I wonder if Molly the detective wears sunglasses so Steve Dillon gets a little less to draw. I assume they’re also there so she looks too cool to hang out with Detective Soap, but still. It’s disconcerting having a character without expressions.
This issue, save the killer priest scene, which is particularly crappy, is rather good. Ennis sets up the detectives teaming up and does a little comedy relief with Soap. But most of the issue is real time with Frank on the run through Central Park. Some of the exposition is odd–Frank pauses to watch polar bears eat a bad guy and Ennis all of a sudden introduces the idea he’s a sadist for sadism’s sake. It’s brief, all by itself and very strange.
There’s a gentleness to how Ennis handles some of it. Frank’s oddly gentle, even when vicious, and Ennis handles Soap gently.
It’s good stuff.
B+
CREDITS
Wild Kingdom; writer, Garth Ennis; penciller, Steve Dillon; inker, Jimmy Palmiotti; colorist, Chris Sotomayor; letterers, Richard Starkings and Wes Abbott; editor, Joe Quesada; publisher, Marvel Comics.
Rocket Girl ends its first arc with an explosion, not a bang. Meaning, there's an explosion in the issue, but Montclare doesn't do anything too outlandish with the story. He wraps up the cliffhanger from the previous issue, with DaYoung discovering the populace is willing the help her. Reeder does a great eighties shopping scene with it.
Lapham almost brings it back, he really almost does. The comic’s been missing active intelligence from Beth–and Virginia–for quite a while (seriously, Virginia’s been on her own how long and she couldn’t sniff out a pedophile, especially one who looks like Sideshow Bob) but the end of this issue has Virginia come back. It’s fantastic.
Maybe half the issue is really good background stuff with Velvet’s training after World War II and her mentor. Brubaker’s hostile to the new reader–and even to the regular reader with the bad memory–he doesn’t establish the story in context, he just starts out with his alternating flashbacks.
Ennis brings in Daredevil for what seems like a bad idea cameo and turns out to be a great one. It’s a lot of talking heads with Frank and Matt Murdock arguing about what’s justice and whatnot. Only Ennis makes sure to bring in some action every few pages so it doesn’t get boring.
What just happened here? It’s like Spears put together two weak ideas–the very Hollywood one of how does his lunatic producer deal with an actress who won’t take off her top and then what happens if the producer’s serial killer sidekick actually kills someone. The result is a pointless, personality-free issue of The Auteur.
How does Lapham resolve a story he didn’t have any reason to do? Poorly.
There was an unfortunate amount of time I spent on this issue waiting for Old John and crew to show up. I should have been appreciating the wonder Graham and artist Dave Taylor were doing instead. Luckily, I caught on in time.
Everything is going swimmingly until the end. Sure, Ennis doesn’t write Frank’s threatening dialogue as well as he writes his narration, which continues to be sublime, but the plotting is phenomenal. Frank methodically goes up the food chain on the mob family, with Ennis showing the steps in Frank’s investigation.
Leave it to Mark Millar to screw it up when he's got a good thing going. Even without the terrible soft cliffhanger, MPH does have some fantastic art from Duncan Fegredo. Fantastic enough to probably make the comic worth a look even if it didn't have a serviceable script.
And now Lapham just decides to mess with the reader. The story has Amy Racecar–you know, Virginia’s alter ego–kidnapped by a bad guy, along with her male friend. She escapes, leaving the male friend behind. Is Lapham finally going to break from the Amy Racecar stuff into Virginia’s real life, where she’s escaped from the pedophile in the previous issue (Lapham’s worst?). No, no, he’s not.
It’s another outstanding issue. This one goes a little cute, with Virginia now a babysitter to a mob guy’s bratty kids and searching the house for his missing fortune. Not missing fortune, the money his wife has stashed he now needs. He’s out with the wife. And there’s a mistress in the mix and one of the kids reminds Virginia of herself.
Garth Ennis has a real sense of exuberance with The Punisher. Steve Dillon not as much–maybe he realized how round Jimmy Palmiotti’s inks would make the pencils–but the art’s still good. Every line of Ennis’s narration from Frank is enthralled, though. Even though nothing happens this issue, that narration makes it worth it.
For the third issue of Starlight, things are coming together. Well, not so much things, but Millar’s writing. He’s pacing out the narrative a lot better. There are probably six or seven scenes this issue and they’re mostly good scenes. The cliffhanger is a little abrupt and he spends too much time with the lame villain, but the stuff with Duke is all pretty great.
After threatening it since issue five or so, Lapham finally has a pedophile attack Virginia. He appears to be an equal opportunity pedophile because he goes after Virginia’s friend, Bobby, too.
The Field gets better this issue because Brisson turns up the craziness. He also gives Roy a great action sequence–the kidnapping Christian versus some elderly bikers. That action puts the comic on its own level, where something should be funny but it isn’t. There’s no humor in way Brisson writes the comic and Roy never pauses on a comic moment. So to describe the comic, it might sound like there’s humor… and there isn’t.
Trina Robbins does a rather good job hiding The Once and Future Story’s PSA status. It’s a perfectly good one too–Wonder Woman is translating some tablets and there’s spousal abuse in it and then Diana also discovers something similar going on with the archeologists she’s working with.
Seriously? They team up. A human and a Terminator team up in a Dark Horse comic? Didn’t I read this comic many times as a teenager? I was kind of hoping for something more. Maybe the big problem is the team up comes so late. There’s only one more issue to the series.
Sometimes–and this issue is definitely one of those times and in its entirety too–Stray Bullets feels like Lapham hasn’t realized he isn’t doing a Love and Rockets with crime and violence. This issue has Monster in L.A., after Beth and looking for the money and cocaine. Beth has a couple ex-boyfriends there and the girl from a few issues ago who likes breaking up marriages or whatever.
Aguirre-Sacasa and Francavilla take their impossible series and finish the first arc and it’s glorious. Aguirre-Sacasa tells it from the butler’s point of view, which gives the issue a very proper, classical adventure narration. He’s journaling. It’s good to have journaling butlers.
I think all of the jokes Moore gives Svetlana X–proud Russian science hero who has an interesting way of saying things (Moore gives her the cursing, only with accurate if misunderstood translation)–just primes for the big finish. He ends the story arc involving the giant space ants with a great cheap joke. There’s a lot of humor throughout, but the finish is an easy, wonderful joke.
The Stop Button 