Posts Tagged ‘ Recommended Reading ’

In honor of the Fantastic Four‘s 50th Anniversary, I thought I’d run down my favorite runs on the book. It’s worth bearing in mind that I like a lot of bad comics and that I haven’t read much from after Stan and Jack’s departure through John Byrne’s coming on board for double duty (so from about #103 – #230ish) so I’ve missed a good quarter of the original volume. I also never read the Marvel Knights Four book, or Morrison’s 1234 so they aren’t included here either.

Anyway…my totally subjective list of FF goodness (including Amazon links to some stuff; please ignore them if you like):

1 - Stan and Jack’s run: Fantastic Four #1-102

You can’t have the FF without this; hell, you can’t really have the Marvel Universe without this. As I said previously, it’s not just a great run but it’s the sheer number of other ideas that came about from this, ideas and characters that underpin so much of the Marvel Universe. Once Stan and Jack hit their groove, the book became what defines it for me the most – the FF aren’t really super-heroes, they’re a family of explorers who happen to have super-powers.

2 - John Byrne’s run as writer/artist: Fantastic Four #232-293

Marvel took a chance when they put John Byrne on the book as writer and artist. Although he’d pulled double duty before (including a two-part FF tale and the classic Marvel Two-In-One #50 – I can’t recommend you track down that Thing story enough) handing him the reins to FF must have been a pretty ballsy move – but it payed off big-time. Byrne’s run lead to an empowered Invisible Woman, with Sue finally stepping into a strong role after playing nursemaid for 20 odd years, the Thing leaving the team, She-Hulk stepping up to the big times as a member of the team, Johnny seeing Alicia, the death and rebirth of Doctor Doom, the Hate Monger’s corruption of Sue Storm which lead to this oft-reblogged panel -

- and a whole host of other stories, including the FF traveling back in time as Nick Fury tried to kill Hitler. The FF were explorers again, and a family – even if Ben was absent for a good chunk of the run. Simply put, Byrne’s FF sold me on the team and the book when I was younger – and they sold me for life. His departure mid-story was abrupt and (I believe) related to him taking on Man of Steel for DC, but the stories up to that point – just great comics.

3 - Mark Waid’s run as writer, partnered with Mike Wieringo and Howard Porter: Fantastic Four v3 #60-70, v1 (renumbered) #500-524

Waid and the late Mike Wieringo gave the franchise a kick-start when they came on board the book in 2002, restoring a sense of wonder that was missing from the book for a while. Waid’s FF was about character, with the stories designed to highlight aspects of the team’s personalities that maybe hadn’t been played with too much in recent years; Reed’s desire to keep his family together coupled with his guilt for ‘ruining’ their lives; Johnny’s desire to better himself yet still be the irresponsible kid; and Doom’s desire for power at the expense of his humanity. In their ‘Unthinkable’ arc, Doom refocused himself on his magical powerset as opposed to his technological one, and wore an armor created from the skin of his one true love (yes, you read that right).

Waid and Ringo were fired from the book with #500, but reinstated after fan backlash – but the firing meant that Howard Porter stepped in for an arc where the FF took over Latveria. Ringo was back for the rest of the run though, as Reed, Sue and Johnny went to rescue Ben from Heaven – and a certain benevolent creator…

The run continued for over a year after that – and I recommend the whole thing. The FF were back as explorers (see, there’s my hang-up again).

4 - Tom DeFalco’s run as writer, mainly partnered with Paul Ryan: Fantastic Four #356-416

I’ll catch some grief for this one, as DeFalco’s 90s output rarely makes anyone’s list of good comics (except mine, where he also shows up for his Thor/Thunderstrike run) but I can’t help it: I love it. Coupled with the under-appreciated Ryan, DeFalco crafted what turned out to be a years-long run. If a lot of that run eschewed the exploring for the super-hero aspect of the book, it turned out to be more than ever about family.

DeFalco kicked off by breaking up the marriage of Johnny and Alicia by retroactively making her a Skrull agent, Lyra, for the previous 100 or so issues (and this was before Superboy Prime retconned punch dead kids back to life). It was a bold move, but set in motion a great personal arc for both Johnny and Ben through his run, as well as adding Lyra to the ever-expanding family. The team grew after (spoiler!) Reed’s death to accommodate the likes of Ant-Man Scott Lang and his daughter (now better known as Young Avengers‘ Stature), Kristoff – Doom’s successor with a copy of Doom’s mind, Nathaniel Richards – Reed’s time-traveling entirely untrustworthy father, and more.

