 |
| Trees on fire, labs on fire, all's clear, and car's on fire. |
Swamp Thing #7 (Pick of the Week): Even after defeating the rising threat of boy-herald-of-doom William Arcane, Alec Holland is having a terrible go of things. Forced to make the decision of whether to change into a monster to fight monsters is not an easy chase, or one devoid of high stakes. Nature is burning, the princess has been kidnapped and warped into a mirror-evil, and the influence of the Rot continues to spread. It's when things get THIS bad the reader can expect to feel an emotional battle-cry when the protagonist puts their foot down with a commanding "enough is enough" bravado. Snyder and Paquette do an excellent job transforming Holland into the big-green monster without giving too much away, the jolly green force of nature being treated as exotic and hidden from the reader as much as possible. There is no last-page stinger of Swampy revealed, but of Holland going off to make his heroic stand after his monstrous-new-form scares the agents of the Rot (who are no pushovers themselves). By showing the reader the intense carnage of the Rot, the choice to hide Holland's monstrous form takes the character back to its roots in horror comics. Toes curled in excitement for next month's instalment.
Team: Scott Snyder, Yanick Paquette. A deal with the devil.
Animal Man #7: Perhaps my second favorite issue since the series started seven months ago. Having so much in common with the fight against the Rot, the series feels at its most unique when its replicating the emotion of family life. There are flash-forwards to a possible future-war (in which Buddy Baker's daughter Maxine becomes a threatening badass) but the scenes with Buddy's non-powered son Cliff and the pair's lurking around town that sells the book for me. Buddy and Ellen's attempts to raise their children is like, to make use of a pun, herding cats. I'll admit, even though parents and their kids bump heads in fits of ego there's nothing more rewarding than having your dad swoop in and steal the scene making you both look cool. Steve Pugh continues to take over art duties from Travel Foreman and does well drawing people but lacks the visceral horror and of Foreman's monsters of Rot.
Team: Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh, Travel Foreman, Jeff Huet.
Manhattan Projects #1: A nifty little concept made better by some great storytelling decisions. Notable for the twin-timelines of two men, the swapping of which comes as a great a twist on the story as any. What happens when the world's greatest scientist-turned-pacifist gets swapped for a homicidal maniac? Time will tell. Robots and b-level science fiction fun done at the a-level, Manhattan Projects is a great first instalment for a new creator-owned gem. Plus, Einstein.
Team: Jonathan Hickman, Nick Pitarra, Chris Peter, Rus Wooton.
Fatale #3: Despite a ridiculous number of reprints I find anxious myself to wash myself of this series, but keep pulling along in the hopes things will improve. Each time the next issue comes out I find that I have to go back and read the first few out of sheer confusion over what exactly is going on (a problem I've never had with a series before). Longtime collaborators Brubaker and Phillips have hit a snag with their recent series by perhaps thinking too far ahead. Brubaker's writing pushes two stories (one then, one now) together to explore a femme fatale gifted with mysterious powers from an even more mysterious force. The conflict that arises is that there are a lot of balls in play: from police drama to cults to the fatale to the modern incident to men with glasses to demons, ect. Reading Fatale leaves me with the sensation of bumbling around in the dark and able to grab onto some beautiful granite countertops but unable to glean anything remarkable about them. Phillip's reliance on drawing the same face with different hair is also beginning to show.
No comments:
Post a Comment