Review: Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters Vol. 1

This is the third trade collection of an IDW Godzilla series I've tried, and, like the others I've tried, it has an extremely interesting, "Hey, I'd like to see what those guys would do with Godzilla and friends!" creative team involved, and it featured not just the title character, but several other Toho Studios monsters (In this volume, we see Anguirus, Rodan and Battra, with Mothra foreshadowed—and appearing on a variant cover. Kumonga and King Ghidorah also make variant cover-only appearances).

I think that speaks quite well to the fact that IDW was pursuing a smart strategy of putting together strong creative teams by creators who weren't the most obvious of choices of giant monster comics, and it speaks to how aggressively—too aggressively?—the publisher was seeking to exploit the license. This title, for example, is completely unrelated to the other two I read (Godzilla: The Half-Century War and just plain Godzilla). It's so different, in both its look and conception, I think its existence is justified, but it does make coming to the franchise a little late (even just wait-for-the-trade late) difficult.

The team on this particular book, which Wikipedia reminds me was IDW's original Godzilla offering and was a 12-issue series that has since been completely collected, consists of co-writer Eric Powell, best-known as the writer/artist for his Dark Horse series The Goon (and, now that I think of it, some pretty swell Marvel monster comics), pencil artist Phil Hester, probably best known for his collaborations with writer Kevin Smith (Green Arrow for DC, Clerks: The Lost Scene for Oni) or the short-lived Marvel series The Irredeemable Ant-Man. Powell's co-writer is Tracy March, and Hester is inked by a Bruce McCorkindale (And while Powell's just writing this series, he does provide some of the many covers as well, for Powell fans who want to see how the writer-who-is-also-an-artist draws Godzilla and some of his frenemies; we'll look at some covers near the bottom of this post).

This story is set in modern times, and, unlike the Swierczynski series, in which Godzilla has been a fact of life for a while, this is apparently the first appearance of any giant monsters on Earth. The big guy appears in a weird opening scene in which two little Japanese kids play on a beach, when they suddenly notice the gigantic tail of a diving...something. Godzilla appears next on a two page spread, SKREEEEE-ONK-ing as he eats the children in a huge mouthful of sand, like some sort of gigantic organic steam shovel surfacing through the beach itself.

The Japanese try to missile the monster to death to no effect...

...and when he gets out to sea, the U.S. tries a sub-launched nuclear missile, which only has the result of making Godzilla grow larger and start breathing his blue radioactive fire (not the traditional orange fire that Alex Ross has him breathing on the cover there).

The first issue/chapter ends with President Obama seeing the news, and reacting the same way his Japanese counterpart did upon learning that the nuke only made Godzilla stronger and gave him a new weapon.

"You have to be @%$#ing kidding me" is to Kingdom of Monsters as "I've got a bad feeling about this" is to Star Wars, apparently.

Meanwhile, weird shit is happening all around the world, like cattle, crows and swarms of cicadas suddenly dropping dead out of the world. Second monster Anguirus emerging from the ground in Texas, and running, jumping and rolling its way toward the U.S. border. In Russia, a little boy nicks a museum piece during an earthquake, and out of it hatches a baby pterodactyl, which grows into Rodan in the space of a bout a day.

Meanwhile, an enormous Mothra-like egg is discovered in France, and two mute but enormously powerful psychic school girls find it, and control the monstrous larva that emerges, whom they name Battra.

The worst news of all, however, is that when Godzilla's through with Japan, he heads to the U.S., and he and Anguirus or on a collision course in Los Angeles.

What's different about this book is the focus on the human characters, and the fact that there are so many human characters, all around the world. Many look and sound familiar, while many more are introduced just to die. There's the aforementioned President Obama, who we first meet talking to an advisor named David who looks an awful lot like Obama's advisor David Axlerod; it's not until near the end of the second issue that he's referred to as President Ogden. Similarly, we're introduced to a pop singer known for wearing outrageous get-ups, like this one, for example...

...who is called "Girly Yaya" (Get it?). There's a very popular TV show about vapid young people from New Jersey, and the cast appear a few times throughout; the name of that show is Jerseyfied (GET IT?!).

There's the father of the two kids eaten in the opening scene; a coupe of red neck stereotypes that plan on teaching Anguirus no to mess with Texas (not unlike the gun nuts who appear in Swiercyznski's first issue, actually); the Governor of Texas who believes his anti-immigrant wall can keep Angie from crossing the border; the little Russian boy who hatches Rodan, and so on.

Likely, non-monster protagonists seem to be Sergeant Steven Woods, recent recipient of the presidential medal of honor, and/or maybe the psychic twins controlling Battra's larva...at least, these are the fictional, non-parody characters original to the series.

For the most part, Powell and Marsh seem to deploy these characters either to emphasize how small and insignificant single human lives can be in relation to the titanic monsters (a point made ultra-clear when one tries to suicide-bomb Godzilla in revenge, and does nothing more than briefly confuse the King of the Monsters by popping like a bubble on his snout. They also seem to be making some rather broad statements about the shallowness of American culture—both political and entertainment culture—but the targets are so easy, and the criticism so broad and unfocused, it's hard to guess what they're saying exactly. Maybe something along the lines of if atomic age originally ushered in these monsters via film, they are now being summoned by a nihilistic and destructive culture...? I don't know.

Some of it's funny, I guess, but it seems to lack a point...or, if there is a point, its so dull that it barely pokes, let alone pierces and draws blood.

The President "Ogden" business grates, too. I've always been irritated by such half-measures of using analogues in comics, particularly ones that are completely obvious and completely unnecessary. I suppose Lady Gaga and the cast of The Jersey Shore (which I have to assume was still a relevant target when this series launched three years ago then it it is today) might have their images or names trademarked or copyrighted or could make arguments that their likenesses and names are their means of financial gain, and thus this little, barely-read Godzilla book (surely even it it outsold every other book in the direct market, its audience would still be practically molecular to that of Lady Gaga and the folks from that dumb TV show were garnering at the time). But President Obama? Public figures don't get more public than him, and there's hardly any way to use Obama's name and likeness that wouldn't be considered fair use. (Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer appear too, but; they're only partially named, kinda like David Axelrod is in his appearance).

I've always been of the opinion that if you have something to say, just say it, rather than hiding behind passive-aggressive, half-ass, it's-a-parody-but-not-really name-changing. Jersified's "The Predicament" is The Jersey Shore's "The Situation," and you're not fooling anyone, guys.

My favorite of Hester's Godzillas is the one that appears on the variant cover for the second issue, which appears unencumbered by text in the "gallery" section at the back of this book:

Note the elongated snout, that makes his Godzilla look like a slightly more realistic creature—ditto the longer, thinner arms and the fact that you can't see whether his legs are a pile of fat rubber folding in on itself or not. Hester's Godzilla, especially in that image, looks like he could whirl in any direction and take off at a run at any second, rather than simply trudging and plodding.

Hester's interior Godzilla never looks quite that elongated, but he's definitely a slimmer, more muscular, less fat and unwieldy-looking monster than the man in the suit...or, come to think of it, the ultra-faithful Alex Ross version on the cover of the trade collection. In general, he and/or McCorkindale seem to use fewer lines in their creation of Godzilla's scales, and on his fellow monsters Anguirus and Rodan. The over-all effect is that the monsters look a little less carved and a lot more drawn. The design is still tight, but the texture is smoother and more polished. They all reminded me a bit more of large, living gargoyles than articulated toys and costumes, like Hester was losing some of the detail of the suits in order to achieve something more appropriate for a comic.

Of the three series, this is probably the weakest, but it is maybe also harder to judge simply by the first volume than the Godzilla series was, as its premise isn't so quickly and throughly defined.

Here's one of the Powell covers, featuring three of the monsters:

There are three additional Powell covers in this collection, plus a fold-out, three-page image featuring monsters from these issues and several monsters who have yet to appear in the series.

