That’s a rather grand title. Rather than some deep analysis of why super-heroes should be based and from all over the world, this was just inspired by the fact that a). three super-heroes (at least) have re-located, and b). New York and Gotham have become ridiculously over-populated by super-heroes in Marvel’s and DC’s lines.
Four mini-reviews of graphic novels I have read over the last couple of weeks: Captain America: Road to Reborn and Reborn, Indestructible Hulk, Superman: Secret Identity, Wonder Woman (New 52).
With my new job, I haven’t been spending as much time at my home computer in the past few months. I have not, however, stopped reading. Not by any stretch of the imagination. As a result, though, I have been racking up a lot of sets of notes for books (fiction, non-fiction, and particularly graphic novels) that I haven’t had a chance to feature on the blog, yet. So, over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to try (famous last words) to get a whole bunch mini-reviewed.
Part of the attraction of shorter reviews for many of these graphic novels, along with the lower time commitment, comes from a desire to avoid spoilers. Some of these – as in this review – are volumes that come pretty late in established (or slowly-becoming-established) series. Anyway, let us get on with it. Here are some thoughts on the following Captain America books: The Death of Captain America, Vols.1-3, Man With No Face, and also Man Out Of Time.
A strange combination of having had a ton of spare time to read and a new job means I probably won’t be able to write my usual-type of review for many of the books and graphic novels I’ve read over the past couple of months. For some books, I will still write longer reviews, but for many (if not most) I’ll include them in occasional round-/catch-up posts with mini-reviews. Today, I take a look at recently-read Marvel titles.
Reviewed: Amazing Spider-Man “Red-Headed Stranger”, “Return of the Black Cat” & “The Gauntlet Vol.1”; Rick Remender’s Venom Vols.1-3, Ultimate Comics – X-Men Vol.1, Ultimate Comics – Hawkeye, Daredevil Yellow
Writers: Dan Slott, Stan Lee, Mark Waid, Bob Gale | Artists: John Romita, Jr., Marcos Martin, Colleen Doran, Mario Alberti | Inks: Klaus Janson | Colors: Dean White, Jose Villarrubia, Javier Rodriguez
The return of Doctor Octopus, Daredevil, a wedding you never predicted, and the return of one of the most important people in Peter Parker’s life. Doc’s back in town, but it’s only a prelude to darker days ahead as Spidey unknowingly prepares for a gauntlet he can’t predict. Also, several short features showcase some rarely-explored aspects of both Spidey and Peter’s life. And, finally, the second most important wedding day of Peter Parker’s life.
Collects: Amazing Spider-Man #600-601, Amazing Spider-Man Annual #36,
& material from Amazing Spider-Man Family #7
The book is rather uneven. It’s bitty, highly episodic, and the tone veers all over the place, dependent on the writer. The humour works at times, but at others it feels like it is trying so hard, it’s difficult to like it at all (imagine the quippiness of Gilmore Girls, but with a wall-crawling super-hero). It took longer than I expected to read all of this, as I just couldn’t get sucked in. It is not, however, without its moments. Thankfully, the book improved, once we got beyond the first, mammoth issue.
My continued education in the “classic” DC storylines and Events continues. This time, with the Grant Morrison-written Final Crisis and Mark Waid-penned Kingdom Come. As I should have expected, the former contains moments of actual originality and genuine interest and skill, but also a lackluster execution and a fair number of things I really didn’t like. The latter was more of a surprise, as I found it to be a rather intriguing premise, executed in a fashion that left me rather bored. It was a struggle to finish, in fact.
Managed to get my hands on a couple more issues from Marvel’s latest re-launch/-boot/-branding: Mark Waid’s Indestructible Hulk and Rick Remender’s Uncanny Avengers. Two pretty noteworthy titles, one was excellent while the other has some way to go before I’m fully convinced.
Caution: If you haven’t read Avengers vs. X-Men and don’t want certain moments of that Event spoiled, I strongly advise that you do not read the review of Uncanny Avengers. Just sayin’.
