Captain America and Bucky #624 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker & Marc Andreyko (writers), Chris Samnee (art), Bettie Breitweiser (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), John Denning (assistant editor) & Lauren Sankovitch (editor)

The Story: Bucky is now the Winter Soldier.

Five things: 

1. Chris Samnee is just incredible!  – I hate to say someone’s art is “the best” because “the best” is so subjective.  But, Chris Samnee is squarely in that mythical “top 10” of comic artists who are capable of doing a monthly comic book.  What’s so impressive about Samnee’s excellence is that he get’s there without doing anything outwardly flashy.  It’s just page after page of awesome sequential art and lively characters.  The influences of Alex Toth are readily apparent, but he is also mixing in a thick, softer line that is incredibly attractive.  I also love that Samnee isn’t noodling with his art; sometimes the first few lines are the best and adding can sap the vitality of an image.

2. This is a Winter Soldier that I can enjoy.  – For some reason, Winter Soldier never clicked with me.  I know people gushed about how awesome he was when Brubaker first introduced him and I thought it was “okay”….but this is great stuff.  Why is one clicking and the other isn’t?  Well….I think Samnee probably deserves credit for that for delivering visuals that are burned into my brain.  This issue shows a recently activated Winter Soldier.  It’s hard to pin down the timeframe because of the slippery Marvel sense of time, but it has a very 1960’s vibe to it.  Bucky has his brainwashing and is going about his business, but there are chinks in the mental armor that make his handlers nervous (like how he keeps reverting to speaking English).

3. Also a wonderful Black Widow. – Is Nastasha really in love with Bucky?  Would she run away with him if his conditioning broke?  Or is she just keeping a very close eye on Bucky for the Soviets?  This Black Widow is wonderfully vague (and drawn very sexily by Samnee).

Avengers Academy #21 – Review

By: Christos Gage (writer), Sean Chen (pencils), Scott Hanna (inks), Jeremy Cox & Veronica Gandini (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), John Denning & Jake Thomas (assistant editors) & Bill Rosemann (editor)

The Story: After the destruction of the Infinite Mansion during Fear Itself, the Avengers Academy needs a new home, and possibly a new direction.

Five Things: 

1. Mixing things up is good.  To me, comics are kinda like that old myth about sharks: “If they stop moving forward, they will die.”  The worst times in superhero comics are when the stories run in circles.  I know there are fans that enjoy having the same story reserved to them year after year, but it’s not for me.  So, the idea of moving the Avengers Academy to the old West Coast Avengers facility and bringing in some new faces (both teachers and students) is great.  Just keep mixing it up with these comics!  Sustain the things that work and trash the stuff that stinks, but don’t be afraid to fail and keep moving forward!

2. WONDERFUL twist ending! That was an awesome twist at the end where we see [SPOILER] the evil future selves of our young Academy heroes.  It plays on two big themes of the series.  One, that the reason these kids are getting training is that they are the most likely to go evil due to being fiddled with by Norman Osborn.  Two, we kinda saw these adult versions of the kids before during the Korvac story (around issue #12) when the kids were able to access their adult power levels to defeat Korvac.  But, that wasn’t really seeing their actual future selves, just their future power-sets and we didn’t know that they became villainous.  Nor did we know that they had kidnapped Reptil and sent back “future, evil Reptil”.  How very sneaky and villainous!  Love it!  However, that final splash page really should have had an editor’s note referring people to that back issue because if I look at that splash page with “new reader” eyes, I wouldn’t have a clue what was going on since the only visual cues are that Finesse has longer hair and the electric guy looks grown up (Veil, Hazmat & Mettle look the same).

3. Too much talking in the middle.  There a lot of hand-wringing in the middle of this issue – too much of the teachers and students talking about each other from across the room.  It seems like that could have been wrapped up in a page if the creators weren’t afraid of old-fashioned exposition.  Just have the verbal misunderstanding happen at the same time as the physical conflict.  I know it seems unrealistic to have these long speeches in the middle of the fisticuffs, but that is far preferable to having to waste several pages to get to the same end point.  This comic existed to get us to the money shot (the cool reveal on the final page), not to beat into our heads how much misunderstanding there is among these folks.