I’ll admit it’s not all good; Franklin’s fast-forward aging and subsequent heroic persona and team (the oh-so-90s Fantastic Force) and Sue’s abominable new outfit fairly reek of the decade of excess – and don’t even get me started on Atlantis Rising, but there’s enough good stuff here for me to overlook that. From Ben’s further scarred face (thanks, Logan) to the team’s cross-time adventure as they try to find Reed (spoiler – he’s alive), to the team’s final run as they go up against Onslaught, it’s a run that gets very little love – but I love it all the same.

Sadly, this run is almost entirely uncollected. I tell ya, DeFalco gets no respect.

5 - Steve Englehart’s run as writer, mainly partnered with Keith Pollard: Fantastic Four #304-325

Englehart picked up the book from Roger Stern (whose Avengers I love), who had the thankless job of tidying up Byrne’s run and getting the Thing back on the team in time for the book’s 25th Anniversary issue, and promptly made it his own by shipping off Reed and Sue to retirementville to raise Franklin away from danger and making Ben the leader of the team.

Ben replaced the pair with his gal pal from his time on the superhero wrestling circuit (yes you read that right), Ms Marvel – this being redheaded Sharon Ventura, not then-Binary Carol Danvers – and Johnny’s ex, the Inhuman princess Crystal, who had previously subbed for a pregnant Sue. This caused all kinds of drama for Johnny, who still carried a torch for her but had recently married Alicia, who was Ben’s ex. And a Skrull, of course, but we didn’t know that yet.

The run took the team on a tour of the MU’s wildest places – from Wakanda to the Mole Man’s underground kingdom to the Savage Land and beyond, cementing them once again as explorers. He also managed to throw in an unexpected sequel to Secret Wars II (which aptly featured one more throw-down between the Beyonder and Doom), wrap up his long-lingering Mantis storyline that he’d carried with him through various Avengers books, and to explore Ben’s role as leader and his character by mutating him further – the infamous ‘pineapple Thing’ – and making Sharon a female version of him struggling with depression.

Englehart’s run ended ignominiously starting with the return of Reed and Sue to the team in #326 (after they had a four issue stint as Avengers) by editorial edict and a horrible storyline for another six issues that he took his name off. It’s worth checking his site for his own comments on his run – but the first couple of years, right up to #325? Good stuff.

Like DeFalco’s run this is entirely uncollected – but worth tracking down in the cheap bins.

6 - Walt Simonson’s run as writer/artist: Fantastic Four #333-354, less a couple of fill-ins

Much more critically applauded than the last two entries on my list, Walt Simonson’s run had the dubious responsibility of cleaning up the mess left by Englehart and build to the team’s 350th issue. Simonson threw a lot of familiar stuff into the mix – Thor, Iron Man and, er, Death’s Head, for instance – and at times the Fantastic Four felt like bit players in their own book. Never was this more obvious than in the excellent three parter (with art by Art Adams) with the ‘new’ Fantastic Four made up of Spider-Man, Wolverine, Ghost Rider and the Hulk.

Even so, the highlight of Simonson’s brief run for me was #352 as Reed and Doom battled across time – with you having to find the next part of the battle by using the timestamp. Also, having the Time Variance Authority be filled with clones of Mark Gruenwald – as nobody else could keep track of everything – was a nice touch.

7 - Karl Kesel’s run as writer: Fantastic Four 2099 #1-4

Oh, what could have been.

In the month cover dated January 1996, the 2099 line added two more books – Fantastic Four 2099 and X-Nation 2099, bringing the total in the line to six; by the month cover dated August 1996 the line was canceled and replaced by an anthology book that limped before dying a slow death at #8, effectively marking the end of the entire line.

Unlike all the other 2099 creations, these weren’t namesakes – they were the original FF, or at least facsimiles of them. In his four brief issues (the fifth was plotted by Kesel but not scripted by him, as the book joined the line-wide hurtle to cancellation in the form of a giant planetoid flooding the Earth, or something) Kesel managed to exactly capture the feel of the real FF as they should be: an ordinary family of extraordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Worth picking those four up in the quarter bins at the next convention.