The third act of Waid’s highly acclaimed run
Writers: Mark Waid (Avenging Spider-Man #6, Daredevil #11-15), Greg Rucka (ASM#6, The Punisher #10) | Artists: Marco Checchetto (ASM#6, TP#10, Dd#11), Chris Samnee (Dd#12,14,15) & Khoi Pham (Dd#13) | Inks: Tom Palmer (Dd#13) | Colours: Matt Hollingsworth (ASM#6, TP#10, Dd#11), Javier Rodriquez (Dd#12-15)
It’s the meanest team-up you ever saw as Daredevil, Spider-Man and the Punisher find themselves caught up in an epic chase across Manhattan for the Omega Drive – a powerful and dangerous information source that could change the course of all their lives!
Plus: It’s lawyers in love as Matt Murdock finally makes some time for Assistant District Attorney Kirsten McDuffie. But when Megacrime strikes back at Daredevil, the sightless super hero finds himself imprisoned in Latveria for crimes against the state! And as the law firm of Nelson & Murdock undergoes a drastic change, Matt’s “happy go lucky” veneer at last begins to peel back, revealing darker truths that may just end his heroic career.
That’s probably the busiest credits list I’ve ever seen for a single graphic novel collection… Nevertheless, this is a pretty solid book, and one that continues Mark Waid’s excellent run on telling the story of the Man Without Fear. “The Omega Effect” story, which forms the first three chapters (and reviewed first here & here), is a great opening mini-arc for the book, as it is the culmination of a lot of Daredevil’s shenanigans. I did, however, prefer the Daredevil-specific storyline that followed. This is a very good book, and I highly recommend it for fans of the series and Waid’s work in general; and also the series for people who want to read just great comics.
Collects: Avenging Spider-Man #6, The Punisher #10, Daredevil #11-15
Writer: Mark Waid | Artist: Paolo Rivera (#7,9,10), Emma Rios (Amazing Spider-Man #677), Kano (#8), Khoi Pham (#10.1) | Inks: Joe Rivera (#7,9,10) | Colours: Javier Rodriguez
Following a shocking discovery about the Marvel Universe, Daredevil has a weighty decision to make, the results of which will affect his friends and enemies both! Meanwhile, the Nelson and Murdock law offices struggle to celebrate the holidays as insurmountable problems descend upon them! Then, Spider-Man and Daredevil team up when Black Cat is arrested, and Murdock is the only lawyer who will touch her (her case, we mean). The next great love triangle of the Marvel U begins.
I blitzed through this. The series has been showered with praise across seemingly the whole spectrum of comics establishment and fans alike. As a fan of Waid’s Irredeemable and Incorruptible, there was little doubt that I would check out what he’s done with Daredevil. I really enjoyed the first book, and so there was no doubt I would pick this one up. And luckily, it does the trick – it builds on the setting and characters, and weaves in more of New York’s super-hero community (Spider-Man and, in Volume 3, Punisher). I thoroughly enjoyed this – the writing, artwork, everything.
Collects: Daredevil #7, Amazing Spider-Man #677, Daredevil #8-10.1
I really enjoyed the first collected edition of Mark Waid’s new run on Daredevil, and I’ve been waiting to get my hands on book two (which I’ve ordered) and the soon-to-be-released book three. In the meantime, I’ve been keeping on top of the artwork and so forth for individual issues. And the art for #18, by Paolo Rivera, is pretty interesting and striking:
It fits in rather nicely with Daredevil’s special sight – although, while he wouldn’t be able to see someone’s venous system like this, there’s something about this picture that is somehow apt.
The issue is written by Mark Waid and pencilled by Chris Samnee. Here’s the synopsis:
Get ready for the biggest Daredevil story yet, as a new menace walks the streets of New York – the ruthless killer called Coyote! Can Daredevil put a stop to his crime spree? And with all that has been happening in his life, just how sane IS matt Murdock?
