Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril #4 – Review

By: Peter Hogan (story), Chris Sprouse (pencils) Karl Story (inks), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: The man with a sword takes on a biker gang during the end of days.

The Review: Anyone who’s followed this site long enough knows that I try to give every new series a fair shake before making any hard judgments about it.  With this medium, you have to afford stories some time to reveal their hidden strengths, if any lie in wait.  But having given Tom Strong the benefit of the doubt, I can’t say it’s done anything but fulfilled the least expectations people had from the moment it was announced as part of Vertigo’s new line-up.

Even though from the mere look of the series, Tom Strong seemed to be pure, old-school superhero through and through, I assumed that anything with the Vertigo stamp had to have some layer of depth in its makeup, even if you didn’t see it right away.  But I guess not every title can be Astro City, which places itself squarely in the superhero camp even as it expands the genre’s boundaries.  Tom Strong simply roots itself in mystery men tradition, from which it largely refuses to step away.

Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril #3 – Review

By: Peter Hogan (story), Chris Sprouse (pencils), Karl Story (inks), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: In times of crisis, people turn to their gods for help—sometimes literally.

The Review: At first glance, you’d think six issues would be plenty for what appears to be an old-school, superhero romp.  But now that we’re halfway through this series, you’re starting to wonder how Hogan can possibly wrap up his story in just three more issues when you feel like it’s barely started.  For a plot wherein the lives of one important character and millions of other innocents hang in the balance, it doesn’t have much of a sense of urgency, does it?

You’re starting to see that Hogan made a mistake when he chose to involve a Justice Society-sized squad of superheroes in a mini, especially since very few of us even know who these characters are.  Not that it matters; each of them has apparently gone through some fairly significant changes in this plague era on Terra Obscura, necessitating a bunch of introductions for those out of the loop and a bunch of status updates for those in it.

Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril #2 – Review

By: Peter Hogan (story), Chris Sprouse (pencils), Karl Story (inks), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: Tom’s search for a cure leaves him quarantined.

The Review: If you haven’t learned not to judge a comic book by its cover yet, now’s a good time as any to appreciate that lesson.  If you got a quick look at the cover of Tom Strong’s first issue, with Sprouse’s retro linework and the strong-chinned characters, your first instinct is to write off the series as a Golden/Silver Age throwback.  The alliterative title, so fraught with melodrama, almost confirms it.

Well, once you actually crack open the second issue and it greets you right off the bat with martial law and mass graves, you’ll know this is no charming homage to a more innocent age.  On the other hand, there’s no indication that this will necessarily turn out to be a mind-blowing exploration of moral conflict, either.  From what we’ve seen thus far, much of Terra Obscura’s troubles right now fall into your typical worldwide plague woes: panic and crime in the streets, martial law, and desperate attempts to prolong the doom.

Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril #1 – Review

By: Peter Hogan (story), Chris Sprouse (pencils), Karl Story (inks), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: Would you travel the stars for a magic potion to save your pregnant daughter?  Literally?

The Review: Perhaps I read it in an online article or in a comment to one, but I distinctly recall someone scoffing at Tom Strong’s inclusion in the new Vertigo lineup as a strange, even degrading mismatch.  I have to admit, this title is, at first glance, one of Vertigo’s odder additions; it seems like it’d fight right into your garden-variety superhero series.  But with all Vertigo projects, appearance belies the actual purpose.

There’s no escaping the tonal resemblance between Tom Strong and Superman in particular, with their wholesome values and deep, earnest affection for loved ones.  The differences between them, at least from what we can see so far, are slight, but profound.  Tom doesn’t have much of a sense of humor; he’s not humorless or uptight, but he doesn’t have Superman’s jokey side.  At the same time, he has a gentle way about him that gives him Superman’s likability, and the fact he doesn’t have to deliver some winking one-liner every few pages only makes him less hokey.

Action Comics #18 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Rags Morales & Brad Walker (pencils), Cam Smith & Andrew Hennessy (inks), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Does anyone know which dimension we’re in?

The Review: Morrison is a complicated writer.  We all know that and many of us even love that.  But there are times when he’s complicated with purpose, and there are other times when he’s just complicated.  Unfortunately, I think his stature has gotten to a point where DC just greenlights pretty much everything he produces without much interference (quite a contrast to the treatment given other, lesser-known writers, if rumors be believed).

I don’t mind it when content and substance have layers that require a little more effort on your part to parse through and appreciate.  I cannot, however, abide needlessly confusing structural choices.  By far, Morrison’s worst problem is that characters frequently don’t seem to actually respond to each other’s lines.  Take Ferlin, son of Mxyzptlk and Nyxlygsptlnz, accusing his dad, “It’s your fault my dear mother’s blood stained this foul item I’ve treasured in her memory.”

Action Comics #17 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Brad Walker & Rags Morales (pencils), Andrew Hennessy, Mark Probst, Cam Smith (inks), Gabe Eltaeb & Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Superman lives the worst days of his life all at once.

The Review: If you’ve decided to be a Morrison fan, then you’ve already resigned yourself to the serious highs and lows that kind of commitment requires.  Because when the man is on, he is on and you have the pleasure of reading something that can very well remain a part of comic book history.  And when he is not so good, it really is a crisis of faith, isn’t it—where you begin to reconsider whether Morriosn really deserves the reputation attached to him.

But I’m projecting.  My point is, you read Morrison knowing he aims high, so there will be falls along the way.  The worst is if he makes the descent at the end of an arc, when his trajectory should be in the opposite direction.  Most unfortunately, that seems to be the case here.  Though he spent the last year laying all kinds of bombs set to go off at this, Superman’s finest (thus far) moment, the release of energy here is chaotic and confused, with almost no sense of control.