8 - Carlos Pacheco’s run as writer/artist: Fantastic Four v3 #35-54

Pacheco flew solo on the book after Chris Claremont’s run ended (see below) – with some script assist from Jeph Loeb – and the results were surprisingly good. He seemed to concentrate on revamping some of the team’s less threatening villains, with Diablo, Grey Gargoyle, the Puppet Master and Trapster all getting a look-in. He also wasn’t afraid of using the team’s history, with many past members showing up for cameos. And honestly, Johnny hooking up with Namorita was so obvious I wondered why it hadn’t happened sooner.

Once he was on a solid footing, Pacheco maybe overstretched himself a little with a big arc centering on Abraxas, an entity with a desire to destroy the universe, and with tying up a loose end concerning Valeria from Claremont’s run

Pacheco’s run as both writer and penciller ended with #49, but he remained as co-plotter through a silent issue and a four-part Inhumans story, then left the book. All in all, a good run that looked to the past for inspiration.

9 - Chris Claremont’s run as writer, mainly partnered with Salvador Larocca: Fantastic Four v3 #5-32

Claremont took over the book when (I think) editorial decided Scott Lobdell’s Heroes Reborn relaunch wasn’t working out. He promptly made it feel like a bunch of left-over X-Men and Excalibur plots, having the team run into those books’ cast-offs like Genosha, the Warwolves, the Technet, Saturnyne, Roma and the Captain Britain Corps – even going so far as to have an other-dimensional version of long-time Excalibur supporting character Alysande Stuart be a Scottish-themed Captain Britainalike, Caledonia, and join the team as Franklin (and later Valeria’s) nanny.

Speaking of Valeria, Claremont introduced her as the future daughter of Doom and Sue as a teenager who was soon accepted into the family; this seemed like it would make sense towards the end of the run but was never fully resolved. He also introduced Alyssa Moy, Reed’s former flame, who would later be used extensively in the Millar/Hitch run.

Once all the X-nonsense was out of his system, though, Claremont managed to tell a good space story followed by a great arc with Reed trapped in Doom’s armor and having to pretend to the world at large that he was Doom.

A rocky start – but a strong finish. Once again, this is pretty much uncollected – and I can understand why – but it shouldn’t be too much hassle to track down on ebay or at a con.

There are other notable runs in recent years – JM Straczynski’s run as writer, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s run (which holds up better on re-read, actually) and the current Jonathan Hickman run – but for me, none of them quite capture the essence of the FF. They’re either too enamored of Reed (JMS), or of their own ideas (Millar and Hickman) or simply do not feel like the FF I know and love (Hickman, again).

Still, I should give an honorable mention to Dwayne McDuffie’s stint which had Black Panther and Storm replacing Reed and Sue, as it managed to replicate the family feel of the book very nicely. Sadly, it was always viewed as short term and Reed and Sue were back in less than six issues, with T’Challa and Ororo – and McDuffie – departing shortly after.

Also leaked today was this -

- really? A return of Fantastic Four title with #600? Who’d a thunk it?

I’m on record (admittedly about 5 years ago and the image dropped off the post and the text got garbled over multiple blog migrations…wait, I’ve been doing this over 5 years?) as not really ‘getting’ Ghost Rider beyond him being a cool visual, but something made me order the Ghost Rider Omnibus from Amazon recently when it dropped to a decent price.

That something was writer Jason Aaron. Scalped is one of my favorite books right now (even if I don’t talk about it much); such a perfect noirish crime story that every new trade makes me want to reread older ones for things I missed. At this point, I’ll pick up pretty much anything with Jason Aaron’s name on it, I think (yes, even X-Men).

And I wondered what he could do with Ghost Rider.

A hell of a lot, as it turns out. I actually can’t remember the last time a book surprised me this much. As Aaron picks up the story, Johnny Blaze has found out that Ghost Rider is actually a creation of the angel Zadkiel as part of his private army to storm the gates of Heaven and overthrow God, and he’s none to happy about being lied to and basically screwed over for most of his life. His solution? Go to Heaven and kick Zadkiel’s ass – but getting there might be a problem.

