Grayson #2 – Review

By: Tim Seeley (writer), Tim Seeley and Tom King (plot), Mikel Janin; Guillermo Ortega; and Juan Castro (art), Jeromy Cox (colorist)

The Story: Agent 27’s first mission with Spyral was a big success. Dick Grayson is playing the spy game now and you can’t deny that he has the skills for it. The question now is does he have the stomach for it.

…If you’ve read the issue you’ll know why I’m sorry about that last statement.

The Review: Apparently Spyral is operating out of St. Hadrian’s Finishing School and has taken over Leviathan’s task of teaching the next generation of young women to be prim, proper assassins. While the comic says Grayson on the cover, it’s clearly Matron Bertinelli who runs this school.

After running interference last time, Helena gets some time in the limelight this issue. In some ways she’s limited by the confines of her role, there’s a right way to do her job after all, but Tim Seeley does an admirable job of demonstrating Bertinelli’s competence and outlook on the job.

It does feel this month that Dick Grayson is a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of ideas in his title. Dick is a fine point of reference and allows Seeley to introduce some welcome levity into the story. Dick’s quips occasionally feel a little generic, like they would fit any character so inclined rather than being tuned to Dick’s personality, but at times it seems as though that’s intentional. In fact, the one great element of this issue that features Dick is the very real sense of Dick’s identity being challenged. Perhaps indicative of Tom King’s influence, Grayson #2 shows Dick’s sense of isolation beautifully. The final scene can read a little flat if you’re not in the mood to empathize, but in the right space it’s rather touching.

We also get a new character, if one whose personality is somewhat sublimated to the plot, as well as appearances from nearly all of the supporting characters from issue #1. Most interesting of these is Midnighter, who is apparently going to be a recurring antagonist for Agent 27 now that he’s fallen in with an organization called the God Garden.

It’s also very worth noting that your experience of this issue will likely differ dramatically based on your interest in the areas of the DCU King and Seeley are exploring. Those longing for more of the weird and wonderful present in Batman Incorporated will be happy to find that Seeley can’t hide his enthusiasm for it, but if you’re getting sick of unelaborated-upon organizations and awkward backronyms, I’m not sure that this will bring you around.

Green Lantern Corps #25 – Review

By: Van Jansen (script), Robert Venditti (co-plot), Victor Orujiniu and Ivan Fernandez (main sequence pencils), Juan Castro and Rob Lean (main sequence inks), Allan Jefferson (flashback pencils), Rob Lean (flashback inks), Garry Henderson (colors)

The Story: John Stewart’s knowledge of the Super Bowl halftime show saves the day. No, seriously.

The Review: John Stewart is one of the most interesting figures in DC’s history. Created by Denny O’Neill and Neal Adams, Stewart debuted as an architect and a somewhat justified Angry Black Man, focused on egalitarianism, transparency, and questioning authority. Since then he’s had a number of false starts that generally left him languishing in obscurity until the next reboot of his role came along. That changed in 2001 when he was chosen to represent the Corps in the Justice League animated series, making him the Green Lantern to an entire generation. This John Stewart was a former Marine; stern, straight-laced, and stoic. Before long this was transferred into the comics continuity and this new John returned to the Green Lantern Corps with honor, before beginning his cycle of reinvention once again.

I mention this because John is a character who people really want to succeed but has rarely found a status quo that worked for him. His history is a bit of a mess; for instance, I don’t know that it’s ever been addressed that John is man in his thirties who’s supposedly served as an active Marine and undergone the mandatory five or more years it takes to become an architect before joining the Green Lantern Corps.

GI Joe #6 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Jamal Igle (pencils), Juan Castro (inks), Joana LaFuente (colors) and Neil Uyetake (letters)

The Story: Cover Girl’s past is revealed as she learns more about her kinda-boyfriend, Duke.

