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Reviews and commentary by Tony Isabella
"America's Most Beloved Comic-Book Writer & Columnist"
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TONY'S ONLINE TIPS
for Monday, October 17, 2005
From COMICS BUYER'S GUIDE #1611:
"If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before."
- Mitchell Burgess, "Northern Exposure"
I've been writing about the comics community and this summer crystalized what it means to me. Between working my way out of a few health concerns and watching the repairs and renovation of Casa Isabella move along far too slowly - the work was supposed to have been completed by the end of July and I'll give you odds it won't have been completed by the time you read this column - I didn't get to enjoy or celebrate or even grieve with that community in person. Even so, I never felt detached from it.
We lost a lot of good people this summer. Some I knew, some I didn't know well, some I'd never met. Mourning them here doesn't seem like a proper fit for this column - too little space to come close to doing them justice - but it seems remiss not to at least bow my head and offer a prayer for John Albano, Jim Aparo, Paul Cassidy, Bruce Hamilton, Anne Mooney, Selby Kelly, Sam Kweskin, Sam Loeb, Owen McCarron, and Byron Preiss. My good thoughts go out to all those who knew and loved them.
Whatever concerns I have about various aspects of the comics industry, I'm thrilled to see sales on the upswing, readers getting passionate about titles, creators doing great work and landing good contracts, conventions drawing record numbers, and the success of movies like BATMAN BEGINS and FANTASTIC FOUR. I may be celebrating from a distance, but I'm celebrating nonetheless.
Likewise, even though my circumstances keep me confined to my comfortable-if-unkempt garret, I still enjoy the fellowship of our community through such online forums as those found at CBGXTRA.COM, my own message board [www.comicscommunity.com/boards/tony], and a select few comics mailing lists. Later this year, when I launch my 2006 TONY ISABELLA "DID YOU MISS ME?" TOUR and see my online pals in person, it will be as if no time has passed since the last time I saw them face-to-face. For a kid who grew up exchanging letters and post cards - Who could afford phone calls? - with Mark Evanier and Dwight Decker and Carl Gafford and so many others, this might be even better than the future we were promised in those old comic books and science fiction magazines.
Here's something that caught me by surprise this summer. I've rediscovered my love for Marvel Comics, the kind of love that drove me to get into the business over three decades ago. I was sorting several years of comics loaned to me by a friend and got the notion to catch up on titles I'd read haphazardly at best, as well as some of the new kids on the Marvel block.
I'm halfway through HOUSE OF M as I write this column and I'm digging through the boxes for all the spin-off issues. I never did that with previous major events from Marvel or any other publisher. I got current with THE (old) AVENGERS and several of the "Ultimate" titles. I'm trying to decide if I want to read several years worth of DAREDEVIL or ULTIMATE X-MEN next. It's not that everything I'm reading is terrific - it isn't - but I'm getting a genuine sense of excitement off these comics. I wish I could find my MERRY MARVEL MARCHING SOCIETY membership card.
So, in honor of Marvel making my stay-at-home summer a little more fun, their comics get the spotlight treatment in this column. Face front, true believers...
...because it's easier to read the reviews that way.
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS: WOLVERINE VOL. 1 [$12.99] reprints the 1988 Wolverine serial which originally ran in the first ten issues of MCP. Written by Chris Claremont with art by John Buscema and Klaus Janson, this story introduced Madripoor, the island country where "anything goes and everything is for sale" and Logan's home away from home for quite a few adventures.
At the time this story appeared, the X-Men were believed dead and a restless Wolverine sometimes walked among men trying to keep as low a profile as possible. For him, that is. Come to Madripoor to fulfill the last request of a dying man, Logan finds himself in the middle of a battle between a ruthless crime lord and the woman who seeks to take that crime lord's place.
This is rugged and sometimes brutal adventure. Claremont does a fine job putting an exotically grim-and-gritty face on the Marvel Universe, pitting Wolverine against remarkably vicious-yet-mostly-human villains. Buscema and Janson deliver visuals wholly in sync with the scripts. This is my third time reading the story - I read it in serial form and then again in its entirety - and it holds up very well indeed.
I do have some quibbles with this trade paperback collection. A glaring error in the original story had Wolverine being referred to as "Patch" before he had actually assumed his Madripoor "secret identity." It's a small thing, but it could have been corrected in this reprinting.
More, I guess "annoying" would be the word, more annoying is the inclusion of the back cover art for the original issues of MCP #1-10. While the covers were wrap-around covers, they look goofy to me in this format. Your mileage may vary.
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS: WOLVERINE VOL. 1 is a bit pricey for its 80 pages of story, but the mitigating circumstances are that it reprints a really good story. On our usual scale of zero to five, this trade paperback earns four Tonys.
Mild spoilers ahead.
I confess to a disappointment with ASTONISHING X-MEN by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. Reading issues #7-11, I think it remains an exceedingly well-written and well-drawn series. However, due to its less-than-monthly frequency, it is less than the flagship X-Men title I'd hoped it would be.
