She-Hulks #3 – Review

By: Harrison Wilcox (writer), Ryan Stegman (pencils), Michael Babinski (inks), Guru eFX (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: She-Hulks Jen and Lyra continue taking down The Intelligencia while dealing with other important matters… like shopping.

What’s Good: This miniseries has capital F-U-N all over it.  I love it.  The story is quick and funny, it isn’t all bogged down in any of the other Marvel Universe continuity and the art is just greatly awesome.

This story is very new-reader-friendly and doesn’t take itself too seriously.  It also strikes me as something that Marvel could sell the hell out of to girls or sell digitally.  Jen and Lyra have a great chemistry together.  It’s a kinda spunky-yet-misunderstood teenage girl with her “cool” aunt vibe.   It is enjoyable watching Jen teach Lyra the superhero basics of busting criminals, maintaining your secret identity and also finding to time go shopping with Bruce Banner’s credit card (leading to one funny scene where a holographic Hulk on the communicator is craning his neck trying to see all the shopping bags).  Love it.

Here’s a name for you comic fans to keep an eye on: Ryan Stegman.  The art in this issue is just incredible.  The only thing that worries me is that Stegman draws attractive women SOOOOO well that he’s going to get “stuck” on books like She-Hulk or his upcoming story arc on X-23.  If you follow the guy on twitter, you see his sketches and he can draw just about anything.  Stegman doesn’t just draw the pretty ladies either, you’ve got good story telling, great panel layouts, backgrounds, some creative panel design, etc.  It’s just a very complete effort and I really didn’t mind that Stegman didn’t ink his own work here.  I think he’s a good inker and this IS a different look, but it still works just fine for me.  And kudos also to those nameless colorists at Guru eFX.  You can’t have a She-Hulk comic without doing a good job on green skin and they nail it.

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.

Chaos War: Dead Avengers #2 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Tom Grummett (pencils), Cory Hamscher (inks), Andy Troy & Sotocolor (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: The Dead Avengers continue in an attempt to protect the current/living/comatose Avengers from a “back from the dead” Grim Reaper.

What’s Good: This is a great little tie-in series to the Chaos War event for a few reasons, a) it makes sense with the overall story and doesn’t seem forced, b) it is not essential to your enjoyment of Chaos War proper, c) it adds to your enjoyment of the overall event if you read it and d) it is not causing any continuity problems.

The basic story is that the Chaos King has put all mortal humans on Earth into a coma and brought all of the dead back to life.  Only, they aren’t ghoulish zombies…. they’re just who they were before they died, with all their memories, motives, etc. intact.  Oh, and the bad guys seem to be really powered up.  So, when a group of Dead Avengers is revived and finds current Avengers flopped around comatose with a revived Grim Reaper trying to kill them, they leap into action.

What is great is that writer Van Lente is spending a little bit of time showing the back story of each of the Dead Avengers.  That’s appreciated because some of these characters have been out of comics for a long time.  He also gives each of them a unique voice and motivation for wanting to help out.  And, in true Van Lente fashion, there are a couple of “panels of the week candidates” that make you snicker as you read (loved the Swordsman coming on to Yellowjacket and explaining that he can’t help it because he is French).  Van Lente is one of the real stars at Marvel and why they haven’t locked him up with an “exclusive” deal is beyond me.  His comics are always entertaining and even when I don’t think I’ll enjoy the subject matter (i.e. Dead Avengers) I find myself having a great time reading.  I think his secret is that he’s using just the right about of continuity to “matter” but not so much that the story is bogged down.

Grummett’s pencils are also really sweet.  He’s a veteran of comic art and for some reason his style has kinda fallen out of favor, but I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is because his characters look like they conform to more of a “house style” and artists today have to be individuals?  But, this is just flat out nice artwork in a very throwback way (i.e. is faithful to human muscle groups).  And, for this type of story, dealing with mortal danger, this sort of classic, super-hero art is more appropriate than a more cartooning style.  Also kudos to the rest of the art team.  Nice inks, pretty colors and even some creative lettering.

Chaos War: Thor #2 – Review

By: J.M. Dematteis (writer), Brian Ching (pencils), Rick Ketcham (inks), Rob Schwager (colors), Simon Bowland (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: An amnesiac Thor, in Donald Blake form, does battle with Glory while protecting a comely widow.

What’s Good: The art is pretty good in this tie-in to Chaos War.  Brian Ching is given lots of opportunities to draw Glory.  This isn’t the normal version of Glory, but a demonic looking thing that has fallen to Earth after being smote by Thor in Chaos War: Thor #1.  This demon looks very…well…demonic and Ching draws him really well.  The art tells the story very effectively and coloring is right on point too.  He even gets in a few very nice pages of Thor once Don Blake get’s his mojo back.

