The Doomino Effect for the week of January 9, 2008

Greetings, Doomwads, and welcome to this week’s Doomino Effect. We’re right in the middle, or at least middle-ish, of our annual Doomkopf Best and Worst of the Year awards, which I get super pumped for each year. I love going back and looking at past years and I realize I can’t say I like seeing what the big “stories” and “issues” were without sounding like I’m making a pun.

But speaking of one of the big stories of the year, let’s start with X-Factor #27, chapter 11 of Messiah CompleX. With Messiah CompleX, I find myself not only enjoying an X-Men crossover for probably the first time since X-Cutioner’s Song, but also being really excited about each new issue.

We see in the future that Jamie and Layla are talking to a young Lucas Bishop, who blames his sad state of affairs on the messiah baby, a.k.a. the mutant infant that everyone’s trying to get their grubby mitts on. Apparently, Bishop never gets over this youthful rage as he enters adulthood, and even though in adulthood he’s obviously no longer in such horrible conditions and able to help free mutants by reigning in those who dare perpetrate against their kind.

Never mind that — at least we get a good superficial explanation for why Bishop has turned on his team. One thing I like about Messiah CompleX is how it reminds me of the Mutant Massacre, which was freaking intense for its time. There are a lot of parallels that are obvious, such as who some of the main bad guys are, but one thing that may not be so deliberate is the time spent worrying about the injured. This is a war with casualties, as was the Mutant Massacre, and the seriousness of the situation is compounded as another body is brought into the infirmary.

Remember in Mutant Massacre, when the wounded included Shadowcat, Nightcrawler and Colossus? These were known and loved characters who were being taken out of commission in a serious way. Messiah CompleX doesn’t have that to the same degree, but the fact that the story spends time in the infirmary shows the characters are worried and reminds the readers that we should be too.

As far as the ending goes, I was going to write a blog about how annoying it is that Marvel can’t seem to keep the length of Mr. Sinister’s hair consistent. Does the guy have a close-cropped buzz cut or long, flowing grungilocks? It seems to change issue to issue, penciller to penciller. Now there’s a reason for that, I suppose.

Speaking of shape changers, that leads me to Mighty Avengers #7, which starts off with Spider-Woman bringing a wet, dead Elektraskrull to Tony Stark’s hospital room. Tony, demonstrating why his style of heroicism will forever doom him to be despised, decides that the best way to tell his team the news is to not tell his team the news and instead plant Jessica Drew as a sort of non-Skrull spy. It’ll help him save the world, but everyone will think he’s a prick for doing it that way. That’s Tony. He should start shrugging his shoulders and looking at the camera at the end of every episode.

The team acts the way one might expect them to act – with confusion, anger and mistrust. But then the mood is lightened when Wonder Man is forced to choose a new look, because his costume – which is far more modern and far less lame than any of his new options – apparently is not modern enough and too lame. This was the only point at which I thought new series artist Mark Bagley showed his weakness. I’m not a Bagley fan at all, but I didn’t mind his presence on this issue in the slightest. He’s a good fit on a superhero book, and he can handle drawing different kinds of faces, which many artists surprisingly can’t.

But in this scene where he was presumably called upon to design several costumes to be modeled for Wonder Man, the dated aspect of his art style is exposed. While nothing like the Image gang that headlined the ’90s, Mark Bagley’s style is still very ’90s. The fact that he’s still in action is a testament to his value, but it doesn’t erase that he’s still basically drawing in the exact same style that he was on New Warriors in 1991. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is what it is.

Ironically enough, Bendis then has Bagley retread perhaps his most famous contribution to ’90s art, and that is Venom symbiotes runnin’ wild, particularly in the more liquid “Carnage” form. Talk about writing for your artist. “Who are you giving me?” “Mark Bagley.” “Okay, let’s have kitschy ’90s costumes and lots of Venom and Carnage.” I totally hope Night Thrasher joins the Mighty Avengers next issue.

Also, my money has been on Carol Danvers being a Skrull, and this issue didn’t yet convince me I’m wrong.

Speaking of Can’t Get Enough of the ’90s, that leads me to Ghost Rider #19. Once this series started slipping, I swore to myself that if I went through the end of Daniel Way’s storyline, I could give it up after that. Well here we are – the conclusion. The last issue I’m going to buy of Ghost Rider.

