Showing posts with label super-powers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label super-powers. Show all posts

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Young Avengers Mic-Drop at the Edge of Time and Space by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie


Rating: WARTY!

Having been thrilled with Marvel's "Ms Marvel" - the teen version, not the absurdly disjointed, brutal "Civil War" version - and having really enjoyed Marvel's Runaways, I made the mistake of thinking this success could continue. I brought home the first three volumes of the Young Avengers. Was that ever a mistake! The series is boring, ridiculous, bland, and nonsensical. Fortunately, I brought them home from the library and not from the bookstore, so I didn't waste any of my money on these. See my review of volume one in this series for some background.

This series features the bizarre "Hulkling" (Theodore Altman), the childish "Kid Loki" (Loki Laufeyson), the ridiculously named "Marvel Boy" (Noh-Varr), the absurdly named "Miss America" (America Chavez), the completely pointless "Patriot" (Elijah Bradley), the only one with a decent name, "Prodigy" (David Alleyne), the unfortunately named "Speed" (Thomas Shepherd), and the inappropriately named "Wiccan" (William Kaplan) who has nothing to do with the religion of Wicca.

Volume three was pretty much a clone of volumes one and two, which featured pointless and unentertaining traipsing through other dimensions by these supposed heroes, fighting, and eating breakfast. There was no story. This was garbage. Period. The baton was dropped. Nothing else.


Young Avengers Alternative Culture by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie


Rating: WARTY!

Having been thrilled with Marvel's "Ms Marvel" - the teen version, not the absurdly disjointed, brutal "Civil War" version - and having really enjoyed Marvel's Runaways, I made the mistake of thinking this success could continue. I brought home the first three volumes of the Young Avengers. Was that ever a mistake! The series is boring, ridiculous, bland, and nonsensical. Fortunately, I brought them home from the library and not from the bookstore, so I didn't waste any of my money on these. See my review of volume one in this series for some background.

This series features the bizarre "Hulkling" (Theodore Altman), the childish "Kid Loki" (Loki Laufeyson), the ridiculously named "Marvel Boy" (Noh-Varr), the absurdly named "Miss America" (America Chavez), the completely pointless "Patriot" (Elijah Bradley), the only one with a decent name, "Prodigy" (David Alleyne), the unfortunately named "Speed" (Thomas Shepherd), and the inappropriately named "Wiccan" (William Kaplan) who has nothing to do with the religion of Wicca.

Volume two was pretty much a clone of volume one, which featured pointless and unentertaining traipsing through other dimensions by these supposed heroes, fighting, and eating breakfast. There was no story. This was garbage. Period. No culture in evidence!


Young Avengers Style (something) Substance by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie


Rating: WARTY!

Having been thrilled with Marvel's "Ms Marvel" - the teen version, not the absurdly disjointed, brutal "Civil War" version - and having really enjoyed Marvel's Runaways, I made the mistake of thinking this success could continue. I brought home the first three volumes of the Young Avengers. Was that ever a mistake! The series is boring, ridiculous, bland, and nonsensical. Fortunately, I brought them home from the library and not from the bookstore, so I didn't waste any of my money on these.

Why graphic novel series creators are so dead-set on confusing their readers, especially ones who come late to a series, and are so insistent upon dedicatedly keeping potential readers and fans in the dark about which volume is which is an enduring mystery. Is it really so hard for the publisher or the cover artist to take the perfectly logical, helpful, and simple step of putting a number one on the front cover of volume one? Or would they much rather waste people's time and money? Is it so hard to put a short text reading "Collects Issues 1 through 5"? I guess it is, because the designers here found it far less demanding to put "Style > Substance" on this cover. What does that even mean? Style is greater than substance? It doesn't mean Style over Substance, because that's not the symbol they used! Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. The title doesn't even apply to the story within, which is more like Silage > Frustration.

The goodreads page for this makes it crystal clear how confused the publishers are. The title there is listed as Young Avengers, Vol. 1: Style > Substance (Young Avengers Vol. II #1). Seriously? Someone is very confused and I think it's the graphic novel creators/publishers! Say what you mean, mean what you say. It's that simple.

So, for the uninitiated, Young Avengers was created by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung to appeal to a younger audience than comic books evidently do, and features teen characters who are essentially unimaginative rip-offs of more mature and established Marvel characters from The Avengers. Some of these teens are offspring of unholy unions between mature "super heroes" although since none of the "super heroes" ever have sex (or swear! LOL!), it's quite a mystery as to how these offspring were actually conceived. It's not even possible genetically.

Our closest relative on Earth is the chimpanzee with which we share nearly all our genes, yet it's not possible to conceive offspring between humans and chimpanzees even if you could find some low-life chimp who would be willing to volunteer to have sex with an ugly and disgustingly bald human! It's sure as hell not possible to conceive with someone from a different planet. Not after millions of years of divergent and unrelated evolution. Maybe super-heroes have super-eggs or super-sperm?

Evidently the original launch of the Young Avengers was so unsuccessful that it had to be relaunched in January of 2013 by Kieron Gillen who wrote the tedious text, and Jamie McKelvie who did the average art. There's nothing of interest here. Nothing thought-provoking. Nothing engaging. The stories are disjointed and bland, even where they make any kind of sense. There is often little connection between one panel and the next let alone between one part of the story and the next. None of it made any sense or provided any entertainment.

This series features the bizarre "Hulkling" (Theodore Altman), the childish "Kid Loki" (Loki Laufeyson), the ridiculously named "Marvel Boy" (Noh-Varr), the absurdly named "Miss America" (America Chavez), the completely pointless "Patriot" (Elijah Bradley), the only one with a decent name, "Prodigy" (David Alleyne), the unfortunately named "Speed" (Thomas Shepherd), and the inappropriately named "Wiccan" (William Kaplan) who has nothing to do with the religion of Wicca.