Matt Frank's art is also represented by several covers; I like his Mothra one best:

The remainder of the covers come from Jeff Zornow and Paul Hanley. There's only a single image by Hanley, so it's hard to judge his skill at drawing giant monsters, but Zornow, whose variants are attached to some of the other Godzilla comics as well, is pretty great at it.

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

I have a post reviewing two pretty excellent Drawn and Quarterly books at Robot 6 today. The books are:

1.) Diane Obomsawin's On Loving Women

2.) Brecht Vandenbroucke's White Cube

While you're at Robot 6, you may also like to stop by Tom Bondurant's "Grumpy Old Fan" column, in which takes a look at "Earth-August," the DC Universe as it existed in August of 2011, before the New 52 initiative. He nails a few of the things that so discombobulated me about The New 52: DC had spent the better part of a year doing things like having their most popular writer revamp and revitalize a handful of former Justice Leaguer characters that could have benefited from a shot of Vitamin Johns in Brightest Day, setting up a new JLI book, introducing Vertigo characters Swamp Thing and Constantine back into the DCU, and then the New 52 just came along and knee-capped all that hard work.

The result? Fantastic sales—for a few months.

I don't think there's any reason to believe that Geoff Johns and Jim Lee on Justice League #1 featuring the characters from before the reboot (in their less appalling costumes) or Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis on Aquaman wouldn't have sold just as well, regardless of the continuity. Many books certainly couldn't have done any worse than their New 52 counterparts (Teen Titans vs. Teen Titans, for example, or the promised JLI vs. The New 52 JLI, etc).

The Justice League books were the ones that really rankled at the time, as I was interested in and, yes, even cared about characters like Aquaman and Martian Manhunter. But I completely forgot just how much rebooting DC did in 2010...right before they re-rebooted many characters and book (Like The Flash and Birds of Prey, for example).

Review: Godzilla Vol. 1

When Legendary Pictures released the first trailer for this summer's Hollywood Godzilla reboot a while back, the idea was—obviously—to get people excited about the upcoming film. As a survivor of the 1998 Godzilla, I'm afraid I can't muster any stronger emotion than "cautious" or "curious" when it comes to the new film, but the trailer did remind me of the big guy, and set me on two different paths of catching up with him.

First, I decided I'd start watching and/or re-watching the Godzilla and Toho kaiju movies in an organized fashion (if that's an area of interest for you, I discussed Godzilla Raids Again and Frankenstein Conquers The World in the last "EVERYTHING ELSE" post; the next such post will cover Rodan, Mothra and War of the Gargantuas...at the very least).

Second, it reminded me that I had yet to read James Stokoe's Godzilla: The Half-Century War, which I was trade-waiting. I got right on that and, given how excellent that particular IDW Godzilla comic turned out to be, I started looking for all the other IDW Godzilla books I could find through Ohio libraries (Sadly, they're not as easy to find in libraries as virtually any Marvel, DC or manga collection, so I may have to invest some money if I want to find out how some of these stories turn out—and I do!).

The first I found was the sub-title-less Godzilla, which I believe is the series that showed up on Diamond's shipping lists as "GODZILLA ONGOING" (As with many of IDW's licensed comics, the publisher immediately exploded it into a franchise with multiple books with different, event dueling continuities, making it hard to keep up or catch up. In addition to Godzilla (Ongoing?) and the aforementioned Half-Century War, they've also published/are publishing Godzilla Legends, Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters, Godzilla: Gangsters & Goliaths and Godzilla: Rulers of The Earth).

This is the series written by Duane Swierczynski, one of the handful of prose crime fiction writers who found a side gig in writing comics. In his case, they've mostly been for Marvel (Cable, Immortal Iron Fist, some stuff featuring The Punisher, Moon Knight and Deadpool), and he also launched the New 52 Birds of Prey for DC* and is currently writing for Dark Horse and Valiant.

Of greater interest (to me personally, anyway), is the artist on the creative team for this particular comic: Simon Gane. Particularly expert at drawing cute girls, cool fashion and detailed urban areas, he's probably best known for his Vertigo work, the major focus of which was the art on the shortlived Vinyl Underground series. He's not an artist I would have thought would either be game or be good for a giant monster comic, but that is because I am dumb—turns out he actually already had a giant monster comic (of a sort) on his resume.

So what have these creators I primarily know of for scripting street-level superheros and sketching pretty girls online come up with?

A super-solid premise for a giant monster comic, one that I haven't seen or heard before (certainly not in relation to Godzilla), one that includes a large swathe of the Toho monster menagerie, and one that that sounds like it could potentially be the basis of a kick-ass action movie...were it not for the fact that there is so much action, destruction, monster mayhem and kick-assery, it would probably be too expensive to actually commit to celluloid (Hollywood's still working on getting one kaiju on the big screen; they can't possibly be ready for a half-dozen or more).

So giant monsters are arising and wreaking havoc all over the world. Giant spider Kumonga in Mexico, Rodan in Brazil, Battra in South Korea, and Godzilla himself in the good old US of A. Retired soldier Boxer, who has had dealings with Godzilla in the past, is currently serving as the body guard of a young Japanese girl in Washington D.C., when who should attack the very skyscraper they're in then the King of Monsters himself.

Boxer, who Gane has fan-cast as Jason Statham**, gets the girl to safety, only to lose her to the stupidity of others. With more reason ever to have a grudge against Godzilla, and with his life suddenly needing new direction, he comes up with a great idea—for a comic book, if not a career. He gathers a band of acquaintances and former allies who have similarly lost something to giant monsters: Demolitions expert Urv, driver Harrison and army scientist Claire Plangman, inventer of a "headache gun" that can't exactly slay the dragons, but can prod, push and otherwise annoy them.

When Anguirus attacks Edinburgh in the second issue, Boxer takes his team in...but not before first asking for a seven billion-pound bounty. He gets it, and they get Anguirus. And then they're in the business of bounty-hunting Toho kaiju, seven billion a head ("Eh, that's a buck for every living person on Earth," he tells an television reporter sticking a microphone in his face. "A bargain, really."

Before the first volume is over, they'll go on to tackle Battra, Kumonga and, in the climactic issue, Rodan and Titanosaurus...simultaneously.

As many monsters as they take down, and as rich as they're getting, they still haven't challenged Godzilla yet, and sinister, human forces are moving against Boxer.

Like I said, I liked the premise, and the way it offers engaging characters with passably relatable conflicts and goals; sure, the characters aren't any deeper than those in any action movie, but they're deep enough to act as an axis around which to rotate the various man vs. monster action scenes and more occasional monster-on-monster violence.

Gane's artwork is pretty incredible, and I'm tempted to say that it's almost as good as Stokoe's, but there takes are so different it's difficult to compare them, and Gane is working as an artist in collaboration with a writer, where as Stokoe was creating almost every aspect of his Godzilla project, giving him a bit of advantage in terms of creating a more personalized version of a Godzilla storyline.

Like Stokoe, Gane finds the perfect balance between making the monsters look like "themselves" (that is, rubber suits) and looking realistic. Godzilla, Rodan and Titanosaurus all have an authentic, unnatural look about the way they stand, pose and move, while Anguirus, Kumonga and Battra look much more natural, like things that could conceivably exist in nature, things that could survive outside of a Japanese monster movie.

He's better still at the human characters, all of whom are slightly exaggerated and extremely distinct in design, and Gane is aces when it comes to drawing buildings...and then wrecking them. It seems as if every panel of the book includes a cloud of broken glass, clouds of smoke and storms of rubble.

It's an all-around pretty great Godzilla comic, which disappointed me a little, as it mean now I have to buy the next two volumes, if I want to find out what happens next, and how it all ends. (It's my understanding that the Swierczynski/Gane "ongoing" lasted about 18 months or so, as my local comic shop had three volumes on the shelf, and the last page of the third volume said "The End" on it.)

