Paul Neary – Page 4 – The Stop Button

See, if you make the Nazis aliens… you can sell your comic books easier to Germans….

Millar’s “Secret Invasion” thing here–shocking he didn’t get mad at Bendis, also shocking there’s a big rip-off of a Men in Black moment–is a huge cop-out as far as real problems go. It’s sensational and bombastic, but it also gives the Ultimates an enemy who can be killed in hugely cinematic ways–just like The Matrix, which is another reference for the issue.

Sure, Millar takes the time to have Tony Stark “freak out” about alien invasions, but Hitch’s art’s static in the one panel with Stark freaking so it comes off as sarcastic instead of emotional.

The issue ends with Captain America getting ready to beat the crap out of Hank Pym, which may or may not just be Millar lifting the Jesse vs. Cassidy conflict from Preacher.

Eh.

Reading old DC comics–well, not old, but late seventies and early-to-mid eighties, I’m taken aback by the lame one issue villains they sometimes have. Gerry Conway did a lot of these on his Batman run, as far as I can tell. This issue of Captain America shows Marvel did it a lot too and, well, worse.

This issue opens with Cap breaking into the West Coast Avengers mansion or compound or whatever–it’s a chance to hype the coming West Coast Avengers series presumably–and then he gets into this long fight scene with a new villain, the Mexican-American Armadillo, who works for a super-mad scientist who no one seems to have heard of before and it kicks off some melodrama.

The writing’s competent (the end’s lame though, real lame) but the art’s awful. Cap’s face is often incomplete (no nose).

What a strange comic.