As some of you may have heard, new comics will be available for sale this week in comic book shops all across this great continent of ours.
While your hearts are filled with the soaring wonder of it all, let's take a look at some of the comics in question...
(By the way, I encourage more of you to tell us about comics you read mentioned in the Quick Review, particularly if it's a title I say that I know nothing about -- which, as you know, is most of them. And be sure to point out worthy releases that I fail to mention here as well.)
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Dark Horse Comics is bringing a little funk and a dash of noise this week:
When the police come to arrest DC Comics they'll be listening to dance...music...
Image Comics brings us its new releases on this tidal wave of young blood:
Marvel Comics says they don't like you; you can't stand them; they can't love you anymore than this:
More non-Marvel/DC Fun:
We're going to double-dip on this week's Random Comic Spotlight (while trying to be briefer than last week) with a pair of collections from Archaia Studios Press (I guess that's pronounced "ar-KAY-uh?"):
Artesia Vol. 3 ("Artesia Afire") and Mouse Guard Vol. 1 ("Fall 1152").
As you've grown to expect of the Quick Review, I know nothing about either of these properties. So it turns out that Artesia is a fantasy comic book written and drawn by Mark Smylie. The protagonist is a woman who, you'll be shocked to learn, likes to show off a little leg and a little cleavage (although, I'll grant you, not as much as Red Sonja or Lady Death).
Sayeth Wikipedia:
Smylie has described her as a "Pagan Joan of Arc", to use a popular reference, while noting that the closest historical model is the Irish Queen Medb. The series is noted for its depiction of feudal politics, intrigue, and power struggles, its complex mythology and world history, and its strong female characters.
The art looks pretty good too. Also, the online samples and, to an extent, the blurb above remind me of the superb Deed of Paksenarrion. I am skeptical it's as good but it seems like it's worth checking out.
Meanwhile, Mouse Guard appears to be a Redwall riff that has received some favorable press. Apparently it's a bi-monthly comic that Wikipedia says "...is noted to stand-out on the shelves due to its odd size a square (8" x 8")..." Well it's good to be known for something.
The mice struggle to live safely and prosper among all of the world's harsh conditions and predators. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed. After persevering against a weasel warlord in the winter war of 1149, the territories are no longer as troubled. They are not simply soldiers that fight off intruders; rather, they are guides for the common mice looking to journey without confrontation from one hidden mouse village to another. The Guard patrols borders, finds safeways and paths through dangerous territories and treacherous terrain, watches weather patterns, and keeps the mouse territories free of predators. They do so with fearless dedication so that they might not just exist, but truly live.
Every mouse dies. Not every mouse truly lives.
Like Artesia, Mouse Guard appears to have quality art, so if you dig Redwall I imagine this might appeal to you as well.
And that's all for this week. Now make with the comments or I'll start reviewing sexist comics-related statuary, and you know you don't want that.
Posted by Chris M. at May 16, 2007 12:17 PM
Justice League of America #9. Are we getting closer to the return of the Good ol' Legion? That's all I wanna know.
Legion of Super Heroes In The 31st Century #2. Based on the cartoon version of the Legion. I'm actually not all that fond of the cartoon, to be honest.
Those are the two comics I got this week.
JLA: Not much action. Surprise! But there were a couple of interesting revelations. As for your question about whether the 'good ol' Legion' is coming back, the answer seems to be, depending on just how rigorous about definitions you are, either 'maybe' or 'no'. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. I liked the DnA Legion, and, despite a couple of flaws, I like the WaK Legion. I don't know if I like the WaK Legion better than the Levitz-and-Giffen Legion, but I bet I like it better than I like some current writer's take on a pseudo-Levitz-and-Giffen Legion.
LSH31C: If you don't like the cartoon you won't like this either, but it's a big improvement over the panel salad that constituted the first issue.
"I like the WaK Legion. I don't know if I like the WaK Legion better than the Levitz-and-Giffen Legion, but I bet I like it better than I like some current writer's take on a pseudo-Levitz-and-Giffen Legion."
You have hit the nail squarely on the head -- that is the dilemma.