Journey Into Mystery #630 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Richard Elson (artist), Jessica Kholinne of IFS (colors), John Denning (assistant editor), Lauren Sankovitch (editor)

The Story: As the great battle event Fear Itself played across the Marvel Universe, Volstagg seemed to be MIA. Where was he? This issue tells us and gives a bit of emotional perspective on the Fear Itself event from a couple of key participants.

The Review: This issue is half buddy picture (Loki and Volstagg) and half Asgardian Uncle Buck (Volstagg) played by John Candy at his best. Heimdall opens the book saying “Asgard’s greatest weapon, the missing Destroyer, is brought back by its thieves.” Who would do that? Enter Loki and Volstagg, playing the classic fat-guy/skinny-guy dynamic with the secrets they both have to hide after the death of Thor and the end of Fear Itself. The amount of personality in the writing and in the art between these two is awesome. Loki is a natural scene stealer (aren’t most trickster gods?) and his efforts to get Volstagg out of a hole are heroically comic. And streetwise, affable Volstagg gets to be the responsible one of the two and deliver some great emotional moments that readers need to ease out of the Fear Itself event. However powerful that first scene, it is Volstagg’s homecoming which ends up stealing the heart of the issue, with what he tells his children, his wife and himself about what has happened. Multiple reveals. Multiple emotional hits for the reader. Multiple moments of growth for different characters. Good story-telling

Avengers Academy #18 – Review

By: Christos Gage (writer), Andrea Di Vito (artist), Jeromy Cox (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer), John Denning (assistant editor) & Bill Rosemann (editor)

The Story: The Avengers Academy kids are dealing with Fear Itself when the hammer-wielding Titania and Absorbing Man invade the Infinite Mansion.

The Review: This being a bit of a light week of comics for me, it made sense to review a comic that has stayed on my pull-list for awhile, but that I rarely review: Avengers Academy.  For the folks who complain that there “are no new characters in comics today”, this is a series that you should try.  Granted, it is 18 issues in, but (a) the trade paperbacks are readily available and (b) it really wouldn’t be that hard to just jump in with these characters.  After all, they’re new characters: They only have these 18 months of history.  So, it isn’t like wading into Captain America or the X-Men where there are references to stories that were told 30 years ago.  Just try it…

This particular issue ties into Fear Itself and shows the kids struggling with the powered up versions of Titania and Absorbing Man.  Not only do I enjoy the Academy kids and the central concept that the Avengers are training them because these kids are the most “at risk” for becoming future super-villains, but I also really enjoy Titania and Absorbing Man.  Secret Wars was my first comic event and these two baddies featured heavily in that story.  Heck, that’s the origin of Titania.

Like all good comic stories about super-powered teenagers, writer Christos Gage is gradually moving them up the scale of villains they can deal with.  We’ve seen that the Fear Itself guys are no joke, so the kids initially think they are in huge trouble before they start to come up with some very clever solutions to the problem.  A few of these solutions even deal with the kid’s possibly villainous nature.  All in all, it is a pretty solid superhero comic.  The only downside to this story is that this is the second issue of a 3-part Fear Itself tie-in.  Like many superhero comic stories these days, that’s too many issues.  The basic concept of this story arc should be a done-in-one.  Three issues just makes it feel drawn out; even if it is still “good”, I’d rather move on to whatever other stories Gage has to tell instead of seeing 3 issues of a story like this one.

Mystery Men #2 – Review

By: David Liss (writer), Patrick Zircher (artist), Andy Troy (colorist), John Denning and Rachel Pinnelas (assistant editors)

The Story: The Operative and the Revenant must learn to play nice to start making headway on the investigation of the death of Alice Starr. And Alice’s sister, who happens to have built a jetpack, also wants a piece of the action.

What’s Good: I’m loving Zircher and Troy on the art chores. The period costumes feel authentic (check out the leather flying gear, the cut of the police clothing and the Operative’s suit and fedora) as do the sets (like the police bar). And while the layout choices are, for the most part, pretty standard, I did enjoy Zircher’s ease at switching viewing angles within a scene for dramatic effect (check out the harbor opening page). At the same time, I did enjoy the variation in the number of panels per page to manage the pacing of the story. Zircher picks a whole lot of panels to space out conversation and make a car ride look more tense, while later taking broader panels to slow down a conflict between the General and the Operative that in real life would have been a tense few seconds. His technique of having background in some of the shots and using solid, undetailed colors in other panels for effect was also cool.

