Everytime I make a “plan for the week”, I end up reading,oh say, a book where a skeleton fights a shark. So no plan. That’s the plan.
5 Likes
I’ve decided to do monthly Updates.
Here’s what I read in January, not much, but I’ll be sure to read more as the year goes on.
| Date | Comic Title | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| 1/26/21 | OUR FIGHTING FORCES (2020-) #1 | DC Universe |
| 1/26/21 | BATMAN (1940-) #686 | DC Universe |
| 1/27/21 | JOKER: THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION (DC BLACK LABEL EDITION) | DC Universe |
| 1/27/21 | HELLBLAZER (1988-) #2 | DC Universe |
| 1/28/21 | Doom Patrol (1987-) #22 | DC Universe |
| 1/28/21 | Superman: Earth One Vol. 1 | DC Universe |
6 Likes
Wonder Woman: 86 issues from 2016-2020
Writers: Greg Rucka (26 issues), Shea Fontana (5 issues), James Robinson (20 issues), G. Willow Wilson (23 issues), Steve Orlando (11 issues)
#750 Stories: Steve Orlando, Gail Simone, Mariko Tamaki, Greg Rucka, Kami Garcia, Shannon Hale & Dean Hale, Marguerite Bennett, Vita Ayala, Scott Snyder
As this is the current series, I’ll be putting my review under a dropdown for spoiler reasons. Also, because it is horrifically, ridiculously, brutally long. I really should’ve broken this up into separate posts for each run, but I guess what’s done is done. I’ll at least do section headers for each run.
Overall impressions:
-
Rucka: Not perfect but an unexpected thumbs up
-
Fontana: Fine, basically
-
Robinson: Annoying backslide trying too hard to tie into the movie when it basically can’t
-
Wilson: Making an effort, but not really hitting the mark somehow, but still leaps and bounds better than the immediate preceding and following runs
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Orlando: Started out with some conceptually solid ideas, made them boring in practice, and then deteriorated to the point of being insane and honestly pretty offensive.
Full review
Greg Rucka
First: What is a “perfect?” I’ve literally been researching the word’s etymology, trying to figure out why you would call a lariat that, and I have nothing. Also, over the course of this whole series, there’s an odd shift to depicting the, uh, thingy as an untied rope wielded more like a whip instead of an actual Lasso. What’s with that?
Second: This is actually weirdly adequate. Rucka learned to write characters who aren’t irredeemable hate sinks, underdeveloped suffering sponges, or the Question (or all three at various points like Renee Montoya).
Third: The art is all really good. I definitely like Nicola Scott better than Liam Sharp, but relative to other artists they’re both good. Actually, Wonder Woman has had a pretty strong streak of artists here in general. David Finch was inconsistent and cheesecakey but he had some really cool visuals and it sort of evened out as the run went on, Cliff Chiang and Goran Sudzuka were probably the best part of Azzarello’s run, I forget who drew Odyssey but it looked decent too, and Aaron Lopresti and Nicola Scott again were both excellent on Simone’s run. Even Terry Dodson was pretty good, not as good as most of the names I just mentioned, but maybe better than Finch, so that brings me all the way back to Infinite Crisis.
Fourth: OK, here’s the thing. Diana having a girlfriend? No problem. Diana having a girlfriend who’s also an Amazon? Dude, that’s a three thousand year age difference. Does no one else find that creepy?
Fifth: New Cheetah origin isn’t bad, but part of what I found interesting about the Cheetah is that while she was feral in some ways, there were brains behind her actions too. Barbara Minerva and the Cheetah weren’t totally aligned in goals or temperament, but they were threats in their own ways. There was room for more moral complexity there, sure, but the new version goes a bit too far into being very… Man-Battish. She doesn’t have very much agency as an independent antagonist in her own right, instead being more often a pawn of other villains.
Sixth: Wonder Woman is grenade-proof but not bulletproof. That’s not me being snarky; she contains a grenade blast with her bare hands and then later gets shot. It doesn’t do much more than annoy her, but it’s written as a heals-fast thing, not a bulletproof-in-the-first-place thing.
Seventh: I knew this was going to become the Veronica Cale Show again. I knew it. She has something more closely approximating an actual motivation this time, but in terms of actually being interesting is mainly coasting on more engaging hench-types.
Eighth: OK, it’s not Sarge Steel who got beaten up and replaced with an infiltrator this time, but it’s basically the same thing in spirit.
Ninth: Diana getting her lasso back at the end is not quite a literal deus ex machina, but only for lack of a machina.
Shea Fontana
This was fine. It’s, uh, basically the sort of filler arc that someone with only five issues on the title would write. Something that I missed when I was reading but saw pointed out somewhere else is that the flashbacks to young Diana on Themyscira have nothing to do with the actual plot. They’re just kinda there to be cute.
James Robinson
You know something, I don’t think anybody’s beat the drum of “HEY, DID YOU KNOW ZEUS HAD LOTS OF KIDS, HE TOTALLY DID,” enough yet (you know, other than Azzarello’s entire run), so let’s suddenly decide Wonder Woman is still a Zeus-baby and not made out of clay like the good origins, because I guess Rucka technically never said that wasn’t still a thing. Thanks.
