Irredeemable Special (2010) #1

What a terrible comic.

I’m used to Irredeemable running hot and lukewarm and Incorruptible being awful–Waid’s incredibly inconsistent–and this special is anything but.

There are three stories. One’s a prologue, sort of, to the first issue of Irredeemable. It apparently hints at something the regular series will deal with. The second story might serve a similar purpose.

For the third story, Waid just ran out of ideas and did a little Incorruptible story with terrible, terrible, terrible Howard Chaykin artwork. How Chaykin is still an attraction for readers is beyond me… his art is just awful here.

The second story–with the Emma Rios art–is artistically solid. It looks like a Japanese fable or something, which is the point, and the art’s nice. The Paul Azaceta artwork on the first story’s mediocre at best. Azaceta runs hot and cold, colder here than hot.

It’s a real snoozer.

Incorruptible (2009) #5

It’s a question of competence. Incorruptible is incompetent.

Finally someone realized Jean Diaz was making the bad book already worse and brought in Horacio Domingues, who’s much less “realistic” and a lot more cartoon-influenced and, well, at least it’s fun. Domingues’s artwork doesn’t fit the script at all and it’s just a great time, at least for the first half, because it’s all bright and giddy–it’s like a Spirit homage almost. Until halfway, I thought Waid and Boom! realized what a turd they were printing and they’d decided to do something good with it.

No luck.

It’s actually an attempt at a serious comic too–but it’s just so silly. The world’s a different place with the Plutonian on a rampage, but cellphones still work for comic relief and Max Damage still has his awesome suburban house hideout.

I’m actually really bummed they aren’t going the spoof direction.

Incorruptible (2009) #4

Someone does look at this book, right? Before it’s printed, I mean. Jean Diaz’s artwork is so not ready for prime time… I say it every issue I imagine. He’s just so static, so bad. And with an all action issue, it’s especially horrendous.

This issue’s a little better because most of it is a (poorly drawn) fight scene and boring, poorly drawn fight scenes are a lot better than the Christian indoctrination Waid usually does with the comic. There’s only the briefest spouting of rhetoric from Max Damage at the beginning of the issue–he’s at his secret base, a suburban house.

There are more Plutonian appearances in this one–in flashback–than usual and it reminds of a better book, so it’s somewhat digestible.

As opposed to Irredeemable, which seemingly will go stale the longer the run, Incorruptible might actually get an average bad after another dozen issues.

Irredeemable (2009) #12

The issue’s a wee bit speedier of a read than I would have liked–it took a heck of lot less than five minutes to read–and it seems like a joining issue anyway. There’s the conclusion to a cliffhanger from the previous issue–Barreto handles the superheroes, Krause handles the Plutonian, which is efficient, sure, but not necessarily the way to make a fluid comic book–but Waid cops out on the Plutonian’s family story.

Spoiler alert–the Plutonian kills his former foster brother and sister and leaves his mentally handicapped foster brother to starve to death. In other words, he’s a really, really terrible piece of shit.

In some ways, it might be the worst thing Waid’s shown him do so far, torturing someone so exaggeratedly helpless. I’ll bet Waid wanted to have him brutally kill a kid and Boom! wouldn’t let him.

Still, it’s way too quick.

Irredeemable (2009) #11

Interesting revelation this issue–not the stuff with the Plutonian’s girlfriend and the space alien, which is amusing both comedically and in terms of a character being boiled down to nothing more than a girl who likes bad boys (which works in an episode of “Seinfeld,” but is a little banal in more literary ventures)–rather about the Plutonian’s youth.

Actually, wait, it does relate–besides the squeeze finds out he’s a psychopath and the revelation–Tony “broke” his baby brother–are about the same thing. The Plutonian didn’t just snap, he’s always been a nutcase. It breaks the Superman parallels, quite intentionally, and Waid’s moving Irredeemable onto its own ground more and more each issue.

Unfortunately, regular artist Peter Krause isn’t on the whole issue. Diego Barreto, who isn’t bad, does the first half. He’s serviceable, but the issue feels off visually.

