Indestructible Hulk #19 – Review

by Mark Waid (Writer) Jheremy Raapack, Joe Bennett, Ruy Jose, Tom Grummett, Karl Kesel, Andrew Hennessy (Artists), Val Staples (Colorist)

The Story: Bruce tries to find out just what happened to Jessup as an evil organisation plans for nefarious deeds related to inhumans.

The Review: Some writers are known to surprise readers. It can be an especially nice thing to know that someone is able to circumvent expectations, allowing for twists and turns to be shown at random. To not be able to see where the title could be headed is a blessing for fans, with a untold possibilities being presented in each issues.

However, not all such writers can achieve good results with said approach at all times. For all the praise Mark Waid has received for work such as Kingdom Come, Daredevil and Superman: Birthright, there are some things he did that don’t exactly warrant the same kind of commendation. Unfortunately, his Indestructible Hulk run, for the most part, simply hasn’t been the best of showcase when it comes to the man and his talent, with this issue being a good example.

It’s not that it’s bad, far from it. There are multiple qualities that are quite visible, making the book not a terrible read, but a bit of an unfulfilling one. For one, the characterization of Bruce Banner is not only sound, but also interesting. The use of narration to provide an outlet for his inner thoughts and his more analytical tendencies prove to be a rather apt method to present characterization and contextualization without slowing things down. His rage, his attempts at calming down and his interactions with others prove to be rather amusing, with Waid pushing forth his version of the character in ways that feel natural to the story he’s telling here.

Indestructible Hulk #18 – Review

by Mark Waid (Writer), Jheremy Raapack, Miguel Sepulveda, Tom Grummett (Artists), Val Staples (Colorist)

The Story: With the effect of the bomb Banner had built now understood, it would be a shame of something horrible were to happen to someone…

The Review: There are always some creators that we care more about than others. It’s a sad fact, but one that is especially true for everyone. Some prefer Jonathan Hickman over Matt Fraction, some prefer Grant Morrison over Alan Moore and other have preferences over some unpopular creators. Subjectivity and personal tastes being the key here, there are simply some creators in which we have quite a lot of faith in.

Mark Waid is one of those for me. Even though not all of his work is especially amazing, the man did produce a superb run on Fantastic Four, wrote some terrific JLA stories, made Kingdom Come and a good lot of other really great things even nowadays. With such a notable amount of work of quality under his name, I have a lot of faith in him as a writer, which can act as a curse sometimes when reading some of the materials of lesser quality even he can produce.

His tenure on Hulk and his stories, while backed by a genuinely good concept and with a really great first batch of issues, hasn’t been nearly as good as some of the previous stuff he did, to be overtly frank. While filled with some very nice ideas, the execution isn’t as good as the very concepts behind them most of the time, which doesn’t make the book the best thing he is writing right now.

This issue, however, does provide some rather interesting ideas and some potent character work from the writer. The way he present Hank Pym and how other scientists and their reaction to the discovery of just what Banner was planning with his bomb makes for some rather good moments, playing quite a bit with super-science as well as the bond between man delving into the subjects all the time. The relationship between those people as well as the quest of Bruce Banner for their respect makes for a rather enjoyable aspect of this issue.

Incredible Hulks #635 – Review

Heart of the Monster by: Greg Pak (writer), Paul Pelletier (art), Danny Miki (inks), Morry Hollowell (colors) & Simon Bowland (letters)

Conclusion by: Pak (writer), Tom Grummett (art), Cory Hamscher & Scott Hanna (inks), Jesus Aburtov (colors) & Bowland (letters)

Jake Thomas (assistant editor) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: Greg Pak wraps up the Heart of the Monster story AND his ~6 year run on Incredible Hulk.

What’s Good: Hulk is one of those characters that can be great in the hands of a writer who knows how to use him, but Hulk can also be really dismal with a mediocre writer.  So, let’s give Greg Pak an huge round of applause for 6 years of (mostly) really good Hulk stories AND a special gold star for giving us Planet Hulk which is the best Hulk story ever written (go read it if you haven’t).

This issue wraps up the really cool Heart of the Monster storyline.  The essence of this story is that a Wishing Well has been created and Hulk and Betty and all other sorts of characters have been making wishes that have led to things like Kirby-monsters stampeding in Vegas and the Hulk getting sent to Hell (although it is unclear who wished for this).  Sounds grim until you consider that for Hulk, hell is probably heaven: He has lots of things to fight and doesn’t have to worry about going too far and destroying the world by accident.  It’s serious Hulk smashing action at its best.