Making Nessie the Silver Swan was annoying the first time, so while I like her, it was also annoying that she was brought back just to do it again. And even the first time, she wasn’t a random stalker serial killer with inexplicable back nanites.
Inexplicable back nanites have been the absolute bane of DC continuity for the last decade or so.
And maybe the worst thing is Julia going unnamed and dying off-panel. Why bother?
And then Steve and these randos we barely know somehow beat the Female Furies off-panel.
Oh, hang on, there’s something to rant about. Having the New Gods show up and mess around with Wonder Woman stuff because get it, they’re gods too lol was maybe sort of almost clever in the late ‘80s when George Pérez made it a plot point. Maybe. But thirty-some years of more-writers-than-not doing it later, Darkseid is really starting to wear out his welcome in this title. It’s not like anything he ever does in Wonder Woman is ever actually resolved in Wonder Woman. It feels like some preliminary side-story to some Justice League book I’m not reading.
Jason is intensely uninteresting. He hasn’t quite risen to the level of actively annoying me, but I certainly don’t care about him nearly as much as I suspect I’m meant to.
Though when he gets super duper god armor that gives him all the gods’ powers (but only one at a time, except when he’s able to imitate like five gods in as many seconds and the effects of their abilities last even when he switches powers) like some kind of overclocked bargain bin Captain Marvel, that probably puts him over to the “annoying” category.
Anyway, I also love forced SAAAAD endings that are all “Trust us, the characters are way smarter than you and they’re pretty sure this is the only way to solve the problem.” Odd, too. That’s usually Rucka’s domain.
And now, a brief interlude
Skipping arcs by Steve Orlando and James Tynion IV because I’ve already read them. Orlando’s arc was rushed, and it felt insubstantial. Also, Artemis is the most annoying she’s been since she was introduced. Tynion’s was fine, but it was just tie-ins to Justice League Dark.
G. Willow Wilson
Hey, Ares spontaneously changed personality again. Twice. He doesn’t even just do this between runs, he usually does it during any given run, often multiple times. Aphrodite is doing it too.
If you or a loved one is suffering from Chronic Motivation Changes, ask your doctor about Consistent Characterization.
It bothers me far more than it should that Eirene the minotaur is female but has a bull’s horns. And that 90% of Ferdinand’s characterization was “He’s technically a Kythitaur because he’s not from Minos,” and now two writers in a row have been calling him a minotaur anyway.
Anyway, of all the things to keep from Odyssey, Nemesis still has her weird head tentacles?
Anyway, the whole thing depends increasingly on inconsistent and arbitrary lore. It gets steadily harder to care as I go. Antiope’s friggin’ sword can do anything. I was about to make an “It slices, it dices” joke, except I should revise that last statement: As far as I can remember, it’s been used to do everything except actually cut anything.
And this goes back to Robinson, but I am so sick of Grail. She has zero personality or motivation, she just kind of floats around and does vaguely upsetting things. Weird that Antiope isn’t associated with the Bana anymore even though they’re still canon, too.
Sidenote, re: Year of the Villain. In the banner at the top of the tie-in covers, the central figure (Luthor?) looks disturbingly like a grimdark Ambush Bug.
Boy, characters in this run are great at inexplicably knowing everything about events they weren’t present for.
Seeing Steve go at the end… I really don’t care all that much, which I guess says something in itself about all of these runs. I legit felt worse when Aphrodite died, and she’s barely in this.
Oh, and (carrying over into Orlando’s run), I know I said the Cheetah should be a smarter villain, but smarter Cheetah is wearing out her welcome too. I mean, she’s basically still just running around killing stuff, but now she monologues while she’s doing it, mainly about motivations that make no sense and are inconsistent with previous characterization.
Steve Orlando (again)
Orlando is actually trying to make sense of some of the motivations, bless his heart, but he’s not solving the underlying problem where she’s spending an unacceptably huge number of issues in a row doing nothing but monologuing and trying to kill everything in reach.
Also, the gratuitous guest appearance by the Silencer is so pointless. She just stands there and repeatedly makes one-liners to the effect that she wants to shoot the Cheetah (for… reasons), and then is somehow prevented from shooting the Cheetah. That’s it. That’s all she contributes.
#750 is… meh. I like a couple of the stories, but honestly these anniversary issues are usually pretty underwhelming in my experience. Rewriting the origin again is silly, especially since it doesn’t seem motivated by much more than this weird idea that characters need to have their worth proven by heaping seniority on them. Like, why stop at the ‘40s? I mean, if we leave it there, Hawkman and Etrigan and the Shining Knight still predate Wonder Woman, so clearly she’s not a good enough character yet. What if the Amazons were never secluded from the world at all because her mission started in Twelfth Century BCE? What if Diana was born before Themyscira? Hercules had his own title that one time, and if he was the FIRST EVER SUPERHERO, then why, that wouldn’t be Wonder Woman! It would be much better if Diana was Hippolyta’s mother. In fact, we should say that she was originally the one to inspire Vandal Savage to go look at a meteor. In fact, she put the meteor there. She did it with a Green Lantern ring, which she was given as a courtesy because she actually founded the Guardians of the Universe. Do you love her yet?!
