365 Comics...157: Avengers Arena #10 (2013)

[Spoilers]

Oh boy, I honestly didn't feel bad for the backlash Dennis Hopeless was receiving when he started this Avengers Arena gig, back when I though it was *just* a cheap-thrills book/excuse for making dead teenagers, but now that I see that there's more to the series than just that, now that I can see much of the craft Hopeless is putting into the book, I feel a little bad for the backlash he's now receiving and going to continue to get, except that I shouldn't, because this is what the reaction should be.

Many of the characters in Avengers Arena were created by Hopeless for the series with ties to Marvel-at-large (Kid Briton, Bloodstone, Death Locket), others cam from minor parts throughout the Marvel universe (Cammi, Juston, Darkhawn), others from the Avengers Academy (this series' direct predecessor) and of course the female Wolverine clone X-23.  Oh yeah, and the Runaways Nico and Chase.

I stopped reading the Runaways after Brian K. Vaughn and Joss Whedon finished their runs, and to me their story kind of stopped there.  I know they were pushed around a bit and integration into the Marvel U was forced a bit more, but they seemed like a true clan of outsiders, and Hopeless has sustained them as such in this series, having Nico and Chase keep to themselves for the most part.  They're not superheroes, really, they're not trained ones at least, and their school-of-hard-knocks experience doesn't count for much against a likeminded group of scared and/or duplicitous teenagers, nor their homicidal warden, Arcade, the proprietor of the deathmatch they found themselves in.

Nico was apparently killed this issue by the villain of the piece, the one teenager who has made it known that she's fully accepting the terms of Arcade's game and she intends to win. Apex is able to control technology, and as such, she killed Juston last issue to steal his Sentinel, she's hijacked Death Locket, and she's also taken over Chase's inherited Darkhawk armor.  It's through controlling Chase that she got the jump on Nico, slicing her arm off, severing her from her staff.  Cold brutality, yes, and oh, for fans of Nico (as I am) a harsh blow.  This is not quite Red Wedding level of shock and awe but the result is kind of the same.  Much of the AV Club's essay Why the Red Wedding Has Such An Emotional Impact can carry over to what Hopeless has done here.

Bleeding Cool has assembled some Tumblr reactions to Nico's death, and the results are knee jerk and hysterical, because of course they are. My favourite is this one :

adambogert

#$%@!

I did not, until just now, really look at the last pages preceding Nico’s death.

She sees Chase show up. She is relieved. She goes to apologize, and has her arm blown off, the staff (which should not break) broken, and is then dropkicked off a cliff.

By her best friend.

Hopeless didn’t just kill Nico.

He used Chase to do it.

If I sounded angry over the last few days, that was nothing compared to how I feel right now.

This is my favourite reaction because it's spelling out exactly what makes this death so well orchestrated.  There's the duplicity as Nico thinks she faces a friend, only to find out too late that it's not really her friend at all.  But at the same time, Chase is not performing the action, and he's helpless to stop it.  So if he actually does murder his best friend, he's going to have that hanging on him... Chase, the perpetual fuckup, the one without powers, the one who couldn't save the day, again.  It's unfortunate, truly, that Nico was the victim of this and that it wouldn't work as well (or at all) the other way around... and given that Nico's final word to her staff was "HELP", a spell I'm not sure she's ever cast before, perhaps it's not her final word afterall (I hope Hopeless has indeed gone through all of Nico's appearances to catalog her spells, or at least ensure she hasn't said this one before...also "help" might not necessarily mean Nico still lives, but it may alert the outside world to this seemingly hidden Murderworld).

It's all rather sharp writing from Hopeless, who wants this kind of visceral, emotional outpouring from readers.  It's a brave (not in like fireman/policeman/soldier brave, but like challenging the establishment brave, shaking up the status quo brave) move, particularly because it may wind up alienating readers (as so many are reacting that they're quitting Marvel or comics for good), but at the same time it's captivating storytelling and I'm sure most of these people will be back again to see how it all plays out.  Afterall, if their favourite character dies, and they don't find out what it was all for, then didn't their favourite character die in vain?  And if it turns out that what it's all for is just some stupid crap like an Avengers VR training simulation and everyone's still alive, all used to root out which trainees are not capable of being truly
heroic, then sure, it's worthwhile to get upset.  Actually wait, that's actually perfectly acceptable, if quite a cheat ending to all this, although you'd have a lot of really PO'd teenaged heroes (those Avengers Academy kids were already deceived once before).

365 Comics...156: The Steam Engines of Oz #1 (2013)

I submitted my review for the Steam Engines of Oz for Thor's Comic Column last Friday morning, and not 10 hours later I was flipping through my Flipboard to see that the Steam Engines of Oz is Kickstarting for an OGN which seems to have already have met its goal.  It would appear that the series is only lasting 3 issues (or 4, with the Free Comic Book Day issue) before it's collected, and the OGN is picking up where it left off.

