November picks

November is almost here, so it's time to see what is on offer for those of us who just like to sit indoors and read comic books while the raining is pouring down on the poor souls lost in the fall darkness. Unfortunately, November is a pretty bad month for so-conservative-it's-almost-fascist Marvel zombies such as myself. In fact, I only managed to find three books that I find vaguely interesting, and none of them are really must-buys. I guess I'll be catching up on some of the stuff I haven't read yet like Annihilation and Iron Fist this month.

The first book is Avengers: The Initiative Vol. 2. I recently reviewed the first book in this series, and if the second book keeps up the quality while answering some of the questions asked in the first book, it should be pretty good.

Young X-Men Vol. 1: Final Genesis will be a try-out for me. Marvel has released a lot of titles featuring young and original characters in the last couple of years, Avengers: The Initiative being an example of this, and I think they've had a pretty good track record so far.

Finally we have X-Men: Legacy - Divided He Stands, which is a tie-in to Messiah Complex, so I guess I'm getting this. Oh God, I'm a sucker for these things...

I should also point out the Daredevil by Frank Miller TPB. Miller's Daredevil is still one of my favorite comic book runs ever, his sense of visual storytelling reached fantastic heights during this run. Too bad that's all gone now... I have the original issues, but those who don't have these in any format should definitely put it high on the list.

To make up for my pitiful ignorance regarding non-Marvel publications, I have asked my friend Michael Lindal to tell about his picks, and here's what he has to say:

Buffy the Vampire Season 8 is of course executive produced and sometimes written by the TV-shows mastermind and Eisner Award winner Joss Whedon. It’s the official continuation of the show and is easily one of the most enjoyable reads on the stand at the moment. The third volume is called Wolves at the Gate and is written by Drew Goddard (Buffy, Lost, Cloverfield). Buffy and Dracula go to Japan. And if that doesn’t excite you, then nevermind. There is also a stand-alone story written by Whedon. Series regular Georges Jeanty provides artwork.

Also from Dark Horse is The Umbrella Academy written by Gerard Way with masterful artwork by Gabriel Ba. This highly original and quirky superhero book has been out in trade paperback for a while now, but November sees the release of the insanely tricked out hardcover edition. If you like that sort of thing. Umbrella Academy is worth it.

Warren Ellis has, along with artist Paul Duffield, created a weekly web comic called Freakangels and it’s actually rather good. You can read it on the web for free, but if you like your books to be, well, actual books, then you’re in luck as Avatar is now publishing the first volume. You could also just click here and read it for free.

http://www.freakangels.com/

November is of course the month before Christmas (seriously, it is. Look it up in a calendar or on Wikipedia) and while most record companies are putting out vast numbers of Greatest Hits collections, the comic book publishers are dusting off several classics and releasing them in juicy, tasty hardcovers. This blog might be called tpbreviewer, but sometimes a hardcover is the way to go. Neil Gaiman’s classic Sandman finishes its series of Absolute Editions with the fourth volume. The first three volumes were beautiful, so this should be a safe bet. DC is also releasing a Deluxe Hardcover of Camelot 3000 by Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland, which is a good old fashioned fun comic book. Also from DC is a new hardcover edition of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen. This will probably be the first of many reprints of this masterpiece in the near future. There is even a rumour of a reprint of the insanely gorgeous Absolute Edition sometime next year. So deck the halls and start buying. ‘Tis what Christmas is all about.

Ultimate Power

Collects Ultimate Power #1-9 written by Brian Michael Bendis (#1-3), J. Michael Straczynski (#4-6) and Jeph Loeb (#7-9) and drawn by Greg Land.

This is the first crossover involving all major Ultimate titles and I'm assuming that what happens in this book will have some sort of influence on this year's big Ultimate crossover, Ultimatum, written by Jeph Loeb.

