365 Comics...304: Smallville Season 11 Special #3 (2013)

With all the fun that Brian Q Millar has been having building another DCU within the Smallville Universe, it's become easy to forget that for ten years this was a TV show with a regular cast and a whole lot of characters passing through that a Smallville fan might want to know what's happening with them.  The Specials have allowed Millar the opportunity to write the main series unfettered by the TV show's cast by putting their stories into the spotlight here.  This issue covers the current status of the sibling rivalry between Lex Luthor and his sister Tess Mercer. 

If you missed it, Tess was apparently killed by a resurrected Lex in season 10, but managed to stay alive somehow in Lex's brain, as seen earlier this season.   Once her consciousness was discovered Clark an Emil Hamilton managed to transfer her into a digital persona, which has led her to question her existence somewhat.  On that same track, Lex has pondered the same, his memories still absent from his gap in living.  He's developed a big substance abuse problem and seems to be actively seeking an end to his mortality.   Lex has changed but deep down the spots are still the same and the ruthlessness emerges once more.

Millar knows these characters so very well,  and with full control over their destinies he's shaped them all into much richer characters.  The Specials may not be as fun as the ongoing, but they still offer the same great writing and commitment to character and world building as the main series.  Here Hank Henshaw,  the would-be cyborg Superman steals the show being literally nothing more than a talking head.

365 Comics...303: Five Ghosts #6 (2013)

I realized that, while I like the concept of Five Ghosts, it's really Chris Mooneyham's art that I'm attracted to.  I'm okay with pulp adventure, but it's not my preferred genre, so there has to be something special to draw me in, and with Five Ghosts, it's partly the concept of a Fabian Grey channeling Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Robin Hood, Merlin and the samurai from literature whose name I've forgotten, and it's even more partly Chris Mooneyham's Kubert-ian artwork.  This issue features an enjoyable done-in-one script from Frank Barbiere, but the art from Garry Brown pales compared to Mooneyham.  Brown has an excellent sense of storytelling but the end work winds up feeling rushed and sloppy in execution.  I quite like his work on The Massive with Brian Wood, so I'm not sure why I dislike it so much here.  Is it just the difference in style from the series creator, or is it just ill-suited for the subject matter.

Either way, this feels like a bit of a placeholder issue, a "don't forget about us" while Mooneyham stocks up some work on the next arc or something.  I'm not abject to having more one-off issues of Five Ghosts by other artists, but they have a lot to live up to.

365 Comics...302: Velvet #1 (2013)

Depending on how much of a stickler you are for near mint/1st printings/value, I either got lucky or screwed.  I was way late to my weekly pull and (despite impressive 50k+ print runs) both Velvet and Pretty Deadly were sold out.  But as I checked out,  I noticed a copy sitting on the back counter.  I asked if there were any more and they said I could have that one.  Getting around to reading today, I believe it to have been a returned copy (though likely unknown to the employee helping me) since there were a few gently  torn pages in the middle of an otherwise pristine book.  But, for me, I don't care.  I'm just happy to have the book.

And it's a great book.

For fans of pop-spy stories in the James Bond/Man From U.N.C.L.E. vain it's a beautiful twist on a familiar structure.  Essentially it's a "What If...Moneypenny were really the best spy in the agency?"  But it's richer than that.  Velvet Templeton had the potential to be the best but she settled for a desk job instead, running the department as the director's right hand.  Now, with one agent, the series' James Bond,  gunned down, Velvet puts herself back into action.

I love Steve Epting's Velvet, a mature woman, late 30's I'm guessing,  if not early 40's, not your usual comic book bombshell.  Attractive, but not a supermodel...  I actually thought "she's a handsome woman".  She has taken excellent care of herself, is a liberated woman (this in the 60's/70's Cold War setting) but is just enough out of conditioning to be problematic when she ventures into action.  Under Epting's pen she exudes confidence, but her rusty skills play out beautifully in her physicality.

I've invested heavily into Bond films and comics this year, and yet I think Velvet is one of the best Bond stories that isn't a Bond story.  Love it.  Awesome.  Get it.

