Meaningless Awards of the Week- 5/16/07
Book of the Week- Uncanny X-Men #486
“The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire” certainly had its faults. Alternating between Billy Tan and Clayton Henry on art duties was jarring to say the least since the two have such drastically different styles. Focusing solely on Vulcan for a few issues sort of interrupted the flow of the main story involving the X-Men. And while twelve issues make for a nicely-sized hardcover collection, it may have been a few more issues than this storyline needed. But despite these arguable points, “Rise and Fall” delivered pretty solidly in the end.
Major status quo changes only seem to take place when a new creative team is taking over a book. Unless, of course, Ed Brubaker is the writer. He killed off Captain America in the middle of his run on that title (although that one was certainly an editorial decision). He altered Matt Murdock’s status quo by actually giving him one several arcs into his Daredevil run. And now twelve issues into his run on Uncanny X-Men, Brubaker strands half the team in outer space and brings the rest back to Earth. Now instead of one Uncanny X-Men team I’m excited to read about, there’s two. Whether Brubaker decides to follow the Uncanny Starjammers or the remnants of the team that made it back to Earth, I’m pretty excited to see where he goes with them.
Cover of the Week- Countdown #50
Say what you will about the quality of the story, but that cover was just frickin’ sweet. I’d buy anything with a Joker like that on the cover.
Inter-Title Crossover of the Week- “Checkout,” Checkmate #14
What makes “Checkout,” the Checkmate/Outsiders crossover, come out on top in a week that also featured an installment of the huge JLA/JSA crossover, “The Lightning Saga?” It’s simple. That is to say, the crossover is simple, not the answer to my question. Although that answer is also simple, because the answer is both simple and “simple.” Let me start over.
There are three reasons I’ve really been enjoying “Checkout.”
The first is that the crossover is kept simple. Unlike “The Lightning Saga,” there isn’t a cast of over twenty heroes to contend with, and nothing earth-shattering is going on in “Checkout.” It’s a lot easier to have a good story when the writers aren’t trying to make everything overly epic all the time.
The second reason is that the crossover makes absolutely perfect sense. The Outsiders is a team who for the last year has been violating all sorts of international laws in the name of the common good. Checkmate is an organization that exists to deal with superhumans violating international law. So it would have been unusual if Checkmate had completely ignored what the Outsiders were doing. Who’d have thought a crossover that didn’t come about as a marketing gimmick would be better than one that did?
Lastly, “Checkout” is a four-part story coming out in four consecutive weeks. I cannot stress how important this last one is. Almost any story is better if it’s read over the course of four weeks instead of four months. While reading part 3 of “Checkout,” I actually remembered exactly what happened in the first two parts. Unlike, say, Ultimates 2 #13.
Artist of the Week- Mike Allred, X-Men: First Class Special
This is probably the first and only time I’ll ever give the Artist of the Week award to an inker, but when Mike Allred is said inker, he really makes the art his own. Maybe I’m unfairly taking credit away from the penciller, but seriously, just look at the image below. Do you see anything but Mike Allred? Me neither.
Letter of the Week- X
I bought seven Marvel comics this week. Out of those seven comics, five had an X in the title, and one other was an X-Men family title. That’s a lot of X. But I’m not certain if it’s an unrealized fascination I have with Marvel’s merry mutants or if Marvel’s just milking their favorite letter for all it’s worth (which is a lot, obviously). The weird thing is there are plenty of X-centric titles I avoid like the plague, yet at least once a month I end up bringing home five or six in a single week. Now even DC’s getting in on the act by releasing Ex Machina in the unofficial X week.