Tag: Ed Brubaker
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Wait a second… at no time during Marvel’s attempts to “toughen up” the line did anyone ever stop to consider Doctor Doom having nuclear weapons is a lot more dangerous than the Hulk? Sorry, I just gave away Brubaker’s big reveal for the issue. Sadly, it’s a lame one. Otherwise, the issue’s okay. The pacing…
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So, if the good guys are going to figure out the identity of the bad guy–bad girl, actually–before the issue starts, why bother making it a mystery? In addition to that silly plotting, this issue is the first where Brubaker’s pacing is too hurried. There’s a mission briefing, there’s the mission, then there’s the surprise…
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While Winter Soldier remains exceptionally entertaining, Brubaker runs into some genre problems. He runs the book like it’s action espionage with supervillains–though it’s unclear why Bucky isn’t familiar with the Red Ghost (to be fair, I got companies confused and thought the machine gunning gorilla was Monsieur Mallah)–but he still keeps the mystery investigation angle.…
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So Black Widow is ageless, right? I’m not missing something. Brubaker uses her to interesting effect in Winter Soldier. While she’s technically the sidekick, she’s more a supporting girlfriend character. The comic is so much in Bucky’s head, there’s not really room to share it with a sidekick. The story’s good Marvel Brubaker; a modern…
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Brubaker recovers very nicely. And he lets Phillips go outside. Phillips’s outdoors art is always lovely. There’s a surprise in the issue–or two, but the second one is somewhat immaterial–and Brubaker did a great job setting it up. It makes perfect sense and is only possible because he kept switching the perspective around through the…
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Yeah, the impulse is gone now. Brubaker’s initial excitement and the creative force of Fatale has petered out. It’s still a good comic book, it’s just not exciting. There’s not a single surprise this issue. Brubaker changes gears a lot. The bad cop is now not only one of the protagonists, he’s also not quite…
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Fatale all of a sudden becomes very small and predictable. Brubaker moves the action, for a bit, to Fresno (in the fifties), which gives Phillips a lot to draw. Except when it comes time for the big reveal scene–when Hank gets his first clue about being in over his head–it’s an exceptionally small scene. I…
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No framing this issue–and no immediate resolution to the previous cliffhanger. Instead, Brubaker does what he can to keep the reader on unsteady ground. The titular fatale, Josephine, opens the issue (I think) and Brubaker sticks close to her in terms of third person narration. Everyone gets close third person, actually. Brubaker follows four characters…
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Fatale‘s first issue has some extra pages, but not so many it’s totally different from a regular comic. Brubaker does wonders with the pacing. He opens with a modern story, then flashes back into something. It’s unclear if it’s the manuscript the protagonist found or just a flashback. But in that flashback, Brubaker moves between…
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Well, at least Brubaker goes whole hog when it comes to unresolved endings. He overwrites the final issue of Deadenders to an exceptional degree and still manages to get away with some of it. His writing skills–his short comic subject, like from Dark Horse Presents or Lowlife–come through and he writes some rather decent scenes.…
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Reading this issue, I do think Brubaker is just abbreviating his plans for how Deadenders would eventually turn out. It’s the only explanation for why he’d string together the issue’s awkward little “chapters.” Even with the dumb dialogue and terrible new characters, the worst thing about the comic is the art. Pleece and Cameron have…
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I guess Brubaker just found out Deadenders was headed for the chopping block because he kicks off a rapid-fire close-up arc this issue. Instead of going out with some dignity, he’s trying to answer all of the Deadenders‘s questions, whether they’re important in the context of the previous issues or not. In order to get…
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Well, there’s a disappointment. It’s like Brubaker forgot all the build-up he’d been doing towards the race and its location. He had a chance for a sublime issue and instead he used it as background for getting Anna back to Beezer’s home sector. He also continues the villain arc, which seems like an incredible misstep…
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It’s hard to tell where Brubaker’s going with the series at this point… besides the inevitable moped race. He’s revealed some more about the big terrible event, but not exactly. He’s hinted there’s more to the story. At the same time, he’s finally established the girl enough I can remember her name–Anna (though I swear…
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Besides a little framing scene at the beginning of the issue, Brubaker manages to stick with Beezer (his protagonist) for the entire issue. Brubaker layers the narrative a lot with a flashback catching the reader up to the environment suit girl being out of her environment suit. There’s a real lack of drama–she and Beezer…