Review (with little SPOILERS): Wow….what a difference competent art makes!  The art has been very unsteady since the main GI Joe title renumbered a few months ago with Fred Van Lente as the writer.  It’s hard to really appreciate “the story” when you’re noticing funny looking panels and weirdly distorted faces.  But, replace the former art team with someone like Jamal Igle and you get the best issue of the series so far.  IDW really needs to decide on a direction for these Joe titles artistically because the books will never be more than mediocre until their hire seriously skilled artists (like Igle).

What’s great is that there isn’t anything flashy about Igle’s art.  He’s just pumping along and illustrating the story so that people can understand what is going on.  Perhaps more importantly, he isn’t making any glaring mistakes that pull us out of the story.  I sometimes think that being an artist is more about the mistakes you avoid than the spectacular pages you generate…and since the spectacular pages you generate depend on external factors (like the flow of the story, what characters are involved, etc.) it is much easier to just avoid the mistakes.  It’s kinda like being a goalkeeper in soccer: You have full control over avoiding the moronic mistakes, but you depend on other circumstances to be in position to make the spectacular saves.

GI Joe #5 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Steve Kurth (pencils), Allen Martinez, Marc Deering and Juan Castro (inks), Joana LaFuente (colors), Chris Mowry (letters)

The Story: A small GI Joe team has to fight its way out of an American town that has been completely flipped by Cobra.

Review (with minor SPOILERS): “Pretty good story undone by poor art!”  THAT is the headline for this issue.

It’s never a good sign when an issue credits three inkers.  The art on this series hits new lows in this issue.  The problem is mostly related to depth.  If you stare at a lot of the panels, a crazy “magic eye” thing will happen.  Suddenly characters’ arms and legs will appear to be in totally different planes than the rest of their bodies.  It’s screwed up.  And once you start to see these problems with depth, the anatomy of the characters starts to come undone too because your mind starts trying to rationalize how an arm/leg could bend to achieve these weird depth positions.  Steve Kurth has never been my favorite penciller, but it’s not fair to heap this on him.  Depth problems are generally the fault of inkers and colorists.

Katana #3 – Review

By: Ann Nocenti (story), Cliff Richards (pencils), Rebeca Buchman, Juan Castro, Le Beau Underwood, Phyllis Novin (inks), Pete Pantazis (colors)

The Story: The Dagger Clan try to prove that the size of one’s sword really doesn’t matter.

The Review: I always find it a little risky when a creator mentions how he was inspired by this-or-that or so-and-so in his latest project.  Most of the time, he’s referring to some seminal work of the past, which is now held up as a standard for all works to follow.  Not that this is his intention, but why invite that comparison?  It just raises fans’ expectations and skeptics’ eyebrows that much higher, and a story tends to suffer in the process.

In nearly every interview I’ve read of Nocenti talking about Katana, she’s referred to Seven Samurai as a source of inspiration.  I find this rather amusing because not only does the substance of this series bear no resemblance to that legendary film (except, perhaps, for Katana being a samurai—sort of), but nothing in the tone nor the structure of Katana evokes the spirit that made Seven Samurai special.  This title already suffers from its own shortcomings; it can only look even worse when beheld next to a masterpiece.

Snake-Eyes #8 – Review

By: Chuck Dixon (writer), Casey Maloney (pencils), Juan Castro & Chris Dreier (inks), Simon Gough & Romulo Fajardo, Jr. (colors), Neil Uyetake (letters) & Carlos Guzman & John Barber (editors)

The Story: Snake-Eyes and Duke try to find a cure for a Cobra engineered bioweapon.

Four Things:

1. Generally been enjoying GI Joe comics recently. – I don’t know how this happened.  I read some of the old Marvel GI Joe series when I was a kid and had enjoyed the GI Joe/Cobra series from IDW featuring Chuckles as a spy within Cobra.  But, something clicked in me that I needed to read this Cobra Civil War series a few weeks ago and via the beauty of digital comics I was able to mainline the whole story in a week or so.  And, it’s a really good and strong story.  There’s one big caveat with the books that I’ll get into below, but the storyline behind the GI Joe books is pretty hot.

