Creator Misc. - Review

Fear Itself 1 & The Home Front 1

Three comics in, and I am very irritated by this Fear Itself event. The prologue set up the Red Skull’s daughter, Sin, tracking some mighty weapon. In FI1 she gets it, and it’s like Don Blake getting Mjolnir: she becomes some ancient scary Asgardian god (of fear, I suppose). Odin immediately runs away, taking all of his Asgardians with him. Oh, and Sin meets some old guy, an alternate or evil Odin type by the look of it, and summons something or other. This is a double-length issue, so 66 or whatever pages in, and we still don’t actually know what is going on, but just keep getting “OMG Odin is scared and look the Watcher is hanging around so just imagine how big and exciting this is!!!!” stuff thrown at us.

Essential Captain America 6

My god the slump in standards some way into this is painful. I’m not sure I can think of another Essential volume where it’s so precipitous.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight books 6 & 7

There were opportunities and difficulties in continuing Buffy as a comic series, and there are all kinds of interesting effects both from those and from putting a TV writer in charge of something that used to be a TV show.

Showcase Presents The Witching Hour 1

Who writes the blurbs for these things? This features art “from a host of comics legends including Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Jack Sparling, Pat Boyette and George Tuska,” a selection that slips steeply away from the legendary. In case you think that really is the best list they could pull, here are a few more artists featured inside: Kirby, Adams, Infantino, Gil Kane, Cardy, Morrow, Williamson, Sekowsky, Wood, Grandenetti, Aparo. I think I’d have mentioned one or two of those ahead of, for instance, George Tuska.

Venom 1

I said of Flash Thompson in my review of Amazing Spider-Man 654.1, which may as well have been the first issue of Venom, “Why a disabled ex-corporal was chosen for this is not stated – because he’s an old pal of Spider-Man, is all I can come up with, which is a comic writer’s reason, not military intelligence’s.” I thought this might start to attempt to justify that, but in fact I now learn that Flash has had problems with alcoholism which, since they need the host to be in calm control of the Venom symbiote, pushes this even further beyond plausibility.

Showcase Presents Justice League of America 5

This collection, reprinting JLA 84-106, 1970-73, is not one of the better periods for the JLA. I love the team and several of its members, but it has to be faced that it has had plenty of crappy periods. After the charming and fun, if very trivial, early stories by Fox & Sekowsky, by now it is trying to be more Marvel and more ‘relevant’ as the term was then.

BPRD: Plague of Frogs

I am by now a total Hellboy fan, and that extended quickly to Mignola’s world, especially when I fell for Guy Davis’s artwork. Having said that, this 400+ page hardback book is not a very coherent volume.

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 17

I was quite harsh on Garth Ennis’s writing when I reviewed the previous volume. In this, he seems to be grasping Dredd and his world rather more substantially. It’s worth noting here that I think that this is one of the great comic creations, a memorable central character in a complex world that offers immense possibilities for all kinds of action, adventure, comedy and satire. The series would be kind of unacceptable without that final element, without the sense that the government on show is not being offered as a wholly good thing, but in fact it’s the thrill power that stays with me.

Wolverine Goes to Hell

Deeply unimpressed as I was by Aaron’s start on Ultimate Captain America, this bargain collection of the first three issues of his Wolverine tempted me to try again. It is better, but I am still not terribly keen.

Whores of Mensa 5

The previous four issues of this small press comic seemed to emanate from a gang. I could imagine members Mardou, Jeremy Day (formerly Jeremy Dennis) and Ellen Linder (replacing Rachel Sweet after the first issue) as a kind of convention-cruising girl gang, strutting between the trestle tables, WoM logo stitched matchingly to the back of their leather jackets.