Action Comics #16 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Brad Walker & Rags Morales (pencils), Andrew Hennessy & Mark Probst (inks), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: God among men versus god.

The Review: Mr. Morrison, I know you’re probably too wily and experienced to succumb to the temptation of perusing the internet for remarks on your work, but your probably know already the general criticisms about your work.  “Confusing” is the operative term you likely most often hear, but I think a more accurate description is “headache-inducing mind bogglement.”  Granted, you don’t want to alter your craft on public whim alone, but sometimes, the public has a point.

Because this issue is a prime example of what people are talking about when they complain about the obtuseness of your work.  Now, I know what you’re about to say: this is a story about time and space going bananas at the shenanigans of a fifth-dimensional being so of course the narrative will run off-kilter.  Unfortunately, that’s not where my point of contention lies.  Your reality-warping nonsense is your fictional style at its most classic and actually the best part of the issue.  The real problem lies elsewhere.

Action Comics #15 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Brad Walker & Rags Morales (pencils), Andrew Hennessy & Mark Probst (inks), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Hey, even extradimensional beings can have a Shakespearean romance.

The Review: Sadly, one of my favorite moments from Morrison’s run on New X-Men was “Magneto” giving Jean a massive stroke on a planetary scale.  It was the most ingenious way to kill a being of her power I’ve seen.  That scene clued me into the scale at which Morrison develops his ideas.  He’s the only one who can embrace the sheer lunacy of the Silver Age and give it enough sense and logic to work for our highly technical generation.

In this issue, Morrison takes his ideas train into overdrive, almost flippantly tossing delightful bits of imagination at us.  Tesseract mines which release a new predatory environment when triggered may seem wonderfully bizarre at first, but they have nothing on the fifth-dimensional material which follows.

Action Comics #14 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Rags Morales (pencils), Mark Propst (inks), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Is the god among men ready to face the legions of heaven?

The Review: Like a lot of people, I imagine, I was immediately struck by the covers to this issue.  You have Superman assailed by a flock of angels—with wings and togas and flaming swords, the whole deal.  How can you look at that and not think, What the what? or some more vulgar equivalent?  That there, my friends, is the very thing that gives Morrison a big name among comic book writers: an unwavering commitment to the wondrously strange.

As it turns out—spoiler alert—these angels actually represent the Multitude, which has laid waste to various worlds, rebuffed only once by Jor-El of Krypton, and now targeting Earth.  True to any Morrison concept, the Multitude requires a great deal of abstract imagining on your part, for it is “all one thing—a single weapon with countless points aimed at us from a higher, 5th dimension.”  That’s comparatively tame when you consider some of the truly crazy ideas seen in other Morrison projects, but nonetheless, a worthy challenge for Superman.

Human Target #5 – Review

By Len Wein and Robbie Thompson (Writers), Bruno Redondo (Penciler), Sergio Sandoval (Inker), Chris Sprouse (Penciler) & Karl Story (Inker).

Christopher Chance (AKA the Human Target) is again whisked away to another worldly location, Hong Kong this time, in the hope of finding and procuring more of Morelli’s important ledgers, to help get him safely to Washington D.C. to turn states evidence against his Mafioso family.  To complicate matters, a traitor is finally revealed.

Len Wein and Robbie Thompson have finally given us something else to think about with a traitorous member of Christopher Chance’s group that he is trying to protect and deliver to Washington D.C.  There has been a build for this reveal to happen for the last 1 or 2 issues, through subtle hints dropped in characters conversations to each other, specifically between Chance and Guerrero.  However, with the lack of characters in the book, it’s not enough of a twist, since picking out the traitor is as easy as walking into a pencil factory and finding a pencil.  The rest of the story is pretty status quo for the rest of the books in the series thus far.

The more that I have read, the more I have realized that this is clearly a promotion for the TV series more than anything else.  The book itself reads as a TV episode more than a book, which is just one issue with the writing.  Another problem with the writing is that it’s mostly voice over narration by Christopher Chance.  Now, that alone isn’t necessarily bad and could potentially work, if he was actually thinking about something worthwhile that had to do with the story.  However, his voice over narration is simply explaining what we’re seeing in each panel.  I can see that four goons are behind you.  I don’t need to read you thinking: “Great.  Four goons behind me.”

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Chris Sprouse (artist), Karl Story (inker), Guy Major (colors), Mike Marts (editor)

The Story: A prehistoric tribe of hunters has stumbled upon some kind of rocket ship, and while reading spiritual meaning into its appearance, and against the backdrop of a rite of passage, they follow strange tracks leading away from the craft. They encounter a flock of bats and a confused man who speaks in tongues. They keep him, treating this supernatural being, partly as a ghost, partly as a pet. Then the Blood Mob Tribe attacks and it goes very much downhill…

What’s Good: When the Blood Mob Tribe attacked, I expected Bruce to make short work of them. I really, really respected Morrison for making Bruce take an arrow in the shoulder and retreat. Batman is one of the most superb fighters on Earth, but he is still a man, and so many writers forget that. When the Blood Mob Tribe actually caught him, I was even more impressed. How the heck is he going to get out of this? Morrison also did some fine voice work. The tribespeople didn’t use different words than us, but their word order and expressions were different enough to give me the flavor of a simpler, changed language of thirty thousand years ago. And he succeeded in delivering an emotional note to this story with the advice and teachings that the tribe kept giving to the boy undergoing his rite of passage. It made me care a lot more about the story. My tension rose a lot at the appearance of Superman and Green Lantern, especially since they were too late. Now I’m itching to learn more about what they were talking about.