Tagged: Oxford Comics

The Weekly Haul: Reviews for March 27, 2008

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  • March 27, 2008

This week has all the makings, as an underdog wins book of the week honors, Marvel tries its darndest to rev up Skrullfest ’08 and Atlanta traffic finally almost kills me. Without further ado, the reviews…

Book of the Week: Blue Beetle #25 — When this first series first started up, I loved the concept but found it too hit-or-miss to pick up on a regular basis. After reading this latest issue, I can firmly say that not only has writer John Rogers found his stride, he’s turned this book into one of DC’s best.

In the conclusion to an epic whole-world-at-stake storyline, Jaime finally comes into his own as a hero, using a whole lot of trickeration and stick-to-it-ive-ness to defeat the bad aliens. Rogers uses those evil aliens (who are in a way the scarab’s source) to effectively entrench Jaime as the definitive Blue Beetle – no small feat.

It’s a perfectly executed balancing act between superhero fun and tense action, with plenty of credit owed to Rafael Albuquerque’s art. The two hilarious intrusions by Guy Gardner and Booster Gold put this book over the top.

Runners Up:

New Avengers #39 — Of the three books that crammed the upcoming Secret Invasion down my throat, only this one had any effect. Brian Michael Bendis combines the expected handful of brilliant personal exchanges with an intense fight between a mysteriously super-powered Skrull and Echo and Wolverine. Ultimately, it’s a tense and foreboding book, although I’m still on the fence about the big event.

All-Star Superman #10 — This book is so consistently entertaining and touching that it’s like clockwork. Now, if only it was like clockwork regarding the release schedule… That aside, the story of Superman’s impending demise continues and (maybe?) concludes in this issue, which essentially serves as an elegy to his glorious life. Beyond the affecting contemplations on mortality, what Grant Morrison does especially well here is capture the sense of round-the-clock heroism of Superman’s life.

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Review: ‘The Ten-Cent Plague’ by David Hajdu

Review: ‘The Ten-Cent Plague’ by David Hajdu

The journalist David Hajdu’s new book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America, has been billed as a retelling of the little-known inquisition against comics that nearly killed the industry in the 1950s.

It does tell that story (and quite well), but perhaps more importantly it serves as one of the best histories yet of the Golden Age of comics. Picking up literally with the creation of the comic book, The Ten-Cent Plague chronicles the medium’s rise as cartoon characters gave way to superheroes, adventurers, pirates, criminals and jungle queens.

With an unerring eye for the telling detail, Hajdu brings to life the mad men of the early comics scene, a rag tag group of artsy teens and swindler publishers who make today’s comics personalities seem tame by comparison. Big names like Will Eisner and Bob Kane earn mention, along with a great number of lesser-knowns.

Harry "A" Chesler, Jr., the comic-book packager, applied the "Jr." to his name or dispensed with it as he saw fit, and put quotation marks around the initial because he thought they were stylistically correct, and he had a point. When he was asked what the "A" stood for, he said, "Anything."

If anything, Hajdu goes a bit overboard in describing so many people in great detail. While these anecdotes are interesting and reveal an impressive layer of research, they also meander and distract from the central narrative. That being the progression of comics pushing ever harder against any perceived boundaries, just as the youths who devoured the books tested the confines of their mid-century upbringing.

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The Weekly Haul: Reviews for March 6, 2008

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  • March 6, 2008

Welcome to the inaugural Weekly Haul, a collection of reviews of this week’s comic book issues brought to you by none other than ComicMix. It was a big week for floppies, with four new series worth giving a read and several old standbys seeing new developments. Without further ado, let’s get to the reviews.

Book of the Week: The All-New Atom #21 — Anyone wondering whether this title would keep being a must-read after Gail Simone stepped aside as writer and Rick Remender took the reins can go ahead and relax. The All-New Atom is better than ever in this issue, which takes the classic archetypal conflict of man vs. himself and gives it one heck of a twist.

While trying to figure out if Ray Palmer’s experiments were responsible for Ivy Town’s craziness, the new Atom, Ryan, shrinks down to explore a sample of his own blood (sounds weird, but it makes sense). Remender makes that effort alone a pulse-pounder, but then Ryan finds some terrible infestation in his blood and all hell breaks loose.