My point is that it feels like a very artificial way to prop up a character who does not need propping up. She’s better served by being in sync with her supporting cast and her peers than by having a massive, empty gap in her history during which she apparently didn’t meet anyone important or do anything. And part of what makes her actually interesting is that she looks at the world with an outsider’s perspective, objective in some ways and simplistic in others. But if she’s been here for eighty years, that doesn’t make any sense at all. And if any of Rebirth is still canon, she hasn’t even seen Themyscira in all that time. And if Rebirth is not canon, why does the same run immediately pick up afterwards as though nothing happened?
I think what happened was that they somehow jumped the gun on the “5G” reboot and then backed off of it after it had already gotten some content. But it’s very strange that this origin happens and then we immediately snap back to Rebirth. And I guess there was that disjointed, stylistically inconsistent, oddly sequenced series of vague monologues masquerading as a story earlier in the issue from the Bombshells universe, so not everything in this issue is meant to be canon, but that was still tied to an elseworld that actually exists.
… Wow, I only meant to make a single snide comment, not a three-paragraph-long rant.
Anyway, for the rest of Orlando’s run, I like that it’s making use of older characters and concepts. But it’s dull and just so muddled by the layers upon layers of retcons this character has had to deal with. This title, by the way, has become Exhibit A for why reboots don’t actually simplify anything.
And you know what, there’s something really uncomfortable going on in this Four Horsewomen arc. So, you’ve got Paula Von Gunther, who has generally had some degree of affiliation with Nazis. They’re saying she’s not one here, but she still has a lot of the trappings like the Norse symbolism and the red armband going on. And for one of her henchgoons, she’s got Genocide, whose name has not stopped being really over-the-top. So that combination is already kind of… uncomfortable.
And then everybody starts referring to Genocide as a “golem.” Which, like, in the generic fantasy D&D sense, is not a strictly inaccurate description. But, um, referring to a creature named “Genocide” that’s working for a Nazi by the name of a largely benevolent figure from Jewish folklore? Really? Really?
And then suddenly, the Phantom Stranger is there, and he’s actually behind the whole plot somehow, and we’re establishing the Judas origin for him? What the hell just happened to this title?!
We’ve only got one issue of Mariko Tamaki’s run so far, so I’m just gonna leave that alone. Besides, I can’t bear to see what further indignities have been heaped upon Maxwell Lord. He didn’t deserve anything that’s happened to him since 2005.
7 Likes
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight: 4 issues from 2006, pre-One Year Later
Well, there wasn’t actually a “One Year Later” arc in this book as such, since it kind of jumps around the timeline as it is, but at least up to the same month as most of titles that did do a skip.
Arcs:
-
Blaze of Glory, by Will Pfeifer: The way Batman figures out the culprit is perfectly ridiculous. Somehow he connects the use of a bat symbol to batarangs in particular, and then somehow decides it’s this guy he only fought once, because on that one occasion he fought him, he hit him with a batarang. How many guys must Batman have thrown batarangs at in his career?!
-
Gotham Emergency, by Eddie Campbell and Daren White: This was pretty good, though the situation is a little strange since the framing looks like Batman could have redirected the Joker’s toxin to not hit either of them instead of pointing it back at the Joker. Like, it might just be weird art, but the whole plot only makes sense because this moment happened, so it’s a conspicuous place for it.
Oh, and I’m getting back to Marvel stuff, too:
Fury: Oneshot from 1994
Writer: Barry Dutter
Review
So, this opens with a message from the editor dumping on Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., which I actually liked, so it doesn’t quite endear itself off the bat.
Oh my god, the story actually begins with Fury getting yelled at for not playing by the book and being a maverick loose cannon. Like, those exact words are used. That’s hilarious.
Everything from the plot to the dialogue to the pacing in this is really clumsy and simplistic. And the whole thing seems to exist just to be all “EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED WAS EXACTLY ACCORDING TO STRUCKER’S PLANS, MWAHAHA!”
It also seems to be trying to dance around continuity, lifting a couple scenes verbatim from the original Kirby stuff (which sticks out like a sore thumb because the Silver Age dialogue is actually better and more natural than the rest of the book, or at least more creatively phrased), but then there are parts that make no sense like Laura Brown being around before they make Fury director.
Wolverine/Nick Fury: Scorpio Rising: Oneshot from 1994
Writer: Howard Chaykin
Review
Honestly, I can barely pay attention to the plot past the hilariously ‘90s Liefeld-wannabe art.
The plot itself is a sequel to something that’s not digitized, and it’s… inoffensive, I guess? I’ve read worse? But when they make a thing into its own whole special oneshot, I sort of expect… more.
Fury/Black Widow: Death Duty: Oneshot from 1995
Writer: Cefn Ridout
Review
So Nick Fury is in like two pages of this. There is no reason at all for him to be in the title at all, let alone get top billing. It’s not even like he was a uniquely big name at this point in time, since clearly his actual series had gotten canceled several years earlier.
