Infinity – Free Comic Book Day Review

By: Jonathan Hickman, Warren Ellis, Scott Edelman (Writers), Jim Cheung, Mike Zeck, Mike Mckone (Artists), Justin Ponsor, Chris Eliopoulos (Colorists)

The Story (The interesting one): Thanos sends assassins and envoys to other planets, demanding tributes for his crushing conquests of their ancient home.

(The less interesting ones): Thanos wants to crush a flower, because he’s a bad man! Meanwhile, we get a preview we have already seen of a book by an author many actually like.

The Review: It is pretty easy to completely disregard free comic book day. It is, after all, something that many actual fans of comics might not be so enthusiastic about, since most offerings are either tease at bigger things to come yet, or reprints of stuff we have already seen before. From a bigger perspective, this seems more like a move made to gather people who are not thoroughly interested in the media to begin with, to give them a taste of how versatile the market can be. Sure, there are some terrific books in these free selections, like Atomic Robo, Mouse Guard or any that actually create new and compelling content for people to enjoy.

Of course, what most people will look for is what kind of offering the big two is giving away this year. While DC side has already been explored, Marvel hasn’t, as they have decided to give us a proper tease of their next big event involving one of the most beloved villains of the Marvel universe: Thanos. While it is merely to set up the stage and to excite their fan base, how does it actually fare as a proper comic?

Captain America #8 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (writer), Alan Davis (penciler), Mark Farmer (inker), Laura Martin (colorist)

The Story: Powerless, Part 3: Cap and Sharon manage to eke out a victory in a tough fight with the Serpent Squad only for Cap to lose his powers once again. Why? Who’s behind this? Sharon has one theory and the investigation leads her to the Machinesmith. In the meantime, the Hydra Queen makes several moves. It’s all going pear-shaped.

The Review: I have been a big Davis/Farmer fan since the 80s and absolutely loved them here. Davis is at once a master of draftsmanship, with elegant, detailed faces with close-up texturing. At the same time, he knows his way around a superhero fight, with varied panel structures and camera angles, with quicker and more stylized shapes to focus the reader’s eye on the dynamism as opposed to the detail. A great example of this is on the first page. Cap as the center of the action has the most detail, but it is clearly the composition doing the work here. Check out the stances and angles, the V-shape made by Cap’s leg with the Eel’s, the detail-free Sharon in an uber-energetic Kirby-esque pose. The page radiates energy. Then in the next couple of pages, the close-ups of Cap and Sharon’s faces are wonderfully detailed, emotive and lifelike, in the way a Neal Adams face comes alive. The other artistic roots I felt while reading this book was Mike Zeck. Zeck defined the Captain America for several years and I almost felt Zeck’s great style being channeled in this book, but better.

Storywise, it’s hard to go wrong with Brubaker. His name on the top of the credits virtually guarantees that you’ll be treated as an intelligent reader. Moreover, he’s so good at the thriller and the espionage motifs, which are so much a part of Cap’s WWII and cold-war mythos, that the intrigue and layered mystery pulls the story towards a climax you know is going to be good. The dialogue is crisp and believable (insofar as some villains have to have a bit of an over-the-top style to them) and the plot twists are great. I loved the Cobra interrogation scene and Sharon’s next steps, and I was eating up the Hydra Queen moves.

Kraven’s Last Hunt – Review

By J.M. DeMatteis (writer), Mike Zeck (pencils), Bob McLeod (inks), Mike Zeck and Ian Tetrault (colors), Rick Parker (letters)

The Review: Because of the recent “Grim Hunt” storyline in Amazing Spider-Man (and, frankly, to wash the taste of “OMIT” out of my brain), I thought this would be an excellent time to look back on what, in my mind, just might be the single greatest Spidey story ever told.

I really shouldn’t be as big a fan of this story as I am: I don’t care for overly dark or noirish stories, overwrought emotion irritates me, and Spidey himself has never been at the top of my ‘favorite heroes’ list. The way Spider-Man is often written comes off (to my ear) as too immature and naive. I’m sure these are some of the same character aspects that make him charming and endearing to so many, but it has never particularly worked for me. To top it off, I’m really not a fan of breaking up a cohesive story between multiple comic book titles. This isn’t an issue when reading the book collected in a trade like this, but it still irks me in general principle.

And yet, I can’t help but love this book. It stands as final proof to me that a serialized comic book can hold just as much literary merit and value as a novel, poem, or other written work of art. The story, characters and symbolism are absolutely epic, in the Homeric sense of the term. Kraven’s Last Hunt feels more like an ancient myth with a Spider-Man mask loosely draped over it than it does a comic book, and I mean that as the highest sort of complement. The combination of DeMatteis’ writing and Zeck’s pencils tap into something very deep and primal here, and create a book and a story that is far more than the sum of its parts.

The major key to what makes this work is the characterization and the writing. The dialog flows effortlessly and—against all odds, naturally—between Kraven’s lofty, self-assured poetry, Spider-Man’s blue collar, down to Earth shock and anger, and Vermin’s simple, animalistic expressions of craving. Not only are these characters beautifully and deftly crafted as individuals with wants, needs and goals of their own, they function as fully realized archetypes which fit in seamlessly to the grand, almost mythic tone that runs through the surface-level grit and realism of the story.