Chaos War #4 – Review

By: Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente (writer), Khoi Pham (pencils), Thomas Palmer (inks), Sunny Gho (colors), Simon Bowland (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: Now that the Chaos King has given the beat-down to just about the entire Marvel U., how is anyone going to stand up to him?

What’s Good: This issue becomes much more of a Hercules story than a Marvel U. story.  If you’re a Herc fan, you’ll love it because all of the other Marvel characters who have played roles in Chaos War thus far kinda fade to the side.

The central problem is that Herc’s God Squad and all other forces standing against the Chaos King have been pretty thoroughly trounced and they’ll either have to flee (which leads to a neat Galactus/Cho moment) OR someone is going to have to seriously level-up.  I’ll let you guess what is probably going to happen as the issue ends on a note that makes me excited for issue #5.

Pham, Palmer and Gho continue to do a nice job on the art.  A special kudos needs to go to colorist Sunny Gho.  Colors are really important to making cosmic or godly events seem…well…cosmic and godly.  And he does a very nice job.  Also, I usually don’t care about cover art at all, but Dan Panosian’s cover is really nice.  Note, I’m giving the kudos based on the art being a pin-up and I’ll discuss the dictated content below.

Incredible Hulks #618 – Review

By: Greg Pak (writer), Paul Pelletier (pencils), Danny Miki (inks), Paul Mounts (colors), Simon Bowland (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

A-Bomb back-up by: Jeff Parker (writer), Yacine Elghorri (art), Bowland (letters) & Jordan White (editor)

The Story: The Hulk family is sucked into the Chaos War.

What’s Good: Kudos to Pak and editor Paniccia to finding a way to tie the Hulk family into Chaos War in a way that makes sense in continuity.  One of the things I really miss from the comics I enjoyed as a kid was the feeling that the Marvel U is one big place and that all of these characters exist at the same time and in the same world.  Too often nowadays each branch of the Marvel U has its own threat-to-Earth going on that is made to feel small because none of the other books acknowledge each other.  Heck, Avengers and New Avengers don’t even acknowledge each other and they have the same writer and some of the same characters.

So, it was very nice to see the Hulks go immediately from their adventures in space last story arc to being tied into Chaos War.  One of the first events of Chaos War was that all the mortal heroes on Earth were knocked into a coma of sorts, so it makes sense that the Hulks (being off planet at the time) would have a role to play since they were unaffected.  It’s just nice to see nods to continuity in an event that isn’t blatantly numbering its books (although all the cross pollination between Chaos War scribe and Greg Pak and the Hulk and Hercules universes probably helps coordination).

The story itself is pretty average.  It’s nothing special, but no one who enjoys Hulk stuff is going to be disappointed to see that Abomination is back from the dead to fight the Hulks when they get back to Earth.  Hulks are big and they smash stuff.  Yeah!

Chaos War: God Squad #1 – Review

By: Marc Sumerak (writer), Dan Panosian (art), Antonio Fabela (colors), Dave Sharpe (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: A bunch of neither God, nor mortal heroic types battle the forces of Chaos.

What’s Good: This is a comic you buy if you’re into a couple of the characters OR are buying the whole Chaos War event (like me).  The story focuses on Daimon Hellstrom, Sersi, Silver Surfer & Venus.  How’s that for an odd team?  Probably most Marvel fans will be interested to read about one or two of those characters.  For me, the highlights are the Surfer and Venus.  Although Venus’ joke of signing some appropriate (yet oddly inapt) song to solve a problem is not a new joke, it really never gets old.  It is one of those story devices where you can just tell that every Marvel writer has “the song” that they’re going to have Venus sing if they ever get to writer her.  I love reading a comic that contains that sort of enthusiasm from the creators.  Do you doubt that some Marvel writer has a plan to have Venus sing “Baby got back” someday?

In an oddly good moment for an event tie-in, this issue actually expands the Chaos War event a little bit by explaining why these four characters are important to defeating the Chaos King.  Here’s a hint: The name “God Squad” is actually kinda a misnomer for them, but only “kinda”.  This was a neat concept and I hope it is explored a little more in the Chaos War proper.

Panosian’s art is mostly excellent.  There were pages in here where I said, “Ohhh.  I like that.  I wouldn’t mind having that framed on my wall.”  That doesn’t happen in every comic.  This issue also has a lot of cosmic vibe to it that allows Fabela’s colors to shine.

Chaos War: Dead Avengers #1 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Tom Grummett (pencils), Cory Hamscher (inks), Andy Troy (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: The Chaos King has struck all living mortal heroes dead/comatose, so it falls upon a group of dead Avengers to save innocent civilians and the helpless Avengers.