While the FF are minding their own business, the Squadron Supreme shows up out of nowhere and accuses Reed for unleashing a weird organism on their universe that is killing millions of people. They take it out on the street and a big battle ensues, over the course of which Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Ultimates join in. The battle ends as the Squadron escapes with Reed as their prisoner. The Ultimate heroes, not taking no for an answer, follows the Squadron in the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and another big battle ensues. After lots of battling, a Squadron Supreme from a third reality shows up and joins the melee. After lots and lots of battling it is revealed that the culprits behind the whole affair is not Reed Richards, but rather some Emil Burbank (of the Supreme Universe) and Nick Fury and the Ultimate heroes all agree that they didn't really like Mr. Fury in the first place, and so decide to hand him over to the Squadron Supreme to do with him whatever they like. Even though his involvement really didn't have anything to do with the killer organism, but hey, who's to know?

I should note that this book is my first encounter with the Squadron Supreme, and I know absolutely nothing about them. I've read and thoroughly enjoyed the two Ultimates series, and they were basically the reason I decided to get this one.

This book actually starts out pretty well. The story is interesting and draws the reader in as more and more is revealed and the art is absolutely gorgeous, although there's a bit much posing for my tastes. But it seems that as the story progresses, in fact each time a new writer takes over, the story drops a notch or two in quality and the level of the art slowly degrades as well. When we get to Loeb's part, we're pretty much left with a mess of a run of the mill superhero megabattle that's far too confusing to let the actual plot get anywhere. There's page and page of brutes in capes and babes in bikinis taking it out on each other, and all of a sudden it's all over and everybody shake hands and go home. After finishing it I was surprised of how little plot the three writers managed to squeeze into 9 issues of comic books! The art, although showing a drop in quality throughout the book, never gets worse than good, and so the book does have that going for it at least.

With two and a half super star writers (I don't personally consider Loeb a super star writer, but I know the industry does) and a super star artist, I would say that I had expected more. The Ultimates is some of the best Marvel I've read in recent times and, although Ultimates was written by Mark Millar, I guess I expected something similar to that, but Ultimate Power is nothing like Ultimates. It just features the same characters.

So if you're in the mood for a well drawn and really long super hero battle, this might just be the book for you. But if you're looking for something similar to the Ultimates don't bother. In my opinion the story never really gets better than average, and considering the creators, that is a shame.

5/10

Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and the Dying

Collects Criminal Vol. 2 #1-3 written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Sean Phillips. This is a review of the edition published in England by Titan Books, which should be completely identical to the American edition published by Marvel.

In this, the latest addition to Brubaker and Phillips' dark crime series, the reader is offered three tales of death, drugs and desperation intertwined to tell a complete story from the perspectives of three of the people involved. We have the criminal turned boxer, the vet returned from the war and the beautiful drug addict. There are no happy beginnings here so don't expect to see any happy endings either.

The story is set in an unnamed American city in the 70's. The free love and rock'n'roll of the 60's have been replaced with war, drug addiction and depression. There are elements of classic noir here, the guys are tough and the dames are dangerous, but the setting is different from that genre. Brubaker and Phillips basically grabs the themes of noir and injects it into a more modern setting, and you could argue that this is the binding concept of the series. It is a concept that has proven to be a great vessel for telling some really good and touching stories so far, and this time is no exception.

The concept of telling the same story from the different perspectives has been seen before, but in this case it is more a case of telling different parts of the story from different perspectives. This means that there is little overlap, and the individual stories complement each other very well. Once again, Brubaker excels at creating interesting characters that feel real and he seems to have no issues hurling them into desperate situations with no chance of salvation. Compared to the two other books in the series (the second reviewed here), the individual characters seem a bit more shallow and clichèd this time around, the focus seems to be more on the story and how it is told, and it may also be a consequence of less pages per character due to there being three main characters. But this is more a testament of how good the previous books are, because Brubaker again manages to bring forth characters that are many times more interesting that what you'll see in most other comic books out there.

Phillips' art is dark and gritty as always. I have always liked his art, and I will restate that I think this kind of book is perfect for him. The art seems a little less tight in this book, but again, even when Phillips is not doing his best work, it's still damn good. Each page is divided into three rows of frames of differing widths, and this gives an almost claustrophobic feeling when reading the story. A feeling that there really is no way out, and this is only strengthened by the story.

