AvX: Consequences (2012-2013)

A mini series that is basically the epilogue to the Avengers vs. X-Men crossover. Unlike the entirely superfluous AvX: VS mini, which depicted battles between various characters during the event, Consequences is required reading for those who want to know what happened next to Scott Summers. Since his character has never been more interesting since they made him into a villain (arguably that just how he is presented and at least Kieron Gillen subtly acknowledges this), I say this is nearly just as good as the crossover its closing shop for.

One ingenious idea I really liked was how Scott communicated with Magneto while in prison. But that’s just a nice touch to make the good better. And it’s good because Gillen really gets these characters, writes them like real people with their own, conflicting agendas and unique voices. Even Colossus, who always struck me as a walking cliche of what a Russian must look like to Americans, felt like someone real, which I’ve never seen another writer manage.

So, essential reading if you liked Avengers vs. X-Men.

Red (2003-2004)

Warren Ellis and artist Cully Hamner’s three issue mini series is a study in lean storytelling. No words or panel is wasted, everything is optimized to tell the story in the smallest amount of space. At a time when Ellis and other writers were called out for decompressed storytelling, Ellis showed that it was just a choice and if he wanted, he could easily write something as compact as Red, without sacrificing coherence in the plot department.

That said, the story isn’t all that original: an old CIA assassin is ordered to be killed (oh the irony) so that his past never sees the light of days (because the new era doesn’t allow such a sordid past to be revealed). Expectedly, he reacts in a very direct and violent manner, showing that age hasn’t dulled his skills. On his way to those who ordered the kill, he leave a trail of dead bodies, while taunting his real targets along the way. But while it’s not all that original, the execution of the story is perfect and Hamner’s sparse but clean art makes it look all that much better.

I can easily understand why this got adapted into a movie. The concept is easy to summarize, the weary but still deadly old warrior who has to make one last run.

Swamp Thing: Raise Them Bones (2011-2012)

Swamp Thing’s history can be summed up as: Alan Moore did a groundbreaking run on the comic, others tried some weird stuff after it, but nothing managed to reach the same level of quality, before or after. That’s not entirely accurate, nor is the other stuff, either before Moore or after bad, but it’s an impression each new writer has to deal with.

Snyder certainly managed to get the new series running on all cylinders right out of the gate. Where Moore managed to redefine the creature with just one issue (The Anatomy Lesson, his second on the title), Snyder introduced a powerful and beautiful vision of plant life that few readers will have ever encountered, but which is so compelling that it sets an entirely new tone that feels both like an original take and yet one completely in sync with everything Swamp Thing.

Plant life isn’t less violent than flesh-and-bones driven biota (the whole red in tooth and claw), it just operates on a different time scale and is hidden from our everyday eyes, but on its own it’s just as violent, ferocious and callous. Together with Yanick Paquette’s great art, this metaphor for plant life comes to disturbing life on the pages, ready to haunt the reader, drawn him in.

The rest – a new villain (whose actually a redefinition of an old one), clever use of continuity bits, a slight retcon that explains why Alec Holland’s remains gave birth to the original Swamp Thing and why he’s still haunted by the Green, now that he’s alive again – all work great. But the one thing that made this new series got traction so easily with me, is the depiction of nature as green in thorn and strangling silence.

X-Men: Schism (2011)

That was the mini series preceding Avengers vs X-Men (in terms of big plot developments), where Cyclops and Wolverine went their separate ways afterwards. This one was interesting, because I liked the plot development with all its consequences, though I think the delivery was kinda flaky. The evil four mini-geniuses that killed their parents, took over and then killed a branch of the Hellfire club and maneuvered the mutant community to present their new brand Sentinel to prospective buyers was way overdone and completely out of touch with the serious tone of the rest of the series.

Really, characters who are evil for evil’s sake and also sociopathic child geniuses, can you get more tired tropes in one extremely annoying package. This was just lazy writing.

But worse, beyond the ridiculous villains, Schism had exactly the same problem that Avengers vs. X-Men had. The writers tried to paint Cyclops as the wrong one and Wolverine as the one with the right vision, but that’s just not flying with me. By all accounts (objectively, canon-wise) mutant kids and teenagers were never safe in any of Charles Xavier’s schools (killed right and left with very few reaching adulthood alive, if not exactly undamaged).

Utopia and Cyclops at least were giving them a fighting chance at survival, while Wolverine’s sad attempt to recreate the better days at Xavier’s school will eventually only result in more dead kids.

It’s funny how the writers clear intention to make Wolverine look good makes him look like an ass (and not the lovable ass he was under Claremont) whereupon Cyclops cold and brush demeanor doesn’t take away an ounce from the reasonableness of his position.

Avengers Vs. X-Men (2012)

I haven’t read much X-Men stuff since probably back when Grant Morrison was still writing. But recently I had the urge to see what was happening in that part of the Marvel universe, and reading the trades in the order I got them, I started with the most recent big event: Avengers vs. X-Men. Now, big events that pit one side of the heroes against the other is par for the course for Marvel and not exactly fresh, but I thought this had actually an adequate reason for the Avengers going after the X-Men (those led by Cyclops).

