Category: books of doom

My fears that I’d be flying solo this week turned out to be relatively unfounded, as Fin Fang Doom and Jason from Legend joined us again this week. More from them in a minute.

I haven’t been reading Fantastic Four at all, but I thought this seemed like a fairly interesting point to jump in. Not necessarily a good point, but an interesting one. And everything else coming out this week looked terrible. Marvel solicited it as “the Death of the Invisible Woman,” but visitor Aussiesmurf warned us that the Invisible Woman who was about to kick the bucket was likely to be the recently introduced Invisible Woman from the future.

So for a reader who was just jumping on, I thought this book was very accessible. It did a good job of introducing me to this gang from the future, what they wanted, why they wanted it and what they were going to do about that. It gave a great depiction of the Fantastic Four and their personalities, including the geek chic of Mr. Fantastic with his awesomely clever way of tracking Future Sue by injecting a tracker into Present Sue. I also dug the little character moments, like Alex Ultron noticing the contrast between Johnny Storm’s screams for mercy and Doom’s composed silence. Everything about the building tension and the drama made sense, but it played out so casually in a way that just made the FF seem supremely confident of their awesomeness. I dug that. And Bryan Hitch’s art, as always is beautiful.
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This week, against my better judgment, I picked the Justice Society of America one-shot spin-off featuring Superman from Earth-22, better known as the Kingdom Come Superman. I say it’s against my better judgment, because I really didn’t like Kingdom Come all that much. The art is really stiff, and I’ve never found the story that particularly engaging. I know, it’s supposed to be a classic and everything, but Alex Ross has always bored the hell out of me.

Still, though, Justice Society has been incredibly entertaining lately, so I figured I’d give this a shot. Was it worth it?

In my opinion, that’s a resounding no.

We do plenty of complaining around here about high prices on comic books (with good reason, mind you), but this week proved to be an especially expensive week, with several books coming out with a $3.99 cover price. Take an issue like Nightwing, where it’s the 150th issue, the conclusion to a big story-arc, and padded with lots of extra pages, and I’m perfectly okay with it. But, then, when you juxtapose that with this crap, where we’re basically paying an extra dollar to see the human models that Alex Ross used to draw this drivel, along with his stupid notes about how he did it, and you can imagine how angry I am about plunking down that extra buck.

Kingdom Come Superman has issues, and he’s starting to see that this earth isn’t exactly like his old earth. Great. We’ve seen that in the pages of JSA for the past year. There’s nothing new here, so all we’re given is a showcase for Alex Ross’ art and writing, both of which I’ve never been thrilled by.

I’m not going to buy any more of these one-shots. I’ll wait for the next issue of Justice Society and leave it at that. I’d rather not shell out twenty some bucks for stories that have no impact on the actual story.

Take it away, Jim Doom.
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Welcome once again to the Book of Doom. This week we’ll be reviewing X-Men and Spider-Man #1, Marvel’s latest attempt to milk $4 out of it’s readers with a needless mini-series featuring its A-list characters. But y’know, sometimes these needless mini-series turn out to be a good read.

This week there’s four of us trying to decide into which category X-Men and Spider-Man #1 falls. In addition to the regular gang, Jason @ Legend Comics sent us a review, and since I’m such a nice guy I’m going to let him kick things off.

Jason @ Legend Comics: X-Men and Spider-Man #1 is not a book I would normally read given the X-Men and Spider-Man are Marvel’s most overused and tired properties. See the 30 million X-books, of which only Uncanny is even readable. The less said about Spider-Man post-One More Day the better. This is an attempt by Gage and co. to do the “retrofit continuity story”, in this case pre-Gwen Stacy’s death and pre-Amazing Adventures #11.

Spider-Man and the X-Men meet up to fight Kraven, who has been hunting Spider-Man to “bring him to justice”. The problem is that this book doesn’t really know what it wants to be-is it a fun, light hearted romp with Spidey and the original X-Men or is it a set-up to something bigger as suggested by the minor “twist” ending (featuring one of Marvels lamest villains)? It does not succeed at either.

Gage clearly is not on the level of a Brian Bendis when it comes to stories like this-Bendis is the unquestioned master of the “retro fitted story”, especially when it comes to dialogue. The art is passable but not great-like so many pros these days, Mario Alberti is good at backgrounds and action sequences but his faces are average to awful. (more…)

Hellboy: In the Chapel of Moloch was the first Hellboy story I’d read in years. It reminded me of two important points:

1. How almost effortlessly cool this book seems and
2. How exponentially better it is when Mignola does the art

As a kid, I remember hating Mignola’s art. I just knew him as the guy who did covers for X-Men Classics, and I thought he sucked. This was in the age of Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, and I simply could not or would not appreciate such abstracted art. I’m guessing I thought something like “This guy doesn’t draw enough lines.”

Well anyway, now almost 20 years later, I can’t really enjoy anything Hellboy without Mignola’s art. It just adds so much to the dark, mysterious and quirky world he’s created. The settings are always so beautiful. The scenery in Hellboy comics is like an uncredited character. Mignola takes advantage of that, often spending panel time devoted to quiet reflections on the setting. I counted more than 30 panels of silent scenery and set details, before any of the big-fight action begins (which involved plenty of “silent” panels, but of a different sort).

I hadn’t read any Hellboy since seeing the first movie several years ago, and I’d forgotten how the character’s personality wasn’t as hammy as Ron Perlman plays him. So I enjoyed reading the character as a little more subdued, almost matter-of-fact about his work. There’s still humor, but it’s not as wide-screen in its delivery.
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Geoff Johns. Do we have a hard-on for that guy or what? This marks the fifth consecutive Book of Doom written by him. But I assure you that this is mere coincidence. There’s even two other writers on the book this week. We just can’t help it if Johns is a kickass writer and makes us really want to read his stuff.

Speaking of previous Books of Doom, two weeks ago I said that I was probably going to sit the New Krypton arc out. I didn’t want to be dragged into buying two more books that I didn’t usually buy (Superman and Supergirl). But I actually thought the arc was going to be a whole lot longer than it really is, like four or five months. Turns out it’s only nine parts, a much more manageable crossover. So I decided to buy the Superman: New Krypton Special and use it to decide whether or not I’d continue buying the arc.

Turns out, I’m glad I did. The first nine pages were a great epilogue to the “Braniac” arc that just ended in Action Comics, drawn by series regular Gary Frank. In it, we see Pa Kent’s funeral, Superman fantasizing about beating the snot out of Braniac again, and Clark going through the chest that his father kept of their fondest memories. I really liked the inclusion of the horseshoe that Clark heat-visioned “World’s Greatest Dad” into, which was actually a scene from the current Johns/Frank run.

Then we transition to a government facility where Braniac is being held and tested. Braniac escapes and kills some scientist before Agent Assassin takes him down. I had no idea who this Assassin guy was, but thankfully it was later explained that he’s a villain from the last Superman arc. Then it’s back to Smallville from some awkward/touching/sad moments between Clark and his mother. I’m not sure if Pa’s death will actually factor into this arc at all, but I’m glad the writers aren’t ignoring it to deal with it later. (more…)