The first volume puts the team together despite the team supposedly having been put together earlier during the Heinberg and Cheung era. We get to know nothing about the characters except what we're begrudgingly told, which is very little, so not one of them seemed like a real person to me. They have no personality. In the end, these "heroes' were only their powers, and their power seemed entirely restricted to fighting and mischief - oh, and and eating breakfast. Boring.

The only other thing which featured was that there were a couple of gay or bisexual guys, and those felt like they'd been put in there for no other reason than to ride the LGBTQIA bandwagon. They had nothing else to offer. None of these characters did. Loki was pathetic. Miss America had one trait and one trait only: violence. Not one of them had a life outside of their little clique. it was like a pathetic high-school melodrama.

So what was the story? There was no story. The entire volume was the same as the next two volumes in the series, which consist of pointless traipsing through other dimensions, fighting, and eating breakfast. There was no story. This was garbage.


Ms Marvel Last Days by G Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona


Rating: WORTHY!

This volume exemplifies one of the things I complain about with graphic novels. It's a good story, but I got it home from the library only to discover that I'd already read it as part of a different volume. Frustrating? Yes! This is why I refuse to buy these things because you never know when you're going to wind up with one you already read as part of a compendium, or under a different cover. What's with this insane obsession with variant covers? Spend more time on improving the art in the panels, and the hell with the wastefully time-consuming extra covers! The story is also incomplete - in this volume and in the compendium. There is no conclusion. Instead of it diverging into a short story about Spider-Man, I'd rather have had the original story concluded.

The story begins with a planet appearing in the sky above Earth. This has been done in Doctor Who and other stories, and none of it makes sense. A planet that close to Earth, even in another dimension, if it's appearing through some sort of dimensional rupture, will exert a massive gravitational pull on Earth, just as earth will on it, and life on both planets would be destroyed. That this never happens in these stories is testimony only to the poor science education the writers have. It makes the story completely unrealistic.

That gripe aside, I really liked the rest of the story because it pretty much abandoned the lie-destroying planet motif and got down to more personal business, and Ms Marvel entertained, as she typically does in these issues. I've read only one volume in this series which has disappointed me, and although some of Ms Marvel's behavior, particularly towards her would-be boyfriend, is inexcusible, G Willow Wilson tells a good story and Adrian Alphonsa illustrates it perfectly.


Ms Marvel Vol 2 by G Willow Wilson


Rating: WORTHY!

Here is yet another volume in a series where I've been disappointed by only one volume so far. I'm not a fan of series, so that's quite a compliment from me! I thought I'd read the first three, but this volume pops up in between two of the other volumes I read and favorably reviewed. Is it so very hard for the creators of a graphic novel series to actually put a number on the front cover so readers can readily identify in what order they should pursue the series? Seriously? What is the big freaking deal with being so cryptic that it's impossible to know where to start a series without engaging in some real research? Graphic novel series creators are frustrating as hell! It's doubly frustrating to bring home two volumes from the library and discover that they're really the same volume, or that one volume is a compendium which incorporates the other. This is why I refuse to buy these things, because you end up with more than one copy of the same story.

That off my chest, I did enjoy this volume. The art was good, and the story engaging. Also, it filled a few holes in the earlier stories I'd read. Kamala falls for a new guy - one who shares her religion and her interests - only to rather predictably, I have to say, discover that he's working for the dark side which is employing him to recruit her. Naturally, and predictably, she refuses, but rather than return to her buddy who has stood by her side throughout, she rejects him, too, with a weak story about how she can't be involved with a guy while she's wedded to her super powers and her need to fight evil. Tired tropes assemble! That, I felt, was poorly done and made her look callous and irrational. She's already involved with this guy anyway, even if not romantically. This does explain why he's moved on in a later volume and begun dating someone else, but Kamala cannot whine about it, after the way she treated him!

That dislike dealt with, I was pleased with her in other respects, especially as she continues to grow and learn new ways to use her shape-distorting powers. All in all, and despite my distaste for her "romantic" behavior, I did like this volume and I recommend it as part of this excellent series. The story was - apart from the non-romance - as well-written as ever, and the art by Elmo Bondoc, Takeshi Miyazawa, and Adrian Alphona was the usual entertaining, colorful, and amusing standard.


Sunday, August 28, 2016

Mystique Ultimate Collection by Brian K Vaughan, Jorge Lucas, Michael Ryan, Manuel Garcia


Rating: WORTHY!

Originally created by artist David Cockrum, Mystique's "real" name is Raven Darkhölme, although she has many aliases, and no one really knows squat about her actual name, or her origins or how old she is - it would seem she's at least a century which begs the question as to why she would be interested in anyone of her own apparent age unless she simply wanted to get laid by a young stud. Like Logan, otherwise known as Wolverine, her youth is preserved by her mutation. In Logan's case it's his healing ability. In Mystique's case it's through her shape-shifting, so she sure doesn't look like she's a centenarian.

Being contrary, she rejects the use of the name 'Raven' in this volume, and is going about her routine business of assassinating people who harm mutants, when she finds herself about to be terminated. At the last minute (because rescuers never can be punctual), she's rescued by Magneto, which is a surprise to her because she thought he was dead; however, it's not Magneto, it's Charles Xavier. He's merely projecting Magneto into her brain in order to win her trust and effect the rescue. Well, he fails!

The deal is that he wants jobs done which he doesn't want tied back to him or his mutants, and Mystique represents the perfect undercover agent to carry out his wishes. If she were not wanted by every nation on the planet (except one!), she would have rejected his deal out of hand, but having a lifelong interest in self-preservation, she decides to throw her lot in with him at least for the time being especially since his wishes happen to coincide with her aims for once.