Whedon's first story arc had a huge idea in the discovery of a "cure" for being a mutant and a ho-hum one in the introduction of an alien race out to destroy all mutants. Thus far, the former has been used for little more than jump-starting his second story arc. As for the latter, well, we've seen lots of people hating mutants, though the denizens of "Breakworld" have a slightly different take on it, believing a mutant will destroy their civilization. I can relate; I feel the same way about TV reality shows.
This time out, Whedon has the Danger Room - the X-Men's god-like computerized training program - gaining sentience and trying to kill them and its kind of sort of creator Charles Xavier. It's been an exciting arc so far, filled with peril and bodily damage. Of course, part of my excitement comes from my hope that this means we've seen the last of the Danger Room, which has surely become the most overused excuse for contrived fight scenes in all of comics. Anything that sends that cliche packing is gonna score fairly huge with me.
There are brilliant bits in these five issues. The X-Men and the Fantastic Four fighting a giant monster in Manhattan is spiffy fun. The awkward moments between Kitty Pryde and an amazingly not-dead-anymore Colossus are sweetly and painfully romantic. That a nasty offshoot of SHIELD has a mole at the Xavier Institute is an intriguing sub-plot. Whedon also plays well with the large number of mutants at the Institute, especially in a scene where the stars wear out every healer in the joint.
ASTONISHING X-MEN isn't the quantum leap forward I had wanted, but it's still a fine series and well worth reading whenever a new issue comes out. I give it four Tonys.
Mild spoilers ahead.
This will sound like damning with faint praise, but I enjoyed THE NEW AVENGERS #1-7 [$2.25 each] more than I thought I would. I hadn't liked AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED and I'm not yet convinced this new group is an adequate replacement for the traditional team, this despite my digging of HOUSE OF M. But writer Brian Michael Bendis and artists David Finch and Steve McNiven have kept me interested and reading while I make up my mind.
I do like Captain America's reasoning behind the reformation of the Avengers. That this team gets together more by chance than anything else appeals to me as a veteran reader and from a creative viewpoint. I like the interaction of Spider-Man and Luke Cage with Captain America and Iron Man. I like that Daredevil didn't join. I'm not sold on Spider-Woman, Wolverine, or the Sentry as members, but loved the appearance of Marvel writer Paul Jenkins in issue #7. Maybe Jenkins could become the Rick Jones or - dare I say - Snapper Carr of this new team.
The first story arc set up nice possibilities for the future. The team is formed in the make of a massive prison break and there are dozens of super-villains still running free as a result. The new Avengers have come into conflict with the "dark underbelly of SHIELD" and that made for an gripping adventure in the Savage Land. I'm intrigued by the unanswered question of where the loyalties of Spider-Woman - SHIELD agent Jessica Drew - actually lie.
On the minus side, Wolverine remains a tough sell for me and I've never been very comfortable with "evil SHIELD" stories or, by extension, "evil American government" stories. It's a logic thing for me. I distrust the current government more than any other in my lifetime, but I think the presence of super-heroes in the world would have changed it for the better, acting as yet another balance to any abuses of power.
It's also a freshness thing; we're getting it in this book, in ASTONISHING X-MEN, in all the "Ultimates" titles, in BLACK PANTHER, in...you get the idea. Even someone like me, who is big on echoes of the real world in super-hero comics, wants to see more variety than this in those comics.
THE NEW AVENGERS #1-7 earn a respectable three Tonys and also my continued attention. Show me what you've got, kids.
THE NEW THUNDERBOLTS #1-10 [$2.99 each] are proof of just how rich Kurt Busiek's concept for the first Thunderbolts series was. Writer Fabian Nicieza - with the occasional assist from occasional co-plotter Busiek - examines super-villains from a much different perspective than is usually found in super-hero comics. Some team members are sincere in their desire to reform and pay their debts to society. Some are seemingly trapped in their bad habits. Some are just callously playing the angles. It's a volatile mix that, more than virtually any other Marvel title, keeps readers guessing. Anything can - and does - happen to these characters.
Nicieza's writing is at its best on this title. Penciller Tom Grummett is doing top-of-the-line super-hero art, straightforward, action-packed, emotional. Inker Gary Erskine is a good match for Grummett. My quibbles are small, indeed: I don't much like Captain Whiney-Boy...I mean, Genis or Photon or whatever he calls himself of late...and the current Killgrave the Purple Man storyline up and gets sidetracked for a HOUSE OF M issue.
These small quibbles don't cost THE NEW THUNDERBOLTS "points." This relaunch gets the full five Tonys.
For me, the trick to being able to read and enjoy ULTIMATES 2 [$2.99 per issue] is to forget the characters therein are supposed to be alternate versions of the real Avengers. It is not a trick I've mastered.