Fear Itself: Fearsome Four #1 – Review

By: Brandon Montclare (writer), Michael William Kaluta, Ryan Bodenheim & Simon Bisley (art), Chris Sotomayor, Tony Avina & Bisley (colors), Nate Piekos (colors), John Denning (assistant editor) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: Whoever feels fear shall burn at the Man-Thing’s touch!  Given that Man-Thing is living on the Raft and the Raft has been blown up during FEAR ITSELF, that little Marvel factoid might present a problem, huh?

The Review: This comic is an interesting concept that kinda falls apart in its execution.  When Juggernaut’s hammer blasted the Raft, all manner of bad guys where loosed onto the world.  Among them was Man Thing, who isn’t really evil. He’s kinda just an elemental force of nature and is hanging out on the Raft to provide transportation for the Thunderbolts.  But, everyone knows that Man Thing is drawn to fear and when he touches someone who is afraid, he burns them to a crisp.  So, the fact that the world is in a full-scale panic due to Fear Itself is going to drive poor Man Thing nuts and a lot of civilians will die unless someone stops him.

See, that set-up kinda works, right?

Now what I don’t like as much is the execution.  The team that is sent after Man Thing consists of: Howard the Duck, She Hulk (original green lawyer flavor), Frankenstein and Nighthawk.  Some comic fans love any sort of oddball mash-up because I see their comments on message boards and they like saying, “Just give me Howard the Duck and Frankenstein working together and I’m happy.”  I hate to sound elitist, but I’m a little more discerning than that as I really didn’t care for the team-up and the only singular character I enjoy out of that bunch is She-Hulk.

Avengers Academy #14 – Review

By: Christos Gage (writer), Sean Chen (penciller), Scott Hanna (inker), Jeromy Cox (colorist), John Denning (assistant editor), Bill Rosemann (editor)

The Story: Electro attacks France’s main science institute while most of the full-fledged Avengers are away. The kids need a chance to prove themselves and Electro isn’t the baddest guy in town. When they get there, though, it turns out he ain’t alone. The kids don’t do too bad, though, all things considered.

What’s Good: Gage did one thing every great writer must do. He made the heroes active. They wanted something. They wanted it bad, and we the reader can sympathize: they want to prove themselves. They’re not asking for a free lunch. Just put me in the game coach. I like them already. This situation also creates a lot of tension, because when has any battle plan survived contact with the enemy? I love how well the trainees do against the Sinister Six and I have to say, I really like the ending. For a while, when I saw how they got the bad press and all, I was thinking “Oh great. Another thin persecution story. Seen it.” But Gage tricked me. That wasn’t the end. The end was about stepping up to the plate morally that was the big climax of the book. The fight, for all that it was a great superhero donnybrook, was really just a plot device to get to the personal growth made by a surprising number of people at the end. What am I saying about the writing? Gage was right on target.

And, I have to say, after my first exposure to the Chen-Hanna-Cox team, I’m loving the art. The fine lines leave a lot of room to fill the panels with detail, which I love. The credit page is a pretty good example of this. From top to bottom, the big panel is brimming with the external accoutrements of the Avengers Mansion, the backgrounded and framing characters, the tight line of those arguing, with some intense Giant-Man action thrown in as background. That is visual storytelling! And Cox’ colors are beautiful and clear, with the bright spots attracting the eye to the important parts of the page. I also enjoyed Chen’s slanting camera angles and overlaid panels. His layouts and choices of borders (or not) kept the pages from ever feeling the same. Chen and team made it feel like there was so much action going on that it could only be layered. And a PS: I loved the texture of Reptile and Rhino when they slapped down.

Avengers Academy #13 – Review

By: Christos Gage (writer), Sean Chen (pencils), Scott Hanna (inks), Jeromy Cox (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), John Denning (assistant editor) & Bill Rosemann (editor)

The Story: The Avengers Academy teachers throw a prom for the kids.

What’s Good: There’s a lot of good character development in this issue for the Academy kids and teachers and also a nice guest starring appearance by a bunch of other younger characters in the Marvel U.  Avengers Academy has been a really quality title and its kids have been through the wringer the last few issues, so it was fun to see the teachers (notably Hank Pym and Tigra) decide that a prom was a good idea. One nice thing about a prom issue is that it really nails down the age of these kids: They’re high schoolers.  That’s kinda important for the reader to realize because I’d imagine most readers are probably in their 30s and just perceived these kids as “young”, but we all know that there is a world of difference between 18 and 23 and that many of the experiences that normal people go through in that age range that help us mature (college, marriage, kids) will not be on the table for the Academy kids.