She begins carrying out ops for him which are rooted in the assassination of Prudence, an X-men undercover operative. Prudence was on the trail of a viral agent which has the power to kill everyone who has been inoculated against smallpox, which includes the entire US military, along with medical professionals and a host of other people. Smallpox is a horrible disease, and this mutant version is a huge threat. Mystique takes up the baton and flies with it. She's cool, exciting, inventive, resourceful and every bit the embodiment of a strong female character that I like. Plus she can literally kick ass. Her foes are a match for her (almost!) and the plots are pretty decent. I really enjoyed these stories.

This graphic novel had some truly breath-taking art between chapters done by Mike Mayhew, and though it was superlative, it wasn't so different from the regular panel art that it made me feel cheated as some comics do. Overall this novel was very well illustrated by Jorge Lucas, Michael Ryan, and Manuel Garcia. That George Lucas sure gets around doesn't he? LOL! I've been watching a show on Netflix titled Life which is about this cop who returns to the job after twelve years of false imprisonment for a triple-murder he didn't commit, and the name of the producer is Loucas George! You can't get away from the guy!

One thing I liked about the art is that it seemed a little less "sexploitive" than comic book art all-too-often is where a female character - super or otherwise - is concerned, so I appreciated that. That and the overall quality of the art and of course the excellent stories were what made this a worthy read.


Saturday, August 20, 2016

Ms Marvel Vol 1: No Normal by G Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona


Rating: WORTHY!

Admirably written by the talented G Willow Wilson, and nicely and amusingly illustrated by Adrian Alphona, the Ms. Marvel book is actually the first in the series - finally! I can't believe graphic novel writers make it so hard to figure out which collected volume is the first you should read. Is it such a problem to put a big "#1" of the front cover? LOL! It's a good story though, so I want to read more in this series. I think I've now read the first three (but who can say?!), and really liked one and three; two, not so much. Finally I got to learn how Kamala Khan got her super power - and it was by the oddball method of becoming enveloped in an unexplained fog which wafted through the city!

Working on an idea for a super hero novel (not graphic, just text!) myself, I've started thinking about the existing ones a little bit more closely. Becoming empowered by a fog struck me as decidedly odd, because everyone in the city (this is set in Jersey City; Marvel seems obsessed with the east coast for some reason) was likewise exposed, yet only Kamala seems to have developed any super powers from it. Why? This goes not only unexplained, but unexplored. I found it sad that she wasn't curious about why she alone was blessed or cursed. Thinking about other heroes, only one immediately comes to mind - although I'm sure there are more - who developed his power in a way parallel to Kamala, and The Hulk really goes unexplained too, so this is nothing new.

I mean, how did Bruce Banner change, and no one else exposed to gamma rays did? Maybe it's because no one had the exposure he did, yet we're all exposed to gamma rays from space - fortunately not to a high degree. The fact remained that it was he who survived and developed his...condition. Spider-man is a similar case, but though many are bitten by spiders, none that I know of have been bitten by a radioactive spider! Superman doesn't count because he isn't special - anyone from Krypton would have his powers if they came to Earth, as his story shows. Batman and Iron Man are self-made, so they're responsible for their "power". Thor is just like Superman in many regards, so nothing to be learned there. Wonder Woman is also in that category. Green Lantern got his power because he was chosen and imbued with it, just as was Captain America, although in a different manner. Again, anyone in theory could have had their power. So we're back to Kamala being special in an undefined way which few other heroes are. Unless of course she was chosen somehow, but we're left with these unanswered questions, which make her very intriguing to me.

Moving on from the receipt of the power, we immediately get to the story of how she recognized it and learned to live and work with it, which I thought was really well done in this book. It felt real, and natural and organic, and it made for a fun and engaging story, especially since it's tied, in many ways, to her Muslim upbringing, her distance from her traditional parents - and from her school-friends, and her desire to be "normal" yet be able to use her gift to help others. I loved this story and recommend it as a great start to the series. I was unimpressed by volume two, especially the artwork. Volume three was a much more impressive and very amusing volume. I review both of those separately elsewhere on my blog.


Saturday, August 13, 2016

Ms Marvel Vol 5 Super Famous by G Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa


Rating: WORTHY!

I reviewed the previous volume to this (I think - Graphic novel creators make it far harder than it ought to be to follow a series!) back in July of 2015 to mark the end of my year of two reviews per day every single day without a miss, which was stressful, but a great discipline. I wasn't impressed with the comic because the artwork was atrocious, but I was impressed - as much as not, by the young Ms Marvel character, Kamala Khan.

I started in on this graphic novel and found it refreshing. The young Ms Marvel is more like Spiderman in that she's young, has real relationship issues, and has to cope with demands on her time which interfere with her super-heroics. It's also set in a Marvel world where the usual Avengers super heroes have been switched around a bit. Thor is now a female (and still evidently named Thor, not Thora!). Spider-Man wears black instead of his usual red and blue. Captain America is black, but having said that, there's a disturbing lack of African American and Asian American presence in this story.

Ms Marvel is a young teen who is a Muslim (yet she never actually practices her religion), but there's also a Captain Marvel - who I assume we'll see in the movie theaters at some point, although the date keeps on being pushed back, from July 2018 to November, and then to March 2019. Seriously? At least we get Wonder Woman next year, although how good that will be depends on how willing DC is to totally screw-up yet another of their properties. They seem to be batting a thousand so far in that department ever since Chris Nolan finished his excellent Batman trilogy.

I read an earlier comic in this series where I really didn't like the artwork and found some of the story condescending, but this one seems much better and the artwork is far better. The comic was also really funny. Kamala's ex-boyfriend creates two clones of Kamala using technology left behind by Loki, and these clones start to multiply and take over the city. One of them is supposed to represent the scholarly Kamala while she's off super hero-ing. This one can say only "Easy-peasey" and marches around hilariously. The other is supposed to represent the good sister Kamala attending on her brother's wedding preparations, and has only one line related to the wedding. No one seems to think there's anything wrong here! Until the clones start flooding the city.