Daredevil #18 will be published on September 19th.
The Origin of the Man of Steel
Writer: Mark Waid | Artist: Leinil Francis Yu | Inks: Gerry Alanguilan
Since his debut in 1938 Superman has become one of the most recognisable fictional characters in existence. Now, prepare for a fresh take on Superman... Imagine Superman comics were beginning again and you could read the first adventures of the Man of Steel – but reinvented from top to bottom to reflect today’s world and today’s sensibilities.
As can be expected from Mark Waid, this is a superb modern re-telling of the Superman origin story. It’s thoughtful, thought-provoking, endearing, funny and also quite sad. Certainly one of the best Superman origin stories I’ve read, I thoroughly enjoyed this.
This week I bring you some weird supernatural goings-on, a triumvirate of super-heroes try to save New York City, a vampire slayer goes into space, some anthropomorphised dinosaurs kick butt, the history of the Jedi is expanded on, and an undead king fights an army of pissed off warrior-women.
So, a bit of a mix, then…
Reviewed: BPRD Hell On Earth: Devil’s Engine #1, Daredevil #11, FCBD Buffy/Guild, FCBD Star Wars/Serenity, Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi #4, Valen the Outcast #6
Much has been made about comics maestro Mark Waid’s fondness for digital comics and his apparent preference for the new medium – he even went so far as to sell his comics collection to help fund his new THRILLBENT project. There are currently two comics up there, with a third, as-yet-untitled comic coming on May 9th. They’re free to try, so head on over to the site and check out what all the fuss is about. Here are some very preliminary thoughts of mine on the new medium and also the comics themselves.
The Man With No Fear returns!
Writer: Mark Waid | Artists: Paolo Rivera & Marcos Martin
The Devil is Reborn. Renewed. Resurrected.
With new enemies, new friends... and that same old “grinnin’ in the face of hell” attitude, the Man Without Fear is back in action and leading with his face!
Having turned his world upside over the past several years, Matt Murdock realizes that justice may not be blind to his past and villains may not be the only ones looking for answers. Bring it on. If Matt Murdock could see what he was doing... he’d be terrified.
Given how much great press this series has been getting – enough that Marvel started printing one- and two-page spreads of quotes and endorsements in their other series – there was just no way I was going to ignore it. Also, it’s written by Mark Waid, so... Yeah. This was a must-read for me. And it definitely lived up to my expectations. Indeed, it exceeded them – I had, I am sad to admit, some reservations about the artwork, but that was only because I’d seen rather poor examples of it. This comic is, in almost every way, excellent.
A more varied selection of links this week, as I venture outside of the speculative genre blogosphere (a pilgrim in a foreign, unknowable wilderness: one that featured only token mentions of Game of Thrones, Hunger Games and lots of literary fiction…). I was able to find some very interesting articles this week.
Bastard Books: Interview with Myke Cole
Does this really need an explanation? Needless to say, Myke’s debut novel is a favourite of mine, so I’d recommend you read it if you haven’t yet. Here’s my review, another interview, and a guest post Myke wrote about Peter V. Brett’s novels.
Yglesias (an MSNBC political analyst and contributor) takes a look at the pending DoJ case that has been brought against Apple and a number of big-name publishing houses. A couple of interesting comments (of which there are many):
- “If there’s a case against the government’s actions it’s that the forces of disruption buffeting traditional publishing are much too large to be blocked by any cartel. The good news is that literary culture should survive either way.”
- “In bookstores,” Turow writes, “readers are open to trying new genres and new authors: It’s by far the best way for new works to be discovered.” – This I agree with, although it’s also possible that an eBook store could offer a similar function.
- “the Justice Department’s notion that we should fear a book publishers’ cartel is borderline absurd, on par with worrying about price-fixing in the horse-and-buggy market.”