2. Snake Eyes busting the place up. – This story is pretty basic: Cobra has released a bioweapon and Duke has also been infected.  So, Snake Eyes and Duke go charging into the Cobra lab facility to find the cure.  Duke has some kind of armored hazmat suit that’s kinda cool.  And they fight all kinds of Cobra troops with Snake Eyes being all bad ass, and that’ definitely cool.  There really isn’t a whole lot of subtlety to a comic like this and there are plot holes galore (what happens to the Vipers if they shoot Duke’s suit and the virus spills out?), but it is exciting to read.  Duke is in really bad shape and IDW has demonstrated that they’re not afraid of death.  A LOT of GI Joe’s have been killed recently and a few “named” Cobra guys too.  So, this issue isn’t something you can read thinking, “Oh sure…..Duke will be fine in the end because it can’t end any other way.”  That threat of DEATH adds some weight to these scenes of Snake Eyes fighting all these Hasbro-toy-line inspired Cobra bad guys.

Incorruptible #10 – Review

By: Mark Waid (writer/creator), Horacio Domingues (pencils), Juan Castro & Michael Babinski (inks), Nolan Woodard (colors) & Ed Dukeshire (letters)

The Story: Max Damage and sidekick confront a group of white supremacists inspired by the Plutonian.

What’s Good: For a series that is supposed to be about Max Damage, it is interesting that the most interesting characters are the young women in his life.  So it was welcome this month to see that Annie, the “new” Jailbait, gets her own nickname: Hardcase.  Of course it makes the job of the lowly comics reviewer easier to not have to refer to new/old Jailbaits but it also helps to establish Annie as her own character.  It also seems to settle whether Annie will be remaining as a character.

It is also a very positive sign that Waid has added the Plutonian’s former girlfriend, Alana Patel, to Max’s entourage.  Waid has shown a few deft hand at dealing with emotionally damaged young women in this series, so this should be fertile ground for him to work in for future issues.

Incorruptible #9 – Review

By: Mark Waid (writer), Horacio Domingues (art), Juan Castro (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors) & Ed Dukeshire (letters)

The Story: A well done jumping on point allows us to learn some additional background info on several of our central characters.

What’s Good: If you’re a fan of “jumping on points” this will be a good issue for you.  Mark Waid does a very nice job of balancing the summary-of-the-story-so-far aspects of a jumping on point issue with the unveiling of additional information that is necessary to keep established readers from screaming.  He does this really well by using flashbacks and it makes me wonder why jumping on point issues can’t always be this way.

I also really like what Waid is doing with the Jailbait 2.0 character.  The original Jailbait is a great character and is easy to root for: she’s just a kid who has made some poor choices and you really want to see her straighten her life out or at least catch a break.  However, having original Jailbait around makes Max Damage’s history of sleeping with this 15-16 year old girl a little too blatant.  Your tastes may vary and I do appreciate that this history of pedophilia is important if we are to appreciate Max Damage’s ultimate redemption, but I still don’t like to see the living, breathing victim on every page.  It’s just a little too skeevy so I am happy that the new Jailbait 2.0 is becoming a more central character.

In terms of overall plot, Incorruptible is starting to actually feel like it might belong in the same universe with Irredeemable by showing Max’s looming confrontation with this cult that worships the Plutonian.  These blatant connections between the series have been kinda slow to materialize, but I finally feel that the events of this issue might set us up for a some kind of interaction between Max and the Plutonian.  [Although it wouldn’t hurt if Irredeemable could return the favor and at least mention Max as a legit threat to the Plutonian…]

Incorruptible #8 – Review

By: Mark Waid (writer), Horacio Domingues (pencils), Juan Castro (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors) & Ed Dukeshire (letters)

The Story: After getting shot in the last issue, will Max Damage survive?  And what is the next chapter in the story of Jailbait?

What’s Good: I’ve been pretty unabashed in my love of the character Jailbait.  Waid really mixes things up nicely in this issue, giving us Jailbait 2.0 by bringing back the girl who Max had forced to play Jailbait a few issues ago.  It turns out that her family was murdered by a group of skinhead-like thugs who idolize the Plutonian and she is willing to play Jailbait if Max promises to keep her safe.