*********************

Now let's look at some covers. There were, obviously, lots of covers for the comics in this collection—13 covers for just four issues, if I counted correctly.

I understand that the vagaries of comic shop retailing somewhat necessitates that publishers who aren't DC or Marvel publish lots of variant covers, but, as a consumer, the practice is generally just a further incentive to trade-wait, as if the trade collections generally include all the covers (In this trade, for example, covers appear between the issues, and then there's an "Art Gallery" in the back, containing all of the variant covers that weren't previously shown in the collection, each unencumbered by text.

There were four covers for the first issue; two of them were by excellent monster artist and Guy Who Previously Drew Godzilla For Dark Horse Arthur Adams. This is one of 'em:

The other Adams cover was just a black and white version of that. I really like Adams' Godzilla on that cover. No, it doesn't really look like Godzilla, but it does look like Godzilla might look were he a real theropod dinosaur of some kind. It's weird how Adams draws the face and head so realistically, but the tail is still segmented.

Of the other artists that contribute covers (Ryan Kelly, Tony Harris, Zach Howard), Matt Frank draws the versions of the monsters that are furthest divorced from their rubber suit-and-puppet origins.

Check out his Rodan and Titanosaurus:

Very cool-looking, although there's no way I would have guessed that monster on the right was meant to be Rodan, had I not read the comic that appeared under that cover. I like the way Frank makes the monsters his own, adhering to the basics of the design, but not bothering to adhere to the real-world, live-action limitations that defined them. That said, I also like the way Gane and Stokoe drew them, incorporating the limitations-inspired design into their drawings. I'm honestly not sure what the best approach is, as both have their virtues. So I'm glad IDW had Frank do these covers, as his approach differs so greatly from the interior artists I've seen so far (Gane, Stokoe and Phil Hester, whose Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters Vol. 1 I'll discuss this weekend).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, here are the same monsters fighting as drawn by Jeff Zornow, who accentuates the goofy, guy-in-suit nature of their designs:

That image cracks me up.

Here's another Zornow cover, which is a nice portrait type cover of Anguirus...

...even if the image lacks the slap stick of one monster bonking another on the head with some form of mass transit.


*Like a lot of creators since the relaunch, Swierczynski didn't stick around all that long—almost a year and a half—but I don't recall any particularly angry interviews or accusations of editorial interferences, so I'm assuming he left BOP under amicable circumstances...? Or was I just not paying attention, having had no interest at all in a Birds of Prey comic that departed from the central premise of concept, former Batgirl Barbara "Oracle" Gordon teaming with former Justice Leaguer Black Canary to fight crime on their own terms...?

**Although there's a bit of Bruce Willis in him too, I think...or maybe that's just the fact that he spends much of the first issue imperiled in a skyscraper making me think that? Matt Frank's variant cover for the second issue is even more Bruce Willis-y. Like, a Moonlighting-era Willis

Review: Uncanny X-Force Vol. 2: Deathlok Nation

Simone Bianchi's cover to Uncanny X-Force #5.1

When someone descends into a confusing, chaotic realm in which they are temporarily divorced from their everyday, normal lives and are instead faced with difficult, arcane or even just very particular minutiae, you'll often here them talk about having gone "down the rabbit hole." When it comes to Marvel's X-Men, I prefer the metaphor of the labyrinth: There are many different paths to take, they branch off and rejoin one another constantly, its easy to get lost and one could spend the rest of one's life wandering, without ever having covered all of the ground. Also, eventually you'll be killed and eaten by a half-human, half-animal monster. I'm guessing.

For example, over two years ago I read a Uncanny X-Force: The Apocalypse Solution, which collected the start of the Rick Remender reboot of the previously rebooted X-Force title, which was a reboot of a few other reboots of the series (and which has since been rebooted at least two or three more times, splitting into two different comics with similar names as part of the "Marvel NOW!" initiative, and then re-combining into a new, single comic as part of the "All-New Marvel NOW!" initiative).

I rather liked it, and had every intention of reading the next collection, but apparently forgot about it at some point, and never picked up the next collection.

Having recently started reading the Brian Michael Bendis-written X-Men comics (All-New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men) and discovering that they were actually pretty good (far better than his Avengers comics were) and taking the occasion of Jason Aaron's long-running Wolverine and The X-Men run wrapping up to start catching up on that book, I found myself reading a lot of X-Men trades all of a sudden, and encountering plot points I didn't understand, like original X-Men Angel not being the grim, blue-faced, metal-winged character he was the last time I saw him in Apocalypse Solution, but instead being a younger, happier, more naive and angelic-looking version of himself. And a kid named "Genesis" who looked an awful lot like the kid who got shot to death at the end of Apocalypse Solution being enrolled at the Jean Grey School (That's the X-Men school that Wolverine founded to replace the Xavier School, if you're an even less frequent visitor to the labyrinth of X-Men continuity than I am).

Wondering aloud (well, "a-blog," I suppose would be a more accurate term) about this, a few of you mentioned the Angel changes and the origins of this Genesis kid could be found in Remender's Uncanny X-Force, which I quit reading and forgot about.

So I thought maybe I'd get back to it where I left off, a few years ago.

And that's a half-dozen paragraphs basically just saying what the title of this post says, but I did want to take a moment to detail something curious about the X-books, and the curious way their plots feed in and out of one another, often changing hands from writer to writer and title to title and premise to premise in ways I don't think any other Big Two super-franchises do at the moment (For all their faults, for example, the Green Lantern, Batman and Justice League franchises at DC are a little more streamlined; I suppose Marvel's Avengers gets pretty messy, but because that line expansion is so recent, as opposed to the X-Men line, which has had a mess of books since at least the '90s, it's not as big a maze to navigate).

So when we (and by "we" I mean "I") last saw this version of the Uncanny X-Force, they had just completed their first mission. Assembled as the black-ops/wetworks squad of X-people doing mutantkind's dirty work while Cyclops and the less kill-crazy X-Men continued to present a handsome, happy face to mankind, the team consisted of financier and kinda sorta leader Warren Worthing III, aka Angel, aka Archangel, his girlfriend Psyclocke, other kinda sorta leader Wolverine, Grant Morrison-created Fantomas-homage Fantomex, Fantomex sentient mutant UFO EVA and mutant mercenary Deadpool. They all hung out in a secret cave headquarters with matching unifroms—basically just black and gray versions of their regular costumes—and killed people together.

But their first mission hit a snag when they found out that the next incarnation of Apocalypse was still just a kid, and while they were pretty sure he was gonna grow up to be a mutant super-Hitler, they weren't real keen on having to kill a kid, whether he was destined to be mutant super-Hitler or not.

All except Fantomex, anyway, who went ahead and shot the still innocent kid in the head and killed him.

This continues to way heavily on Fantomex's teammates as the second volume opens, with the supposedly amoral characters like Deadpool and Wolverine seeming especially upset and angry, and the supposedly more virtuous characters like Archangel and Psylocke worrying that they aren't more upset about angry, at that and about killing people in general.

That accounts for much of the inter-personal character conflict and a major sub-plot running through this volume, although I suppose I've already spoiled it by mentioning "Genesis" at all: Turns out that while Fantomex technically did kill the Apocalypse kid, he also took some DNA and then started growing a clone of him in The World, a sentient super-soldier factory that was in part responsible for cranking out various "Weapon Plus" mutants like Wolverine, Deadpool and Fantomex (I believe Morrison created it; it featured prominently in his New X-Men run, and was one of the many concepts that later writers continued to play with, even as much of Morrison's run and its innovations were discarded).

So is Fantomex more evil and heartless than all the assassins he hangs out with? Not really; he'll shoot a kid in the head, sure, but he'll also bring him back to life. He killed Hitler as a baby, but then cloned Hitler and tried to raise him right...? I guess that's the way Fantomex answers the whole time-travel, Hitler baby killing dilemma?

