X-Statix
Finally getting into the current story arc after having a rocky time with the first two issues. Henrietta is a lot better if you practice the "squint" approach, and it's about time another member of the team suffered horrible injury. I looked back through the first Milligan/Allred X-Force trade the other day and I'd forgotten how strong the carnage was. I like all these characters, but I also liked not knowing who was going to make it through any given mission. And, yeah, the Code is kinda neat, and pretty satirical to boot.
Queen & Country: Operation Blackwall
The 4th Q&C trade (not counting "Declassified") is out, and that's a good thing for me. They say that everyone has one novel in them. Sometimes, when I look at the work of the writers in comics today I feel a lot of them have one comic in them too - or at least one work where their voice shines through much more strongly, one work which overshadows the rest of what they do. I don't have a lot of time for Rucka's other work, but Q&C is very nice. I'm enjoying the ongoing character development in this book, and particularly liking the fact that it never strays into action movie territory.
That said, one tiny niggle is in a couple points of language use. Generally, Rucka writes very convincing British dialogue, but (i) people in Britain really don't say "What the bloody hell." They do say "bloody hell" a lot but that construction is almost never used. Secondly, there's a bit where two British characters rag on the French for having surrendered (presumably during WWII). Again, that's an American thing. The Brits have plenty to be snide about the French for, but the fact that they were conquered by Hitler is not usually high on the list. (And ironically contrasts with Milligan's use of "Surrender Monkey" in last month's X-Statix. There you had a British writer handling American characters and playing to the American stereotyping of the French, which worked. Here you have an American writer putting that same stereotype in the mouths of British characters, where it falls a bit flat.)
Whiteout
More Rucka. This is not quite as good as Q&C, which is a shame, because it should be. The central ruse is that it's a murder mystery set in Antarctica. The long winter is coming and there's less than two weeks for our US Marshall heroine to solve the case before 80% of the continent's inhabitants leave to fly home. That, plus fantastic art from Steve Lieber, provide a very moody tale. So it's too bad that the central mystery element is a bit spotty and obvious. Worth reading but I felt a little let down. That said, can anyone confirm if there's a second book in this series?
Alias, volume 3
Sticking with my above thesis, Alias is to Bendis as Q&C is to Rucka. I know you're meant to love Powers if you're into your indies, but to be honest I never really grokked it. But Alias does everything that I want a modern superhero book to do. I find Jessica a very satisfying character, I like the noir elements, I like the view of the "superhero underworld" and the plots are well written and produce a nice air of tension and confusion. Bendis skillfully handles the readers' knowledge about the Marvel Universe and gets you to dance along to his tune pretty well, although there are moments when I feel he overdoes the superheroes. The book would be a bit better served, overall, by having one foot grounded in reality and one in the superheroic world, rather than having, eg. every newspaper headline always be about the Hulk.
Watchmen
I picked this up for $10 in a used bookstore so's I could lend it to a mate. I'm odd like that, I'll grant you. Anyway, ended up goofing off work yesterday afternoon and skim-re-reading the whole damn thing. I must've read this book at least a dozen times now and there are still things to notice in here. What really impresses me more and more is the very deft handling of the alternate history that it's set in. All of the elements are there from changes in fashion, drugs, politics, technology of transport, but tucked in the background. If you want you can go through and mine them and work out what Moore & Gibbons think is going on with society, but you don't need to. And of course the setting seems natural since it recapitulates GK Chesterton's great joke from 'The Napoleon Of Notting Hill': the future (or in this case, Elsewhere) is just like now/here. The concerns are the same, the times are the same. A very clever book, and by far the most moving superhero comic I'm aware of.
Cheat
by Christine Norrie, from Oni Press.
I don't pick up enough of these slim little indy/art comics. Many of them have greater ambition than they fulfil, but there's still something really refreshing about them. Norrie has a nice clean line and uses it to good effect to render emotion very simply on the page in this clean little tail of disfunctional relationships and fucked up decisions. That said, I found myself wishing that this book were longer so that there could be more thoughtful exploration of the character dynamics. What you get here is not quite as much as I ultimately wanted. But still for six bucks it was a satisfying wee read.
Tom Strong, volume 1
Menh. I really want to like this book. My interest in the pulp genre has been vitalised by the whole wave of "the new pulp" that seems to be going on just now - the 'Adventure!' roleplaying game, 'Planetary', 'Kill Bill', even books like 'Alias' which are bringing older pulp tropes back into comics. And I've been reading up on my Lovecraft, Howard and Burroughs this last year. Plus, this is of course the Bearded One at the writing helm and I have to admit to being a bit of a sucker in fannishly following his works. But....
Tom Strong just doesn't kick it for me. It seems frightfully clever, but also overly simple, lacking in nuance. There's just not a lot to latch your teeth onto here, and what there is seems very clearly manufactured. Perhaps if there were 100 years worth of comics and pulps about these characters then we'd get a buzz reading about their exploits in the situations they're thrown into. (Don't get me wrong, obviously, thank God there's not 100 years worth of comics and pulps to wade through, but what I mean is that if this involved actually established characters then maybe I would find myself getting more of a reaction. I think Ellis gets round this in Planetary by making all of the characters such obvious rip-offs that you know this is Tarzan, or whomever, not just someone random.) Overall, I think that this is the least successful of the ABC line for me, although I fear I'll keep buying it since, as noted above, I am a bit of a whorish fanboy where Moore is concerned. |