Zadkiel’s developed quite the cult of followers on Earth, from gun-toting psychotic nurses to mass-murdering preachers and plain oldnut jobs, and Blaze has to go through them all to find out how to get to Heaven. Helping him on the way is a new Caretaker (a former nun who adapts to her new life after having a whole bunch of lore dropped in her mind) and a bunch of foreign Ghost Riders, Aaron’s biggest contribution to the convoluted mythos of the character, but one that opens up a lot of storytelling potential.

Also in Blaze’s way is Danny Ketch, his brother (and star of Ghost Rider in the 1990s), who gathers a bunch of old Ghost Rider villains – and a new Vengeance – together to stop him on behalf of Zadkiel.

Oh, and there’s some kick-ass nuns here too.

What Aaron’s done here – with his three or four art teams, some good, some not-so-good but still suited for the book – is create a grindhouse comic out of Ghost Rider and craft a story with a defined ending, something we don’t always get in comics these days. The Omnibus collects Aaron’s sixteen issue run on the main book and the six issue mini that followed, wrapping up loose ends and having the final confrontation with Zadkiel.

For a mainstream Marvel book, it’s surprisingly brutal and adult, but successfully places Aaron as one of Marvel’s top writers – and proves that when you let a creative writer loose on a low-selling book, sometimes you get something that surprises you.

Now, when does Aarons’ first Wolverine Omnibus come out?

You know when a band reforms after a few years ‘pursuing solo projects’, then it turns out that maybe they split up because they had nothing new to offer and we might have been better off with them not getting back together?

That’s kind of how I feel about Gail Simone’s return to Birds of Prey. It’s not bad, exactly, but there doesn’t feel like there’s anything new here. Oracle reassembles Huntress, Black Canary and Lady Blackhawk when she starts receiving blackmail material on all of them and adds Dove and the newly-resurrected Hawk to the team too. While they’re protecting the Penguin the group run afoul of a new antagonist, White Canary, with ties to one team member’s past. Meanwhile Oracle must deal with the return of two of Simone’s earlier creations, Creote and Savant.

Oh, and Lady Shiva shows up too.

There’s a lot going on in the six issues collected here – too much. Hawk and Dove’s presence feels like an edict from above given their exposure in Blackest Night and Brightest Day, but their presence doesn’t really add anything in this arc and they don’t get much to do – well, aside for Dove providing the Penguin somebody else to lust over (and don’t get me started on his dream sequence).

Simone also falls back on the old narrative box trick, with each issue largely narrated by one character – usually Black Canary – but it doesn’t quite work. It’s not bad on the scale of James Robinson’s Justice League of America narration, but it’s distracting and interrupts the flow of the story somewhat.

The book also suffers from choppy pacing as the action switches between wherever the on-the-ground team is and wherever Oracle happens to be. Once the team splits up and we get three separate story threads, it feels even more disjointed. Plot-wise there’s a little bit of a disconnect too; while we get a good feel for the White Canary (even if I can’t really remember the events that lead to her grudge), throwing the Penguin into the mix is superfluous at best. While Savant’s motivation in the plot is clear, the fact that he is instrumental in exposing Black Canary’s civilian ID and life is pretty much ignored once the details are out in the open – although I suppose that may be followed up on later in the run.

And then there’s, Black Canary. Traditionally one of DC’s strongest characters (outside of some really bad decisions when it comes to Green Arrow), Dinah is presented here as someone almost in awe of the newly introduced White Canary’s Machiavellian ways. Yes, her identity is exposed, and yes, her once-almost-adopted-daughter Sin is imperiled, but it feels like Dinah just caves to the White Canary’s demands without even thinking about other options. It doesn’t feel like her.

You may notice I mentioned this being Simone’s return to the book, and not artist Ed Benes. That’s because he manages to turn in only one complete issue here, sharing the art duties on three more with Adriana Melo before moving on completely. Melo then shares the art with Alvin Lee for the final two issues of the volume. While the three have similar enough art styles for this not to be too jarring, the inconsistencies are still apparent and it’s frustrating for the reader.

Just in case it feels I’ve been overly harsh here, let me add that I do enjoy Huntress and Lady Blackhawk. Huntress especially has a few good scenes in the final issue of the book, while Zinda continues to be a joy in every scene.