As for the A-plot, it mostly involves Deathloks, as the sub-title no doubt alerted you. The collection opens with Uncanny X-Force #5.1 (which, defying numerical norms, is placed before Uncanny X-Force #5. Why? Because Marvel, that's why).

This original round of ".1" issues were meant as good jumping-on points, but here it's basically just a done-in-one that introduces the characters (not that they really need it; Fantomex is the most obscure member of the cast, and Wolverine and Deadpool are among the best-known Marvel characters), and their mission: Secretly killing people.

The plot? Wolverine's enemy Lady Deathstrike has assembled a new group of Reavers (mutant-hating cyborgs) and they are planning to strike the X-Men's homeland, Utopia. X-Force preemptively strikes. Violence ensues.

Albuquerque

That story is drawn by Rafael Albuquerque who does a damn fine job. Unfortunately, he does not redesign Deathstrike at all, and she still looks like she did in the 1990s and in that dumb cartoon. Albuquerque draws her nicely and all, but I just don't understand what she's wearing. Or her head. What is on her head?!

Albuquerque

(By the way, how do her powers work? She must have the strongest fingers in the world).

With that out of the way, the rest of the collection is devoted to the three-issue "Deathlok Nation" story arc, which is simplicity itself. Deathloks from the future, made from superheroes with robot parts attached to 'em instead of just regular old soldier corpses with robot bits attached to 'em, attack Fantomex in order to get at The World and kill the clone of the kid that everyone thinks Fantomex already killed.

So it's kinda like Terminator, except instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's cyborg Marvel heroes, including Deathlok-ed versions of the Uncanny X-Forcers. Also, the "real" Deathlok, calling himself "Deathlok Prime," shows up to team-up with X-Force. They fight in Fantomex's house, they fight in the Alps and, ultimately, they fight in The World, where the various members of X-Force break up into teams to further their emotional conflicts while fighting Deathloks.

The artwork, penciled by Esad Ribic and inked by John Lucas, is superb throughout. They're given all kinds of crazy shit to draw, but they manage to make The World and it's craziness look realistic and threatening, but also airy and roomy. Additionally, they do really great work with good old-fashioned motion lines, denoting action.

Ribic and Lucas

Ribic and Lucas again

I forgot how much I like the X-Force costumes the characterss wear, too. Deadpool especially looks much better in the muted gray costume than the red one he usually wears. And I like how this version of Fantomex basically just ooks like G.I. Joe bad guy Firefly with a trench coat on.

Now hopefully I can continue to follow this storyline through the end of Remender's run on this title, without getting lost or side-tracked into a reboot...

Jimmy Gownley's Cerebus

In Jimmy Gownley's The Dumbest Idea Ever, a new memoir comic in which the Amelia Rules cartoonist recounts how he first became a comic book creator, Gownley recounts his first trip to a comic book store. It's a pretty great sequence that should ring true to any comics lover of a certain age who remembers the first time they discovered there were these places where they sold nothing but comics. Most of the titles and covers featured in the scene are made-up ones, with the exception of Dave Sim and Gerhard's Cerebus. You know, the super weird comic about a donkey.

Cerebus makes an encore appearance later in the book as well, when young Jimmy Gownley is feeling a little lost and, late one night, he realizes what the existence of Cerebus signifies.

You know, that you can make, publish and sell your own comic books. (By the way, I have a review of Dumbest Idea Ever here).

Review: Wolverine and The X-Men Vol. 4

Wow, I guess the 12-issue Avengers Vs. X-Men series must have lasted a lot longer than I expected, given that the this five-issue collection is the second straight collection of this title tying directly into the line-wide crossover story.

As with Vol. 3, the Avengers Vs. X-Men series plot more-or-less takes over the book, with the issues collected herein consisting mostly of done-in-one stories that take place in and around plot beats from AvX, with writer Jason Aaron striving valiantly to move his own sub-plots forward (and sometimes succeeding quite admirably). There are three art teams involved in these issues, with pencil artist Jorge Molina and inker Norman Lee handling three issues, pencil artist Chris Bachalo and a trio of inkers handling a single issue, and Michael Allred coming aboard for a single issue in order to draw the collection's highlight, a story featuring his co-creation Doop.

In the first issue, one of the Molina issue, the Phoenix-possessed Colossus arrives at the Jean Grey School in order to ask headmistress Kitty Pryde, who has been mostly sitting out the conflict in order to keep the school going and the kids safe, out on a date. She complies, in order to try and talk her old friend (and old boyfriend) out of the mad god/cosmic supervillain territory he and the rest of the "Phoenix Five" are quickly edging into (At this point in the main storyline, they've started imprisoning defeated Avengers in an infernal prison camp, and many of the other X-Men are starting to have serious doubts about siding with Cyclops over the Avengers, here dramatized by series regular Iceman walking out on on the crazy mutants). I like the way Molina draws Iceman...he's still a spiky, but not as spikey, and he's not wearing those cargo shorts.

The date doesn't go well, and Colossus is ready to destroy Kitty's school, when its few feeble defenders—Kitty, Deathlok, Lockheed, Husk, Toad, Doop and Krakoa—convince Colossus to leave them alone for now via their apparently willingness to die for the school. Colossus is sad.

Molina draws the second issue as well, a pause-before-the-storm one in which the remaining teens from Utopia enroll at the school, Avengers Iron Man and Iron Fist consult with Beast and Broo about how to deal with the Phoenix Force, Charles Xavier shows up to look over the grounds and briefly deal with Quentin Quire, and then Xavier, Angel, Beast, Wolverine, Rachel Grey and Iceman go off for their final battle with the be-Phoneixed Cyclops and company.

Bachalo then shows up to draw a Hellfire Kids issue, which basically shows what they've been up to now that mutants are ruling their world with their nearly omnipotent powers. While their leader Kade Kilgore tells the readers the story of how he took over the Hellfire Club and went into the business of building and selling Sentinels, Cyclops and company show up, have some words with Kilgore and throw the kids into an adult prison, where they wait out the current status quo, and actually fare much better than one might expect a handful of little kids to.

That's followed by the Allred issue. Entitled "Wolverine's Secret Weapon," it's the story of how Wolverine convinced Doop to join the teaching staff at the school—a three-page sequence in which Doop has Wolverine to try and keep up with him. When Wolvie complies with all of his requests, no matter how difficult and/or embarassing, Doop takes on the position of the Jean Grey shcool's fixer. Doop, it turns out, is the best there is and what he does, and what he doesn't not only isn't very pretty, it's incredibly weird.

So Doop violently deals with hate groups and monsters, seduces local city council officials—male and female—to change their votes, has scary-rough sex with Warbird, out-metals Satan in a "Devil to Georgia"-like guitar duel, competes on the Avengers roller derby team (on his hands, if you're wondering where he puts his skates), baseball bats the laptops of bloggers bad mouthing the school, time-travelling to safeguard Charles Xavier's ancestors, and so on.

It's the kind of craziness Aaron excels at—"We're trapped in a cave in Dimension ZZZ, surrounded by hordes of bloodthirsty robo-barbarians, with nothing between us but a broken sword, a rubber chicken with nails in it, and a gun that shoots bees"—without even the porous filter of a semi-serious X-Men comic tamping down on any of it. Allred is, of course, game for anything, and this issue, in which every panel or four switches to a different scene of madness, gives hima whole bunch of crazy shit to draw...and a pretty big chunk of the Marvel Universe, actually. In addition to the Wolverine and The X-Men cast, he also gets to draw such unexpected characters as Howard The Duck, Tigra, She-Hulk, Gambit, Man-Thing, Deadpool, Sabretooth and more.

It's pretty much the best thing ever. (And a welcome break from the increasingly serious events of Avengers Vs. X-Men.)