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Beezer gets a nemesis this issue. Instead of seeing things in an idyllic, pre-disaster light, this guy sees them the other way. Bleeding eye sockets, end times sort of thing. I assume Brubaker has a point to the juxtaposition but it doesn’t really matter. The nemesis angle is a lot less interesting than it should…
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Cameron Stewart joins as inker this issue, which Brubaker splits between the present action of Beezer exploring the nicer sectors and flashbacks to his departure. The way Brubaker layers the narrative is sort of nice. He’s doing it to keep Deadenders more compelling, which he might not need–Case and Stewart’s vision of the perfect future…
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This issue might be the most Love and Rockets influenced issue of Deadenders yet. It might even just be homage. Brubaker follows a relatively unfamiliar member of the supporting cast–she’s so unfamiliar I thought she was someone else. Brubaker really needs a better recap system for the supporting cast. There are like two dozen characters…
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Reading Deadenders is watching Brubaker’s development as a writer. At least one hopes he’s developing and learning from the mistakes. For example, if you’re going to write an ongoing comic book, it’s not a good idea to imply a protagonist’s death (by flashing forward ten years into the future) because why should a reader stick…
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Brubaker runs into a big problem this issue; I’m a little surprised, because it’s an obvious one. His backup episode, about one of the characters crushing on a guy, is far more effective than his lead story. The lead story is following a plot, it’s increasing tension, it’s got a decent cliffhanger, but it feels…
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Brubaker does a nice move starting out this new arc. He sets the action ahead about a month from the last issue. The reader hears, from the characters, about the time between, but it doesn’t sound like much interesting happens. So the inciting incident for this arc is Beezer’s pissed off dealer boss finally getting…
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I think this issue finishes Deadenders‘s first arc. Brubaker sends it off on a high point, but only because he finishes the issue with a short Archie-style story. The rest of the issue is a mess. He follows a government scientist who interviews Beezer. Now, nothing happens in the story–we even miss the one interesting…
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Brubaker outdoes himself this issue. He achieves a startling moments of emotion, which isn’t easy to do in a comic book, but he does it here. Obviously, Pleece and Case have a lot to do with it… but it’s Brubaker. He brings home a great moment. That great moment comes after a rather mediocre first…
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Brubaker works three points of view into this issue. He opens with Beezer’s girlfriend, Sophie, who’s writing in her journal about the issue’s events so she’s supposedly the primary. But Beezer runs off and he’s the protagonist for a while. Then Beezer disappears for a bit and the story shifts to an omnipotent third person.…
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Ed Brubaker opens the first Deadenders issue rather predictably. Sure, the details about the future world are a different (a little) from other dystopian future worlds, but there’s nothing glaringly original. Two rich bad guys are talking about the fate of a teenager out in one of the rough sectors. Then Brubaker moves to the…
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Brubaker goes with a simple conclusion—not out of Tom Strong, but keeping with his Moore fascination on this series, out of Watchmen—and it works. Maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know. He ends the series with a lovely setup for a third Incognito and that setup works and so it just makes me want another one…
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I just noticed, this issue, Phillips is really playing up the masks this series of Incognito. Everyone’s got a mask of some kind or another (well, all the girls have Catwoman masks out of the Adam West “Batman”) so it looks like he’s keeping busy illustrating other stuff, since Brubaker’s still not giving him particularly…
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Okay, so every issue of Bad Influences so far has had a different pacing structure. Here, Brubaker splits it between his three or four main characters. Except two of the main characters are antagonists and it’s unclear how much either is going to have to do with the series overall and he gives Zoe Zeppelin…
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Look at Brubaker surprising me… not so much with anything going on in the issue, but with the soft cliffhanger. The entire issue suggests he’s going to have problems filling out three more issues, then the cliffhanger suggests he’s not going to have enough time for all his plans. I coasted through this issue on…
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Until the last few pages, the first issue of Bad Influences seems like a slice-of-life book. Zack Overkill is relating his new life to the reader and it’s all rather amusing. The issue opens with an event then Brubaker goes back and explains it—humorously and cinematically. Even with the ending’s change in narrative tone, this…
The Stop Button 