Chaos War: X-Men #1 – Review

By: Louise Simonson & Chris Claremont (writers), Doug Braithwaite (art), Dave Sharpe (letters), Rob Schwager (colors) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: Some dead X-Men find themselves brought back to life and thrust into the Chaos War.

What’s Good: The art looks very nice.  If you’re not familiar with Doug Braithwaite, he’ll remind you a little of Alex Ross.  He definitely falls into the more realistic school of art and what strikes you most about his linework is how anatomically correct his characters are.  All of the muscles, contours, facial wrinkles, etc. are all as they’d appear on real humans.  Then he combines that with a very nuanced inked shading.  These inks combine with Schwager’s colors to give some pages an almost painted look.  The end result is very nice.

What’s Not So Good: This issue is credited to Claremont, Simonson & Braithwaite without any indication as to who wrote and who handled art duties.  I’m assuming that means that Braithwaite had some input on the story and that one or the other of Claremont and Simonson only helped in the most conceptual manner.  But, it could also be that no one really wanted to take credit for this story because it is not very good.

The general concept of Chaos War is that the Chaos King has destroyed death.  This allows all of the dead to come back to life.  At the same time, the Chaos King has struck down all mortal heroes into a coma of sorts.  So, while the godly characters of the Marvel U are fighting the Chaos King in the main part of the event, some of these back-from-the-dead heroes are trying to do little bits to help here on Earth.  This formula has given us a really good Dead Avengers miniseries and a fun Alpha Flight one-shot.  But, that magic was missing from this issue.

Wonder Woman #600 – Review

By Gail Simone (writer), George Perez (pencils), Scott Koblish (inks), Amanda Conner (writer and artist), Paul Mounts (colors), Louise Simonson (writer), Eduardo Pansica (pencils), Bob Wiacek (ink), Geoff Johns (writer), Scott Kolins (art), Michael Atiyeh (colors), and J. Michael Straczynski (writer), Don Kramer (pencils), Michael Babinski (inks)

The Stories: Gail Simone (yay!) gives us a nice story about a team up between Diana and most of the other female DC heroes (including Kate Kane’s Batwoman—double yay!), Amanda Conner gives us a fluffy but fun vignette that has Diana helping Power Girl to solve a…relationship problem, Louise Simonson tells us about a disasters nearly averted as Wonder Woman teams up with Superman to take down Aegeus, Geoff Johns (yay again!) gives us a very nice, very classic-feeling Wonder Woman tale that ends up being a prologue to…

…the Big One. Straczynski and company attempt to reinvent everything, from Wonder Woman’s costume to her attitude to her origin, to he very timeline itself. How do they fare? Read on.

The Review: We’ll get to the elephant in the room in a moment, but let’s focus on the non-JMS stories first. They’re all good, mostly because of the caliber of creators (especially writers) they pulled in for this issue. Johns’ story was easily my favorite (full disclosure: I’m a completely unapologetic Johns fangirl, so your mileage could vary), both because of the excellent writing and the story itself (short though it was.) I just love the added meaning he endows the “wonder” of Wonder Woman with. It’s not the first time it has been done of course, but Johns works it in very quietly and elegantly, without overemphasizing it or beating us over the head. I appreciate that. All of the vignettes were worth the time I invested in reading them, honestly; even “Fuzzy Logic,” my least favorite of the group, was harmless enough. It was a bit too cute for my taste, but it really does emphasize that there’s a Wonder Woman story in this issue to suit every kind of fan.

Now, on to ”Couture Shock.” I hate to start off with a complaint when there are a lot of good things to say about this story…but ugh. Worst. Pun. Ever. Yes I know it’s a reference to the new costume, but still. No thank you. It’s just BAD. With such major changes being made to such an iconic character, I really would have appreciated a title that was a little less flippant. Maybe I’m being oversensitive, but it really feels rather disrespectful, especially given how…we’ll say “passionately,” fans tend to react to changes of this magnitude. (Just titling it plain ‘ol “Culture Shock,” while generic, would have been plenty serviceable, and preferable in my opinion.)