This whole Jailbait tale is really shaping up to be a fun and dramatic story.  Surely the original Jailbait isn’t going to be thrilled with this new development, so it looks like Max Damage is starting a collection of emotionally damaged young ladies.  In a way, I like the new Jailbait better because it is hard to think of Max as truly heroic when the original Jailbait was basically a walking, talking reminder of his past pedophilia.  Nothing heroic about pedophilia!

Incorruptible #7 – Review

By: Mark Waid (writer), Horacio Domingues (pencils), Juan Castro (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters)

The Story: More Jailbait fun and Max Damage begins to come into conflict with the Diamond Gang.

What’s Good: One thing that I love about Incorruptible (and its sister title, Irredeemable) is that they are not written in story arcs.  Each issue is “what happened next” and it reminds me of how comics were as a kid in the 1980’s before comics were written in arcs with each arc beginning some indeterminate time after the preceding arc (days? weeks? months?, who knows?).  This issue continues following the very compelling little tale of Jailbait, Max Damage’s 16-year old sidekick (nee, accomplice).  She’s a very compelling character who is really the moral center for the entire comic.  I guess that Max is technically the main character, but I find that I really don’t care about him very much.  Witness, he gets hurt pretty badly at the end of this issue and I don’t think I cared……but I was very curious about what happened to Jailbait after she snuck off.  I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of her because she is too good of a character to lose.  And, we even have a little bit of “Who will wear the leather tramp costume” action going on here as we see some cute young thing swipe Jailbait’s costume from her room.  I definitely want to know what is going on with that!

This comic is also neat in that it doesn’t spoon-feed everything to you.  After reading several pages of Max talking like he’s having a stroke, you realize that it’s simply because he hasn’t slept and his body is becoming hard as a brick (that’s his power).  But, Waid just allows this to happen organically during the issue and spares us any yawning or inner monologue that explains what is going on.

The art on this title is much improved.  I wouldn’t say it’s a book to buy for the art, but the art is no longer holding this title back.

Incorruptible #6 – Review

By: Mark Waid (writer), Horacio Domingues (art), Juan Castro (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors) & Ed Dukeshire (letters)

The Story: Will Max Damage compromise his new (very new) superhero ideals to save Jailbait?

What’s Good: For those who have followed Incorruptible since issue #1, it hasn’t been 100% clear what kind of hero Max Damage would turn into.  Is he going to be a Captain American-type boy scout?  Or is he going to be some kind of murkier hero like someone from the Thunderbolts or Suicide Squad?

When we last left this story in issue #5, Jailbait (Max’s underage sex-toy from his criminal days) had been kidnapped and the bad guys were starting to mail her to him piece-by-piece (a finger first).  What lengths would Max go to in order to save Jailbait?

I like the turn that Waid gives Max.  He’s going to be a no compromises hero; there will be no negotiating with criminals or terrorists.  This works really well considering that Incorruptible is a mirror to Irredeemable.  Just as the Plutonian has gone from being Superman to a twisted, perverted mass-murderer, it makes sense that Max (who kept a 16 year old as a sex-toy) would become a boy scout.  I also like this direction because it will set up a constant struggle for Max to toe the line.  Honestly, if Max had just morphed into some kind of anti-hero, you could have made the case that he hadn’t really changed at all…

Waid is also doing a lovely job of making Jailbait the emotional core of this series.  As we learn more about her character, we’re seeing that she is just a really screwed up kid.  Max was kinda all she had in the world and she is going through a bit of an identity crisis now that Max isn’t consorting with 16 year olds.  Didn’t we all know some girl in high school who had a heart of gold, but was a bit too easy because she had really low self-esteem and a lousy father?  Didn’t you just want to shake her and say, “Honey, this is not the way to make yourself happy!”  Jailbait is that girl.

From a story-development standpoint, Waid finally gets the car in gear and it is time.  The whole series, I’d wondered when we would be done (at least mostly done) with the character development and start seeing Max do some superhero stuff.  It looks like that is about to get started.