- “the only way for these firms to stay viable is to publish books people like and to sell them at a price readers want to pay”
Yglesias’s article also has a link to…
This is a very well-written, thought-provoking article. That I imagine a lot of readers of this blog might take issue with. That being said, I think he makes a lot of good points, despite how much we may wish he was wrong. [Please come back and leave comments here, if you have any! Same goes for any of these linked-articles.]
The author takes an alternative stance on the indie bookstores-vs.-Amazon debate to what you might expect from most (if not all) book-related blogs and news-sites. He is also even-handed in his position. For one, Manjoo is not blind to Amazon’s “wantonly callous” tactics that end up “destroying its competitors”. Nor, however, is he blind to Amazon’s strengths and positive aspects of its existence:
- “As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books.”
- An interesting factoid (one that my own book-buying practices support): “Amazon has said that after people buy a Kindle reader, they begin purchasing e-books at twice the rate they’d previously purchased print titles. (And they keep buying print titles.)”
This article also has a number of interesting links embedded within. I spent a pleasant while clicking through the links in this and Yglesias’s article. It also reminded me of a conversation I had with Myke Cole and Peter V. Brett back in December (and it actually was a dark and stormy night, too, which added a pleasant pathetic fallacy to proceedings…).
An author I’ve never had a chance to read, but a lot of people seem to think he’s the bee’s knees. An interesting interview with some good commentary.
American Prospect: “Hell’s Bells” by Abby McGanney Nolan [Article]
An interesting look at the rise of teen heroines in dystopian future fiction (Hunger Games, Divergent, Legend, Blood Red Road). In each of the novels looked at, Nolan explains and examines a common theme: “the teenage-girl narrator has grown up sheltered in a zone of relative comfort. Her troubles multiply as society’s flaws are revealed to her and she must fight for survival and the safety of her family.” The author also goes on about the presence of an “ideal young man” in each novel, all of whom seem perfect in every way (I haven’t read any of the novels, but do hope to read Hunger Games in the very near future, in my new-found interest in YA).
“In this recession-battered age, these four authors (including two in their mid-20s) present the wild possibility of love and social change amid the ruins. If there’s hope in dystopias, what’s impossible in our world?”
Staffer’s Musings: Interview with Anne Lyle
Again, pretty self-explanatory what this is. If you want more from Anne Lyle, check out my interview with her for this site, too. I hope to get to her debut, Alchemist of Souls, within the next week or so, depending on whether or not I get better and can start reading at a decent pace again.
I’m a huge fan of Waid’s work, as can be seen from the amount of coverage I’ve given Irredeemable and Incorruptible, not to mention a couple of his other series. I recently also bought the first volume of his run on Daredevil (volume two is released in a couple months), which I hope to read and review in the next week or so.
“Waid announced [at WorldCon] that he is selling his extensive comic book collection to fund a weekly online comic series, which will launch in May.”
Quite a surprising move, but one that sort-of makes sense in a market that is slowly coming around to embracing the digital medium (see, for example, Marvel’s decision to start packaging a free digital copy with their $3.99 comics).
Waid said: “They don’t want to undercut the 1,800 Diamond retailers out there in the world, and I get it… I don’t want to undercut them either. But we’re playing a different game. The more of us that know how to do this for the Web, the better off the medium is.”
I also learned that both Incorruptible and Irredeemable will come to an end in May! Even though I had a feeling it was bound to happen, this still makes me a little sad.
***
On Civilian Reader this week, in case you’ve not been reading, we’ve had two interviews – with Gail Carriger and Gaie Sebold; a wealth of comic reviews (I’ve been rather under the weather this week, and they are easier to read and review), including my New 52 Catch-Ups (Batman and Bat-Family); and a review of a fun political thriller, The Run by Stuart Woods (first published in 2000). Sadly, as I was struck down in the “pribe ob libe” (as I seem to be writing everywhere)* by man-flu, my review of Kingdoms of Dust, the gothic third novel in Amanda Downum’s Necromancer Chronicles, will be postponed until Monday afternoon.