And honestly, Black Widow barely does anything here either. She mostly follows this Night Raven guy around, getting people to drop exposition about his backstory on her.
And even his backstory is, based on some wiki spelunking, almost entirely in backup features in British Marvel books from like twenty years before this.
So basically, I don’t care.
6 Likes
1/24/21 - 2/7/21
-Uncanny Avengers(2012) #24-25 (2)
-Loki: Agent of Asgard #6-7 (2)
-Magneto(2014) #9-12 (4)
-Deadpool(2012) #26,
-Axis: Carnage #1-3 (3)
-Savage Avengers #17
-Daredevil #26
-Marvel #3-4 (2)
-Wolverine #9
-Venom #33
-King in Black: Gwenom vs Carnage #2, Maurauders #1, Black Knight #1, Namor #3, Return of the Valkyries #2 (5)
-Amazing Spider-Man #58
-Thor #10
-The Other History of the DC Universe #2
-Joker/ Harley: Criminal Sanity #7
-Strange Adventures #8
-Batman: White Knight Presents Harley Quinn #4
-Batman: Black and White #2
-Man-Bat (2021) #1
-Hellblazer: Rise and Fall #3
-Future State: Swamp Thing #2, Dark Detective #2 (2)
-Ghost/Hellboy 1-2 (2)
-Sparkling Stars(1946) #16
-Dell Four Color (1953) #488: Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars
-Spawn #314
-Startling Terror Tales (1954) vol.2 #11
-Dreadstar (1980): The Metamorphosis Odyssey TPB (9)
-Silver Surfer: Black Marvel Treasury Edition (5)
-Avengers/X-Men: Axis TPB (9)
-Conan: Book of Thoth TPB (5)
-Guardians of the Galaxy by Brian Michael Bendis Omnibus: Avengers Assemble #1-8, GotG: Tomorrow’s Avengers, All-New X-Men 22-23, FCBD:GotG #1, Guardians Team-Up #1-2, GotG(2013) 0.1-27, Annual 1 (43)
-Avengers World: The Complete Collection #1-20, Avengers #34.1-34.2, All-New Marvel Now Point One #1 (22)
-Avengers: Time Runs Out Vol. 1 (5)
TOTAL: 139
2021 TOTAL: 326
6 Likes
JLA: 4 issues from 2006
Writer: Bob Harras
The end of this series. Not a bad plot, but it still doesn’t really resolve the interpersonal conflicts it raises. And I also think this is one of those places where Batman’s supposed to be being a jerk, except he’s actually kinda right about most of the stuff he brings up.
434.
Secret War: 5 issues from 2004-2005
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Review
OK, so I liked this in general, but my main issue here is that it feels like more of the plot than not happens off-panel. The flashback part seems more complex and like it’s missing a chunk out of the middle, while the present is 90% fight scene and takes up the bulk of the page count. And, like, I get that it’s Bendis, but five double-length issues should really be more than enough to fit a complete story in without it feeling rushed.
6 Likes
Sorry if I’m getting a bit spammy. Just did more reading today than I expected.
JSA: 4 issues from 2006, pre-One Year Later
Writers: Keith Champagne (2 issues), Geoff Johns (1 issue), Paul Levitz (1 issue)
So, the first two issues here are half about the Thunderbolt, and half about Doctor Fate, who are the team’s two resident overpowered characters. Any plot about them has that problem where you basically have to take the comic’s word for it that there are stakes. Like, Thunderbolt disobeying Possessed!Jakeem’s orders? I know that doesn’t typically happen, but I have zero frame of reference for how difficult it is. So, there’s sort of a sense that I should probably maybe think that it’s a big moment, but it’s much weaker than I think it was meant to be.
So the third issue is… I guess about Courtney since it’s narrated by her and spends half its page count on her backstory and ends with her (birth) father randomly dying off-panel for no reason. But, like, the part of it where there’s actual conflict and people doing things mainly hinges on Jesse’s relationship with her mother, except we barely see either of them. It’s not so much the fact that Jesse is a complete non-entity in this book that amuses me (there are like a hundred glorified namedrops sprinkled around the roster at various points over the course of this title), it’s that the book seems so insistent on calling attention to the fact that she’s a complete non-entity.
Fourth issue was actually legitimately really good, and I don’t just say that because of the Pérez art. I mean, I say that like 75% because of that, but-
Ahem, anyway, as I was saying, it’s surprisingly good for an Infinite Crisis tie-in.
443.
6 Likes
Here are the comics I read from the year 1942. Now I am off to 1943.
Summary
DC Comics
Action Comics #46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57
All-Star Comics #10,11,12,13,14,15
Batman #10,11,12,13,14,15
Comic Cavalcade #1
Detective Comics #61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72
More Fun Comics #77,78
Sensation Comics #4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14
Superman #16,17,18,19,20,21
Wonder Woman #1,2,3
World’s Finest Comics #7,8
Marvel Comics
All-Winners Comics #4,5,6,7
Captain America #10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20
Human Torch Comics #7,8,9
Marvel Mystery Comics #27,28
Sub-Mariner Comics #5,6,7,8
Total Comics 85
Total Comics (2021) 156
5 Likes
OK, the fact that One Year Later happened so close to the beginning of 2006 meant that I was going to be doing a lot of short reviews in very rapid succession, so I saved up a bunch of them instead. This should be the last of the Infinite Crisis tie-ins, so that’s a plus.