The final book returns to the AVX plot, and to Molina and Lee and artists. Aaron jumps back and forth between the final battle between the Cyclops and Pretty Much Everyone Else, the one that ultimately ends with (spoiler!) Cyclops killing Xavier and the Phoenix Force being diffused to restart the mutant race, just as Cyclops had hoped it would, and between the events at the school. These include Husk leaving the teaching staff, Idie acting strangely, and Broo trying to get to the bottom of Idie's strange behavior, which exposes a new and weird plot by those Hellfire kids. In a particularly affecting scene, the Stepford Cuckoos, monitoring the battle via Cerebra, see so many new lights appearing, as the Phoenix Force starts making new mutants again, that no one notices that one light goes out.

As with the previous collection of the series, I'm curious how this reads to someone not following Avengers Vs. X-Men, as so much of it is written as direct reactions (The Doop issue aside, which is the only issue that doesn't refer to AVX at all). Aaron does a pretty good job of writing a long string of tie-ins without completely surrendering his own plotting in service to what it's tie-ing in to, however. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that Aaron co-plotted AVX and wrote portions of it, and thus knew it inside and outside well enough to intertwine it with the events of his own book.

DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #5: Just one more issue, and then we can forget this ever happened.

This week DC shipped the penultimate issue of their big event series pitting some of the most powerful characters from two alternate universes against one another, in the pages of Forever Evil #6. It wasn't very good, nor was it terribly interesting in any way. But it could have been worse. It could have been the penultimate issue of another DC event series pitting some of the most powerful characters from two alternate universes agains one another: It could have been DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #5.

As you'll recall if you're reading the series, or just reading my series of blog posts about the series, one-time court jester and created-for-the-dumb-cartoon-series comic relief character Orko, tired of being laughed at, became an all-powerful monster wizard guy, so powerful that Eternian Big Bad Skeletor now works for him.

He sent Skeletor to the DC Universe, specifically, Earth-New 52, where Skeletor enlisted teh aid of Black Alice, who has yet to use any magical powers of her own, or do much aside from occasionally sass Skeletor. They set up a bunch of magical "siphons," their intent being to drain this world of all its magical energy, destroying it in the process.

To keep those pesky superheroes in the Justice League out of the way, Skeletor had them all possessed (except Batman, who could not be possessed, because he's Batman) and sent them after He-Man, He-Man's mom, Teela and Evil-Lyn, who have journeyed to the DCU to stop Skeletor. At one point, He-Man impaled Superman on his magic sword, causing the latter to disappear and, because everyone in this book is an idiot, they assumed that meant He-Man murdered Superman.

The remaining Justice Leaguers, plus some of the guys from Justice League of America, the team in a book that DC launched exclusively to tie-in to "Trinity War" and Forever Evil and are will therefore soon cancel in a few months, go after all the good guy Eternians, which now include Man-At-Arms, Stratos, Roboto and Battle Cat, who have arrived looking for He-Man and friends.

Then the members of the third Justice League, the Justice League Dark, show up with Batman and break up that fight.

And, that's pretty much where plotter Keith Giffen, scripter Tony Bedard, artist Pop Mhan and the pair of colorists splitting up random chunks of the book to work on—Veronica Gandini and Tony Avina—left off.

So once more into the breach, dear friends...

COVER:

This is the first cover of the series not drawn be Ed Benes, an artist who I think I've made pretty clear in the past that I am not a fan of. This one is drawn by Bernard Chang, who is a pretty good artist, but it's hard to tell based on this terrible cover. Maybe this project is just cursed?

Just as this storyline has completely squandered the scores and scores of characters and settings that combining not one, but two fictional shared-setting universes have to offer, this cover ignores the 20 or so characters involved to present just two: Superman and, well, you might not be able to tell, but his name on the cover should serve as a pretty good clue that the abstract, vaguely skull-like shape in the background is Skeletor.

Superman is being beset by monstrous versions of Trollans, the native inhabitants of Trolla, Orko's homeworld in yet another dimension. The colorist, whom I think is Chang himself as no one else is credited, saw fit to make their blue skin and the red lightning auras about them almost the exact same shade as the red and blue of Superman's costume, so it all blends together into one big, ugly mess...with a little neon yellow trying to peek around the text and figures in the background.

"Trapped in Skeletor's Grasp," the cover says, despite the fact that, as we saw last issue, Superman is actually on Trolla now, trapped in Orko's grasp.

PAGES 1-4:

He-Man, his mom, Teela and Evil-Lynn arrive at the bottom of a rocky hill dotted with bare trees, the top of which is occupied by a shack that the caption tells us is The House of Secrets, which is where Skeletor has been holed up for much of the last four issues.

Inside, Skeletor is pretty happy about how well the magic power siphons are working—for evidence, we see that it has made Black Alice's legs and one of her arms very, very skinny. Black Alice is kinda sorta magic, I think—at the very least, she has a super-power which allows her to temporarily steal and use the magic powers of magic-powered DC characters—although I don't think that's been mentioned at all in this series yet.

Orko appears as a wall of fire with angry eyes to tell Skeletor about He-Man and mom are closing in, and, rather than leaving it to Skeletor to handle, Orko casts a spell that is variation of the one Skeletor used "to enslave the so-called 'Justice League'...Of course, my version is much bigger."

PAGES 5-7:

To emphasize how much bigger, we see the planet earth in long shot, surrounded by a red aura, while big, bolts of red lightning emanate from somewhere in North America, streaking all over the globe.

Meanwhile, in Gotham City, Man-At-Arms and his posse are staring down Batman and his posse, having apparently agreed to come to team-up since we've seen them last. "Then it is decided, Man-Of-Bats, we join forces against Skeletor."

Batman politely declines to mention that Man-Of-Bats is a different guy in a bat costume.

Suddenly, Constantine shouts "INCOMING! and FWOOSHes a spell to protect them from "some bad mojo" that "felt like mind-control, but on a massive" scale.

A message "squarks" in Batman's cowl: "To all who heed the master's call: Proceed to the encolsed coordinates. The Master's enemies must die!."

"That's the Justice League's global emergency frequency," Batman says, "There's o telling how many heroes might be receiving this." Really, notorious control freak Batman who builds secret backdoors into all Justice League technology and operating systems? No way of telling how many heroes are on the global emergency frequency?

Page seven is broken into an eight-panel grid, each showing a different meta-human, none of whom I think would be on that emergency frequency, but, as Constantine says, that spell will likely bring "every bleedin' metahuman" to the House of Secrets. Those shown here, each with glowing red eyes indicating they are being mind-controlled, are Black Canary, Killer Croc, Black Manta, Firestorm, Cheetha, OMAC, Blue Beetle and Orion.

PAGES 8-12:

He-Man and Evil-Lyn storm the front gate of the House, and while Evil-Lyn attempts to betray He-Man, Skeletor stops her, and immediately launches into a completely un-provoked three-page expository story, recounting some of the events from that terrible six-issue He-Man and the Masters of The Universe mini-series DC published a while back.

It goes like this. A long time ago Hordak killed his dad, Hordak Prime, and took his skull, which became a super-powerful, super-evil artifact. Skeletor used it to take over Eternia in the previously mentioned shitty miniseries, and Orko had attempted to stop him by destroying the skull, but, because Orko sucks and his spells always backfire, he instead absorbed all the evil power in the skull. "All his life Orko wanted to be a great wizard," Skeletor says, "Now he is a mad god."

Apparently a very distracted mad god, as he was just monitoring the situation in the House of Secrets, but now doesn't seem to be listening while Skeletor plots with He-Man to stop him.

PAGES 13-15:

Maybe he was busy playing with Superman, who he has held in unbreakable magical bonds on Trolla. He messes with Superman a bit, in the process showing Superman the evil magic skull and wear he keeps it. I wonder if that will come back to bite Orko in the ass later..?

That's a rhetorical question. Orko doens't have an ass.