Of course, a prom issue is going to have lots of romance in the air.  If you read the quite good Giant Sized Avengers Academy (also released last week), you know that there are some residual issues with Reptile and Spider-Girl.  There’s a budding romance with Hazmat and Mettle.  Finesse has been had her eye on a few guys in her weird way.  Striker fancies himself quite the ladies man.  But, with all of this, it was kinda funny to see two of the teachers end up in bed together.  I also really like the Hazmat/Mettle relationship, as the two of them are both complete outcasts due to their powers.  We get the sense that a romance that seemed to begin as “any port in a storm” could become more.

It was also neat to see some of the Young Allies and Spider-Girl at the prom.  I’ll talk about this more below, but with those other series for young heroes never finding their footing from a sales standpoint, I wonder if we’ll be seeing more of them around the Academy.  I certainly wouldn’t mind it if Spider-Girl hung around.

Annihilators #3 – Review

By: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Tan Eng Huat (pencils), Victor Olazaba (inks), June Chung (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), John Denning (assistant editor) & Bill Rosemann (editor)

Rocket-Raccoon story by: Abnett & Lanning (writers), Timothy Green, II (art), Nathan Fairbairn (colors), Clayton Cowles (letters) & Denning & Rosemann (editors)

The Story: We finally see the Dire Wraiths again as the Annihilators journey into Limbo itself.  Meanwhile, Rocket Raccoon is dealing with an odd conspiracy having to do with other intelligent animals and killer clowns.

What’s Good: The art is fairly good throughout.  The star is Green’s art in the Rocket Raccoon story which is very cartoony and where he is drawing all kinds of crazy stuff like killer clowns, a space walrus, a cyborg rabbit, a weasel who is Rocket’s old flame and even a raccoon skeleton (when Rocket goes through an X-Ray).  Green’s layouts are bold and imaginative and the coloring by Nathan Fairbairn pops off the page.  Definitely keep an eye out for Green in the future.

In the “main” Annihilators story, the art team of Tan Eng Huat and Victor Olazaba does a pretty nice job too.  It is a fairly hectic issue with the Annihilators battling the Wraith Queen before journeying into Limbo itself and they manage to keep the story very coherent.  This would have been a pretty easy issue for the artists to lose their handle on the story, but that never happened.

What’s Not So Good: I love me some 70’s and 80’s comics, so I don’t mind exposition, but this issue is very exposition heavy and it doesn’t help that it is double sized (20 pages for Annihilators & 22 pages for Rocket Raccoon).  Some people like to talk about how you “got your money’s worth” for the $4.99 price tag, but I’ve never considered the time required to read a comic to equal “value”; I’m more interested in whether I enjoyed the story and found it memorable.  Probably either one of these stories could have been exposition heavy, and it would have worked IF the other story was quick and jaunty.  But, with both are really drawn out and ponderous, it gets to be a little painful to read.  I tend to blame editorial for this, as I’m fairly sure the original plan was for these to both be separate miniseries before Marvel bolted them together into a single $4.99 miniseries.  It probably would have helped story pacing to lengthen/shorten one of these stories in previous issues such that ALL the exposition wasn’t in issue #3.

Avengers Academy #11 – Review

By: Christos Gage (writer), Tom Raney (pencils), Scott Hanna (inks), Jeromy Cox (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), John Denning (assistant editor) & Bill Rosemann (editor)

The Story: Veil makes a mistake that brings the Academy students into conflict with a Grade A bad dude.

What’s Good: Gage uses a very clever writing trick to show the great things that the Academy students are capable of in this issue.  There are some real challenges to developing young superheroes within the Marvel or DC universes.  Namely, you just can’t have the “kids” going toe-to-toe with Dr. Doom or saving the Earth from Skrulls in issue #5.  They’re the kids and it just isn’t believable that the kids would save the day where the A-List heroes have failed.  So, the formula is to show a bunch of training, let them clobber a B-list villain and maybe help out against an A-lister after ~15 issues or so.  And, that is where a lot of these kids’ titles run out of steam because if they can take on A-list villains, we wonder why they aren’t on the Avengers or JLA, and if they aren’t ready yet, we wonder why we should read stories of B-list heroes beating up B-list villains.