Once again, Waid’s on with this one.

Incorruptible (2009) #3

Wow, it’s best issue so far. It’s still a complete piece of crap, but it’s the best issue so far. Why’s it the best issue? I have no idea, maybe I’m just being generous. Maybe the art is a little bit (we’re talking on the microscopic level) better. Or maybe because Waid isn’t having his protagonist giving speeches Sarah Palin would think are stupid?

Speaking of the protagonist, isn’t Max Damage a standard character name for everything? You’d think Boom! would have wanted something they could trademark.

So the big cliffhanger is that Max became a good guy because instead of him killing a bunch of people, the Plutonian did it.

Lame, but about on par with what I’ve come to expect from this comic book.

There isn’t anything to Incorruptible at all, except to see a smaller publisher exploit a property as selfishly as one of the big two.

The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh (2009) #4

Ok, the next Unknown series? That series might be okay, because Catherine whatever-her-name-is is going to be all messed up with the brain tumor and seeing wacky stuff all the time. It might make the mysteries interesting, but Waid’s steady reliance on Heaven and Hell for all answers certainly isn’t making the series engaging.

He answers maybe one question here, how did Catherine come back to life. But he raises a lot more questions and speeds through them (I’m still not clear on how Doyle got resurrected) to get to his ending, which is the setup for the next series.

Waid doesn’t seem to have much of an idea of where the series is going and he’s now eight issues into it. Instead of doing a comic version of Moonlighting or Remington Steele, he’s doing some lame TV pilot for a fundamentalist Christian pay cable station.

Eh.

Irredeemable (2009) #10

I was going to say, that art doesn’t look like Krause’s and it’s not. It’s a noticeable difference, which is too bad.

I guess if they’re going to do a fill-in artist, this issue’s an appropriate one, content-wise. There’s three stories going on (well, and a flashback); first is the Plutonian’s squeeze and her husband arguing then fighting the U.S. government sanctioned demon (no, I don’t have any Cheney jokes here, come up with them on your own), the Plutonian and his (resurrected?) sidekick (who’s secretly the Plutonian’s arch-villain) going shopping and the Plutonian giving some back story, and then the psycho super-hero who beat the Plutonian up a couple of issues ago.

In other words, it’s a bridging issue. It’s a solid bridging issue, but it’s not particularly important. All the information could be recapped in a two page seventies Marvel summary.

Still smooth sailing.

Incorruptible (2009) #2

I read this comic because I wanted to mock it. I could have said I wanted to attempt to reconcile the excellence of Irredeemable with the worthlessness of Incorruptible; the result is the same.

Waid’s adventures in a post-Plutonian world would have probably been okay as a limited series without the nonsense with the villain turned good. The book’s at its “best” during these scenes..

Jean Diaz really sucks. I mean, the guy’s not ready to doodle on a notepad, much less draw a “big” comic series. Besides Max Damage (great name, by the way, wasn’t it the name of a gay porn star on “Law and Order: SVU”?) having a different face every panel, Diaz draws the underage Jailbait sidekick at about age twenty-eight, which really hurts her whole storyline.

What a piece of crap. I hope Boom! keeps it coming. These reconciliation posts are stress-relieving.

Irredeemable (2009) #9

Darn it, Mark Waid, why do you keep it on such a roller coaster? This issue’s another great one, as Waid reveals quite a bit–there’s the new superhero team going a little nuts, there’s the smart guy off with the villain girl, there’s the U.S. Army making deals with the devil–there’s also what appears to be Al Gore as President. Not so sure what Waid’s doing with that one (in fact, given the highly fundie nature of The Unknown, I’m a little surprised).

It’s a fast-paced issue too (I imagine Irredeemable is going to read splendidly once it’s finished–it also seems like Waid’s blueprinting, I don’t know, a movie perhaps).

What’s so interesting is how the remaining heroes, except the nutso new hero leader, are generally hoping to reform the Plutonian. Instead of spinning off that crappy Incorruptible, Waid should have done a Plutonian apologist series.