PAGES 16-19:

Batman and Man-At-Arms' team are now at the bottom of the hill that He-Man and his gang were at the bottom of on the first page.

When Man-At-Arms, shown clutching an Eternian dildo gun, asks about the rather-humble House—on Eternia, after all, Skeletor hung out in a mountain fortress called Snake Mountain, with a giant snake carved into it, a waterfall pouring out of its jaws like it was eternally vomiting— Batman tells him "It's a dimensional nexus—undetectable by technological means. The Secret Six used to hide out here."

This is interesting because this is the first mention, so far as I know, of a Secret Six in the New 52 continuity. And this story does take place in the New 52 continuity, as the costuming is a pretty dead giveaway, as is the presence and make-up of the Justice League of America and The Justice League Dark.

The thing is, I don't think the Secret Six existed in The New 52. The team changed quite a bit over the years, but it was originally formed by Lex Luthor during the events leading up to the out-of-continuity Infinite Crisis, in the also-out-of-continuity Villains United.

Some of the original Six—Deadshot, Catman, Scandal Savage, Ragdoll II, Cheshire and a Parademon—still exist. Of those, I think Catman is the only one who has yet to be re-introduced into the New 52, but, of the others, they all seem pretty different (I've seen Ragdoll pop up in Arkham War, and there was a DC Comics Presents arc about Vandal Savage and a daughter; was it Scandal?). In fact, I'm not sure that the Parademon could be on the team, since they seem to be robots now...? (At least, The Justice League sure slaughtered them like they were completely artificial creatures).

The line-up rotated pretty much constantly, with only Deadshot, Catman, Scandal and Ragdoll sticking around for each incarnation, but a few of 'em don't seem to have existed yet—Jeanette, Knockout—and a few of them have been introduced, but in forms that it's difficult to imagine them in that particular team (Bane, for example).

And, of course, all of their adventures in Secret Six and the Villains United stories were tied into DC continuity no longer existent, so pretty much all of those events would need to be chucked out if the Secret Six did still exist in The New 52.

I imagine this was just a mistake on Giffen and Bedard's part though. Otherwise, the Secret Six, like The Justice League (only less so, given their much shorter life span), would be one of those teams wherein they supposedly had all the same adventures, just radically different, the differences of which DC doesn't know and won't tell readers.

Anyway, Skeletor meets them all at the door, and between he and Queen He-Man's Mom they convince the newcomers that they all need to team-up to fight Orko and save the DC Universe...and that before they got there, Skeletor snuck He-Man into Trolla to try and free Superman.

PAGE 20:

This is just a short, three-panel page, in which Deadman interrupts everyone to tell them that "pretty much everybody" is in the process of attacking the House.

The figures are in long-shot in the second panel, so it's sort of difficult to make some of them out, aside from those already shown as being mind-controlled, like Black Manta, Blue Beetle, Killer Croc, OMAC, Cheetah and Firestorm. There's also Batgirl, Bane, Hawkman, Deahstroke, a second, female Firestorm (New 52 Firehawk?) and...hey, whose that guy in purple with green hair...? That's not...

Oh shit, it is! That's The Joker, completely with his New 52 sliced-off face—the one I thought The Joker's Daughter was currently wearing on her face—like a mask.

(In fact, there was an ad for that gross Joker's Daughter one-shot in this very comic. Did you guys check that out? She eats The Joker's long-ago flayed-off face that she finds in the sewer on the very first page.)

Why, it's the first in-continuity appearance of The Joker since Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo and company's "Death of The Family"...!

That's gotta be an art mistake, right?

Right below that panel revealing that The Joker has returned not in the pages of Batman or Forever Evil, but in DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #5, are printed what, by the time I finished this issue, were among my three favorite words in the English language:

Review: Vengeance of The Moon Knight Vol. 2: Killed, Not Dead

The second trade collection of the Gregg Hurwitz-written Moon Knight monthly, Vengeance of The Moon Knight is on much surer footing than the previous one, with shorter, sharper stories, each of which features at least one more-popular-than-The Moon Knight guest star, and each of which pull a little further back from the Moon Knight Is A Bloodthirsty Lunatic Trying Not To Kill plot line.

If the first six issues of the series made for a tradepaperback of Moon Knight comic books about other Moon Knight comics, than the next four issues, collected in this second volume, were Moon Knight comic books about action adventure in the Marvel Universe, a marked improvement (I think that’s one of the reasons the Bendis/Maleev Moon Knight comic was more palatable to me than the first Vengeance of...; it was a Moon Knight comic about the Marvel Universe setting as seen through one character’s experiences, and not a Moon Knight comic about old Moon Knight comics).

I think it also helps that here Hurwitz is paired with two different artists than his first partner, both with clearer, cleaner styles, and both markedly better about some of the basics of telling stories in comic book form. At least this time out, I’ve seen clear shots of some of the character’s faces, and could now identify Samuels and Frenchie on sight. Still not sure about Marc Spector/Jake Lockley, Moon Knight’s secret identity/-ies. There’s only two panels in this featuring his face, I think. (Which is better and more panel-time than his girlfriend, what’s-her-face, gets; she only appears in a single panel, as a pair of naked legs rising out of the soapy water of a bubble-bath, and a come-on line of dialogue, coming from a head somewhere off-panel.)

The first two issues, which tell the story from which the collection takes its sub-title, are drawn by Tan Eng Huat. His style has changed quite a bit since editor Andrew Helfer introduced him the North American direct market in one of the (many) doomed Doom Patrol launches way back in 2001, but even as he grows more experienced and comfortable drawing superheroes and tuning his style closer to the standard superhero wave-length, his artwork retains a sense of weird, awkward energy.

The guest-star in these Huat issues is Deadpool, and he’s taken a contract on a very old man dying of stage four colon cancer in a hospital; the lady who hired Deadpool wants the man killed violently, not dying peacefully, in revenge for his ordering the kidnapping and murder of her child (Thus the story and collection title, "Killed, Not Dead"). It is something this terrible very old man has done a lot of over the years and, in fact, he has a kidnapped child waiting to be ordered killed as the story takes place.

In traditional Marvel style, Moon Knight and Deadpool meet and fight. But instead of teaming up, they simply continue to fight. Oddly, neither character seems to know who the other is. Neither are at the top of the heap of Marvel’s character hierarchy obviously, but they’re not the most obscure characters either. I guess I just assumed every character had met every other character, by this point.

Huat

The art’s a little weird here, with some of the action not quite working right, and Deadpool somehow managing to beat blood out of The Moon Knight’s face without getting any on the face mask it must have come through, but it’s a better-looking couple of issues than those in the first volume, and one that manage to retain the same level of darkness and gritty, over-lined work.

The last two issues are drawn by Juan Jose Ryp, a better artist still. His is the smoothest, cleanest art we’ve seen on the series so far, and he has the strongest, clearest figurework and design of the three. His The Moon Knight gives readers the best look at The Moon Knight and his new, over-armored The Moon Knight costume we’ve seen (and really the ninth issue of an ongoing monthly series probably isn’t the ideal time to have a good artist start introducing the character visually).

Ryp

Ryp also uses a lot of lines, including that almost pointillist form of cross-hatching he does to imply texture and shadow. But his lines are careful, giving every panel a really remarkable amount of detail and breakground, without subsuming the figures into it. A Hurwitz/Ryp series would have really been something to see.

Ryp draws two done-in-one issues. The first of these is a Spider-Man team-up (where the cover comes from), and the second is a Secret Avengers team-up (Moon Knight joined the Secret Avengers, after all; this issue opens with former Captain America Commander Rogers, who had taken over Norman Osborn’s job as Boss Of All Superheroes after the events of Siege, and takes us along on a mission with them, as seen through The Moon Knight’s eyes and read through his narration.