I don’t know; maybe I just enjoyed Simone’s original run on the book so much that I expected to love this wholeheartedly, especially given her recent excellent work on the much stronger Secret Six – but this just felt like a ‘miss’ to me. I’ll pick up the next trade just to see how her run finishes – and I’m still looking forward to her new controversial Batgirl book – but I honestly don’t think I can recommend this to anyone but diehard fans of BoP.

Probably shouldn’t have called this series of posts ‘recommended reading’, eh?

Maybe it’s a case of high expectations, but I felt really let down when I read the first volume of Stuart Moore’s new Namor series.

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I like Namor a lot, always have. Whether it be as a romantic foil for Sue Richards (or, these days, Emma Frost), a respectful comrade in arms of Captain America, or a member of the lamest superhero team this side of the Great Lakes Avengers (the Defenders, in case you were wondering), there’s something about Namor that just works. I think it’s his duality – he’s an arrogant, self-centered, egotistical ass, but he’s also a fiercely loyal, honorable man that stands up for what he believes to be right. It’s hard to go wrong with the character.

And yet the first volume of Namor: The First Mutant is horribly, horribly dull. The series uses Namor’s current membership of the X-Men and their problems with vampires as a launching point but can be read as a stand alone (I haven’t read the X-Men: Curse of the Mutants storyline myself and I followed this fine). Essentially, Namor goes off to recover Dracula’s head from a race of underwater vampires and soon finds that they have ties to his own family history.

The X-Men are largely (and wisely) absent, with only Emma Frost from the core team putting in a brief appearance. Fledgling mutant Loa also shows up as a supporting character, and it looks like she may be sticking around, but other new characters introduced are pretty shallowly portrayed and it’s easy to tell which ones are marked for death.

As I said, the main problem with the book is that it’s just dull. In spite of the apparent enormity of the threat of the underwater vampires, there’s no sense of urgency to the story and it often feels as though it’s swimming in circles. Characters go to a cave. They go back to New Atlantis. They go back to the cave. The threat is contained. And that’s pretty much it.

Perhaps it’s unreasonably high expectations, but there’s little to recommend here – it’s not bad exactly (although it would have been nice if artist Ariel Olivetti had managed to complete the whole arc) but it’s not something that could be described as good. Also somewhat annoying is that the trade is another of Marvel’s increasing number of four issue collections so unless you can get it at a heavy discount, I’d avoid it.

Enormously disappointing.

Let me get this out of the way: The Marvels Project is one good-looking trade. Steve Epting and colorist Dave Stewart do a beautiful job on the art, perfectly capturing the war-time settings that most of the book takes place in. I’ve always been a fan of Epting’s work since his Avengers run almost twenty years ago (urk) and he’s at the top of his game here.

Unfortunately, Ed Brubaker’s story lets the art down. Borrowing heavily from the far superior Marvels, The Marvels Project tells the story of the then-Timely Comics heroes as they gather for the first time against the backdrop of World War II, as narrated by Dr Thomas Holloway, the Angel.

The problem is, that’s all it does. There’s no true ‘story’ here, no overarching theme besides ‘ordinary men become heroes, and so do an android, a super-soldier, and an Atlantean’. The big draw for the series is the formation of the Invaders, but we see little of the team in action. Instead, we’re treated to things we’ve seen before; the Human Torch’s unveiling, Namor’s attack on New York and first battle with the Torch, Steve Roger’s transformation into a super-soldier.

There are some original touches – the Angel’s hunt for Nazi spies that has him crossing paths with the new Captain America, a cameo from an aging gunfighter, Nick Fury’s pre-Howling Commandos wartime exploits tying him to Professor Erskine and Captain America’s origin, and the teasing that a new generation may take over the Angel identity – but none of them really take center stage, and the scattergun approach to storytelling is undermined by the fact that too many storylines stay separated or even unresolved at the conclusion.

Brubaker also uses the series to reintroduce John Steele, a soldier from World War I with superhuman powers revived in World War II. Steele had been pretty much unheard of since 1940 (in real time), and Brubaker clearly revived him to use him in Secret Avengers.

Overall, though, this feels like a greatest hits collection that hits all the right scenes but never comes together coherently. Sure, it’s great to look at but it lacks any real heart. This feels like a real missed opportunity.

The Marvels Project is available from Amazon and loads of other places.

