Hitch does the whole Galaxy Quest with comics beautifully, but ups it with a lot of references to the superhero movie industry. It’s a lot of fun to read–though I have no idea how it would read to someone not up on all the industry news. Hitch goes far with it. Too far? I can’t know as I get all the references.
There’s also a bit of Galaxy Quest in the plot reveal. The fake heroes are there to do a public service announcement to reconcile with the bad guys. There’s some good character moments and a couple funny parts and it all plays out well. Then Hitch implies the big villain is actually trying to make the reconciliation work.
Or maybe he doesn’t. Hopefully he does, because it’d make Real Heroes something different. It can continue to amuse with the Galaxy Quest riff. But maybe it’ll be more.
B
CREDITS
Writer and penciller, Bryan Hitch; inkers, Paul Neary and Andrew Currie; colorist, Laura Martin; letterer, Chris Eliopoulos; editor, Drew Gill; publisher, Image Comics.
Lapham is still uneven. He’s trying too hard. This issue has the reveal Spanish Scott is Rose’s brother, which no doubt Lapham also had set up–it makes things make sense (her and Joey being around)–and it’s got a bunch of stuff with Joey getting traumatized. Joey grows up to be the guy who goes berserk in the first issue.
Fingerman achieves a nice, lyrical quality with this issue of Minimum Wage. The issue has a couple repeating elements. Rob isn’t working on his licensed comic job, he’s hanging out a lot with his old roommate, he’s sweating. There’s a lot of sweating to this comic. It’s very hot in New York during this comic.
Moore’s subplot for this issue is Tesla and her fire monster boyfriend, Val. Mostly with her mom trying to keep the progress of their relationship quiet in front of Tom. It never gets a full resolution but Moore foreshadows one nicely.
While The Woods seems like the most movie or TV ready comic to come out in a while–a high school is teleported to an planet with flying demons–writer James Tynion IV never actually panders to that goal. Even with a couple really uneven sections and a problematic soft cliffhanger, he's writing a comic. It's nice to read a comic, not a pitch.
Lapham’s floundering. He finally brings Beth back, but now she’s in LA and Virginia is nowhere to be seen. She’s getting drunk at a bar and some married guy tries to pick up on her. Of course, she’s not the protagonist of the issue, it’s the married guy. His wife’s out of town and he’s trying desperately for female company.
Here’s the problem with Sons of Anarchy, at least how Brisson is pacing it. It’s a licensed comic with a not comic shop traditional audience so Brisson is pacing it for a collection. It makes this issue really frustrating because of the cliffhanger. Brisson does well building up his story for the unfamiliar reader, so he or she is invested in the plot, not the characters.
Moore has a bunch of fun this issue. He enlists the Strongmen of America and they even get to sleepover with the Strong’s. The way he handles the absurdity of these kids getting to sleep over at a superhero’s is great and all, but having Dhalua call their mothers’ to get permission is even better.
The beginning of the issue is slightly better than I expected. Not because Ennis has any good characters, but because he handles the scene with the big alien laboratory pretty well. There are all these alien species in preservation tanks, the humans freak out. It’s a decent scene.
Maybe, instead of actually putting the money into publishing this issue, Lapham should have sat down and thought about a different one. A non-imaginary one. Because an imaginary story breaks the series. It means Lapham doesn’t have to play fair–and he doesn’t here. (I’m not talking about Amy Racecar, which has a context).
I can’t remember exactly what was wrong with the last issue but this issue has a rather obvious problem–writers Stevenson and Ellis think they’re writing a cartoon. Not because of the action, but because of their character approach. They think their characters are rather entertaining just with the superficial personalities they give them. Towards the end of the issue, during some banter, I realized–the writers are assuming the reader can “hear” the characters’ voices.
Moore plots out the issue precisely, not just how he uses the action, but also how he uses Tesla. The issue is just as much hers as Tom’s… or maybe even a little bit more.
Ennis sets up an obvious plot development for the end of the issue and doesn’t go with it, though he’s got time. Instead, he sneaks in a different surprise. He’s been setting it up for a number of issues, but very discreetly. It’ll be interesting to see if he goes with that first obvious one.
Odd theme Lapham’s developing now–cruel women. This issue has a coed having an affair with her professor and she calls the wife during their lovemaking. It partially redeems the unfaithful husband, who seems weak instead of cruel himself. How else would he have fallen in with such a girl.
Until the last sequence, which tries too hard, this issue of Fatale is one of Brubaker’s strongest in a while. It starts with the big bad guy, the Bishop–who I can’t remember if Brubaker has named before–investigating what Jo’s been doing. Then it goes into a long flashback of the Bishop’s life since 1906.
Apparently Mayerik and Trapani are keeping this new style, which is Trapani doing bad faces most of the time. Very unfortunate.
The issue has some of Ennis’s most ambitious ideas and he doesn’t connect with them. He’s got the female cop–darned if I can remember any of the characters names except Eddie the good cop protagonist and Duke the team leader–getting into an altercation with an attempted rape at a night club. It’s just after she’s had an argument with her sister. They’re in a bar. There are a lot of layers. And Ennis tries to move them all together, but it doesn’t work. His characters aren’t strong enough.
This issue might be Lapham’s most difficult to pull off, because he’s not just charting the decline of a previously sympathetic protagonist, he’s charting the decline of new, female character. He’s got to do it very, very carefully.
I tried. I really wanted to be wrong about Veil because Fejzula’s style is so unique but no, no way.
It’s really bad art. From Mayerik and Trapani too. Maybe the inks are a little off but I think a lot if it must be the pencils. I really hope it’s not some new style they’re working on. Because it’s bad.
What a splendid comic. I’m not sure of any other word for it. Between the two parts of the feature story, involving Rocky and Bullwinkle having to go to the moon to stop Pottsylvania from claiming it (and taxing anyone looking at it or talking about it or saying it–oops, looks like I owe), and the Dudley Do-Right story, Evanier and Langridge hit a home run.
It’s an odd issue. Lapham does another Amy Racecar story to emphasize how Virginia is uncomfortable around sex, which makes sense since he’s constantly threatening to have someone rape her.
I was going to try to temper myself, but I can’t. There’s a lot of self-indulgent drivel out there, but Madame Frankenstein might be the current prize winner. Maybe it’s because there’s never a moment writer Jamie S. Rich takes the reader’s experience into account. If it were just the bad dialogue or the unlikable characters or the purposelessly convoluted timeline, it wouldn’t be so bad.
This story is the best so far in Gerber’s Man-Thing run so far. He does a story introducing a Superman analogue, only without growing up in the world and some other significant changes. But what’s important is how Gerber writes this character as encountering the world. Gerber does a second person thing and it’s fascinating stuff.
Soule kind of rushes things and gloriously so. She-Hulk is fast, surprisingly deep and gently funny. Soule doesn’t go for the laughs, which is good. It wouldn’t work with Pulido’s art style. It might turn the comic into a parody, actually.
The Stop Button 