People who have not read any of the Criminal books yet should hurry on to their favorite comic book pusher and get them right away. People who have already read the previous books, can rest assured that they won't be disappointed by this one. You don't have to read the previous books to read this one, but they are even better, so you are advised to do so. Of course, the best thing to do would be to read all of them! Although this book contains only three original issues, each issue is pretty long, so the book is a normal size tpb.

7/10

Avengers: The Initiative vol. 1 - Basic Training

Collects Avengers: The Initiative #1-6 written by Dan Slott and drawn by Stefano Casselli (#6 drawn by Steve Yu).

When I first heard about this book it didn't really strike me as very interesting, but then I read the two issues that were in World War Hulk: X-Men, and I was immediately impressed, so I decided to try it out anyway. Avengers: Initiative is the direct product of many of the major developments in Civil War, and many of the themes of that event are carried over into this book. It's a book that does not want to be it's own niche, it involves the rest of the MU to a very high degree with appearances by many major Marvel characters such as Hank Pym, Henry Peter Gyrich, War Machine, Beast, the Thing, Spider-Man etc. and references to events such as the Stamford incident, NW tags and World War Hulk. As such, this series starts out by placing itself smack in the middle of the MU, thus strengthening the Avengers franchise's position as the pillar of said universe.

The story assumes the disguise of an army story, but at it's heart, it is a good old super hero book. Yes, we have the drill sergeant, meaner than a pit bull, and the top secret projects that only commanding officers can know about, but that's about it. The rest is super heroics with elements of 'coming of age' and 'team building', both classic super hero themes. Plot wise, there's a lot of balls being thrown into the air at the same time and the reader is not likely to be bored. There's a constant buildup to something, a certain feeling that the people in charge have a lot of skeletons in their closets and that things are not as they seem. Nothing is revealed here, however, and if I had to point to something, that is probably the biggest weakness of the book. It builds up to something, it doesn't stand on it's own. This is not a major issue, however, and it certainly shouldn't stop anyone from buying it, just remember to put money aside for the next book as well (solicited to come out by the end of this month).

The book is loosely structured in three parts. In the first part we are introduced to the main characters as they are getting used to their new home and get into their first battles. The second storyline is the World War Hulk tie-in. I'm impressed with how smoothly Slott manages to tie the series into the WWH event. Often when a series is tied into an event it feels a little tagged on, but Slott comes up with a story that makes perfect sense in the context of both Avengers: Initiaive and WWH and even manages to move the book ahead. The last part is a single issue suspense/crime story that sets up the scene for the next book. In the course of the story Slott comes up with several plot twists that really keeps the reader glued, and the last scene is quite a shocker, it made me say out 'Holy Sh*t' in a half whisper!

I must not forget to mention the art which is excellent and only gets better as the book progresses. Caselli is good at infusing his characters with personality, and this is especially important in a book featuring so many characters that readers won't be familiar with. I also want to praise the coloring by Daniele Rudoni, I'm not sure how to describe it, you might say it has a warm almost animation-like quality to it. In any case it is really good, and the combination of Caselli and Rudoni makes for a great looking book. Steve Yu, who handles the art of the last issue, has a somewhat quirky style and I suspect not all readers will enjoy it as much as the rest of the book, but I thought it was pretty good and went well with the story.

This is a good beginning for a new series, and I will definitely be getting the next book as well. It features less known characters but at the same time it is deeply rooted in the MU, and if this sounds interesting to you, I suggest you try it out. You should, however, be aware of two things: two of the issues contained in here are also in the WWH: X-Men book, and the book doesn't read that well on it's own, it is only the beginning. Lets hope the series can keep up the quality!