Batman: Gotham Knights: 4 issues from 2006
Writer: A.J. Lieberman
Ending this series as well. And…
…
Wait a minute, that second issue is just the beginning of A Death in the Family. It’s the same stupid plot.
Anyway, this guy cannot write the Joker. Like, he shouldn’t be allowed anymore.
And the ending is bizarre. So Batman… what, basically leaves Hush to be killed by the Joker? Why? There’s no reason at all that that would be a good idea. And this overall Hush story floated around for two years and didn’t actually have an ending. Paul Dini had to resolve it later in Detective Comics.
447.
Catwoman: 4 issues from 2006, pre-One Year Later
Writer: Will Pfeifer
Wow, I hate everything that just happened. These four issues are a perfect storm of suck from top to bottom.
451.
Gotham Central: 4 issues from 2006
Writer: Greg Rucka
Wow, Jim Corrigan – no, not that Jim Corrigan – suddenly has a lot of resources. This dude should go into supervillaining for himself. Like, if this guy tried to take over the world, suddenly the head of state of every country would spontaneously turn out to be in his pocket, and he’d have a buddy who could loan him a death ray to threaten the world with.
Actually, hang on, how does this plan of his work, anyway? Somehow they run a ballistics test and find out the gun is this pistol with the rifle rounds, and then they tie him to the gun, but then after that he pays off someone in the ballistics lab to say it’s a different gun? Could he not do that last part first and not get tied to it in the first place?
455.
Teen Titans: 4 issues from 2006, pre-One Year Later
Writer: Geoff Johns (3 issues, co-writer on 1 issue), Marv Wolfman (co-writer on 1 issue)
One of the inkers on these issues is named Richard Bonk.
That’s it, that’s the review. Good day.
…
The Raven/Beast Boy pairing is also the absolute worst thing ever and I hate hate hate it.
Also also, Infinite Crisis sucks. Just… just why all the gore? It’s just so bitter.
459.
Superman/Batman: 2 issues from 2006, pre-One Year Later
Writer: Jeph Loeb
Actually got a little ahead of myself because I forgot that this book wasn’t actually monthly. But meh, this pseudo-multiverse story wasn’t really my favorite, even as a sequel to Emperor Joker, which I did like.
The one saving grace is Bizarro, who is admittedly priceless.
461.
Manhunter: 4 issues from 2006, pre-One Year Later
Writer: Marc Andreyko
This series falls back on shock value a little too often for my taste, but there’s a lot going on that actually is pretty good, so I’m conflicted.
465.
JLA Classified: 4 issues from 2006, pre-One Year Later
Writers: Warren Ellis (2 issues), Gail Simone (2 issues)
“New Maps of Hell” spends the back half of its run talking down its own villain. Like, if this guy is so lame, why should I care?
“The Hypothetical Woman” is better. “My god… he’s full of Starro!” Incredible.
Again, doesn’t actualy have an OYL arc as such, just reading up to April.
469.
JSA Classified: 5 issues from 2006, pre-One Year Later
Writers: Jen Van Meter (3 issues), Peter Tomasi (2 issues)
It is, in large part, focusing on characters we’ve already had a lot of exposure to, but this title is actually closer to what I’d sort of hoped the main book would be: using the hilariously oversized cast to spotlight individual members thereof, not moving them from plot to plot in a big unilateral block.
474.
Secret Warriors (and Dark Reign: The List – Secret Warriors oneshot): 29 issues from 2009-2011
Writers: Jonathan Hickman, Brian Michael Bendis (Co-plotter on 6 issues)
Review
Dude.
Colonel Fury.
Nick.
How many shocking reveals that Hydra has been manipulating you all along do you have to go through before it stops surprising you?
And for that matter: Dude.
Baron Von Strucker.
Wolfy.
Exactly how many layers of plans where you appeared to be defeated but were secretly planning everything all along for decades did you work out? It just seems kinda redundant at a certain point. Like, you couldn’t trim a little of that fat?
Strucker’s greatest crime, here, though, is that table shaped like the Hydra symbol. They went to so much effort making it look dramatic that they didn’t leave any space to actually put anything on the table. I’m not even kidding. Look at the scenes where people meet around that table. There’s never anything on it! You know why? Because there’s nowhere with more than like two contiguous inches of surface to put anything on!
Also, Kraken is actually getting kind of hilarious for how many scenes there are of people aggressively assuring us that he is very important and dangerous and influential even though he literally does not actually do anything until the very concluding story arc.
Val was some sort of sleeper agent who infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. for decades and acted exactly as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for no apparent reason other than subsequently infiltrating Hydra on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D. so she could steal a box for her actual bosses.