What’s Good: How many truly interesting superhero characters actually stay dead for very long?  The answer is “not many”, so if you want to do a “dead heroes” issue like this one, you have a challenge as a writer because the only dead heroes are so boring that no one has tried to bring them back. This was a problem that killed the X-Necrosha event last year: Who cared about these dead mutants?  We were glad they were dead and didn’t like being reminded of them!

So Van Lente faced a big obstacle to making this an interesting book.  But the cool thing is that I would totally read an ongoing series written by Van Lente featuring these characters: Vision, Yellowjacket, Swordsman, Dr. Druid, Mar-Vell & Deathcry.  That in itself should make you appreciate what a nice job of writing this is!  Van Lente does a solid job of laying out the scenario that these “dead Avengers” face, who they are and what they can do (coupled with a few origin style flashbacks).  The storytelling is nice and tight and leaves us with a satisfying cliffhanger that makes one anticipate next month’s issue.

Chaos War: Chaos King #1 – Review

By: Brandon Montclare (writer), Michael William Kaluta (art), Brad Anderson, Nathan Eyring & Jim Charlampidis (colors), Jared Fletcher (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: The Chaos King turns his sights on new targets including Zenn-la, Earth & the devil himself.

What’s Good: Holy cow can Mr. Kaluta draw!  That isn’t exactly a news flash, but I’d had a bad experience with my Chaos War tie-in last week and had considered avoiding the tie-ins this week until I saw that Kaluta was drawing this issue.  With his name attached, I almost cease to care what the story is because I’m willing to plunk down my $3.99 to buy it as a picture book.  There aren’t many artists who hit that level of excellence and virtually none who work in modern monthly comics (JH Williams, III is the closest).

This story is very much written to Kaluta’s strengths.  He really excels at large spreads showing godly or demonic images where you have swirling mists or flames and angels/demons swooping about.  I can’t emphasize enough how visually stunning the comic is.  This review is actually taking an overly long time to write because I keep flipping through the issue again to marvel at the pretty pictures.  Just buy it!

The story is almost incidental (for me).  But, it does what event tie-ins should.  It adds extra flavor to the event without being required reading.  The second and third parts of the story where the Chaos King encounters Impossible Man (which is an interesting concept) and the devil are much stronger than the first chapter.

Chaos War: Thor #1 – Review

By: J.M. DeMatteis (writer), Brian Ching (pencils), Rick Ketcham (inks), Rob Schwager (colors), Simon Bowland (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: Thor engages in cosmic-level battle with Oblivion before falling to Earth as an amnesiac Donald Blake and being taken in by a beautiful widow.  Together they will find healing.

What’s Good: If you feel like Thor is too strong to be on Earth because he would break things if he really unloaded with his full might, you’ll probably enjoy the first part of this issue.  Here we see Thor as his cosmic best, doing battle with Oblivion, a cosmic entity who is in league with the Chaos King.  This portion of the issue is really good cosmic action.  It has BIG scenes, bright colors and Thor standing alone against a real heavy hitter.  It also allows the art team to shine, especially the colors from Schwagner.  Cosmic action is all about the colors.  Just think how nice these comics will look digitally instead of printed on cheap paper!

The best thing about this issue is the art.  It is really nice.  It is just a shame that the story isn’t better.

Atlas #2 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (writer), Gabriel Hardman (artist), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colorist), Ramon Rosanas (backup story artist and colorist), Nathan Cosby (associate editor), Mark Paniccia (senior editor)

The Story: The new 3-D Man (Delroy Garrett) is flipping out and his mysterious memories are challenging everyone. Whose memories are right? In the meantime, another Atlas evil empire rebellion is in full swing in Iceland.

What’s Good: Parker’s character work is always fun. Particularly well done are Lao (chewing on a bull hindquarter like I’d chew on a chicken leg) and Hale (who has no end of snappy one-liners and smart-ass remarks). And the tremendous world-building that has to go into every issue of Atlas (the underground culture, the hidden conspiracy-filled past, the weirdness of the characters’ origins, the weirdness of their foes) generates that sense of wonder that I look for in comic books, fantasy and science fiction. It’s the brain-stretching “I-wish-I’d-thought-of-that” feeling. Nice work, Mr. Parker.

Artwise, Hardman, Rosanas and Breitwesier carry a strong issue with dynamic action, expressive faces and gritty scenery. The underground stonework looks textured and stony. Lao looks wrinkled and tactile, as do the zombies with power generators on their back. The art teams make the story look real, which is one of the highest compliments I have for art.