Next week, I hope to bring you more fiction reviews: a short guest review for Brandon Sanderson’s first Mistborn novel, Final Empire (on Monday morning), as well as a couple of short-story and audio-drama reviews. And maybe another thriller. Oh, and an interview with Aidan Harte, a debut author whose novel Irenicon will be published later this year by Jo Fletcher Books (and I’ll be reading and reviewing it at some point soon, too. I’m sure there will be more, but if I told you all of it, then it wouldn’t be a surprise.
* Sometimes I’m like a terrier with a joke – I keep using it and worrying at it until I think of some better quip to inflict on people across my various social media.
Another varied, bumper comics round-up this week. Early on, it seemed to be leaning a bit Wolverine-heavy, but as Wednesday rolled around, I realised there was plenty of other stuff available that was of interest. This round-up manages to tick off most of the comic genres: sci-fi, superheroes, fantasy, action heroes and villains, humorous espionage, and even a geek-fantasy. So, without further ado, let us move right on to the reviews…
Reviewed Herein: Brilliant #1-2, Danger Girl: Revolver #2, GIJoe: Cobra #10, Incorruptible #27, Infestation: Dungeons & Dragons #2, The Ray #2-3, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – War #1-2, Witchblade/Red Sonja #1, Wolverine #20 & #300, Wolverine & The X-Men #5, X-Club #2-3, X-Sanction #3
Along with these new issues (all of which are pretty great), this week I’ve been reading some older material for a series of reviews looking at series beginnings. Those will start cropping up on the blog over the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes open for them. Anyway, without further ado, I give you a great evil-superhero collection, another fairy tale-inspired weird journey, and some ninja beat-downs.
A second round-up will go live later today, taking a look at the Zenescope releases.
Reviewed Herein: Irredeemable Vol.8, Memorial #3, Snake Eyes #10
Writer: Mark Waid | Artist: Chad Hardin | Grand Poobah: Stan Lee
A mysterious band of super-powered assassins, the Split-Second Men, have begun terrorizing seemingly random victims. The only one powerful enough to stop them is THE TRAVELER, an equally unknown masked crusader who knows just when they will strike. But where did THE TRAVELER come from? Whose agenda does he serve? And will his actions cause an even greater cataclysm of time and space?
In my quest to read everything I can by Mark Waid, I stumbled across this title (co-created with Stan Lee, the man behind many of Marvel’s greatest heroes). It’s an interesting title, certainly, with plenty going for it (Hardin’s excellent artwork, for example) but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
Writer: Mark Waid | Artist: Peter Krause & Diego Barreto
Plutonian has been banished by the Paradigm to an off-world insane asylum… but it’s proving too weak to hold him. Meanwhile, upon seeing a darker side of Survivor, Qubit has entered into an uneasy alliance with Modeus, the Plutonian’s arch-nemesis and one of Earth’s most feared supervillains to figure out how to stop the Plutonian once and for all. But what will happen when the Mad God returns to Earth?
This collection brings me up to date on the Irredeemable trade paperback volumes currently available. It’s another great addition to the series, but it was not the strongest of the bunch.
[As with all of my recent Irredeemable reviews, here is your Minor Spoiler Alert.]
Writer: Mark Waid | Artist: Marcio Takara
The Plutonian has been defeated, leaving the world’s most notorious supervillain-turned-superhero, Max Damage, adrift. But Max's work is never done, and being a superhero in a post-Plutonian world is far more difficult than he imagined... especially with a mentally unstable new sidekick and a new team of reluctant allies... the superhero team the Paradigm!
Tying in with the events of Irredeemable Volume Six, these Chapters in Max Damage’s story take a look at how the former villain takes the news of the Plutonian’s incarceration, and where he’ll go and what he’ll do next.
In quick summary, I’m enjoying Incorruptible almost as much as Irredeemable, and I really think people should read them both. Waid shows us how comics can be at their absolute best: enjoyable, entertaining, brilliantly written, and thought-provoking.
[Be warned: Minor Spoilers after the break…]
