it seems to be taking aspects of that run and what seems to be the origin of the Bulleteer (but I haven’t read that yet so maybe someone else can enlighten me). Well combine that with a fractured psyche and a powerful suit of armour – voila! Steele. And Elongated Man got baptized. For all of you who weren’t baptized, that’s pretty much what happens. They dunk you, take your valuables and you sort of trip out for the next few days.
I rate this comic: A great backup for the Crisis of Infinite Earths, oh wait no I got that backwards, stupid retcons. Oh, I like both 52 and the backup.

JLA: Classified #21
You know what? This is the first comic by Gail Simone that disappointed me. It was okay but it wasn’t the same uber-quality I’ve come to expect. I guess I just like my JLA with more doughnuts and Batman chilling with his feet on the JLA meeting table. It is kind of neat that this came out the day after Memorial Day because I don’t know anything about Memorial Day but I think it’s about the military and there’s a lot of talk about soldiers and stuff. All in all it was a bit lackluster for an ending.
I rate this comic: Okay if you read the rest of the arc.

Iron Man: The Inevitable #6
The last issue is forgiven. This rocked. The art kicked ass and took names. The Living Laser shows up and does his thing and Spymaster gets his slobber knocked. I kind of wanted Iron-Man to end that “This is what hate feels like” punch with “bitch!” It’s kind of all that was missing from this comic to make it my favorite super boxing match in a long time. I kind of wish more of this issue was combined into the last issue to let Casey explore some of the action in this a bit more. It was a nifty non-ending but not in the way we’re used to seeing non-endings. Sure it brought back some classic characters and the hero-villain relationship done so well in the last issue of Batman is also explored here. It’s too bad there’s a war on in the Marvel Universe because exploring this dual personality and fractured mask wearing Tony Stark could make for some very interesting stories. Alas and alack, it is not to be, but hey maybe us Canadians can have a true super hero team out of this war thing. You know? One with Americans on it (guest starring Wolverine).
I rate this comic: Happy this series was my first Iron-Man buying experience. Nice Art.

I also picked up the 3rd Seven Soldiers Trade.

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