Plot summary interjection: the phoenix force is coming back to possess some mutant messiah kid, which one side believes will spell the end of the world (Avengers and Wolverine) and another the salvation of his people (Cyclops).

It’s not mind bending stuff, but as far as superhero comics go, still pretty good. Reasonable motivations, the occasional out-of-character moment (Wolverine as a law-and-order freak seems a bit odd), excellent art that makes the action look epic, a few unexpected twists, Cyclops and his allies going Squadron Supreme on the Marvel 616 Earth and the phoenix force as the deus ex machina to rectify the mistake they did with House of M (yeah).

Strangely, whereupon they tried to paint both sides in Civil War as pretty reasonable, but somehow just managed to make Iron Man’s side look worse each moment, I felt Cyclops’s position actually much more reasonable, even when the writers actively tried to paint him as the bad guy.

Funnily enough, Cyclops was actually correct with his assumptions and if the Avengers had done nothing, nobody would have died. Also, when he killed Xavier, I wasn’t exactly shocked, more like: This guy’s still around? I thought he was already dead the third or fought time. Ah, the pain of the trade reader, never up-to date on the latest deaths and rebirths in superhero comics.

Hickman’s Fantastic Four (2009-2013)

I’ve recently finished Jonathan Hickman’s run on the Fantastic Four, which I started reading when the original TPB of the Dark Reign: Fantastic Four mini came out and for which I held off reading the rest because that mini and the following two MPE hardcover where just so damn good. And while it’s been a veritable ride reading his entire run from start to finish with no breaks, there’s a tiny voice in the back of my mind niggling me that something just doesn’t fit.

Compared to other superhero comics, Hickman’s run is pretty damn good. Great, compelling characters who manage to come off as human, despite their superhumaness. All characters, from heroes to villains to secondary ones come off as well written and nuanced. Among the old, but slightly refurbished ideas are a few new ones that fit well with the old and expand the canon. The pacing is also well done, taking up speed from a brilliant setup until it leads into a big, satisfying conclusion.

So what’s wrong then? Hickman started the whole thing by posing one question: if you have the brains and then the means to solve all of the worlds problems, what would you do? Reed Richards, super-genius leader of the Fantastic Four discovers a group of alternative versions of himself that have pooled all their minds to solve all of humanity’s problems, not just on one world, but on all versions of Earth throughout the multiverse. But to the Reed from the 616 universe, something seems wrong.

Instead of diving headlong at the problem, Hickman first sidesteps the problem (if you lose your family and friends, it’s not worth it) and later completely buries it under generic (though fun and well written) superhero adventures. As expected, the alternative Reeds become a problem later, but merely because they play the old game of the greater good requires sacrifices (Earth 616 precisely). What it doesn’t explore is why their approach is problematic in the first place.

If you solve all of the world’s problems (hunger, energy, environment, etc.) without involving the people living on it (just handing it down like a good monarch or worse a far-away good god), you’re creating a host of other problems that in the long run will undercut everything you’ve worked for. Problem like these are never just technical, nor are they entirely self-contained and discrete entities. The council of Reeds would have failed, either by being forced to subjugate humanity completely or by abandoning their approach.

Though, Hickman’s a smart guy. The creation of the Future Foundation, Reed’s speech at the Singularity conference, all these imply a modest attempt by the 616 Reed to do what the council of Reeds did, but with a different approach. And maybe Hickman had a great concept for all of this laid out, indicated by renaming the Fantastic Four the Future Foundation. But how much Marvel’s editorial went with his concept or whether he himself abandoned it, there’s no denying that all those high-flying, exiting ideas got buried under the same old superhero stuff.

It’s a good superhero comic, sure, but nothing more than that. And that’s what’s bothering me.

Moore had Swamp Thing, Morrison had the Invisibles, Ennis Preacher, Ellis Transmetropolitan, Gaiman Sandman and for a newer name, Carey had Lucifer. All great, career-defining longish comic runs, that irrespective of whether they were part of a shared universe or not, will be read, referenced and talked about in the wider comic world, not just the superhero subset. I think Hickman has the potential to do similar great work, but so far he hasn’t. And I hope the whole superhero stuff isn’t dulling his edge before it’s too late.

Foiled (2010)

While Foiled doesn’t exactly cover any new ground, most people have read at least one version of the “a mundane kid discovers a magic world alongside our own, has magic adventures and becomes a big hero” and the whole outsider thing of the main character is done to death and then some, it’s still a compelling read. Which is mostly because the main heroine, who is quite prickly and at times (emphasized through the art by Mike Cavallaro) even exhibits a sort of psychotic quality in her demeanor, is anything but bland. Sure, she fits the generic outsider-template perfectly, but her background, driven (nearly obsessive) prodigy fencer (not exactly a typical sport for kids anywhere) makes it believable.