7/10

Iron Man: Extremis

Collects Iron Man 1- 6 written by Warren Ellis with artwork by Adi Granov

According to British writer Warren Ellis his job at Marvel consists of being the mad scientist in the basement messing around with things and reinventing them. He took a number of D-list characters and created the brilliant Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. (love that title!) and he was also the writer behind the recent shake-up in Thunderbolts. He states that his job isn’t creating anything new, as he has other outlets for that. This also means that he only works on titles for very limited runs as was indeed the case with Thunderbolts and even more so with his brief six issue run on Iron Man a few years back.

Iron Man needed to be brought into the 21st century and since Ellis is the King of Technobabble (not necessarily a bad thing) he was the natural choice for the job. As a result Iron Man: Extremis feels a bit like a pilot episode for a TV-series more than its own entity. Ellis is planting the seeds for future Iron Man stories and he does a very good job at it, but there really isn’t much of a story here.

But Ellis does manage to reinvent Iron Man in a big way. No longer is Tony Stark the Bruce Wayne of the Marvel Universe, as he is now the proud owner of actual superpowers! And that is quite a big thing for Iron Man. Some people might argue that it’s too big a departure from the original concept as Tony was always a real human being with flaws, trying to atone for past sins. In Ellis’ version he is a futurist trying to control the escalating evolution of technology, which has in some ways become a danger in itself. Caught between the military and the corporations (which may be the same thing in the world of today) it’s a constant struggle for the future and his own soul.

It’s heavy stuff.

The story is very simple: A domestic terrorist is injected with the latest in nano-tech turning him into a virtually unstoppable super soldier. As the mad man is heading for Washington to get his revenge, Iron Man has to stop him. In order to do this Tony has to make a tough choice. But we all know that Tony Stark is the one man in the Marvel Universe who is not afraid to make the hard decisions! And this time it changes him forever! No really. It does.

I imagine that this story would have felt rather decompressed in single issues, but it flows nicely in a trade. As a superhero story it never gets terribly exciting, but as a smart, modern, contemporary science fiction story it works like a charm. It feels a bit like a short story by William Gibson, which in my opinion is also a good thing as he has an uncanny understanding (and fascination) of the shadowy side of the corporate world and the dangers of technology. And so does Ellis. If you watch JJ Abrams TV-show Fringe you might recognize certain themes similar to the ones in Extremis in the show: Technology is growing at a dangerous rate and people have become mere ants compared to the corporate leviathan.

So the themes of Extremis are very clever and topical, but what keeps the book from being more than “just a good read” is the lack of an actual storyline. Ellis seems content with reinventing Tony Stark and Iron Man while hinting at certain themes. Which is why the book reminds me of a pilot for a TV-show: It is only the beginning and meant as a teaser. Only Ellis never follows up on it himself.

The artwork from Adi Granov is very good. The action scenes seem a bit static, but he handles atmosphere and talking head scenes brilliantly. The characters do seem a bit passionless, but that might come from Ellis’ script and be the intended tone of the story. The story is hardcore science fiction and about Tony Stark becoming part machine, so the coldness of the dialogue and artwork works nicely with the overall theme of the story. Granov is also the artist behind the forthcoming trade paperback Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas written by Jon Favreau, the director of the wonderful Iron Man movie. I assume that will be a more colourful and silly read, which should put Granov’s ability to draw human emotions to the test.

The colouring is also very good and deserves a special mention.

Overall Iron Man: Extremis is not the best thing since the iPod, but it is an interesting new beginning for the character. The other guy writing reviews for this blog (apparently it’s “his blog”. Whatever!) seems to love the run by the Knaufs which followed directly after this “Pilot episode”. I will have to give it a go.

Rating: 6/10

Review by Michael Lindal (self-proclaimed fill-in artist)

Iiiiiintroduciiiing!!!!!!!!!!

Having realized that I can't possibly keep up with the merciless demands of the Internet when it comes to frequency of posting only by myself, I have begged and begged my comic book reading friends to chip in once in a while, and lo and behold, one of them fell for it! Michael aka.
zombie.ghost.thing, whom some of you may know from the comments section of the reviews on this blog, has promised to contribute a review once in a while, and that should help keeping the flow of reviews steady. The great thing about Michael is that he has a much better taste in comics than I have, so he might even review some non-Marvel books once in a while! Although his first review will be a Marvel book... Lets give a Michael a big welcome (clapclapclap).

