COMICS: Thurs. 6/2/05

Pretty big haul this week. Let's see if I remember them all.

Dorothy: Another fine issue. The photography looks much better in a number of places -- Catie Fisher (playing Dorothy) looks as though she's lit by natural light more often, which helps add to the illusion that she's making a trek through the wilds of Oz. It still looks posed and phony as hell when she's running, though. The snake creature she battles is a great creation -- is he from the books? -- but the panel in which he bites Dorothy doesn't work; it looks like a clean miss. And the Scarecrow is tremendously creepy. I don't know if that was the desired effect or not, but seriously: creepy. His style of speaking -- disjointed and peppered with invented words -- takes some getting used to, but it works for a character who's got straw for brains. (Mmm... brains.)

The Walking Dead: Good stuff here, with Rick going down a very dark path, putting a bullet in the head of Dexter with seemingly very little hesitation or regret. And what's the deal with the woman leading the tame zombies? How exactly do you tame a zombie? Maybe this indicates zombies still possess a certain amount of intelligence, and are able to learn. I happen to know a zombie who would say differently, but whatever. (Let's see if I can work a plug for my other blog into every single review.)

Invincible: This issue really bothered me. It makes the point a couple different times that this is intended to be a "family title," safe for "younger readers," when shying away from the depiction of sex or nudity. But then, when Allen the Alien is attacked by the Viltrumites, the comic absolutely revels in the horrific violence. On one page, Allen's teeth are smashed out, his eyeball is popped out of his head, his back is broken, he gets punched clean through his torso, and his arm is severed at the shoulder. The next page is one giant panel depicting the aftermath, with Allen floating in clouds of blood, his eyeball dangling from its stalk, his entrails spilling out the hole in his back. And that's okay for "younger readers"? I've used the term "pornographic violence" in reference to one of Kirkman's books before, and it applies to this issue of Invincible equally well. In fact, it's more apt here; Brit is clearly, specifically intended for adults, while Invincible is indeed marketed as an all-ages book. I have absolutely no problem with violence in comics. There's been grisly violence in Invincible before, and I've never batted an eye. It's the pretense here that irritates me: shielding the kids from boobies while subjecting them to supreme violence is astoundingly hypocritical at best. Frankly, I find this issue contemptible, when, without that baggage, outside of that context, I would have considered it gripping, well-told (in faux-Stan Lee style), and very enjoyable.

The Incredible Hulk: A fantastic stand-alone story. Remember when comics used to do that? Tell a complete story in one issue? What a concept! The artwork by Jae Lee is... beautifully ugly is the best way I can put it. The eerie fog obscuring details is especially well done. And Peter David's story is a heartbreaker, smart and funny and sad; it's the best Hulk story I've read in... well, since David left the book in 1999, easily; way better than his five-part arc that preceded it. (That's why this is a one-and-done, by the way: it will serve as the sixth issue in the inevitable trade paperback collection. God forbid Marvel should print comics that can't be tidily packaged in a six-issue TPB!)

Y: The Last Man: Things get more complicated here. Who are the bad guys? The pirates reestablishing trade routes by delivering opium and calling it medicine, or the violent hijackers who claim to be defending themselves against the drug trade? Just another great issue of this great comic.

Zatanna: Better than the dragging bore of the first issue, but still my least favorite of the Seven Soldiers titles. The Shapeless One is an uninteresting foe, and an issue of Zatanna and co. dithering around in a magic shop didn't do much for me. The last panel reveal of the Phantom Stranger walking in the door (toting a bag of groceries) was pretty cool, though.

Marvel Team-Up: What was the deal with the restart in the middle of the issue? Was that necessary? Especially when the character introduced with that restart has absolutely no bearing on the main story. Despite that, I enjoyed the bits with Sleepwalker, anyway -- the way he deals with his host's wife (girlfriend?), the way he narrates his own adventures, the way he doesn't quite have a grasp on reality. It makes me want to seek out other appearances of the character. The first half of the book, with Daredevil battling a revamped Stilt Man, was fun; I liked how Luke Cage solves the dilemma of defeating Stilt Man without killing him by ignoring the dilemma, knocking him unconscious and letting DD deal with keeping him from plummeting to his demise.

Concrete: The Human Dilemma: A satisfyingly open-ended finale to a fantastic mini-series. I'm already hungry for more. I thought both Maureen and Larry got a little overwrought in their reactions to their respective situations; Maureen's total emotional devotion to Concrete's (and her?) spawn seems a little out of her strict-and-scientific character, and Larry's mad race through the streets of L.A. was reckless and thoughtless even for him. But, as always with Concrete, this was a thoughtful and thought-provoking tale. Even by Chadwick's standards, The Human Dilemma was tremendous.

House of M: Eh. I got it for the same reason I got the first issue of DC's Infinite Blue Beetle Crisis or whatever the hell they called it: I wanted to give each company's next big thing at least a one-issue try-out. This totally inert issue didn't make me feel like seeing where it goes from here any more than DC's thing did.