This one was funny, and very entertaining, and unlike the previous one, made me want to read more in this series.


Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Turncoat by Ryan O'Sullivan, Plaid Klaus


Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. More info about this graphic novel can be had at http://turncoatcomic.com/

This tongue-in-cheek and highly amusing super hero graphic novel features Duke and Sharon, who don't get along, which more than likely explains why they're not married any more. When they were together, she shot him fifteen times, putting him in hospital for eighteen months, and filed for divorce. That ought to tell you how infuriating he is. Now he has a restraining order against him, but the real problem here is that she and Duke work for different teams in super hero control programs - clandestine operations designed to cull super heroes before they proliferate everywhere, and thereby keep them down to a manageable number. Let's face it, someone has to do this.

Now though, it looks like Sharon has taken to swooping in on Duke's sanctions, completing them before he does, and getting all the credit. She even took out The Savior, who'd been widely considered not only untouchable, but also invulnerable. Maybe there's more going on here than first meets the eye mask. Like, are these heroes based loosely on well-known super heroes from Marvel and DC, or does it just look that way?

Duke really isn't very good at his job despite his profound detestation of everything about super heroes, so he's not likely to figure it out. He's about as on the edge and you can get without flying off from centrifugal force (and to those pseudo scientists who don't think centrifugal force isn't real, I invite them to hang on to edge of something that can spin, get it spinning really fast, and then let go. If they survive, they can tell me how it doesn't really exist). Duke's also really annoying in an amusing (for the reader) and infuriating (for his fellow characters) way.

Sharon, on the other hand, looks like a kick-ass heroic figure. She'd merit a story all of her own. But she's retired - isn't she? Told with a quirky sense of humor and with a sharp eye for comic book super hero conventions (not those conventions, the other ones), this book had me enthralled and I read it faster than the flash. With a name like Plaid, how could he not be an artist? The artwork was perfect for the tone and genre and the story was brilliant. The only complaint I have is that the lettering was often a bit on the small side and too 'plump' to make out characters distinctly from time to time. It was nothing bad enough to spoil the story, though, so i recommend this unreservedly.


Saturday, July 30, 2016

Who is AC? by Hope Larson, Tintin Pantoja


Rating: WORTHY!

Normally I avoid like the plague any novel which has been praised by Kirkus for no other reason than that Kirkus pretty much never met a novel they didn't like, so their reviews are completely worthless and I don't trust 'em! I also liked this novel despite the fact that the author is an I sneer (or is that Eisner?) award winner. Another group of novels I avoid are those which have won awards and especially those which have won Newberys, so I was good there because this one hasn't won such an award - or if it has, I'm unaware of it at this time! Fortunately, this enabled me to read this and I did not regret it.

We know who AC is before she does! AC is a kick-ass, young black female who somehow has super powers transferred to her via her phone while flying to her new home - but the charming thing about her is that she was kick-ass before she ever got her powers. Disgusting and inappropriate as this is given our age difference, I fell in love with Rhea (huge spoiler, that's her real name!!) pretty much from flicking through a few of the pages in the library, and I fell hopelessly in love when I finally got home and read it.

Rhea has a slightly unstable life, but she knows what she wants. She writes fiction and sells it through her friend who owns a small local bookstore. She copies these at a copy shop and binds and pays for them with her own hard-saved cash. Unfortunately, one night she leaves something behind and when she returns to get it, she discovers that the shop is being held up! She plucks up the courage to act, and finds herself transformed into a super hero who would give Hit Girl a run for her money. But this action creates its own problems which AC aka Rhea has to face.

I loved the illustration by Tintin Pantoja, and the writing by Hope Larson was tight and funny, and realistic. I definitely want to read more about this character, and I recommend this as a worthy read.


Saturday, July 2, 2016

Wonder Woman Earth One Vol 1 by Grant Morrison, Yanick Paquette


Rating: WARTY!

With the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, to which I look forward immensely (and depressingly almost a year away as of this review!), and from the fact that Gal Gadot was by far the most impressive character in the rather sad and confused Batman v Superman movie, I decided to take a look at this one, which my awesome public library had sitting right there on the shelf. I was disappointed. Worse than this, it betrayed the original concept dreamed-up by William Moulton Marston and his wife wife Elizabeth.

This is evidently some sort of reboot in the Earth One series, although why a character which has been continuously in print for over three-quarters of a century was felt so lacking in oomph that she needed a reboot is a bit of a mystery. The blurb told me that this was "a wholly unique retelling that still honors her origins" so since I knew squat about the comic book character, I decided this might be a good place to start, but in the end I was not impressed. The art work wasn't bad at all, but some of the images made little sense, and the story itself left a lot to be desired.

We learn here that Princess Diana did not derive from clay brought to life, but as a daughter of Hercules (himself very much a villain here). That's really the only significant difference. We still get Captain Steve Trevor, who is back in this incarnation, and who Wonder Woman delivers to the USA for treatment after his plane crash. The problem is that the story really bogs down at this point, with Wonder Woman made to look like a village idiot with her lack of understanding of the modern world. She's not as much of a moron though, as the army officer who doesn't know the difference between a Humvee and a Jeep. Maybe he'll do better when the Oshkosh L-ATV comes into common use.

Wonder Woman isn't really likable in this story, and especially not when she compares the ineffective soldiers to little girls - like little girls are somehow feeble and useless. This was so far out of left field that it could only have been written by a male writer who turned-off his brain before he wrote this or was so completely out of touch with his subject that he knew no better.