As a fan of writer Paul Cornell’s amazing work on Captain Britain and MI:13, and of artist Leonard Kirk (who also worked on that title), I was looking forward to reading Dark X-Men.

After all – a team of mutants operating under Norman Osborn’s leadership in the midst of the Dark Reign superarc taking place after Utopia? What could go wrong, especially when that team includes the always-good-value Mystique and Dark Beast, the Mengele-esque alternate world version of our own Beast?

Quite a lot as it turns out.

The series has a number of problems: firstly, it focuses less on the team that makes up the Dark X-Men and more on Osborn and returning mutant Nate Grey. While Grey’s return to the Marvel Universe is welcome enough, Osborn has been the center of so many Dark Reign books that any work done with the character here feels redundant – not to mention that having him outwit Mystique, a character with decades more experience than him, diminishes her somewhat.

The second problem is that the other members of the Dark X-Men team are just plain dull; Weapon Omega, born of Bendis’ New Avengers ‘The Collective‘ arc and late of Omega Flight, has been characterized differently in every series he’s shown up in. Here, he’s addicted to the power that Osborn feeds him by throwing other mutants into a big machine that siphons off their power. He’s essentially an addled near-vampiric character with little willpower.

Also on the team is Mimic, a character who has been around since the sixties but rarely gets any facetime, mainly because he’s simply not that interesting – and that doesn’t change here. There’s a hint that he knows he’s due to die at some point in the future and that explains his nihilism but its never really expanded on.

As I mentioned above, Mystique being manipulated by Osborn devalues her character, so thank the heavens for Dark Beast, gleefully vivisecting and experimenting away.

Overall, I was very disappointed, especially as I like the creators. The series doesn’t pick up any plot strands from Utopia and doesn’t really have any impact on anything else going on aside from Nate Grey’s return – and honestly, who missed him anyway?

Full disclosure: first off, I’m not a huge fan of these ‘treasure trove’ types of books where the book comes with removable reprints of memorabilia, and second, I love Peanuts. So these two things should even themselves out.

There’s something about the antics of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, et al. that just gets me. Whether it’s Charlie Brown’s constant underdog status, Snoopy’s understated cool, Linus’ unshakable belief in things he’s told are wrong, or Lucy’s cynicism, there are so many elements of the strip that resonate with me and, given it’s longevity and popularity, millions of others.

Even accepting my general dislike of these kinds of book, this – released to coincide with Peanuts’ 60th anniversary – is a nice example of how they should be done. Not every page has something detachable, thankfully, but virtually every page does have several pictures of rare items. Items included include a film cel, some frameable prints, stickers, comics, a Great Pumpkin carol leaflet, early advertising featuring the characters (for the Ford Falcon) and much more.

On the text side, the book is relatively light – but that seems to be par for the course for these things. Yes, there are over 25 ‘chapters’ but each one takes only a page of the book and focuses on one topic. Subjects range from character pieces (why Linus and Lucy get combined on one page I’ll never know) to merchandising, animation, and a look at how the character of Franklin broke new ground. Writer Nat Gertler has an amazingly comprehensive knowledge of the strip and it’s history so they never fail to be entertaining, if short.

Realistically, this book isn’t going to win any new fans to the world of Peanuts but conversely it’s probably not aimed at them. For fans of the strip already, there’s plenty new here to enjoy – and for those people, I’d highly recommend the book.

The Peanuts Collection: Treasures from the World’s Most Beloved Comic Strip is available on Amazon and at other booksellers. A copy of this book was supplied by the publisher for review.

Look, you know me. I’m a sucker for a good crossover and all that it entails including tie-ins. Tie-in issues that happen between the panels of the ‘main event’, or tie-ins that barely qualify to have the trade dress on the cover (AKA red sky tie-ins) – they’re all okay by me. Hell, the much-reviled Secret Wars II got me into Marvel Comics, and I’ve picked up the Inferno Omnibus and the Inferno Crossovers Omnibus in spite of having all the original issues because I love the story so much, and the fact that it reached out and touched so much of the Marvel Universe.

So picking up this was a no-brainer, wasn’t it? I hadn’t picked up the original Dark Wolverine tie-in issues and despite being irritated at Marvel’s shrinking trade sizes, I decided to pick this up – especially as I got it 50% off through Midtown Comics.