The Spider-Man team-up has the pair trying to stop a robbery by The Sandman, who makes his escape in a gigantic form. I can’t think of an artist better suited to drawing the Sandman, a character literally made up of the little, grainy dots Ryp likes to dapple his work with, and there is just scene after scene of Sandman moving like a sandstorm and reforming. There’s a particularly cool scene set in a museum, where the heroes quietly stalk through taxidermied animals, seeking the hidden and disguised Sandman.

For the Secret Avengers issue, we see Rogers approach Moon Knight, then flashforward to a mission briefing and an attempt to rescue hostages from modern pirates, the leader of which is armed with a pair of super-weapons, one of which they were expecting and one of which they were not. Unlike the later Warren Ellis-written Secret Avengers stories, there’ s no science or espionage really needed on this mission, and nothing clever about its construction or what it asks of the heroes. They basically function as a superhero SWAT or SEAL team, dropping onto the boat and non-lethally but extremely violently dealing with the pirates.

This gives us an opportunity to see Ryp draw not only The Moon Knight and Commander Rogers, but also an Ant-Man, Beast, Valkyrie, War Machine and Black Widow.

Ryp

Ryp comes up with a nice solution to the zipped or unzipped question when it comes to Black Widow, first drawing her almost completely unzipped, but in the act of zipping up, as she will remain for the rest of the story. Cake and eating!

There’s not a whole lot to this aside from a big fight scene, of course, but it sure is a well-drawn fight scene, and The Moon Knight takes a weird shot with a bow and arrow that I didn’t think anyone in the Marvel Universe outside of Hawkeye would or should be able to make.

When speculating on possible reasons for the relative not-very-good-ness of Vengeance of The Moon Knight Vol. 1, I mentioned that it launched as part of the “Dark Reign” status quo, and thus had to tie itself into the overall Marvel Universe mega-story of the time. Here, “The Heroic Age” branding initiative started during the Deadpool team-up.

Like “Dark Reign,” “The Heroic Age” wasn’t a storyline so much as a branding initiative, a temporary dawn after the dark, stormy night of the previous cycle of crossover stories. During "The Heroic Age," Captain America Steve Rogers came back to life, helped the heroes defeat the villains that were running the world, and then became The Boss, replacing Osborn (who had replaced Iron Man, who had replaced Maria Hill, who had replaced Nick Fury I). The idea was to get back to basics, back to business-as-usual super-heroing, which is why I think we see a story as simple as Spider-Man and Moon Knight team-up to stop The Sandman from stealing a diamond, or even The Secret Avengers beat the shit out of some bad guys and that's the whole story kind of story.

Meanwhile...

Well this doesn't happen very often.

Through a very particular confluence of events—publisher release dates, space available in publications, etc—this week I actually have an article or post of some kind in all four of the places that articles or posts of some kind from me can possibly run. I don't actually remember the last time that's happened.

So, for a review of 47 Ronin, the upcoming hardcover collection of the Dark Horse miniseries adapting the classic Japanese national legend by writer Mike Richardson and artist Stan Sakai, please see Good Comics For Kids.

For a short review of Down. Set. Fight!, an original graphic novel from Oni Press with a hard-to-describe-in-a-sentence-or-two premise by the writing team of Chad Bowers and Chris Sims (whoever that is) and artist Scott Kowalchuk, please see Las Vegas Weekly.

I was a little leery going into that book because it has a little to do with sports, of which I am completely ignorant, and it was written by fellow comics blogger and writer-about-comics-on-the-Internet Chris Sims, who I didn't want to criticize, should it have turned out to be a lame comic. I had nothing to worry about, though, as it was pretty awesome, like some long-lost 1980s action movie about mascot-fighting. Kowalchuk's art is fantastic, and grounds what could very easily been a goofy comic in so much realism the the joke is semi-deadpan in delivery. I was really somewhat in awe of all the various mascots for fictionalized sports teams that are created for the story—they must number in the dozens by the end of the book—and as I have no idea how Sims finds the time to write so much about comics for the Internet while also having time to co-write comics like this...especially since I know from twitter that dude spends a lot of time playing video games and watching professional wrestling.

For the latest—and second-to-last!—installment of "Assessor Evil," my spoiler-filled close-reading of Forever Evil, please visit ComicsAlliance.

This issue finally reveals who the person in the hood is—a revelation which will make one wonder why the Syndicate decided to secure him in that fashion, instead of doing something a little more evil, like, I don't know, cutting out his tongue or fusing his lips together with a heat-vision (Also, why is Ultraman so scared of him? Ultraman totally took out a guy with a similar power-set in like four panels a few issues ago).

 The book does not reveal the final fate of Nightwing, however, as the solicitation said it would, nor do we see his last stand, as the cover promises.

If you haven't liked the first five issues, you probably won't like this issue either, as all of the problems from the pervious issues are present here. (For another take on the issue, and the series, check out Tom Spurgeon's review. In addition to being a good writer and really nailing down various aspects of the series in a very short number of paragraphs, Spurgeon's piece is a refreshing one because the view he brings to the material is from the outside looking in at the swamp, rather than being neck deep in the muck of this stuff).

And then, finally, for reviews of the first issues of two new Marvel series featuring characters whose names begins with the letter and M and who both have snazzy new costumes, please visit Robot 6, where you'll find my reviews of Moon Knight #1 and Magneto #1. They're both pretty good, although Moon Knight is the better of the two, and seems poised to be the bigger hit and receive the critical darling status, perhaps in large part because Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey are given a particularly hard problem to solve: Making Moon Knight work (I know from past posts here that a few of you are big Moon Knight fans, so I'm eager to hear what you thought of this take). I've since read a few other people's reviews of Moon Knight #1, and I think Andrew Wheeler's is probably the best of the bunch—he says a lot without using a lot of words, something I'm still not so hot at doing myself.

And that's all I got tonight, but that should be more than enough to tide you over until tomorrow night.

Comic shop comics: March 5

Afterlife With Archie #4 (Archie Comics) This installment of the shockingly adult-oriented and genuinely scary zombiepocalpse-in-Riverdale comic by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla (who colors the whole affair in black, orange and blue) contains a pretty ballsy scene in which Cheryl Blossom and her brother Jason sure sound like they're talking about his incestuous lust for her, and something I was 100% positive I'd never, ever see in an Archie comic: Archie Andrews beating his father to death with a baseball bat while panting, crying and saying "I love you."

Oddly though, the most affecting scene was the one in which Archie's dog heroically tries to hold off the zombie-fied Hotdog so Archie can escape. That second-to-last panel on the page above, where Francavilla captures that look in the dog's eyes? That seriously broke my heart.

Oh, and hey, Archie Andrews said "dammit." I didn't even notice until just now, what with all the head bashing in and all.

Four issues and almost 90 pages in, I still can't believe this book actually exists. But damn am I glad it does.

Finally, I know I complain about the $3.99 price of Marvel and—increasingly—DC Comics, but here's a pretty good example of why I find the prcicing outrageous rather than an acceptable industry practice. This comic features a 23-page story completely uninterrupted by ads, and a six-page black-and-white reprint, and fancy cover stock, and it costs $2.99. Meanwhile, Marvel is charging $4 for a 19-page Moon Knight comic.

Forever Evil: Arkham War #6 (DC Comics) This miniseries tie-in to the Forever Evil series featuring many of the Bat-villains has apparently turned out to be either much more popular than anticipated, or much less popular than anticipated, based on my own shopping experiences.

I never added it to my pull-list, but was just buying a copy off the rack each month. There were always plenty of copies available, and there are still plenty of copies available of the first four issues, which my local comic shop has in a special section of rack space, with all the other Forever Evil books.

But last month, when I went to look for the fifth issue on its day of release, it was all sold out, and they never got any more in to rack alongside the handfuls of issues #1-4 on the Forever Evil display.