I can't recommend a graphic novel about Wonder Woman in which she's portrayed (and betrayed) so badly and where she is so bizarrely forced into delivering dumb lines insulting to women, and where her entire oeuvre consists of offering nothing more than a few cheap shows of super-strength. Wonder woman was supposed to be so much more than this - a different kind of super hero, and the writer failed dismally to deliver in this retelling. There was nothing unique here, and worse, nothing antique (unless you classify those ineffectual chains wrapped around her on the cover as harking back to the purported 'bondage' themes of the original Woman Woman comics). But when you got right down to it, there was nothing to empower women in this character. Quite the contrary. This was a golden opportunity to deliver so much more, and it failed. Instead of an up-armored Humvee, we got an old jeep.


Runaways Vol 3 The Good Die Young by various contributors


Rating: WORTHY!

In this volume, which I was able to launch into right after finishing volume two, the runaways were pursuing a decoding of their parents' secret book, and finally finding out how this all began and where it was going. They discover that their parents are taking part in a ritual under the ocean in front of their alien overlords, and decide to ship-wreck it. Since I laid out the details of this series in my review of volume two, this review will be shorter.

This story was slightly less entertaining than the previous one, but still worth reading. There was some annoying stuff wherein the only interactions between these guys, despite being on the run, hungry, and scared, was of a romantic nature. Yeah, I get that teens often can think of nothing else, but this group was composed mostly of females, and given their circumstances, it seems to me they'd be less focused on romance than on survival. That said, maybe when young people are as hunted and desperate as these guys were, they might well tend towards a more profligate approach to romantic behaviors - like that girl in the Airplane movie?! Who knows? The thing is I could see guys doing this a lot more readily than girls, and this is written by guys!

In addition to this there was this (as another reviewer termed it) "random vampire" thrown into the mix which came right out of left field and served no purpose that I could see. The more interesting thing was the increasing reference to a mole amongst the runaways. I never did guess who it was, but it's revealed towards the end of this volume and plays out quite well. Given this, I didn't see the point of another character (the vampire) who has his own antagonistic agenda.

Both Tony Stark (in a suit) and Steve Rogers (in costume) put in an appearance, and I liked that the Runaways were as suspicious of Captain American as he has been of Government and SHIELD. Overall, though, this was a nice read and I plowed through it in short order. At this point I was interested in reading more of these although they're not really aimed at my age range - more at middle grade despite the Runways being mostly young adult ages. The problem was that later stories in this series were far less impressive to me than these early ones, and I am done following the Runaways now.


Runaways Vol 2 Teenage Wasteland by various contributors


Rating: WARTY!

This was my first venture into Marvel's Runaways, a comic book series in which a band of mostly young teens, but including an 11-year-old, learns after seeing them literally sacrifice a girl, that their parents constitute an evil organization they call 'The Pride'. The series was created by Brian Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, but Joss Whedon has also had some involvement in it, leading some to wonder if this might be Marvel's next big venture - into movies or into a TV series, adding another foundation stone in their burgeoning super hero empire.

I decided that if this was indeed somewhere Marvel was going, I should try to get a leg up on the whole thing since I knew squat about these guys other than the vaguest notion of what they were about. This chance came from my beloved local library when I saw a whole bunch of these on the shelf. I had two immediate problems. One was that of what appeared to be two separate series, and not a one of them had a volume number on the cover or on the credits page, so I had no idea which one came first. I had to look it up online, only to discover my second problem, which was that volume one wasn't on the shelf! I did get vols 2 & 3 though.

Why are graphic novel creators so devoted to keeping people in the dark about where they are? This is one reason I detest series! I know these graphic novels are already aggregations of single issue comics, but could they not put something on the cover to indicate cardinality?! I had to go online to find out which ones to start with, and even then I couldn't figure out who's on first, or whether I was looking at two sets that were really separate or whether they were merely different print runs of the same stories (it turned out to be the latter). I finally picked volumes two and three of the small format paperbacks and a volume of the large format because it was written by Whedon. I have no idea what order that one was in.

That said, I blitzed the two small ones and found them to be quite entertaining despite a few issues here and there (which were no worse than any other comic book). Yes, issues in the issues! The parents of these kids were chosen by aliens to usher in the end of humanity. The reward they were promised was that six of them would live through the genocide of their fellow humans and become immortals. I'm sorry but I see no incentive there! We're supposed to believe that these evil parents were cool with the idea that they would have one child each thereby creating the six survivors? Either they're stupid or far from evil. The aliens told them that only the most devoted of their servants would be the ones who were saved, so there was no reason to believe they would accept substitutes or care about children or their servants' wishes!

Their parents are an assorted group of aliens, time-travelers, scientists, telepaths, and wizards, and what happens is that the kids, who have surprisingly been unaware of how evil their parents are, spy on them and are shocked by their behavior, so they...run away! They try adopting super hero names but it doesn't work. The youngest makes her own thrown-together costume, but none of them really are interested in the traditional super hero path, which made this very appealing to me, especially since I'm working on a super hero novel myself right now. The characters are also mostly female and of diverse ethnic backgrounds, so this is another feather in its cap as far as I'm concerned.

Talking of diversity, Karolina Dean is the alien and she knows she's literally alien. Like superman, her power comes from the sun, but unlike the foundational DC hero, her power fades at night. This was another thing I liked. I've never understood how Superman managed to be as super at night as he was during the day, but perhaps he worked like a capacitor?! Molly Hayes is the daughter of the mutant telepaths, but she's more like Superman in that she has super strength and invulnerability. Nico Minoru, like Harry Potter, is the daughter of wizardly parents and can do magic, although in the two volumes I read, she did very little of it. She's also the de facto leader if there can be said to be one.