"LSH31C: If you don't like the cartoon you won't like this either, but it's a big improvement over the panel salad that constituted the first issue."
I may pick it up to read with my daughter then to see how she likes it. The panel salad (great term) in the first issue alternately confused and bored her.
Hero Squared is a Giffen/DeMatteis book. It's a big load of whiny, plus some of the shtick which they believe is funny all the time and which is only actually funny some of the time. The archvillain would be interesting if she weren't give the weight of the worst funny stuff.
See here for my take on BRPD.
On Spider-girl: Her first series was called simply "Spider-Girl." It ran for 100 issues; the first 50-or-so have been reprinted in a series of digest-sized TPBs. "Spider-Girl was cancelled last year and replaced with "Amazing Spider-Girl." The upcoming trade is a comics-sized collection of the first 6-or-so issues of that series.
Airwave got apparently killed during Infinite Crisis (apparently in that he was seemingly pulled apart by all the electromagnetic spectrum data he was processing, so it's one of those "no body and any writer could bring him back in 5 seconds if desired" deaths).
I've got my reviews up on dvandom.livejournal.com, but I'll just say that this was a fun and darkly goofy issue of Conan. And that I didn't like the Legion cartoon comic this month.
"WAK" is an oddly appropriate term for the current storyline in JLofA.
Spider-Girl: Do you like Tom DeFalco's run on Spider-Man? Do you REALLY like it? Do you remember concepts like Alison Mongrain, Ben Reilly, the rotten childhoods of Otto Octavius, Max Dillon, and Flint Marko, which were ALL THE SAME? Do you consider DeFalco to be a Spider-Writer on the level of Stan the Man or J,M. DeMatteis?
If so, What the FUCK is wrong with you? ANd Spider-Girl is the comic for you. God knows it's not for the intended audience.
Storm Shadow was pretty boss. Fall of Cthulhu was kickass.
Spider-Girl may be the superhero comic I enjoy most these days. It's way up on the list, anyway. It strikes me as having pretty much all the merits of superheroics the way I used to like them done without a burden of nostalgia
Tom DeFalco had two runs on Spider-Man. His mid-80s run was pretty decent -- he took over when Stern left, and gave us things like the black costume saga, Spidey vs. Firelord, and the Rose. He also picked up where Stern left off on the Hobgoblin (although he wasn't responsible for Ned Leeds being the Hobgoblin).
I haven't read the stuff he did when he came back in the mid-90s, but Spider-Girl definitely has a mid-80s Spider-Man vibe to me. It's a good, but not (pardon the pun) amazing book.
Black Gas is a zombie comic (and it's actually Black Gas 2, a sequel miniseries to a three-issue miniseries that ran last year). It's not bad, if you like Ellis.
Left on Mission was a pretty decent spy thing, and the first issue is only 99 cents.
I love Mouse Guard; it's a really fun series, and the mice are pretty badass.
I'm surprised you didn't mention that the final issue of Ultimates 2 was coming out. Several people have commented about hell freezing over or some other improbable event due to its appearance this week along with ASBAR #5.
Marvel Adventures Avengers is actually pretty enjoyable, with fun writing that makes use of Marvel's history, especially wacky characters like MODOK and Ego the living planet.
I find myself periodically surprised by how little I want to see a revival of vintage Legion at this point. I suppose that it's because of the stuff Borges identifies in "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"; context changes things. Digging up corpses from ten to twenty-five years ago and presenting it as a blow for good superheroics seems like an implicit admission that none of the creators could come up with any good new ideas and are stuck playing Frankenstein.
Digging up corpses from ten to twenty-five years ago and presenting it as a blow for good superheroics seems like an implicit admission that none of the creators could come up with any good new ideas and are stuck playing Frankenstein.
Exactly. And it's not even a true admission--since the Levitz Legion, there have been (counts quickly) six takes on the Legion that have been good and worthwhile (5YL, SW6, reboot-including-DnA, WaK threeboot, animated series, Superboy's Legion). Nothing against the Levitz-and-Giffen Legion, at all, but it's not the last word on the subject.