It's good news, I think, since I found the first two books quite enjoyable (small issues around the art, but hopefully with a full graphic novel's worth of work, those kinks will get ironed out).

Yeah, I'm on an Oz kick this year.  Don't expect it to slow any time soon.

365 Comics...155: Fearless Defenders #5 (2013)

If I'm to be perfectly frank (Hi, I'm Frank), it was because of this cover that I started picking up Fearless Defenders.  It was partially the awesome Street Fighter riff, with the 18 various selectable Marvel female superheroes, but even more it was the tantalizing fact that She-Hulk was the 2P selection, facing off against player 1's Valkyre (at least on the cover).  Now, I'm not a Shulkie fanatic but I do like her a whole hell of a lot, so it doesn't come as a total surprise that her appearance on this cover drove me to pick up the past 5 issues (including the Age of Ultron extra-pricey 4A special), but it is kind of nuts, isn't it?  To pick up 5 comics solely based on the promise of seeing a guest appearance of a well-liked character 5 issues down the road, even if she's buried amidst a dozen and a half other guest stars? 

I have problems.

One is an inexplicable attraction to potato chips, and uncontrollable consumption thereafter (Cookie Monster-style, nom nom nom).  Another is my love for comics, and a desire to read all the good stuff, wile also reading all the stuff featuring characters I like or from creators I like.  It's a completist mentality that got me into trouble when I was younger, and now just drowns me in comics on a regular basis.

If I'll be perfectly honest, I don't even know how much I really like the Fearless Defenders.  I mean, I really dig a lot of Cullen Bunn's writing, but perhaps it's just all this Asgardian stuff that's just not doing it for me.  I've never been a Thor fan, and this is somewhat akin to that, so it stands to reason I'm not really enjoying it to its fullest level.  Meanwhile I don't care all that much for Will Sliney's art... his faces, his character poses, his line weight and shadows, they all kind of put me off.  Personal preference mind you, he's a solid storyteller otherwise.  Really, it's Mark Brooks' covers that are selling me on this, month after month, and I'm finding some surprises along the way (the Age of Ultron 4A tie-in endeared me to Hippolyta rather quickly in a way the previous two issues hadn't).  I like the deluge of guest stars here, and I'm kind of wondering what Bunn's post-arc gameplan is, to see if ultimately this series is worth hanging onto or if it's just not going to be enough for me.

It seems to be finding a fan base though, which is great, because Bunn should have the success his talent demands, and there needs to be more female-centric books on the stand.  With all the talk lately (because of Michelle Rodriguez's comments recently) about strong female heroes (including Joss Whedon's more educated input) it's cool to have titles on the stand like this (and Wonder Woman, and Batwoman, and Captain Marvel, and
the new X-Men title) that have kick-ass, unobjectified heroins.

365 Comics...154: Spider-Men #4 (2012)

Spider-Men represents the first crossover between the Marvel 616 and Ultimates universe, and as big an epic as it could have been, it's instead a really nice character piece for Peter Parker, which is rather disappointing if only because Miles Morales kind of gets slighted in the equation.  Peter gets to learn about his Ultimate counterpart's death, he gets to meet Gwen Stacy and Aunt May (Brian Bendis' affection for Ultimate Peter's supporting cast is evident).  Miles, meanwhile, tends to stand in awe of his crimefighting namesake.  I was hoping that with Ultimate Comics Spider-Man creative team of Bendis, Pichelli and Ponsor on the mini that it would be more Miles Morales focussed.  I suppose the intent of the series was to use the "real" Peter Parker as a draw for new readers into the Ultimate side of things, acting as tour guide a little bit.  My favourite part of the mini series however is the gab session Gwen, Miles and Peter are engaged in as Aunt May wakens from her fainting spell.  It felt like a real moment despite the surreality.  I found the Peter and Aunt May scenes genuinely affecting...Bendis works so well on the human level of interaction.  The cover, with Peter cradling a dying/dead Ultimate Spidey in his arms (must've been something he said?) is a terrible fake-out, one that doesn't even come close to occurring in the books.  It's a talking heads book (a talking heads series for that matter) and it's pretty great... I just wish that we got more of Miles' perspective. This really would have made for a great arc in the current run.

365 Comics... 153: Action Comics Weekly #602 (1988)

Sure signs that ACW #602 was made in the 1980's

Green Lantern: Star Sapphire downs a fighter jet and hands the ejected pilot a phone book which he gives to GL; Coast City White Pages

Wild Dog: reporter Susan King shows her boss her latest lame report about how nobody has seen Wild Dog for a long time... and the chief presses ''STOP" on a VHS player
 
Deadman: was sexism an 80's thing?