Naturally, there is great sentiment by the heroes to let Hulk stay there since he’s finally at peace (as he’s ripping demons apart) and not threatening Earth anymore, but what would that mean for Banner?  Does Banner die if Hulk is allowed to cut loose for an extended period of time?  And could there be anything back on Earth sufficient to justify dragging an enraged Hulk back to Earth?  Obviously there is, but the way that Pak takes us from point A to point B is really cool.

Quick-Hit Reviews – Week of May 25, 2011

A whole LOT of very solid comics last week.  We can’t review everything in-depth, so the least we can do is give you a quick-hit letting you know what we thought of an issue and whether it is worth picking up.

Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #6 – Talk about not being what I expected!  I was honestly starting to lose the narrative in issues #4 and #5 of this series once Spider/Wolvie ran into that Luke Cage-looking guy with the diamond-encrusted baseball bat.  So, I really wasn’t looking forward to this issue at all, but it really came together nicely.  Silly me, how could I doubt Jason Aaron?  The guy still hasn’t told me a bad story.  This issue dispenses with the diamond-encrusted baseball bats and Mojo and finds Peter and Logan stranded in the Wild West where Peter finds love and Logan comes to realize how much he likes Peter.  I’ll need to reread this entire series, but I think it might just be one of those modern classics that you could just hand to people as a good Spider-Man/Wolverine story.  Really nice art by Adam Kubert.  Grade: A-

Uncanny X-Men #537 – Kieron Gillen has got a nice little story going on in Uncanny and it is making me very optimistic about how his run on Uncanny might turn out.  The story in this issue follows the deposed Powerlord Kruun from Breakworld as he attempts to exact revenge upon the X-Men who caused him to lose power during Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run.  What makes this story work so nicely is that Gillen is only playing with a few of the X-Men at one time.  Less is always more when doing an X-Men story!  Most of the action in this issue is Kitty-centric as she has to find a way to get help when no one can hear her.  Her solution is pretty darn clever.  I wish the Dodson’s could do all the art on Uncanny and it should be a law that every issue that the Dodson’s do illustrate feature Kitty and Emma Frost because they draw the hell out of those two characters.  Grade: B

The Tattered Man – This one-shot from Image by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray is a very straightforward.  It’s Halloween and some druggie kids take advantage of the holiday to get an old man to open his door, they bust in wanting drug money and get a little more than they bargained for.  There are some parts of this story that are a little familiar, but the execution is really tight and the creators bring it home by not being afraid to kill a few characters who you would usually think are “safe”.  The highlight of the issue was probably the old man recounting his background as a Holocaust survivor (just going to show that you can tread familiar ground if you do it well).  Nice art, especially on the design of the supernatural force of vengeance that shows up.  Palmiotti & Gray could have a nice creator-owned winner with this and this could easily become an ongoing series.  Grade: B

The Incredible Hulks #629 – This was a very good conclusion to a pretty good story arc that teamed up Bruce Banner/Hulk his ex-wife Betty/Red She Hulk.  The story has lots of good Hulk moments.  What Pak does really well is sell the “Oh no!  Now you’ve made him mad!” moment.  You know, the scene where the bad guy whacks the hell out of the Hulk, Hulk goes flying 15 miles through the air and smashes into the ground, but when Hulk climbs out of the crater you just know that the other dude is in HUGE trouble.  It’s hard to capture that moment, but Pak does it really well.  We also get some really good Banner/Betty stuff in this issue.  Betty wants to be with Bruce, but as Red She Hulk, she has other plans.  The only downer in this issue is that I don’t see how the ending jibes at all with what happened in Fear Itself #2 where Banner and Betty are working out their issues in a rain forest.  Is there a writer who cares less about that sort of contemporaneous action than Matt Fraction?  Great art by Tom Grummett too.  Grade: B

Spider-Girl #7 – There are some good elements in this issue, but the negatives kinda balance things out.  The good is seeing Spider-Girl teaming up with Spider-Man to take down some bad guys.  We’re so used to Spider-Man being “the kid” who is always the one being childish and inappropriate and annoying the piss out of the other heroes, that it is kinda fun to see the role reversal and Tobin handles that really well.  There is also a very creative moment when Spider-Girl overwrites the code of a murderous robot’s AI with the game Angry Birds to keep the robot from attacking (unless someone acts like a pig, of course).  But, the downsides are here too.  For one, I don’t want Spider-Man in this book.  Nothing screams, “This character cannot carry his/her own title!” like having Wolverine or Spider-Man co-star.  The other problem I’m having is that this issue is full of Spider-Girl punching out room’s full of commando guys.  Spider-Girl has no powers and is a ~80 pound teenage girl.  I don’t care if she was “trained by Captain America”, she just can’t hit hard enough to have her main attack being punching and kicking 230-pound guys.  Watch some MMA and get creative with how these undersized characters can take down a bigger dude!  And we have a classic Marvel cover fail that shows Spider-Girl punching Screwball (who isn’t even mentioned in the issue).  Grade: C  

Quick Hits Reviews – Week of May 11, 2011

Try as we might, there are always a few titles that don’t get the full review treatment here at WCBR.  What can we say…  Those guys publish a LOT of comics and it’s hard to get to them all.