Not that Foiled is perfect. It’s more like a prologue, a setup for the real story, with the ending revealing the magic world, the true nature of the romantic interest (though Aliera’s ambivalent reactions to her own romantic interest are far more entertaining than any real romance would be) and the magic gimmick that set all that in motion. It’s a good introduction, but nothing more.

Also, though I do think it works in Foiled due to Aliera’s introspective nature, there’s far more telling going on than you get from similar comics. To me it looks like Yolen brought her fiction-writing-derived sensibilities to bear, and while it’s not wrong in any sense, it does seem unusual.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.: Secrets of the Dead (2012-2013)

The second and final TPB of the canceled Frankenstein series of the new DC universe starts with the final issue of Jeff Lemire, that sees Frankenstein and his former bride deal with their monstrous son, and the fallout of that action. The last 8 issues of the series were written by Matt Kindt, whose approach to Frankenstein is less Frankenstein-centric and more group-centric with the various monsters dealing with even more outrageous things and Frankenstein just the biggest badass of the group instead of being the main viewpoint character.

The overall template hasn’t changed much, but Kindt’s Frankenstein doesn’t feel as authentic and real as Lemire’s did. Also, you can kind of see that the series was winding down, since the story got more and more fractured, trying to tell a big, complex and sprawling epic in as few issues as possibles. The pacing got more and more compressed until it felt more like reading a couple of vignettes with barely sensible transitions between individual scenes. Still, I was sad to see the series go, as it scratched the same itch as Dark Horse’s BRPD-series does, and there aren’t enough of that kind around.

Captain Britain Omnibus (1981-1987)

I remember reading a Captain Britain TPB from 2002 that collected the stories penned by Alan Moore. As much as I remember of them, they were quite good. Like most of Moore’s early work, a bit rough around the edges, but on the other hand more down to earth and enthusiastic superhero writing than any of his later stuff. At that time he still wrote stories about characters, instead of meta-commentary on the genre.

The Captain Britain Omnibus collects both Moore’s run, as well as the issue leading into them by Dave Thorpe and the later stuff by Delano. The Thorpe issues were mediocre, the Alan Moore ones ranged from good to brilliant and the Delano stuff nearly as good as the Alan Moore issues. Where Moore really got his claws into the characters and tried to push them to extremes, Delano delivered a more rounded, more steady experience.

Thorpe’s one major contribution was bringing the Captain back to Earth (though it was only a dystopic parallel after all), while Alan Davis redesigned the costume. Not sure who created the reality altering mutant Jasper, who was also responsible for killing all the superheroes on his Earth (while his Marvel 616 counterpart later planned to do the same on his Earth). But Moore managed to make what could have been a generic evil villain story into a tragic of epic proportions that managed to make it personal via Captain UK’s trauma (a female version of Captain Britain who saw the destruction that Jasper brought to her world) and tense through the introduction of the Fury.

Moore’s run oscillated between brilliant and WTF, Delano’s later on was more on the good side of things, with less of Moore’s mindfuckery and grandiosity. Instead of shaking up the status quo with universe destroying enemies or nearly unkillable murder-machines (the unforgettable Fury), Delano tried to get Britain back into the groove of old-school hero stuff. Not very ambitious, but mostly well written. Also, since the series was winding down at that point, Delano wrote a few issues that cleared most of the unfinished plot threads in a satisfying manner, not something given to many series.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.: War of the Monsters (2011-2012)

If one would try to attribute at least one good thing to the whole DC rebooting their universe yet again debacle, it could be the rise of Jeff Lemire into the public comic reader consciousness. The comic industry machine needs young writers who haven’t yet tired of the endlessly generic and manage to take a concept that is both silly and gone through more iterations than anyone wants to count and wring something interesting and original out of it.

Not that the DC Frankenstein as re imagined by Grant Morrison in his Seven Soldiers of Victory mini-crossover was all that boring, but only few could take Morrison brilliant concept and built on that without losing either the manic energy nor the readers willing suspension of disbelief in such a strange creation, even compared to the rest of the nDCU. To get an idea what Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE reads like, think Mignola’s Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense with more humor and insanity.

The plot in the first volume isn’t all that complex: a small town gets invaded by an army of monsters, Frankenstein and his teams of good monsters have to take them out. Then Lemire tops it with showing where the monsters came from and what Frankenstein and team have to do to stop them. This is a comic that doesn’t take itself or its characters too serious, merely enjoys throwing ridiculous stuff at the reader to see with how much it can get away. Yet Lemire (thankfully) keeps a serious tone to never break the illusion and manages to do it all with style and panache.

There are few comics published these days that tell an alien invasion in five issues while introducing a completely new cast and various other plot-elements (like the secret headquarter of S.H.A.D.E. its various secrets) and who are better written than they should have any right to be considering the source material. Sadly, it doesn’t look like the rest of Lemire’s run gets published as a TPB, but at least this first one was a hell of ride.