Superman: actually everything Curt Swan draws looks like it's from the 60's.

Secret Six: "There's a cassette player somewhere-- Can'tcha hear it whirrin?"

Blackhawk: Actually, this one is set in Singapore in 1947 but has an unforgettable Rick Burchette illustrated sequence where Blackhawk fights a bunch of dudes but he's fully in the buff having had his bath interrupted.

365 Comics...152: Superman: The Man of Steel #30 (1994)

There was a time when Lobo appearing in a comic was a special event.  That time was 1992. Mutants over at the House of Ideas were taking over in extreme ways and dominating the sales charts and little outside of killing off their major characters was DC able to reach the same level of interest.  Wolverine --violent, indignant and a total badass-- at that time could seemingly double a sagging book's sales orders (for one month at least).  Anti-heroes like Ghost Rider and the Punisher were part of the comic book zeitgeist, and it was this darker, grayer area that distinguished quite easily Marvel's heroes from DC's.  In 1990 the Alan Grant/Keith Giffen/Simon Bisley Lobo mini series become a shocking mature readers hit and subsequently Lobo became DC's first real entry into the anti-hero game.Two years and a bunch of guest appearances later (although in in L.E.G.I.O.N. he was a regular) he was hot commodity, one of the biggest things at DC. 

Two years even further on tough, Lobo had already started to wear out his welcome... part of it was that he worked best as a mature readers action comedy, part of it was he was fairly complicated to draw well (Simon Bisley was the only one to truly draw Lobo with any biker/punk authenticity).  The biggest part of it was that he's a fairly one-note character and only really good for providing heaps of violence.  He was the Deadpool of the 90's.

For some reason, in 1994, Lobo appearing in a Superman book was considered an event... or at least event enough to merit a gimmick cover. Of course at this point in time, the gimmick cover was as prolific as sales booster as "guest appearances" by hot characters, and a publisher would use any excuse to trot out another one and charge a few bucks more in doing so.  Plus, the speculator boom was in full swing so a ginmick cover would stand out to them.  Combined with a "hot character" appearance, it was a theoretical cash bonanza.

 Gimmick covers these days are, by wary fans of old, considered a waste of money.  Put the money in good story and art.  But given that in the 1990's the material in the books was so mediocre (if not outright terrible) that the gimmick cover was at least something interesting for the buyer to look at (or sometimes play with).  Man of Steel #30 was not, and still is not a good story... it's a thoroughly inorganic meeting between Supes and Lobo that leads to a pointless fight and an unlikely truce at the end.  Bleh.  But the cover... that's fun.

Touted as the first ever do-it-yourself cover, this special polybagged issue came with a couple dozen colorforms of Superman and Lobo in different poses and some other scenery bits. The reusable vinyl sticker-ish shapes applied nicely 19 years ago but they aren't so nicely reusable now.  I wonder had I kept them on the sticker sheet instead of cramming them all onto the cover, would they be any better?

As far as I know, the only other use of this gimmick was a few months later in the one-shot finale to the "Worlds Collide" crossover between the Superman (well, Man of Steel, Superboy and Steel) with the Milestone universe (I don't think I took the appliques off the sheet on that one so I'll have to dig it out and see if they still work at all).

365 Comics...151: Dazzler #14 (1982)

<p dir=ltr>With Dazzler popping up in the latest Uncanny X-Men, I thought I'd check out an earler adventure of Angel whazzerface.&nbsp; You know, you know of a character for so long, you think you know them, and I was probably 5 when I first saw an issue of Dazzler at my cousin's house (for some reason s great many of his comics had a "Whitman" logo rather than the proper DC/Marvel corporate logo... I've always meant to figure out what that was all about), so it feels like I've known her my whole life, but truth told I suspect  Dazzler #42 (365 Comics #98) was actually the first comic I've read with her in it.  Beyond her look, I know very little about her (alter ego: Angel Whazzerface. Powers: I dunno, human glitterball?)

This issue lays it out that she's a singer on the cusp of making it big time, as she uses her mutant powers to wow and, er, dazzle an audience, instead of being an X-Man and fighting bad people, which she probably winds up doing a lot of anyway.  Here she squares off against a brainwashed She-Hulk (who's shredded neglige is easily the more offensive wardrobe over the deep-vee neck disco jumpsuit and mirrorball rollerskates) and acquits herself just fine. 

Less impressive is the Blue Shield, an anti mafia vigilante (who in real life is an undercover agent posing as a mob enforcer) upon whom the wholly coincidental plot hinges.  The Blue Shield... who the eff is this guy?  He's a bit player in this title it seems but does he make it out of this series into the Marvel U at any point?  He's pretty tragic looking, more like something out of Red Circle comics of the time thsn the house of ideas.

</p>