 

The Incredible Hulks #628 – If you’ve followed the news, you’ve probably seen that Greg Pak is ending his LONG run on this title around issue #635 or so.  And, he is really going out with a bang.  This has been a very fun story arc that follows Bruce and Betty Banner as they try to retrieve Pandora’s Box from a bunch of bad guys in a flying fortress.  The Banner’s aren’t getting along all that well, so there is lots of fun, biting banter between the two.  Sometimes it even plays into the story as in one place where Hulk needs to get angrier and she starts telling him that he stinks and when that doesn’t work, she starts telling him about her sexual activities with other men since they broke up. It’s pretty funny, and great superhero action abounds.  It certainly doesn’t hurt to have Tom Grummett drawing the comic.  His classic superhero style doesn’t really have a bad panel in the whole issue and he really nails those scenes when Hulk-action happens and you can almost feel the ground shaking.  Great stuff.  Grade:  A-   

 

X-Men Legacy #248  – A lot happens in this issue as we see the X-Men recovering from Age of X.  Ironically, this mop-up issue ended up being stronger than the actual Age of X story was.  The first part of the issue deals with Emma offering mind-wipes to X-Men who want them, and as you can imagine, not everyone wants the same service: Cannonball wants it all gone, but Frenzy wants to keep her memories of her relationship with Cyclops.  We also dig into Legion a bit and Xavier and Nemesis’s new plan for helping him cope with his personalities.  I’m (personally) not that excited about Legion being a part of ongoing stories, but we’ll see what we get.  There also looks to be some more Rogue/Magneto/Gambit love-triangle stuff going on.   Yawn… But….the big news is that it looks like the X-Men are finally going to go find Rachel, Polaris and Havok who have been missing in space for ~5 years (since the Brubaker run on UXM).  THAT is a story I’m looking forward to seeing.  The art is a bit of a mixed bag.  Jorge Molina has some great panels and some others where characters look funny, but the storytelling is always solid.  Grade: B-

Quick Hit Reviews – Week of April 13, 2011

Try as we might, we can’t always do full reviews for every comic on the stands.  Thus, the Quick Hit Reviews….

Steve Rogers: Super Soldier Annual #1 – Leaving aside the awkwardness of having an Annual for a title that was a 4-issue miniseries that wrapped up ~6 months ago (silly editors!), this was a pretty hot issue.  This is Part 2 of the Escape from the Negative Zone that is mostly an X-Men story.  In the Uncanny X-Men Annual a couple weeks ago, we saw Cyclops, Hope, Namor and Dr. Nemesis get sucked into the Negative Zone and come into conflict with Blastaar.  As you might guess, in this issue Steve Rodgers goes in to save them and fun ensues.  This issue (written by James Asmus) is just packed full of Steve kicking ass, Cyclops and Hope kicking ass, Namor being really well written (not too haughty) and Nemesis being 100% smart-ass fun.   Ibraim Roberson & Jim Charalampidis combine to give the book a very pretty, painted look.  I (personally) like to see a little more inking in my comic art, but I know some people just go bat shit for this painted stuff and this issue is really well done and beautiful.  Grade: A-

Incredible Hulks #626 – Even though I dropped Incredible Hulks during that boring Dark Son story arc ~8 issues ago, I had recently reread the Planet Hulk story and said, “THAT was awesome.  Maybe I should be reading Incredible Hulks again!?!”  This is a fun story that sends Banner off to track down Betsy.  Betsy and he aren’t getting along and she has fallen in with a bad crowd, but the real problem is that her continual use of her Hulk powers is threatening to get her stuck in Hulk form.  OH NO!!!   Banner wants to stop that, but to find her he has to go to a black-tie affair in Italy.  Of course, not everything goes smoothly and thanks to some unstable molecules, you get to see Banner transform into the Hulk without ripping up his tuxedo (which was pretty awesome).  This is a worthwhile Hulk story and Grummett’s art is very much the old-school, superhero art that I like.  Looks like I’m back on Hulk for a while!  Grade: B