So I guess that means either the series is so popular that it sold out and my shop wasn't able to get enough to meet demand, or it was so unpopular that they adjusted their orders down from the too-optimistic ordering of the first two-thirds of the series, so as to avoid having 6-10 issues of it on the rack as they did with the first few issues. I don't know which, but it almost certainly means one of those things.

It also means that I missed the fifth issue. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but it doesn't seem to have been very pivotal, as this was easy enough to follow. Bane is pretty badly beaten up at the beginning of this issue, and has taken off his homemade Batman costume in order to solder his many wounds shut with a blowtorch while standing in a pool of his own blood (I'm not a doctor, but I don't think that's really the best way to deal with flesh wounds.

Oh, and all of the Arkhamites are drawn by artist Scot Eaton with the same big, goofy, Incredible Hulk-like proportions that he has given Bane. They are all amped-up on Venom, the apparently helium and gamma radiation-derived super-steroid that gives Bane his ridiculous-looking proportions. (If that plot point sounds familiar, then you may have had the misfortune of reading Batman: The Dark Knight Vol. 1—Knight Terrors by David Finch and Paul Jenkins, in which Bane himself had given all of the Arkham inmates a version of his Venom (In that story, he was working with The Scarecrow, who concocted a hybrid of Venom and a fear serum for Bane; here Bane and Scarecrow are bitter enemies, and Bane seems shocked to discover that Scarecrow has somehow worked out how to make Venom, although their previous collaboration wasn't mentioned. That was, after all, months ago. The New 52 continuity is almost two-and-a-half years old now! Who can keep track of all that?).

During the two months or so since I read an issue of this, it was also revealed in the pages of Forever Evil that the Crime Syndicate attacked earth less than two days ago, which means everything that has happened in this series—which, remember, includes Gotham completely spiraling out of all control of the the police department and other city and state institutions, and the city being carved-up and assigned to various villains ala 1999 "No Man's Land" event—has happened in less than two days.

This joins "Hey, what the heck is Batgirl, who was in Forever Evil #1, and the other Gotham City heroes doing while this is going on?" as something that bugs me about this series.

So anyway, the Venomized Arkhamites attack Blackgate Prison, and Bane, now once more dressed like Bane, and a Talon fight back (Bane defeats Clayface, who, remember, is sentient Clay, by punching him really hard; I'm not sure that's "realistic"). Man-Bat swoops in and picks up Bane, and they all retreat to Arkham Asylum, where they plan to beat Bane to death. He fights them all in a six-page action sequence, one third of which is a two-page splash (the second in this 20-page comic book featuring the Venomized Arkhamites!) that reminded me of Abhay's review of the first five issues of this series: "It’s a lot of pages of all the Batman villains posing at each other (which, with only a few exceptions, is what mainstream comics call “fight scenes”)."

Bane beats them all up (but doesn't kill any of 'em, I bet!), which he explains while beating them up is because they're bodies are reacting negatively to the Venom, which they haven't had the lifetime to master that Bane has had, I think...?

Then suddenly The Penguin appears slow-clapping with a bunch of armed guys in mardi gras masks, and he offers Bane a deal: He'll give Bane his help and logistical experience in exchange for all the unconscious Arkhamites. Bane agrees, as long as he gets to keep The Scarecrow.

The end!

But wait, how exactly does this lead into Forever Evil #7? Because I'm pretty sure this issue is supposed to lead into Forever Evil #7:

FOREVER EVIL: ARKHAM WAR #6
Written by PETER J. TOMASI
Art by SCOT EATON and JAIME MENDOZA
Cover by JASON FABOK
...
On sale MARCH 5 • 32 pg, FC, 6 of 6, $2.99 US • RATED T
...
The final battle for Gotham City starts now! The Scarecrow has unleashed a mutated army of Arkham’s worst killers, and only Bane can stop them! It all leads into FOREVER EVIL #7!

Huh. Well, it was also supposed to be a six-issue series, but it says "NEXT: BLACK DAWN!" in the last panel. Which I guess is referring to April's extra-sized one-shot follow-up Forever Evil Aftermath: Batman Vs. Bane #1, by the Peter Tomasi, Scott Eaton and Jaime Mendoza creative team that gave us Arkham War, unless DC later decided to turn that into Arkham War #7.

Scooby-Doo Team-Up #3 (DC) Saying this is the best issue of the series so far probably doesn't carry that much weight, as there have only been three issues, but it is the best issue of the series so far. In the third consecutive Batman/Scooby team-up, the Dynamic Duo and Mystery Inc are in the process of busting Bat-villains False Face and The Spook (the latter of whom is a minor rogue who uses trickery to pretend to be a ghost, and thus basically is a Scooby-Doo villain; I believe he was last seen in continuity when Damian Wayne beheaded him with a sword at the start of Grant Morrison's Batman run) when who should show up but Bat-Mite.

Thanks to his Fifth Dimensional imp magic, there is quite literally a gag per panel in this book from the point he shows up on (mid-way through page 2), but it's not simply Bat-Mite turning everyone into babies or ponies for the fun of it. He's soon joined by Scooby-Mite, who is to Scooby-Doo as Bat-Mite is to Batman.

Hilarity ensues.

No, seriously, it does. I know people usually say "hilarity ensues" sarcastically, or with at least a hint of irony, but I'm not kidding. This is hilarious, and packed with jokes, several of which are references for grown-up Batman and Scooby-Doo fans.

Artist Dario Brizuela once again does an incredible job of drawing the Scooby-Doo cast completely on-model, while modulating the Batman characters just so, so that they appear to be themselves but also to belong in the same space as Scooby and the gang. And, it should go without saying, that here he gets to draw all sorts of crazy stuff: Velma and Daphne in Batgirl costumes, Steam Punk Scooby-Doo, zombies eating Scooby Snacks, etc. (That said, he draws some terrible lions; I'm assuming they are supposed to be particular lions from a particular episode of a Scooby-Doo cartoon I can't remember, given how un-lion-like they look).

Anyway, if you've been at all curious about this series but have yet to give it a shot, this is definitely the issue to sample.

She-Hulk #2 (Marvel Entertainment) In the second issue of the surprisingly good new She-Hulk series, writer Charles Soule devotes himself to some world-building—or at least setting and premise building—as Shulkie gets a tour of her new office space (in a building owned by an ex-mutant who only rents office space to people with super-powers), hires a mysterious assistant with some weird shit going on (including always having a monkey in her presence) and goes out for drinks—so many drinks—with Patsy Walker, Hellcat. Patsy gets wasted on margaritas—seven of 'em—and then somehow convinces She-Hulk to suit up with her and go bust an AIM base she knows about. Once again, robots are fought (Or at least mechanized battle suits; close enough).

As was the case with the previous issue, the main attraction for me is the presence of Javier Pulio, brightly, brilliantly colored by Munsta Vicente, whose stripped-down, simplified work is a joy to behold. There are only 20 pages in this issue, but it feels and reads like a lot more, thanks to Pulido's many-panels per page, and the amount of visual content in each (This issue probably took me almost twice as long to read as the 24-page Forever Evil #6, for example, and that was with having to occasionally pause to figure out what David Finch was drawing exactly in FE).

There's a pretty great use of a two-page splash in this issue, maybe the best use of a splash I've read since the Black Canary issue of All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder (at least that I can remember off the top of my head).

I'm not sure how I feel about She-Hulk's new costume, as it includes both an S and an H on it, and generally costumes with two letters rather than one on them are bad. But these letters are pretty far apart, and somewhat subtle in their integration into the design (at least compared to, say, the "GF" in Geo-Force's green and yellow costume).

Pulido draws Hellcat's classic costume quite well, and there are some really nice panels of her in action, including one in which she climbs and flips her way up to the third story of a building, and another where she lands cat-like on the floor, the lines of her legs drawn slightly wiggly to denote movement (and, perhaps incidentally, suggesting a cartoon cat with its hair raised).