It wasn’t that bad. The series struggled when they had to integrate World War Hulk crossovers. It suffered when they lost Mark Texeira. But it excelled when it kept the balance of dark humor and adventure, and for those reasons, this was a satisfying finale. A giant Satan in a miniskirt and tubetop could’ve been way over the top had they bothered to draw attention to it, but they didn’t. They let it be, and as such it was just a little more of the ironic backdrop this story has had since the beginning.

I especially give it credit for having an actual somewhat clever way out. I was a little worried about that – Way set up the storyline so that with each avatar Ghost Rider sent back to Hell, the devil became that much stronger. By solving the problem of Satan loose on earth, Johnny Blaze was essentially just delaying the problem, because that increased the size of each remaining fraction.

So with one piece of the prince remaining, that was going to mean that Ghost Rider would have to defeat the devil one on one. And I was not going to be satisfied with just a whole lot of chain bashing or maybe a “Turn around, sucker” and then the devil gets run over by the flaming bicycle. That just weren’t gonna cut it.

What did cut it was that Johnny Blaze gained enough control of the Ghost Rider persona to temper the unstoppable choo-choo of vengeful rage long enough to out-trick the trickster. That internal struggle for control of Ghost Rider was something Way had been building over his 19 issues, and all faults aside, I commend him for working that into the eventual resolution.

Overall, I give the resurrection of Ghost Rider a B.

Speaking of resurrecting characters, that leads me to Hulk #1. He’s been gone for a month.

Sometimes, I have to just sit and tell myself “Jeph Loeb wrote Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory. Jeph Loeb wrote Daredevil: Yellow. Jeph Loeb wrote Superman for All Seasons,” because I also know that Jeph Loeb wrote Ultimates 3, Wolverine and now Hulk #1, and those books are horrible.

Hulk #1 was so bad that I found myself immediately feeling sorry FOR A FICTIONAL CHARACTER. She-Hulk is written to be such an uncooperative, self-centered, insufferable bitch that I found myself not thinking “God, She-Hulk sucks,” but instead, “Dear God, Jeph Loeb really sucks.”

And wouldn’t you know it, the same plague of idiocy that Dwayne McDuffie has used to infect the Justice League of America has spilled over into Marvel, as She Hulk, Iron Man (you know, with that fancy ever-alert armor) and some SHIELD goons failed to notice that THE WINTER GUARD WAS STANDING RIGHT THERE! Surprise! There’s a big bear, a fake Captain America, some lady and a giant robot standing right next to you!

What a horrible comic book! If I had more respect for Dan DiDio, I’d swear he sent Jeph Loeb to Marvel to screw everything up!

Hey, but speaking of things being sent places to screw stuff up, that leads me to Green Lantern Corps #20. Guy and Kyle decide to move to Oa and open a bar or something. I never much cared for Guy and Kyle, but I have found myself enjoying reading about their evolving characters. The Sinestro Corps War accomplished the goal of getting me to keep picking up GLC even though the war is technically over.

OH BUT IT ISN’T, is it? Mongul’s got himself a Sinestro Ring, and he’s ready to use it! I love the line “The long dead planet of Debstam IV,” accompanied with this dark image of a civilization in ruins. I just love the concept of a planet with remnants of a civilization, monolithic humanoid statues crumbling for no one to witness. But there’s still lightning. Something about that makes the absence of life seem extra harsh. Not really sure. But that one panel really got my imagination going.

It’s a few weeks late, but speaking of Green Lanterns, that leads me to Green Lantern #26. My regular shop was out of it the week it was released, so I picked it up last week. The cover asks “Who are the Alpha Lanterns?” The inside doesn’t really answer. Maybe the cover just honestly doesn’t know.

But it looks like the little guardians have put power batteries inside the guts of Green Lanterns. Are they recently deceased Green Lanterns, reanimated to be zombie weapons of Oa? That was my hunch. It’d be kind of cool. At least they wouldn’t feel much remorse when using their new powers.

Everything else seems to be back to normal. John Stewart is using his powers to build things and Hal Jordan is using his to pick up chicks. Sinestro is on death row, though, which might have been useful news to Amon Sur. The little bald red dork gave himself up, thinking he was going to be taken prisoner, but instead Laira kills him. He got punk’d!

No Ivan Reis on this issue. That hurts.