Viper is now a zombie with an octopus on her head. That’s… that’s just a thing now.
And- and they just nuked Seattle? Like, Seattle is gone now? That’s, um, new.
They eventually got around to sort of vaguely coughing in the direction of the S.H.I.E.L.D. series possibly indirectly being almost but not entirely unrelated to actual S.H.I.E.L.D., so that’s… something. It’s not much but it is indeed a thing.
OK, so I actually do like several of the main characters, and the last three or so issues help explain why some of the choices I’m complaining about were made. This was a passingly interesting read. But for something that is built on complicated conspiracies, the conspiracies themselves come across as kind of pointless and incompetent.
S.H.I.E.L.D.: 6 issues from 2010-2011
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Review
oh my god this is so pretentious
It’s trying so hard to sound important when nothing that happens means anything or matters. It’s adorable.
5 Likes
What were your favorite ones from each year? Reading year by year is a great approach!
5 Likes
Spot on, man. I read both the secret warriors and the shield minis and…just spot on with the summary. I even attempted a reread of the shield bools and couldn’t finish.
4 Likes
It was interesting to see how the comics changed after Pearl Harbor in 1941. After that it focused more on the war and the enemy changed from Hitler to the Japanese.
Batman was probably my favorite. I just read the first appearance of Alfred and I have already seen the first appearances of Joker, Penguin and Catwoman. Also been enjoying Wonder Woman. All-Star Comics has been interesting featuring JSA. It is interesting that each character has their own story that ties into a common mission. Also wish they had runs of early Green Lantern and Flash but they only have 1 issue of each.
Also had no idea Green Arrow and Aquaman were introduced so early. I just assumed they debuted in the Silver Age.
Over at Marvel I have enjoyed Captain America. Not many comics published in these years so instead of a number of comics read, my goal is to get to the year 1960.
5 Likes
I have heard that the early Batman captures his mood right away, so I will have to read those. Glad you’re enjoying Wonder Woman. It was definitely a different era.
5 Likes
You should just save this line for any other Hickman stuff you read, too.
3 Likes
I mean, having read the second volume now, I see that the real problem is that the first volume is basically just an extended teaser for that. Not that the second volume isn’t pretentious, and not that it makes sense, but there’s actually a lot more substance to it.
3 Likes
Yeah, that kinda seems to be how Hickman works. I really like the last ten or so issues of his Fantastic Four, for example, but I can’t stand everything before that. It’s like everything is just a prologue for something that’s coming at the end, and there’s no actual individual stories. But once he got all that out of the way, I did kinda like it.
I also have other problems with his stuff, like how he clearly doesn’t understand how souls work, or how despite being the First Family, the Fantastic Four are hardly ever even in the same room, but I won’t get into that now. Or, at least not more than I already have.
4 Likes
So, making the One Year Later jump here. I’m gonna start doing a new thing when I start a new year or cross some other dividing line, just because I feel like it: I’m going to drop the list of titles I intend to read or have read from the relevant era ahead of time, and say what I’m expecting. I do this in my head anyway, so I may as well write it down.
Here’s my list for 2006, post-One Year Later
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Detective Comics: Already read everything but part of a crossover by James Robinson. Robinson’s Starman was excellent, but I can’t really think of anything else by him I’ve enjoyed. Paul Dini’s run thereafter was very good, though.
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Action Comics: Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns, Fabian Nicieza, and Richard frickin’ Donner? I can definitely live with this group of writers. Busiek and Nicieza wrote my favorite runs of my favorite Marvel series (Thunderbolts) and Johns, while inconsistent, has done some very good work and seems to play well with co-writers. And… OK, the good Superman movie was actually written by Mario Puzo (I think he wrote some other movie with Marlon Brando in it too, something about gangsters or something), but Donner is still a name worth hyping.
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Superman: And more Busiek over here, too.
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Batman: The other half of Robinson’s crossover. And then Grant Morrison. And worse, Damian. I’ve been afraid of getting to this point.
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Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight: You never know what to expect from this series, which is half the fun even if it does turn out bad a lot of the time.
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Robin: When I read this series before, I stopped before the One Year Later arc. There was a very good reason I did that. Poor Cass…
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Nightwing: Already read. Improved post-OYL, but that was a low, low bar.
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Birds of Prey: Already read. I adore this title. I adore this particular arc slightly less because Prometheus is in it and he is a terrible villain, but the B plot makes up for it, because Sin.
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JSA: I liked the one issue by Paul Levitz from before OYL, so more by him could be good.
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Catwoman: Been hating this run, will probably continue hating this run.
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Teen Titans: Also been hating this run, will probably continue to do so as well.
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Superman/Batman: New writers. No clue what to expect. I think it’s Paul Verheiden taking over? Read a little of his work before, but not enough of a sample size to have a strong opinion.
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Manhunter: Book’s been hit-and-miss, but an interesting read in general. We’ll say I’m looking forward to it.
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JLA Classified: Was liking the current arc, so I’m excited to pick it back up.
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Green Lantern: Already read. Been forever, but I remember this being good.
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JSA Classified: I forget what was coming up when I left off, honestly.