Chase Stein is the son of the scientists and has no super power, but he did steal his dad's 'fistigons' which are gloves which seem confined to emitting fireballs and extruding metal claws rather like Wolverine. Alex Wilder is the son of gangland capos, and is described as having a precocious and forward-looking intellect, although he never came off as being particularly smart to me. Gertrude Yorkes (there's that out-of-style name again, but maybe it's because she) is the daughter of the time-travelers. She has an empathic link with a velociraptor nicknamed Old Lace. She goes therefore, by Arsenic. Once again we see the velociraptor way over-sized as it was in the Jurassic Park movies, but since this one is genetically engineered, perhaps there is a reason for that.

This series was written in the mid-'oughts, yet all of these teens seemed unusually familiar with - and addicted to - anachronisms. This brought me out of suspension of reality quite often because it didn't feel like things these teens would say or reference. I mean, how many teens, even US teens, would even know about a 1939 play adapted into a 1944 Cary Grant movie titled Arsenic and Old Lace, as opposed to how many older comic book writers?! They did explain the Beatles references by mentioning that one of the kids had an album, a present from a parent, but this doesn't explain how all the other kids would be familiar enough with them that they never questioned the references.

Those gripes aside, I did like the off-the-beaten-path route this story took, its basic premise of rebellious teens, its cast, and the overall story. This one was focused on the kids establishing themselves in a 'base of operations' and their move towards helping people in a rather forlorn, misguided, and half-hearted effort to right their parents' wrongs, but there as very little super hero activity here. it was mostly focused on the interactions between the teens, but even so, it was very readable and interesting, so I recommend it.


Runaways The Complete Collection Vol 4 by various contributors


Rating: WARTY!

I have to give this fourth volume a negative rating too, along with the third volume I also reviewed. This one I didn't even finish, ditching it about half way through. I'm done with the Runaways series now: it was tedious and repetitive and nothing new was being offered. The characters which had held so much promise when I first began reading their adventures now seem to be running out of interesting or entertaining things to do, and they had nothing new to offer me. Add that to the tedium of some of the characters behaving the same in story after story, making the same mistakes or the same bad jokes, never developing, growing, or learning, and with Molly becoming ever more nauseating it's not appealing to me any more.

I mean Molly is supposed to be thirteen, but she consistently behaves like she's six - and a boy! There's nothing wrong with girls being masculine or tomboyish, but in her case it's not a character trait, it's a consistent failing of the writers to grasp the first thing about twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls. Although they do know how many teeth a thirteen-year-old should have, which is one nice thing I can say! LOL! But Molly never has a period. She's never interested in boys or girls on an emotional level. She shows no growth whatsoever towards maturity despite approaching young adulthood - and living on the street, and fighting for her life from time to time. It's simply not credible that she is a perennial juvenile. Chase is a perennial airhead jock type, Nico is perennially running out of new spells to cast. Frankly, it's boring and unimaginative and I'm done with this series although I still have some individual reviews to post of earlier material I read which was better!


Runaways The Complete Collection Vol 3 by various contributors


Rating: WARTY!

I have to give this a negative review overall, but portions of it I shall be reviewing separately and positively. This review is for the complete volume four collection which to me was not a worthy read. The art work was bordering on Japanese style in some portions: over-sized eyes and so on, of which I am not a fan, and even when it wasn't drawn that way, it was less than thrilling. The stories in the first half of the volume were not entertaining to me. It picked up in the second half, but I'll review those separately since I read them separately prior to getting my hands on this volume.

This takes place during the time of a super hero civil war which was recently and very excellently captured in the third of the Captain America series, which this volume references several times. The main Marvel heroes don't really feature here, though, but the young Avengers, with whom I was not at all impressed, played a lead role. One problem I had with this set of stories was the Skrulls. I am not a fan of this invasion by aliens. I don't know what it is, but it fails to impress me and doesn't stir my interest. I had the same problem with the first Avengers movie - the story was great right up until the alien invasion began, then for me it fell off and was not so interesting.

So while some of the individual stories later were engrossing (once the young Avengers and the Skrulls had departed them), I was not impressed with the overall package, so I cannot recommend this.


Thursday, June 9, 2016

Marvel's Captain America: Sub Rosa by David McDonald


Rating: WARTY!

I came to this novel under false pretenses. I don't know who decides how to categorize these novels when they're put up on Net Galley as advance review copies. I suspect it's the publisher, but whoever it was misrepresented this one. It was categorized under graphic novels, but it's no such thing! There are no graphics in sight - in this case not even a cover, so I was disappointed before I began this. My advice to publishers is not to put your text novels under the graphic novel header. It's misleading at best and dishonest at worst. Nevertheless I gave it the old college try, and I have to report that it was not a beautiful day in the neighborhood for Mr Rogers, aka Captain America. I really could not get into this. I made it to just beyond the half-way point, and when it didn't remotely look like it was getting any better (indeed it got worse, descending into monologues and pages of exposition), I gave up on it.

I'm not a huge comic book fan, but then this was not a comic book, as I was sorry to discover. My experience of Captain America is all from the Marvel movies which have been hitting the screens with a routine and regularity, and a runaway success that's nothing short of breathtaking, and every one of those movies has been funny, amazing, action-packed, intelligent (for Hollywood!), fast-paced, and thoroughly entertaining. This novel was none of that. Instead, it was a series of uninspired fights followed by uninspired dialog, followed by more fighting. And there was neither anything super nor heroic about it. You could have taken out the Cap, and substituted one of the GI Joes, or one of Schwarzeneggar's older characters, like the one from Commando, or tossed in a Jason Bourne or James Bond, or any such macho action dude, and it could have been exactly the same story. There was no reason for the Cap to be here.

The story began with Commander Maria Hill contacting Cap to ask him to take care of her niece, Katherine, who plays the standard maiden in distress, despite the fact that she can handle herself and gets the Cap out of more than one scrape, yet she never gets any respect. I think this story would have been a much better adventure if Commander Hill had taken charge and cap had not been involved, but it is what it never was, and that's what I have to review.