Collecting Dark Wolverine #82-84 (a whole three issues!), New Mutants #11 (also collected in the Siege: Thor trade, and New Mutants Vol 2) and the Siege: Storming Asgard – Heroes and Villains one-shot (which I’ll get to later), the book clocks in at a lightweight 128 pages.

Even so, 128 pages of good comics is 128 pages of good comics so for $10 I was willing to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, the main event here – the Dark Wolverine issues – can’t remotely be described as ‘good comics’. Daken – the son of Wolverine, for those not in the know – was introduced in Daniel Way’s Wolverine: Origins series before graduating to a starring role in the Dark Avengers and taking over one of his father’s other ongoing series. A bisexual, amoral, scheming, pheromone-emitting killer, Daken attracts the attention of virtually everyone he comes into contact with and always has a hidden agenda – even while he’s working alongside Norman Osborn’s Avengers.

In the three issues presented here, he heads to Asgard along with the rest of the team as Osborn – falling apart – has decided to take the battle to the Norse gods at Loki’s urging. Once there, Daken attracts the attentions of the Fates who consider him vitally important and go about showing him what consequences his decisions have.

You realize at the end of the first issue when Daken kills Norman Osborn what consequences these decisions will have for the reader: none. Everything that Daken does ends badly when he chooses to follow his instincts, so the Fates keep rewinding and giving him the opportunity to make different choices.

That’s right, it’s the comic-book equivalent of ‘and it was all a dream!‘.

Not only that, but this happens in every single issue. I counted three resets at the hands of the Fates, and each time Daken snarls a bit and begrudgingly chooses another path. The art is passable, the dialog readable, but the story here is so repetitive and pointless that it gives crossovers a bad name, because quite simply: nothing happens.

At the end of the three issues, we’re not far off where we started: Daken is in Asgard doing Osborn’s dirty work. I’ll say it again: nothing of note has really happened and – worse – it’s been boring while that nothing has not been happening. These are three dull, dull, dull issues.

Now I grant you, it’s possible – possible – that if I were a regular reader of Daken’s own book I might find the issues enjoyable, and see that he’s a changed man following the Fates’ intervention but – and this is crucial – I’m not a regular reader. And if these are any example of what I can expect when I pick it up, I never will be.

Unforgivably bad.

As far as the additional material goes, New Mutants #11 is good enough but available elsewhere, and the handbook-style issue makes the tragic error of not containing any handbook-style information. Call me old-fashioned, but when I read a handbook I like to read up on the past of a character or team, not get fictional characters’ opinions of them.

Avoid this trade. Avoid it like the plague.

Siege: X-Men is available on Amazon and elsewhere but I wouldn’t get it if I were you…

I know, I know – I’m late to the party on the Scalzi-love. That’s what I get for reading too many comics, probably…

John Perry joins the army on his 75th birthday after a quiet life as an advertising copy writer in middle America. He and his wife had both signed the Intent to Join ten years previously and had a few standard medical tests but it wasn’t binding. Now, with Kathy long dead and an adult son who no longer needs him, Perry feels like joining the army is a pretty good idea. They’ll make him younger, able to fight – and when your body’s failing you that sounds pretty damn tempting – and after five years, maybe ten, he’ll be cut loose, still young, and with a whole new life to lead.

All he has to do is accept he’ll never see Earth again.

The army in question is the Colonial Defense Force, mankind’s only front in an ongoing interstellar game of tug with hundreds of other alien races. It seems that there are only limited number of planets available for colonization out there, and there aren’t many races inclined to share.

Old Man’s War follows Perry as he receives a fantastic new body grown from the DNA taken from him ten years before, goes through basic training, and is thrown into combat. Anchored by Perry’s dry wit, the book is by turns funny, sad and horrific as he discovers that going to war against aliens isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you and your friends have a survival rate of less than 25%. And as Perry progresses through the ranks, he comes to question the wisdom of the CDF’s strategy – especially when he encounters a Special Forces soldier who bears a striking resemblance to his late wife; just who are the Ghost Brigade anyway?

John Scalzi’s first entry into his popular series of books is, to put it bluntly, great. I don’t want to say it’s rip-roaring because that sounds a little hyperbolic, but it is rip-roaring. It’s fast paced, well-written with sharp characterization, an engaging narrative and plenty of twists. It’s got enough SCIENCE! to keep harder sci-fi readers interested without overwhelming more casual sci-fi readers like me.