365 Comics...301: Marvel Now What?! (One-Shot)(2013)

The folks at Marvel seem to be having a lot more fun than their Distinguished Competition.  I mean, all the goofy variant covers is one key sign, but the other is stuff like this where they actively make light of themselves.  Also there's someone at Marvel who enjoys comedy, in recent years having Bill Hader and Seth Meyers write a Spiderman story, hiring Brian Posehn and Grerry Duggan for Deadpool, and hear bringing ex-Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac and 30 Rock cast member Scott Adsit, amongst others, in to lampoon the current state of the company or present off-beat, out of continuity sketches starring Marvel characters.

As all anthologies are, it's a mixed bag with the first big sketch from Elliott Kalan and artist Jacob Chabot being the strongest and the funniest.  Meanwhile Duggan and Posehn present a retro tale of Doc Oc appearing on the gong show, an absurdly amusing bit delivered with some of Pat Olliffe's finest work to date but even more nailed by colorist John Kalisz.

The low point is Lucas Hazlett and artist Jacob Chabot's SNL-style sketch about Professor X hiring a team building duo to whip the 90's X-Men into shape.  It feels like a gag already worn thin even before the premise is fully revealed.  Equally the "Catfish" sketch from Sara Schaefer and artist Steve Lieber feels like it exists solely for the punny title of "Cap-fished"... it feels like reading a humour anthology from at least 2 years ago.

Adsit's riff on the watcher Uatu on the receiving end of an intervention is amusing with a totally obvious but also ingenious punchline.

I remember now why I uninstalled the Marvel AR app, though, because it never *expletive* works.  Guess I'll never know why that last page was left intentionally blank. ..

365 Comics...300: Young Avengers #11

Prodigy sends a text...

365 Comics...299: DC Universe vs. Masters of the Universe #2 (2013)

The first issue came out the first week of September, which puts the second issue a few weeks behind schedule.  In the process, all of a sudden Tony Bedard has replaced Keith Giffen on the script, which is interesting, considering that Giffen has also left the main Masters of the Universe book (now written by Dan Abnett) and he replaced James Robinson as writer of the first MOTU mini-series last year on the second issue.  I wonder if Mattel is really that hard to please.

Anyway, I was about done with this mess of a book when Skeletor enchanted the Justice League and sent them after Batman who teleported to the Batcave where He-Man, Teela, Queen Marlena, John Constantine and Madame Xanadu are waiting for him.  It dawned on me that both the Justice League and the Masters are not the characters I know and like.  Like, Marlena knows that He-Man is Adam, which means Teela knows He-Man is Adam?  When did that happen?

Anyway, the thing that gave me pause was the part of the ridiculous Masters versus Justice League fight when [Spoiler Alert] He-Man stabs Superman through the chest with his magic sword (which is a godawful ugly looking magic sword, I might add)... in an interview with Giffen about this series he did hint that this was out of continuity, so anyone could die...I just wasn't expecting it to be Superman after a terribly weak battle sequence.  I really would love to see Superman and He-Man tussle, and members of the League engage against the good and/or bad masters (hey, why not just take the whole thing out of current "style" continuity and just use classic versions of everyone?  Ah, whatever, it's really not worth even discussing anymore).

365 Comics...298: Zero #2 (2013)

Zero #1 was a bit of  a blind buy for me.  I was familiar with only one of writer Ales Kot's previous works but I had no prior knowledge about what the series was about or how it would play out.  It was an engaging first issue, military and espionage elements, with gritty, heavy artwork.  I was expecting a second chapter to follow along, carrying the threads introduced, with the same artistic team.  Instead we get a flashback to Edward Zero as a boy, training for the agency, and taking on his first mission.   The art comes from Tradd Moore, artist of the Luther Strode series, an egregiously hyper-violent series that reaches for Mark Millar-levels of fanboy wish fulfillment.  I thought Moore's work was distinct and interesting, the story of Luther Strode far less so.  It's great to see his work again in a different, better-written context, though the drastic differences between his style and Michael Walsh's from the first issue is very jarring.

I like both of these stories, and although they don't form a cohesive narrative in any way, they're painting a picture of this character.  And this issue provides a little context with respect to where the first issue begins.

I'm loving the design work on this title from Tom Muller... that garish logo alone makes the book stand out.