The cool things in this issue all require a SPOILER WARNING…     What Gage does in this issue is to very cleverly bring Korvac into play.  This is a complete, “Oh shit!” moment because while issue #10 ended on a cliffhanger, it wasn’t anything that foretold THIS.  So, suddenly you think, “What are these kids going to do against Korvac.”  After a long and well done fight scene, just when the heroes are on the ropes, Korvac’s girlfriend uses her powers to give the Academy kids access to the future, fully-developed power sets and this should allow them to better tackle Korvac.

This is a great writing choice by Gage for a couple of reasons.  One, it’ll allow the kids to beat Korvac (next issue) without the reader having to completely suspend disbelief that somehow the deadly duo of Veil and Reptil beat an A-list villain.   Two, it gives us a glimpse of why we should care about these kids going forward by teasing what they can become.  This glimpse of the future isn’t a new technique in comics, but it opens all sorts of great storytelling possibilities where one of the kids can get stuck with some residual memory of their future self OR we readers can have fun watching a character mature differently than we expected (cue Comic Book Guy voice, “As we could clearly see in issue #11, Finesse had adopted a messy hairstyle in the future so when she grows her hair out in issue #62, we know it must be before the future Finesses obtains her full powers.”)

The art is largely fine.  It isn’t art that I’d gush about, but I don’t hate it either.  From a story telling standpoint there is nothing you can fault with any of the layouts.  On the other hand, some of the characters are a little stiff which is something I think happens when the inks around the perimeter of the character are heavy.  But, you know what?  This book comes out on time and keeps the story of these plucky kids moving forward and there are certainly no ugly panels in this book.

Annihilators #1 – Review

By: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Tan Eng Huat (pencils), Victor Olazaba (inks), June Chung (colors), Joe Caramanga (letters), John Denning (assistant editor) & Bill Rosemann (editor)

Rocket Raccoon/Groot by: Abnett & Lanning (writers), Timothy Green, II (art), Nathan Fairbairn (colors), Clayton Cowles (letters), Rachel Pinnelas & Denning (assistant editors) & Rosemann (editor)

The Story: Quasar, Ronan, Gladiator, Beta Ray Bill, Silver Surfer & a Spaceknight (yes…a Spaceknight) team up to keep the Universe safe.  And….we catch up with everyone’s favorite spunky sentient Raccoon.

What’s Good: The mere premise of this book is kinda “Avengers in space”.  And it isn’t some weak team of heroes either.  Abnett & Lanning (DnA) have basically gathered together the most powerful cosmic beings in the Marvel U. on the premise that the Guardians of the Galaxy were a good concept, but simply not powerful enough to stop the truly massive threats.

There is a lot of “team’s first meeting” in this issue, but the real highlight for me is that one member of the Annihilators is an honest-to-goodness Galadorian Spaceknight.  Alas, it is not our favorite silvery Spaceknight hero from the early 1980’s: ROM.  ROM is still stuck in the trademark penalty box between Marvel and Parker Brothers, but the story of the Spaceknights and their mortal enemies, the Dire Wraiths, is a good one and worth exploring in the Marvel U.  Granted, Marvel has never completely abandoned the Spaceknight concept (there was a miniseries ~2000), but it is always good to have them back.

It was also a fun to catch up with Rocket Raccoon in a truly zany tale that shows Rocky in his post-Guardians phase pushing a mail-cart through a prairie dog warren of cubicles for some faceless cosmic corporation.  Sigh…he hates his job, it’s boring, his boss is a prick and then he get’s attacked by a very strange killer clown which causes him to want to track down his old buddy, Groot.  Fun abounds.

This is also a beefy issue.  So, we’re getting 38 pages of comics for your $4.99.

The art is very solid throughout.  Huat’s designs and layouts interpret the story very effectively and I really like Olazaba’s inks.  He shows a real commitment to shading with very fine lines and it gives the comics a very throwback feel.  Green’s art in the Rocket Raccoon story is much more comical and that not only fits the silly nature of the story, but it is usually a good choice with Rocky.  It is really hard to draw a “realistic” bipedal raccoon and not have it look like a monkey.