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Blue Beetle: Been itching to get to this book. Ted Kord’s death is like one of the worst things to happen in comics, but Jaime is a good character and… I think this is written by Keith Giffen, right? Giffen is good.
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Wonder Woman: Already read. Initial run of the 2006 title wasn’t great, but it was OK and pretty short-lived.
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Checkmate: I liked the original Checkmate, but Greg Rucka’s edgelordy rebooting of them has been annoying me in numerous series, so I’m not going into this with high hopes.
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Secret Six miniseries: Already read. A little disappointing compared to Villains United, but Gail Simone was apparently writing like seventy-five different titles at this point, so she might’ve just been spread a bit thin. Also, RIP Pistolera. Nobody cared but me, but RIP nonetheless.
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Shadowpact: I’ve heard this was bad, but I liked Day of Vengeance and I like most of the main characters, so… not sure what to expect.
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The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive: I haven’t heard anything good about this era. Poor Bart…
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Green Lantern Corps: Already read. Great series with one or two dud arcs. I actually like it a little better than the main GL book. I’d misremembered the whole thing as being written by Peter Tomasi up through Blackest Night, but it looks like Dave Gibbons did the first year or so. I didn’t like Rann/Thanagar War by him, but I don’t recall those early issues sticking out as particularly bad or anything either.
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Justice League of America: If Meltzer’s work on Identity Crisis is any indication, this is gonna suck.
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The All-New Atom: No, seriously, Gail Simone was doing everything. And I am fine with that.
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Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters: So, I like the Freedom Fighters and think they deserve more development. But murdering the previous iteration in Infinite Crisis so this team could exist rubs me the wrong way, I’ve heard this is bad, and I haven’t been a fan of my (admittedly minimal) previous exposure to Palmiotti’s writing.
Marvel-wise, I’m continuing with Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D.-related books. Got a little more Hickman stuff, and from there it’s all the books that are pretending to be the MCU. No clue what to expect from those other than desperately trying to convince us they’re the MCU.
Action Comics and Superman: 16 issues from 2006, post-One Year Later
Writers: Kurt Busiek (3 issues of Action Comics, 4 issues of Superman, co-writer on 4 issues of Superman, co-writer on 4 issues of Action Comics), Geoff Johns (co-writer on 4 issues of Superman, co-writer on 5 issues of Action Comics), Fabian Nicieza (co-plotter on 3 issues of Action Comics), Richard Donner (co-writer on 1 issue of Action Comics)
“Up, Up, and Away” crossover by Busiek and Johns: This was really good. The only thing is that if any hero didn’t need the “Gratuitously gets new/more powerful superpowers” trope, it’s Superman. The explanation for his losing his powers for a year also felt a little perfunctory, I guess?
Action Comics by Busiek and Nicieza: This was a good arc, though I think it’s pretty much the same premise as Lord Manga Khan from Justice League International. But, like, if you have to rip something off, JLI totally works.
Beginning of “Last Son” (also in Action) by Johns and Donner: A little too much reliance on BIG SPLASHY PANELS, but the story is looking interesting.
Superman… also by Busiek: Was very good until we went into a generic alt-future dystopia. All I ask is just one book to not waste my time with this trope. One. And what we’ve seen of this Khyber guy so far feels very redundant with Ra’s al Ghul. Like, I guess it’s never been explicitly stated that the League of Assassins is related to the historical Hashshashin, but given the League’s name and Ra’s’ origins in the Middle East circa the Crusades, the connection is pretty intuitive. So we’ve got an immortal, vaguely mystical figure with a misanthropic agenda (Ra’s for environmentalist reasons, while the environment doesn’t seem to fare any better than humanity in Khyber’s future, but it’s functionally the same thing) who originally comes from the Medieval Islamic world and commands an army of ninja assassins.
525.
S.H.I.E.L.D.: 7 issues from 2011-2012
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Review
This is how my patience ends.
So, this book is trying to razzle-dazzle you with a lot of dense philosophical concepts. It’s actually very disingenuous: It wants you to think it’s over your head. That you’re just not smart enough to get what it’s saying. So let me get a little pretentious myself for a second here to break this down:
In philosophy, there are broad trends of (oversimplifying here) favoring logic and reason versus favoring passion and nature. Roughly an order vs. chaos concept. They’re often associated with Nineteenth Century movements of Enlightenment and Romanticism. Basically, having Isaac Newton (an Enlightenment thinker) and Leonardo da Vinci (who predates Romanticism itself, but especially if we’re trying to use inventors or scientists, I can see how he’d be tied to that half of the dichotomy) literally trying to kill each other is pretty heavyhanded symbolism for that.