At the same time I want to extend an invitation to anybody else who wants to try their hands at reviewing tpb's. This blog was always intended to be a community thing, and the more we are, the merrier. Just send a review you've written to tpbreviewer@gmail.com, and we'll see if can work something out.

Iron Man: Hypervelocity

Collects Iron Man: Hypervelocity #1-6 written by Adam Warren and drawn by Brian Denham.

I will admit that I bought this book by mistake. I saw Adam Warren's name on the cover and figured 'I haven't seen anything drawn by that guy in a while, he should be interesting on Iron Man, I remember that Teen Titans thing he did, that was pretty good' and quickly put it into my virtual shopping cart. The word to hang onto here is 'drawn', because Iron Man: Hypervelocity isn't drawn by Adam Warren, it is written by him. And although I have enjoyed his Dirty Pair stuff (and that Teen Titans thing) I don't remember liking it particularly because of the writing, rather I was impressed with his manga-inspired yet very personal art. If I'm not mistaken, he was also one step ahead of the pack when it came to utilizing computer graphics in comics, I remember his Teen Titans as a good example of this.

But this is a review of Iron Man: Hypervelocity, and unfortunately I cannot offer the same kind of praise for this book. But first things first. Iron Man: Hypervelocity originally came out in the beginning of 2007, and it takes place before Iron Man: Extremis, but was actually published after. Go figure, smells like editorial shuffling around if you ask me. The gist of the story is that Tony is attacked and badly wounded by unknown baddies, but in preparation for just such a situation, he has managed to make a software copy of his own mind and uploaded this into a new version of the armor, enter Tony Stark 2.0. I kind of like the idea of the story this far. But then it turns out that the baddies are a group of angry mecha, the cyborg remains of some evil experiment, who are now dedicated to getting back at the world when they're not busy having mecha rave parties in sunken ships. And then the story sort of falls apart.

The mecha baddies fool Shield into thinking that the Iron Man armor has gone rogue, so it can only sit down for very few moments at a time. When things are at their worst, the armor is hacked by the leader of the mecha, a weird chick cyborg that goes by the name Absynthe, and the armor has to come up with one clever trick after another to survive while having drawn out virtual conversations with the Absynthe chick. I guess this could have made for a good story, but the execution just isn't there. It took me a long time to get through this, it simply wasn't entertaining enough to keep my attention.

I have several issues with this book. The story is messy and far, far too wordy. Warren uses lots of fancy tech terms, which can make a setting seem well developed when used with care, but here it's just too much for my taste. And robot rave parties, come on... The art is not very good. For a story like this they could at least have found someone good at drawing mechanics, but Denham seems to prefer just covering every single piece of machinery with as much shadow as he can get away with. Even the baddies are just dark human silhouettes with shiny characters on them. Some of his human characters show a lot more promise, but not enough to save the book. And then there's the little things, like the page where the editor has obviously asked someone to draw in a seat belt in the picture of the Iron Man armor driving a car. Yes, I understand that people should be wearing seat belts in their cars, but this is an Iron Man armor! Stark isn't even inside the armor!!! Jeez...

In the end Tony Stark 2.0 is blown to atoms by a massive nuclear device, and that pretty much sums up this book. I am left with the feeling that it would have been much better if Warren had drawn it himself, and this is substantiated by the page layouts by Warren at the end of the book. As it turns out, the pages by Denham are simply copies of these layouts with nothing added or removed, and if you ask me they should just have had someone ink these pages and used those instead. If you're looking for some good Iron Man, I suggest you try the Knauf's excellent run. If you're looking for good Adam Warren stuff, I suggest you try his Dirty Pair or maybe some of his newer stuff like Livewires or Empowered, although I haven't read this. Meanwhile, I suggest you just forget about this book.

2/10