The Doomino Effect for the week of Mar 14, 2007
Hell-o, everyone! Since Jean-Claude Van Doom didn’t buy enough comics this week to flesh out his regular Worst to First column, and since I neglected to bring you the Doomino Effect for last week (I still haven’t been able to bring myself to read everything I bought last Wednesday), let’s fill that void and bump up the regular Tuesday feature to Thursday. That’s right, it’s an early edition of The Doomino Effect, so let’s line them up and then look at them without knocking them down!
This week, it’s all about Hell. Hell coming to earth, Hell breaking loose, Hell Hell Hell Hell Hell.
I’m sure Doom DeLuise will elaborate further when he posts his weekly review, but 52 this week was all about our angry spocklike friend Black Adam unleashing some fury on those who would harbor horsemen, killing innocents left and right.
And speaking of Hell and killing innocents, that leads me to Ghost Rider #9. This series has a fantastic set-up that guarantees it can run as long as they want it to, and that is that Satan himself is loose on earth, possessing the bodies of the dead to raise Hell, particularly to make Johnny Blaze feel like a moron for letting him out of the big campfire downstairs. In this arc, he’s revived the recently-deceased Jack O’ Lantern and has unleashed Hell on a little town called Sleepy Hollow, Illinois, beheading teenagers and rallying the locals against a flame-headed villain. Of course, everybody assumes that Ghost Rider is the flamehead decapitating their children, so that spells trouble for Johnny Blaze.
It’s Ghost Rider at its best, with just the right doses of self-aware camp and horror, made all the more striking by Mark Texeira’s art. These issues have moved kind of quickly for me, but I think that’s a desire to read more as much as it is some major decompression. I’m guessing when these are released in trade form, you’ll be able to read through a book in about 10 minutes. It’ll be a very pretty 10 minutes, though.
And speaking of art fitting a story as well as Hell being unleashed, that brings me to Green Arrow #72. This is some fast-paced fighting and exploding, wrapping up the “Seeing Red” arc with guest stars Batman and The Red Hood. Jason Todd has captured Speedy and uses his special brand of teasing to tap into Mia’s dark past. It’s a satisfying lack of conclusion, as we don’t know what Hood left spinning in Speedy’s head. He brought her to the brink of death in battle and then made her wish she was dead emotionally, so Winick’s sure to be excited to watch that seed grow. Meanwhile, his handling of the tension between Green Arrow and Batman was pitch perfect, and the series concludes with Oliver Queen’s life about to become a living Hell.
Speaking of Hell being unleashed, life becoming a living Hell, and that stuff earlier about coming back from the dead, oh and good dialogue and whatnot (too many suitable segues here…), that brings me to New Avengers #28. The web kids were all abuzz last week with criticism of yet another Civil War inconsistency, this time with Civil War: The Initiative supposedly claiming Captain America was alive, when here, we realize sometimes apparent consistencies are a part of story telling. While the secret illegal Avengers are rescuing the dead-and-revived Echo, they stop off at the Silver Samurai’s pad to hide from The Hand. He’s all angry and asks how they even got out of their country, which prompts a flashback sequence! I really don’t know how this flashback is going to relate to what they’re doing in Japan, but it’s stuff I want to know so I’m glad that Silly Sam asked the question. Turns out, Ms. Marvel dropped that hint to Spider Woman to sucker the secret Avengers into a trap! I don’t know how these dots are going to connect, but it reminds me of when someone’s telling a long joke and you’re like “You promise this is going somewhere?”
And speaking of going somewhere, as in Hell, that leads me to Civil War: The Confession. Tony Stark makes his confession to Captain America’s dead body. It’s pretty obvious early on that the off-screen person he’s talking to; the nice “surprise” is that it’s Captain America’s corpse and not Cap in a cell. As a nice storytelling touch, the issue is told out of sequence, and we get what is presumably Tony and Steve’s last conversation before Cap bit numerous bullets. Some might claim this issue lacks any surprises or any meaningful events, but that’s just not what this is. A comic book full of guilt-plagued dialogue is what Bendis excels at, and it’s fantastic to see him teamed up with Alex Maleev again.
I really hope Captain America stays dead. I love Captain America, but the guy is just getting a fantastic hero’s send-off in these comics, with grade-A talent handling the chores.
That’s all I got. Maybe Tuesday I’ll review last week’s comics! Hell! Here’s to Jean-Claude Van Doom buying more comics next week!
“A comic book full of guilt-plagued dialogue is what Bendis excels at…”
That’s a very, very accurate statement. Unfortunatley, that’s all he really excels at.
Them are fightin’ words.
It’s hard for me to beleive they would kill off such an iconic character like Captain America. Some serious symbolism there. I recently did a story about Cap’s Death over at Highbrid Nation. I wanted to talk about it from the perpective of the Hip Hop community. Check it out if you get a chance.
Don’t make me reach in your backpack and smack you with your wooden stake.
Luckily, I don’t have to buy a new car (someone ran into me and drove off), so I’ll still be able to afford comics.
Also, I flipped through the Confession, and it was tense and interesting, but it just deepened the dislike I’ve grown to have of all the characters involved in Civil War. I miss comics with heroes.
I say read it, because it’s a step in the path of restoring Iron Man’s hero status. It’s something Marvel needed to do, and they’re going there.
Does the beginning and middle of the book have him moving in that direction? Because I read the end, and that made him look like as big of a dick as ever.
It does actually, because the beginning and the middle are set in the present time, where he’s making his “better late than never” apology to the corpse of Captain America. The ending flashes back two days and explains the guilt behind why Tony wishes he’d done a better job of saying goodbye.
That makes WAY more sense. I guess all it took for Tony to see the light were the deaths of two of his friends and teammates, the imprisonment of hundreds of heroes, the hiring of supervillains of vigilantes, the deaths of plenty of civilians and the creation of a nearly fascist control over heroes.
Still, I’m glad they’re bringing him back toward not being a megalomaniac.
I guess if you have interest in finding out how the story actually goes, buy the comic. If you just want to rip on the story that you haven’t read, you’re probably fine saving your $2.99.
I guess it didn’t come across that I actually wasn’t being sarcastic (except for the second sentence). In that, I was ripping on Civil War, which I read and didn’t like.
Also, I just went out of my way to learn more about what happened in the Confession and it sounds like it was a good read and a good story that’s going in a good direction. OK?
OK!