Oddly, though, Newton is also used as a symbol of fate and consequentialism, while Da Vinci talks about free will and spouts individualist talking points. But the Enlightenment was never a fatalist movement. In fact, modern individualist thought largely originated in the Enlightenment with guys like Immanuel Kant and John Locke. As a committed individualist myself, I’d almost be offended if this weren’t way too obtuse and academic to actually provoke me. Meanwhile, Romanticists chafe at the idea of imposing order on a chaotic world. They are fatalists. The world is going to do what the world is going to do, and in this case, if that includes ending, then so be it. Think Frankenstein: Trying to master the fundamental forces of nature (life, in that case) leads only to madness and ruin. Now, the Renaissance was not a Romantic movement, just the opposite. They were sort of the forebears of Enlightenment, distinguishing themselves from the Middle Ages (which they considered superstitious and stagnant, though that wasn’t strictly true) by following an idealized concept of classical antiquity, which they viewed as an example of innovation and progress. But the juxtaposition of Da Vinci’s faction with Newton’s here is pretty heavy-handedly trying to evoke Romantic ideals, except it does so wrong for… all the reasons I just said.
My point, though, is that the conflict has interesting—if muddled—symbolism.
And then it goes into convoluted time travel BS where the same things happen three times and nothing actually means anything or matters. There’s no real point made or resolution to the conflict. Just… what I think might be a literal deus ex machina. Also, Michelangelo replaces Da Vinci’s half of the conflict partway through for no apparent reason. Which is odd on a number of levels, because all the other major figures are inventors and scientists, but Michelangelo was pretty much strictly an artist.
Also, what’s the bird lady’s deal? Everything else gets at least an “I know what all of those words mean individually but they don’t form a coherent thought in that order” tier explanation, but she’s just… a bird. I was honestly expecting it to reveal that she’s some kind of embodiment of necessity, since get it, lol, necessity is the mother of invention. Like, that’s the kind of thing this series would do, but we don’t even get that much. She’s just a random glowing bird from a random place that people went to in order to do things for reasons, and she became sort of human-ish.
6 Likes
Batman and Detective Comics: 12 issues from 2006, post-One Year Later
Writers: James Robinson (4 issues of Detective Comics, 4 issues of Batman), Grant Morrison (4 issues of Batman)
Face the Face crossover by James Robinson: You killed the Ventriloquist? So we could have Two-Face back? I gotta be honest, I would not take that trade. (And no, Peyton Reilly in Dini’s run didn’t really improve the situation. Like, she wasn’t an uninteresting character, but her, uh, dynamic with Scarface feels very tacked on to the general concept, and she spends too much time trying to one-up Arnold Wesker.) And, uh, RIP KGBeast, Magpie, and Orca too, I guess. That’s, uh, that’s not as great of a loss, but still. I mean, Ten Nights of the Beast was at least the highlight of Jim Starlin’s run (which is a low, low bar, granted, but still), but the character concept very quickly became dated. Byrne’s Man of Steel is legitimately good in a non-damning-with-faint-praise way, but Magpie has a simultaneously really bland and oddly specific gimmick. Orca just… sucks. So, like, if you have to kill four villains, having those be three of them is sound. But the Ventriloquist is a classic (ironically originating in a terrible run). He deserves better. And in general, the idea of Harvey Dent being the only one who could take care of Gotham for a year is ridiculous, and his reasons for becoming Two-Face again are even sillier. And the actual killer they’re hunting for most of this goes down in a frickin’ backup feature. And the Great White Shark being the mastermind comes completely out of nowhere. Frankly, I didn’t even know he’d already existed by this point; I thought he was from later.
First couple issues of Morrison’s run: As one Bruce Wayne insightfully said in an issue I read recently (just before a ten-page fight scene, ironically enough), “If there’s one thing I hate… it’s art with no content.”
Of course, I don’t strictly agree. Personally, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s Damian ■■■■■■■ Wayne. Not least because just after Cassandra Cain got screwed over, they introduce a character who is exactly Cassandra Cain, but a straight-up psychopathic supervillain.
544.
S.H.I.E.L.D.: 12 issues from 2015-2016
Writer: Mark Waid, Al Ewing (backup story in #9)
Review
This is kind of a fun series, but it is very “Editorial said I have to make it like the TV show, so here’s exactly those characters.” Except it’s mostly about the random superhero guest stars in every issue anyway, which feels like it kind of defeats the point, to the extent that there is a point.
I tried to transliterate Horguun’s signature from the runes before they explained it, and I’m pretty sure that actually says Warguun.
The Dum Dum Dugan retcon is horrible, and immediately sets about showing all the reasons it makes no sense. How did he never get injured enough to make it obvious that he was a robot? Why can he only use all these robotic abilities now? And how did Jasper Sitwell die (again), anyway? Speaking of dying multiple times, when Dugan died back in the '88 series, Fury treated it as a real thing. If he could just transfer to a new robot body the whole time, like this story implies has happened multiple times, who would care? And wouldn’t Hydra (and their nefarious scheme for resurrecting him never actually went anywhere - I forget whether I mentioned that in those reviews) notice that they didn’t recover an actual dude?
On another translation note, the Alphonse guy from the Howard the Duck issue somehow translates his name from French into French, so that a caption can then further translate it into English. Well, horrifically mangled French into somewhat less mangled French, but both versions are definitely made out of French words. It’s a funny issue, but I legit can’t tell if this is a joke or not.
And most importantly, the Liverer should’ve been named Gaquacktus.
5 Likes