There have been 2.75 takes on the LSH which have been good and worthwhile. There have been 3.25 takes on the Legion which have been huge, great steaming piles of crap, including some stuff that ranged from the merely self-serving to actual, deliberate attempts to insult the paying audience (Guess Who's back? Wrong!) We've had to deal with comics that were so bad they couldn't publish a letter page (yeah, I know they said the guy who did the letter page was sick. Uh huh.) We've had to deal with art so bad that I was astonished it was actually published in a DC comic book.
"...seems like an implicit admission that none of the creators could come up with any good new ideas..."
I would pretty much agree with that. Levitz may not be the last word on the subject, but he's been the last really good word on the subject.
Now I understand that some of you guys have liked, to varying degrees, stuff that's been done since. Cool. I look at Matthew E's list and I, personally, don't see much there that I would say is truly good, but that's a matter of preference. While my own yearning to have some version of the pre-effed-up Legion returned is certainly shot through with nostalgia, that's not all there is to it.
Consider this: Let's say you feel the Claremont-Cockrum/Byrne/Cockrum X-Men to be the Golden Age of New X-Men stories. Even with all that's happened since then, and the (probably) thousands of issues they've appeared in (given their multiple titles), a writer like Morrison or Whedon can come along and, with very little effort, put a team of X-Men together that is on the same keel as the halcyon days of yore -- and they can do it because the X-Men characters are still those characters, and they've never been fucked up as much or as badly as the Legion has.
I think that a decent writer and artist could take the Legion that we're catching glimpses of now in JLA and JSA and move forward with them and tell good superhero stories, stories that would be better and more interesting than what WaK have done. Of course, I do not seriously expect this to happen, but I can dream.
I decided some while back that it wasn't possible to tell, say, two sequential years' worth of good stories about the Legion if they're connected in any way at all to current DC continuity. Because DC can't go two years without doing something that someone decides requires changes on the Legion's part, and so the creators' plans go out the window in favor of the current mandate, and they never really settle down again.
Also, to be honest, the sheer verbal vehemence of LSH fans ground me down. I got tired years ago of being told that a version I liked was actually a steaming pile of shit, while trying to be polite about anyone else's preference for stuff that never seemed all that inspiring to me. I decided that if I was going to risk being called a whoremongering purveyor of degrading filth, as happened the last time I spoke up for one of my favorite Legion storylines, I'd like it to be over something more important than the details of an LSH story. And I know that some other long-time Legion fans feel the same way; there's far too much heat flying around to make any version at all feel like it could be comfortable reading if we ever want to discuss it at all in a mixed audience.
Bruce, you're a whoremongering purveyor of degrading filth.
There. That's over with, so now you can speak freely.
Words cannot express the magnitude of my appreciation, Mike.
Bruce, the sheer verbal vehemence of me ground me down. I suspect we're on opposite side of ... certain LSH runs ... and the passion I developed surprised the hell out of me, and even now gives me a foul taste in my mouth.
Though I'm not certain that I wouldn't prefer to be called a WPoDF about something as trivial as the LSH, compared to the alternative.
In any case, I tend to agree with you that the LSH works better when its contacts with the rest of the DCU are intermittent intersections rather than systemic. Compare to Matt Rossi's belief that Superboy is intrinsic to the LSH.
I think we're kind of stuck: The LSH has been so many different things that any given run can only be a subset, and thereby alienate some fraction of the readership.
I think we're kind of stuck: The LSH has been so many different things that any given run can only be a subset, and thereby alienate some fraction of the readership.
That's why I posted this. It's the best solution I can come up with.
Combining two streams:
You know the way that certain Legion fans feel about their own particular Worst Legion Era ever? That's a good approximation of how I feel about Tom Defalco's mid-1980s runs on Amazing Spider-Man and Thor. It amazed me at the time that anyone liked them, and in ways amazes me more that anyone likes them now.
On a different topic, if there was anyone who was the target audience of Mouse Guard, it was me. Regrettably, I found it a complete yawn--nicely drawn, but stultifyingly familiar fantasy adventure, and nothing at all was brought to the story by the characters being mice.
Kevin, that's a bummer re: Mouse Guard. How do you think it would play to a six-year-old girl? (I'm pondering if I should pick it up for my daughter.)