The dialog was uninspired and not amusing, except unintentionally, such as at one point when the Cap is fighting a character named Taskmaster, who has "photographic reflexes" (what's really meant is cinematographic reflexes - any move she sees he can emulate). At one point, while fighting Taskmaster and attempting a futile distraction, Cap asks, "So who's paying you, Taskmaster, and how much?" Was Cap not paying attention two minutes before when Taskmaster came flying through a window and announced, as an introduction, "...she's worth a lot to me. Two million dollars to be exact."? I guess not. His motive is to collect a bounty. he's being paid two million dollars to be exact! Cap doesn't come off as very smart in this story, which is another problem. Of course that doesn't explain who's offering the bounty, but that's not exactly what Cap asks, is it?

The writing is a bit clunky, too. Workman-like for the most part, but not inspired. At one point, in the same paragraph we got "Then it came to him...then with a jolt it came to him..." which made for jarring reading. I guess the first time it came to him it didn't jolt him enough? Or maybe he needed to drink a Jolt cola before it came to him? Character descriptions were boilerplate, along the lines of "a lion's mane of hair" and "a curved beak of a nose." Not very inspired or inspiring. It felt like the author had cut & pasted these from other tepid random novels.

It was hard to find this on Goodreads because the title there is different. In fact the title seems very fluid. It's listed as Marvel's Captain America, but the novel itself is titled Marvel Captain America Sub Rosa. That latter Latin means literally beneath the rose or by way of translation, in secret. But it can be no secret that the Cap deserved a lot better than he got here. I can't recommend this based on what I read, which was more than enough for me when there are other novels out there which are desperate to be read and enjoyed and promise to be more rewarding.


Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Klaw The First Cycle by Antoine Ozanam, Joël Jurion, Yoann Guillé


Rating: WARTY!

This was an odd graphic novel and while I thought it was a good idea, I had too many issues with it and gave up reading it about two thirds the way through. This is what happens when I break my vow to never read any fiction with the word 'cycle' in the title! On another note, there are multiple stories titled "Klaw", believe it or not, and this isn't connected with any of the others as far as I know, so if you're looking for this particular one, make sure you get the creator's names memorized so you get the right book!

I was grateful for the chance of an early look at an advance review copy, especially one which had so much potential and with an amazing cover image, and while I recognize it was written for a younger age group than mine, I had some real problems with it nonetheless. One problem I didn't have was the artwork: it was beautifully done. Joël Jurion's drawing was decent - nothing spectacular, but nothing off-putting either, so that was a good start, but Yoann Guillé's coloring was magical. The plotting/writing left something to be desired however and that's a problem for me.

Angel Tomassini has a chronic bullying problem, but it's fantastical to the point of being ridiculous. He's chased in full view of everyone in the school and no one - not one single person, students or staff - does a thing about it. It's hardly surprising then, given how much fantasy we're already in, that he can turn into a huge tiger. He's not only bullied by the trope bullies, he's also bullied by the boyfriend of a girl he likes - a girl he was foolish enough to text. Her boyfriend Kurt saw the text and starts bullying him in full view of everyone at the pool, including the girlfriend upon whom Angel crushes. Again, no one does a thing about it, not even to raise a voice in protest, not even the girl in question. I sincerely hoped at this point that Angel was not going to end up with this lame, selectively blind, jerk of a girl, but that hope was forlorn.

The story gets interesting when Kurt is killed - by something with claws - even though it's obvious who's done it. It gets dumb again when the cops haul Angel down to the station without benefit of counsel or even his parents. Seriously? Angel is the son of a guy who owns the biggest fish wholesale business in the country. Yep, his dad sleeps with the fishes, and he also has major league mob connections, so Angel is freed pretty quickly. This begs the question as to why he's so freely bullied by all and sundry. Either he's a kid with ties to the mob and people are therefore in some fear of messing with him, or he's viewed as a no-import little guy who everyone (including some cops) feels free to bully. It doesn't work both ways. And Angel has to be truly stupid to have never figured out that his dad is shady at best.

As if this isn't improbable enough, Lisa, the girl who Angel is crushing on, and the now ex-girlfriend of dead Kurt, calls Angel up out of the blue and invites him to attend the same dinner she had planned on going to with Kurt. Seriously? But it gets worse. The next day at school she greets him by name, hugs him and kisses him on the cheek. More seriously? But it gets worse! This girl knows he has mob connections and despises them, yet she still asks him out and then later dumps him because of his mob connections! Even more seriously?! This girl has psychological problems, and none of these characters make any sense. Not that any of this bothers shallow Angel who is about as one-dimensional as you can get and still manage to exist in three dimensions. Supposedly Lisa was threatened in order to force her to go out with Angel, but if that was the case, how come she was so enthusiastic about it? How come she doesn't feel threatened when she summarily dumps him? Again, it makes no sense.

The story became too ridiculous for me when Angel starts donning a super-hero costume to fight crime. On the one hand he supposedly loves his father, but on the other, he's committed to putting him out of business. Okay, I'll give that the benefit of the doubt, but why does he need a super hero costume? He's already disguised as a tiger! I'm sorry, but I can't go with this. I wish the creators all the best because I like to support foreign efforts. This was a lot of work, but it didn't seem to me like it was well thought-through.


Monday, April 11, 2016

Faith Vol 1 by Jody Houser, Francis Portela, Margerite Sauvage


Rating: WORTHY!