No matter how good Mike Millar's stories may be, and they are quite good and filled with surprises I don't see coming, it grates on me to see Captain America portrayed as a fascist thug, the Wasp as a tramp, and Hank Pym as a wife-beater. Okay, yes, writers of the traditional Marvel Universe gave us those last two, but it's my review and I'll complain if I want to.
On the other hand, there's much appeal for me in the recasting of Hawkeye as a devoted family man, Iron Man as a kind of straight Oscar Wilde struggling to create in spite of his character flaws, and Thor as a perhaps delusional champion of human rights. Mention should also be made of Bruce Banner, who shows amazing nobility in the aftermath of the Hulk's murderous rage. These are enormously interesting heroes.
That said, ULTIMATES 2 revels in brutality and sleaziness that border on and sometime achieve the depth of savage pandering to the gore-and-whore aficionados. Sadly, that tempers my appreciation of Millar's skill and the exceptional Bryan Hitch/Paul Neary art and lowers my estimation of the title.
ULTIMATES 2 gets three out of five Tonys. I'll give you odds that as many readers will think that's too high a score as do those who will think it's too low.
Mild spoilers ahead.
BLACK PANTHER #1-6 [$2.99 each] are a wild ride, courtesy of writer Reginald Hudlin, penciller John Romita Jr., and inker Klaus Janson. Though the earliest issues don't give us much screen time with T'Challa in sacred panther garb, Hudlin's history of Wakanda provides ample spectacle to compensate for the lack. The gathering of the forces arrayed against our hero and his country is sometimes slow, but the tension builds to satisfying all-out action in the moderately more brutal modern-day equivalent of the mighty Marvel manner. This is an exciting series.
While a new-to-Marvel reader can easily get into this series, this first story arc did cause some confusion for this egregiously lapsed true believer. For example...
When did Klaw go from being a goofy-looking creature made of sound to the skilled strategist who only looks goofy when his arm turns into weapons bigger than he is? He's more impressive in this incarnation, but when did this happen?
Is the Radioactive Man who appears in this series the same one who is appearing in THE NEW THUNDERBOLTS? It's almost impossible to reconcile the two personalities.
Where did this new Black Knight come from? Whatever happened to the old Black Knight? I need a scorecard!
None of my confusion affects my high regard for BLACK PANTHER. Even the "evil American government" subplot wasn't entirely out of place here, though it may well have some readers howling. Hudlin at least makes an effort to show the government's thinking, flawed though he or I might consider that thinking.
BLACK PANTHER has received much well-earned acclaim and I'm jumping on that bandwagon as well. These first six issues earn the full five out of five Tonys.
DAREDEVIL: REDEMPTION #1-6 [2.99 each] is a legal thriller and murder mystery that will kick you in the guts. In a gripping tale by David Hine, Matt Murdock travels to Alabama to defend an outcast teenager accused of a savage murder. Michael Gaydos completes the script with art so evocative of the human tragedy it was sometimes painful to read these comics. And that's all I will say about this story. You need to read it yourself.
DAREDEVIL: REDEMPTION is the stuff award nominations are made of it. I give it five Tonys and my further recommendation that, if you read no other work I review this month, you read this one. If you can't find the comics, a trade paperback of the series will be available in October.
I can't offer you better than DAREDEVIL: REDEMPTION this time around. Look for more reviews tomorrow.
******
TONY POLLS
It's Monday...and that means it's your last day to vote on the current TONY POLLS questions. We asked you a quartet of SERENITY and FIREFLY questions plus a fifth question on how often you play video games. If you haven't yet voted on these questions, you can do so by going to:
www.worldfamouscomics.com/tony/poll
Thanks for spending a part of your day with me. I'll be back tomorrow with more stuff.
Tony Isabella
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THE "TONY" SCALE
ZERO: Burn your money before buying any comic receiving this rating. It doesn't *necessarily* mean there's absolutely nothing of value here - though it *could* - but whatever value it might possess shrinks into insignificance before its overall awfulness.
ONE: Buy something else. Maybe I found something which wasn't completely dreadful in the item, but not enough for me to recommend it when there are better comics available. I only want what's best for you, my children.
TWO: Basic judgment call. I found some value, but not enough to recommend it. My review should give you enough info to decide if you want to take a chance on it. Are you feeling lucky today, punk? Well, are you?
THREE: This denotes something I find perfectly respectable. There are better books out there, but I wouldn't regret buying this item. Based on my review, you should be able to determine if it's of interest to you. Let the Force guide you.
FOUR: I recommend anything earning this rating. Unless you don't like the genre, subject matter, or past work of the creators, I believe you'll enjoy this item. Isn't it uncanny how I can look right into your soul that way?
FIVE: Anything getting this rating is among the best comicdom has to offer. You should buy/read this, even if the genre/subject matter doesn't appeal to you. It's for your own good. Me, I live for comics and books this good...but not in a pathetic "Comic-Book Guy" sort of way.
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