Plus, it has a scene with a battle between humans and tiny Lilliputian-type aliens which involves lots of stomping – and while that sounds inherently funny, it’s actually a scene where the futility of it all really hits Perry.

For people who enjoy science-fiction, even casually, I really can’t recommend this enough.

Old Man’s War is available on Amazon, and also at all good bookstores, but I don’t get a commission from them so, you know…

A few weeks back I asked Deadpool: Merc With A Mouth writer Victor Gischler to recommend one of his novels to me – and he offered up Gun Monkeys, saying ‘people seem to like it’.

Well, yes, I’m sure they do – because it’s a damn good book.

Charlie Swift is a gun monkey; the head gun monkey in Stan’s crew. He kills people for a living, and he’s very good at his job. Life’s pretty good; he’s got a good crew, he enjoys his job, he’s loyal to a fault, his mom cooks a mean meal, his little brother might go back to college,  and he just met a nice taxidermist who seems to be as okay with dead people as she is dead animals.

Unfortunately, Stan’s getting old and maybe losing his edge a little. He’s been muscled out of Orlando by his Miami equivalent, Beggar Johnson, and while he works out what to do, Stan agrees to send Charlie and his monkey cage crew on a hit at a lapdancing club.

Charlie being Charlie, it isn’t much of a problem – until four of the dead guys turn out to be cops,  Charlie’s monkeys disappear and start turning up dead, his brother wants in on the family business, Stan pulls a vanishing act, and Charlie’s left with a couple of accounting ledgers that everybody wants – including Beggar Johnson and the FBI.

Gun Monkeys is a classic, breezy, thriller and as a protagonist, Charlie follows the classic mold. He’s the right mix of tough and cynical, with a dash of humor thrown in for good measure, and Gischler’s easy handle on dialog and character makes this an entertaining and quick read. If there’s any faults in the book, it’s that it follows the set formula a little too closely – but it’s so entertaining while it does that you barely notice, and having an unrepentant killer who just might be a nice guy as the narrator adds a nice twist to it.

Highly recommended!

Gun Monkeys is available on Amazon, and probably at all good bookstores, but I don’t get a commission from them.

The Losers written by Andy Diggle with art by Jock, is as close to an action movie as you can get in comic form.

Jock’s art explodes off the page, giving the action sequences a sense of motion and vitality you don’t often get in comics, while Diggle’s script is tight and sharp, making each character distinct in the midst of chaos.

Originally published in 2003, the comic follows a group of disenfranchised covert ops as they try to get their lives back following a betrayal by the mysterious Max – unfortunately Max is a high level military/CIA asset and crossing him means putting themselves in the crosshairs. While the basic set-up may sound similar to the The A-Team that’s as far as the similarity goes; this isn’t played for laughs – it’s serious business.

Of course, things don’t go that easy as the team face mercenaries, the CIA, the fact that Max may not even exist, and a betrayal at the hands of one of their own – but then if things were easy, they wouldn’t be Losers, would they?

The complete series of The Losers is being re-released in two volumes to capitalize on the forthcoming movie starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana and Chris Evans – so this is a perfect opportunity to get a jump on it.

Highly recommended!

The Losers Vol 1 & 2 is available on Amazon.
The Losers Vol 3-5 is available for preorder.

Ever get the feeling that someone wrote a book specifically for you?

Well, twitter-pal Sarah Kuhn’s One Con Glory is *this* close to that.

The book follows Julie, comics reporter, comics fan and die-hard Glory Gilmore fan, through one comics convention weekend as she deals with an irritating colleague, a pretty-boy TV star, the search for the ultimate collectible and, more importantly, her own neuroses.

In fact, it’s her neuroses that are the biggest obstacle to her achieving any of her goals – so pretty much true to life. The characters are recognizable, well-drawn and have you rooting for them almost immediately – and if there’s any flaw to the book at all, it’s that you don’t really have anyone to root against.

Packed with more pop-culture references (real and disguised) than you can shake a gaffi stick at, the pages of One Con Glory fly by. I can see this as a good independent film, actually – it’s certainly got more heart than a lot of romantic comedies out there, and the three act structure is already in place.

Recommended!

One Con Glory is available through Lulu here.