While still a bit text heavy, the series remains just as zany as under Simone’s watch and is a bit more focused. Good stuff all the way around.

Runners Up:

Logan #1 — Brian K. Vaughan and Eduardo Risso taking on the most famous mutant is pretty well guaranteed to be a quality read. And while this issue is far from mind-blowing, it’s a far superior story of Wolverine getting his memory back than anything we’ve seen in Wolverine: Origins. The downside is Marvel once again arbitrarily slapping a $3.99 price tag on a book for no good reason.

Northlanders #4 — This is the classic "from bad to worse" part of the story, but Brian Wood pulls it off well. The best quality of this vikings series is how Wood gives depth to his characters and doesn’t let any of them fall too far into stereotypical roles of heroes and villains. Life is complicated, especially for blood-hungry Scandinavians.

Omega the Unknown #6 — For the most touching tribute yet to the recently deceased Steve Gerber, this issue merits a purchase. It’s also another darn fine bit of comics by Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple. After all the action of the past few issues, this one serves as a bit of set up to the coming battle with the robots before culminating with a well done metatextual flourish.

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Review: Teen Titans Year One

The other day I was talking to James Kochalka, creator of Superf*ckers and the upcoming Johnny Boo children’s books, and he mentioned how difficult it is to find superhero books for his kids. Such offerings are mostly limited to comic book adaptations of cartoon series that were adapted from comics, he said, and “they’ve been pretty bad.”

For DC, the lifeline to younger readers has long been the Teen Titans, most recently through the TV spinoff Teen Titans Go! and Tiny Titans, which is almost too innocent for its own good. Now we also have Teen Titans Year One (issue #3 is out tomorrow), the “origin” story from writer Amy Wolfram.

The book succeeds on a number of levels, primarily in how it manages to be appropriate for kids without dumbing down. There are serious threats and the group faces violence and danger and interpersonal hangups. The art also perfectly fits the tone.

While I’ve enjoyed the series thus far, I doubt it’ll serve as a jumping-on point for any kid looking to get into comics. Another thing Kochalka complained about was how the youth-oriented Marvel and DC comics rely on readers coming into the book to have a firm understanding of the mythos, and that’s certainly the case with [[[Teen Titans Year One]]]. New comics readers will be fairly lost, if not out and out discouraged by the lack of exposition.

The Year One tag also only hampers the series, forcing it into a ridiculously incongruous existence amid decades-old comics. For instance, these Titans use cell phones and instant messaging, devices that weren’t around when the Teen Titans debuted. That’s nit-picking, to be sure, but when an editor’s note tells me this storyline happened right after [[[The Brave and the Bold]]] #54, I can’t help but be yanked out of the plot.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Review: RASL #1

There’s something of a learning curve that comes with reading RASL, the new comic book series by Jeff Smith. After so many years of all-ages books like Bone and Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil, it’s a bit jarring to see Smith’s cartooning style appear in a book that’s so different from everything he’s done before.

The first issue begins with the protagonist (RASL is his "hacker tag," Smith told me in an interview) wandering through the desert, beaten and bloodied. While the immaculate linework may be reminiscent of Fone Bone, nothing else is. RASL is a dimension-hopping art thief (not to mention a fan of booze and cigars), and the issue quickly introduces him before laying out a string of hooks to catch readers’ interest.

There’s a great sequence where RASL thinks he’s returned to his home dimension only to look at a jukebox and see the album Blonde on Blonde credited to "Robert Zimmerman." "Dylan isn’t Dylan. Damn. I’m in the wrong place," RASL narrates as a shady figure lurks.

Smith also uses a much more complex narrative structure than in past books, revealing his antihero and a twisty back story through multiple time periods and dimensions. Such a structure can be unsettling for readers, but Smith handles it well. There’s a smooth cadence to his writing that bolsters the maturity of the material.

It’s still far too early to grade this series, but at the very least, it’s fun to see Smith continuing to develop as a creator and challenge himself even after he’s had a full and successful career.

 

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) gmail (dot) com.

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