Wolverine #16 – A Quick Execution

How the f**k does the baddest ass hero in comics, get one of the toughest, hard as nails, raw emotional writers in comics and turn in such a weak and lame ass issue of Wolverine. This comic was possibly the worse Wolverine stories I have ever read and I had to check it twice to make sure Jason Aaron was really the writer. Add in Goran Sudzuka turning in Sal Buscema style art with coloring from the seventies and this book was a mess from the $4 price point to the bitter end of the story.

The story was about Wolverine who has gone all feral and is running around with wolves. He went all self pitying and depressed because the Red Hand set him up to kill his own kids that he never knew existed. Evil hunters find the wolves and capture a few and shoot Logan in the head thinking they killed him. Logan gets mad, saves his wolf brothers and the children these guys had captured to be fodder for their games of wolf fights and wolf fights with kids. If only they had also been Nazis and smokers they could have been the most evil people of all time. After saving the kids everybody in the all the groups he belongs to came out to the wilderness lead by his girl friend to tell him they love and want him to come home. Interspaced are head shots of all of Logan’s friends saying what they think of him. Everyone hugs and Wolverine gets excited and pops his claws killing his girl friend. Okay the last line I made up but it would have at least given the book some edge. 

Near Death #1 – A Review

Near Death #1

Writer  Jay Faerber

Art Simone Gugliemini

Color Ron Riley

Publisher Image Comics

Price Point $2.99

An assassin dies for a minute. During his “death” he visits purgatory and discovers that the afterlife does exist and in order to avoid the pangs of hell he needs to try and balance the scales. He starts his balancing act by saving the girl he was trying to kill by killing the man that was hired to finish the job he failed at. An unfortunate twist is the guy he thought he killed to save the girl is still alive and at this point in a coma or something. The employer of our “hero” wants the name of the person who screwed up this assignment. 

It all sounds a little contrived and it read a little contrived. In fact I didn’t like the ending because our central character Markham is supposed to be one of the best at his job in killing people and this last assignment that almost killed him was an aberration, so the fact that he screwed up twice in one issue felt a little too coincidental. The fact that his employer may find him out is something that could have been built over the course of the series. The flip side is with this type of book you may only get one chance to hook a reader in and this choice was one the writer made to keep readers coming back for issue #2.

Severed #2 – A Review

Severed #2

Writer Scott Snyder & Scott Tuft

Art Attila Futaki

Publisher Image Comics

Price $2.99

This series has an unease and creepiness to it that is hard to generate in a comic. I often think that horror plays better in a written book as the horror is on a more personal level. What we can generate in our imagination often is the scarcest stuff out there. I also think a moving picture can generate suspense and therefore static pictures lose some of the visceral feeling that a horror story should generate, Severed overcomes those limitations and manages to tell a great story and yet put a chill in your heart. 

The story is set in 1916 and is the story of a young boy in search of his father. This issue specifically records the struggles of Jack in recovering his possessions from an older hobo on a train and his bonding with his friend Sam. As Sam and he reach the city and await the show where Jack hopes to met his father we find out Sam is actually Samantha. She disguises herself as a boy to keep from being picked on even more as Jack and Sam are both only around 12 years old. Jack fails to actually met his Dad and is given a lead on where he maybe, Sam concocts a plan for Jack to play the fiddle to earn them traveling money. At the same time the killer is on the loose and the grim remains of another child have been found. The killer called the Salesman, as that is the guise he uses, is a cannibal and we get to see the results of his appetites. Although Jack and the killer’s path have not crossed we know the inevitable is coming.

Justice League #1 – A Review

The bold, the brash, the exciting, the new formula Coke is here and ready to take the world by storm. What, it is the new DCU, errr okay. Take two.

The new DCU starts here and it started five years ago, where the heck was I?  Justice League starts five years ago and is about Green Lantern and Batman meeting for the first time. They meet, they exchange quips, they fly over Victor Stone’s high school on the way to Metropolis to investigate if the problem they are dealing with involves Superman and they meet Superman. That is about it for $4 and 24 pages of story and art.

Let’s start with the good part, Jim Lee’s artwork. Jim’s work can be super busy, but it is dynamic story telling at its best and for slam bang super hero action, Jim is hard to beat. Of course Scott Williams is always Lee’s main inker and does a dynamite job of making Jim’s pencils look their absolute best. No major DC super hero book would be complete without Alex Sinclair coloring the book. Alex is hands down the best color artist for this type of work. Alex’s work always enhances the work and is a master with any type of panel. This book has tons of special coloring effects too make the contrast between GL and Batman work. If you just flip through the pages and look at the pictures the words are almost superfluous. Finally as much as I not sure about what they are doing with Superman, the last panel of Superman standing there in his new costume looks pretty damn cool.

Frank Castle is a Bad Mutha – A Review of Punisher Max #16

Punisher Max #16 marks the final chapter of “Frank”, the story arc title. We get to see how Frank escapes from prison and what happen the day that Frank’s family got killed in the park. It all wraps up with the parallel of Frank escaping the prison of his normal family life as well as escaping from the prison he has been locked up in.

What has been so damn compelling about this arc is the portrayal of Frank Castle. I have felt many things about the Punisher over the years and felt that Garth Ennis has done a definitive run on the character and he did. Writer Jason Aaron is hitting some different notes and this book is standing up to Ennis' run. It is rare to have back to back definitive runs on a character, but that is what’s happening.

Batman Retro Active – 1980’s

So I decided I needed another outlet for my thoughts on comics and thought a totally negative connotation would be fun.

The “new” 1980’s story was done by Mike Barr and Jerry Bingham and all in all it was well done. Aping the style of that era makes me wonder if Barr could write for comics today as the style of writing today is dramatically different. Heck in reading the 1970’s Batman it was almost unreadable. Done in that style but made me wonder why I read comics at all during that era. It is not a coincidence that I stopped reading comics as I was turning 15 / 16 and at the same time we were in the 1970s. 

Comic books have been growing up over the years I have been reading them, which is since the early sixties. DC stayed in the mode of writing for 8-12 year olds and the growth spurts that it took for their comics to become more sophisticated were pretty painful. The 70’s were some lowlights, at the same time some of the best things were starting to happen. One step forward and two steps back.