Black Panther #517 – It is not a good thing when you sit down to do the Quick Hit Reviews, look at Black Panther #517 and think, “What was that about?  I remember that Francesco Francavilla’s art was gorgeous, but other than the title nominally being about Black Panther dealing with eastern European gangsters in Hell’s Kitchen, I don’t remember anything about the plot.”  While that is surely a sign that Dean gets too many comics, it also means that this story has run its course.  Like many Marvel story-arcs: It would make a snappy 3-4 issues story, but just doesn’t have the meat to be 6 issues.  Never really understand stretching out stories so that they make better trade paperbacks.  BP is probably selling ~30K units in the direct market, so Marvel will mess up a good story (by stretching it out) only  to have 6 issues to collect into a trade paperback that will probably sell a combined 1,000 units between the direct market and everywhere else.  That’s smart right there! </sarcasm>  I usually don’t pick on covers, but I will here: The cover text promises Black Panther vs. Luke Cage (because we all know that the kiddies love black-on-black fights), yet the cover seems to show Black Panther with his hands around the throat of some white guy.  Bad coloring!  Oh….and SPOILERS….there really isn’t that much to the BP vs. LC fight anyway.  Grade: C (good art, story getting long in the tooth)

Chaos War: Dead Avengers #3 – Review

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

The Story: Will the Dead Avengers be able to withstand the final assault by the Grim Reaper and save the Comatose Avengers.

What’s Good: This has been the best of the Chaos War tie-ins by a long way.  It has felt very connected with the main Chaos War story and it also just makes sense as a story.  The credit for that (I assume) goes to writer, Fred Van Lente.  Mr. Van Lente is also writing Chaos War proper (thus the congruence with the main event) and generally hasn’t written a bad story in quite a while.  I’m always impressed by his ability to make just about any comic scenario interesting.

This issue has a high degree of difficulty too.  The general premise is that since “death” has been destroyed by the Chaos King (and all mortal humans have been tossed into a coma), some Dead Avengers are back and take it upon themselves to make sure that some Dead Villains (notably The Grim Reaper) don’t kill Spidey, Bucky Cap, Spiderwoman, et al while they’re flopped out on the floor.  The trouble for Van Lente is that he needs to have most of his toys put away by the end of this issue because you just know that the end result of Chaos War isn’t going to be that all the Dead Avengers are alive again.  Maybe one or two, but not all.  So, Van Lente sets about writing an entertaining and well-paced story under this constraint.  Most of the toys are put away by the end of the issue and a few others look to have roles to play in the finale of Chaos War proper.

Inkers make a big difference.  I should know better since I collect original comic art, but I often gloss over inkers in doing reviews because it is just hard to distinguish (at least for me) how much is inker and how much is penciler.  What we get in this issue is still some very classic Tom Grummett super-heroes, but the fact that we have two inkers on this issue allows me to appreciate inker Cory Hamscher too.  A lot of that classic goodness in the past couple issues of Dead Avengers was his work.  Let me also take a minute to talk about an artistic subject that has been bugging me recently: Noses!  There is a current trend with some of our younger artists (many of whom I LOVE) to shade noses such that it looks like they have a Breathe-Right Nasal Strip on their snout.  I think that some of these younger artists (who have worked largely in the B&W world previously) are used to letting colorist highlight that nose for you.  I draw your attention to how Grummett and Hamscher draw noses on the Vision in this book.  Perfect!  No weird shading!  Young artists should take note of this!

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: 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.

X-Men: Endangered Species – Review

Written by Mike Carey, Christopher Yost, and Christos Gage

Penciled by Scot Eaton, Mark Bagely, Mike Perkins, Tom Grummett, and Andrea Divito

For the next four weeks, I’m going to give a closer look at the Messiah Trilogy that has consumed the X-Verse for the last three years. I know what you’re thinking: if it’s a trilogy, why are there going to be four posts? That doesn’t add up. Well, no, it might not, but there is a fourth story that I believe is crucial to the experience of these X-Men events. That Story is Endangered Species. It’s a depressing piece, filled with crushed hope and doomed times. All in all, it’s perfect.

The event that truly started all of this was House of M, written by Brian Michael Bendis. It’s a shame, really, because House of M changed so much of the X-Verse and nothing at all in the Avengers world, yet an the Avenger writer wrote the story that would alter the course of X-Men stories forever—or at least for a decade or more. House of M was a horribly written story that made very little sense with repercussions that didn’t add up (and this is coming from a Bendis fan). The Scarlet Witch casts a spell for “no more mutants.” Except most of the X-Men and their key villains keep their powers. Oh, and what was supposed to be 198 mutants left is clearly wrong as “undiscovered” mutants pop up everywhere. However, what the X-writers have done with the concept of an endangered species has been incredible—and future stories are very promising. These writers have carefully crafted a story (I will prove it to you) that has been developing since House of M and is still going on. The Avenger side of the Marvel Universe claim that the story of Siege was building for 10 years or so, but let’s be honest, it was from Civil War on.  The X-Men are on their 5^th year of being endangered.