This is what happens when you put a bunch of women in charge: you get a great super hero comic! (Note that only two out of three of the above are female, lest I get any complaints!) Talking of which, my only complaint - it was too short for me! I got an advance review copy which was more like a sampler - just two episodes plus and really intriguing third episode consisting of line drawings with no coloring or speech bubbles, which was interesting to see - like looking at a skeleton before the flesh and organs are added. Very cool for anyone who's interested in how these things are put together (which I am as it happens), but I don't imagine it will appear like that in the published version, so get it from Net Galley while it's...not! I have to say that both the writing and the artwork were excellent. Nicely drawn, beautifully colored. I am really thankful I got a chance to review this.

This superhero goes by the name of Zephyr, and she borrows somewhat from Superman. In this case she's disguised with eyeglasses and a wig and looking rather frumpy. Definitely a better disguise than Clark Kent has. And she actually comes off rather better than he does base don his last movie outing as of this writing. Those of us in the know are looking forward to Wonder Woman busting loose next year. Does Zephyr work for a newspaper? Well not in this day and age! She works for some sort of a webzine, although it's a bit vague as to what, exactly they do. Nothing very exciting as judged by Summer's comments about it. She really blossoms, though, when she takes off the wig and eyeglasses and launches herself into the sky (she commutes to work from Van Nuys, which isn't so nice since her neighbors are noisy).

So what's with the 'Faith'? It's her real name: Faith Herbert. She's known as a "psiot" - someone who is psionically gifted. I have no idea what that means since it isn't really explained. I assume it means she has some sort of psychic control over her environment. Bullets don't bounce off her, but they do bounce off her psychic shield, which she can project rather like Sue Storm does, for example.

Faith/Summer was working with a team of heroes, but something happened between her and a more traditionally proportioned masculine hero to whom she was evidently about to be married. She moved away, and people who have seen her fly the skies locally are wondering what happened. I mention 'traditionally-proportioned' because Faith is not. Rather than your standard female egg-timer hourglass figure for super heroes, Faith looks more like the egg, and she's all the more charming for it. The best thing about it is that no one makes any apology for her being a big bodied woman. It's who she is and how she is and that's all there is to it. I was delighted to see this for a change, and especially in a super hero comic book.

The blurb mentioned aliens. We see little of them here. But that's not important. What is important is that there's a new and realistic hero in town and I want to read more about her! I recommend this one.


Sunday, January 10, 2016

Batwoman: Vol 4 This Blood is Thick by JH Williams III, W Haden Blackman and various artists


Rating: WARTY!

I covered some general issues I had with this series in my review of volume one. I enjoyed that issue despite the problems, but this one fared far less well. The only reason I eve read it was that I had all four volumes out of the library at once. if I'd had to buy them as single issues every month at the store, I never would have finished the collection in volume two, much less read all four collections.

Volume four of this series of collections was the worst of all. I couldn't even finish it. The thing which really nauseated me was the artwork (at last!), but the intriguing thing was that this was done by a different set of artists. My problem with it was that while the quality was slightly better, the characters looked completely different from how they appeared in the first three volumes! The opening sequence of Kate and Maggie in bed together looked so alien I had no idea who these two people were! Worse than that, however was that they looked significantly younger - like they were teenage girls.

It wasn't this apparent consumption of a draft from the fountain of youth that actually turned me off however, it was the section after that where once again we have to spend time with loser dad Jacob, whom I could not stand and whose story I found consistently dull and tedious through this story arc. In this segment, he was talking to his wife, and while they both looked somewhat different from previous artwork, Jacob at least still looked his age, which was quite mature, whereas his wife looked like a child bride! I don't know if she was supposed to be his original wife in which case she was way-the-hell too young, or if he had remarried, in which case the text made no mention of it, but she looked younger than Kate Kane had in earlier volumes, and Batwoman is supposedly in her thirties. Not that an aunt can't look (or even be) younger than a niece, but it was simply wrong for these two to be talking about 'children' the way they were when the wife was drawn very nearly as a child herself!

After that, I could not take the series seriously, and I quit reading. I certainly cannot recommend any of this unless you're a real (and desperate!) die-hard fan.


Batwoman: Vol 3 World's Finest by JH Williams III, W Haden Blackman and various artists


Rating: WARTY!

I covered some general issues I had with this series in my review of volume one. I enjoyed that issue despite the problems, but this one fared far less well. The only reason I eve read it was that I had all four volumes out of the library at once. if I'd had to buy them as single issues every month at the store, I never would have finished the collection in volume two, much less read all four collections.

Well I'm sorry to have to report that for me, this series which started out so well in volume one, went quickly downhill in volume two. I thought that three might pick things up. It featured Wonder Woman. She and Batwoman had to go to the depths of the ocean to try to track down Medusa, although what Medusa had to do with ocean depths was a mystery. Supposedly that was where she was in prison, but she wasn't actually there and in the end it turned out that she was right back where they'd started: in Gotham City, which was, let's face it, pretty darned obvious when you think about it.

They had to track down Perseus to discover this fact about Medusa, although why he would know goes unexplained. The real problem with this, though, was that Perseus was a direct rip-off of the Kill Bill character Sidewinder, played by Michael Madsen, who wore a cowboy hat and lived in a trailer out in the desert middle of nowhere just like Perseus did. Sad.

Volume three, therefore, seemed to be nothing but filler and had nothing of interest to offer. The artwork continued to be wooden and uninspiring although it wasn't abysmally atrocious. In some parts, because of the choppy story-telling, it was actually hard to tell which of the "civilian" characters was which, they were drawn so much alike. The only redeeming factor was the way Batwoman approached Maggie Sawyer towards the end, kissed her full on and asked her to marry her. This was a full page spread and was beautiful. It was Batwoman coming out in a whole different way. I loved that, but it wasn't enough to rescue a novel which seemed more interested in portraying Batwoman as a smug poseur in page after page, instead of really getting down to a solid story. This may impress die-hard fans of the genre, but it takes both none of that and a lot more than that to get me into a story. I can't recommend this one.