digitalillustration (c) José Villarrubia 2000 digitalillustration (c) José Villarrubia 2000
Comic Industry Journalism
Up to the Minute Commentary and Discourse
Feature Articles, Previews and Interviews
Refined Comics Criticism
Original Online Comics
In-Depth Creator Profiles
Staff Info, Legal Information & More
Past Glories
Art by Chip Zdarsky. Copyright 2002.

PopImage is part of the PopCultureShock network.

UNTIL YOUR HEART STOPS v7.7
by Brian Domingos

Night on the Town
February 16, 2005

I’m doing something a little bit different this week. I’m taking next week off from “Until Your Heart Stops” (I still have something planned, though) because I’m going on a half-week vacation.

I haven’t had a Vacation in god knows how long, so me and The Lady are getting out of town for a few days. The last thing I wanted to do this coming weekend was get a reviews column ready, so I’m going to skip it. Sort of.

No full out trade paperback/Original graphic novels this month. Instead, I’m going to cover the books (floppies and collections) that I’ve read for the last month and talk about the good and the bad. I regularly talk about things that are shipping but I’ve never really followed up with them.

Now, I cover all this stuff over on a Delphi forum, but most people don’t read those anymore. The good thing is that I’m enjoying almost all of the stuff I’m buying. Other stuff, not so much.

I’m currently enjoying ANGELTOWN, the five-issue mini from Gary Phillips and Shawn Martinbrough at Vertigo.

It’s a neo-pulp crime story about a private eye named Nate Hollis, who’s been hired to find a pro basketball player who’s suspected in the death of his ex-wife. Things are further complicated because he’s not the only one looking for the b-baller. Hollis is up against the cops, a bounty hunter and the mob and the trail is riddled with twists and turns.

Phillips’ script is strongly paced with realistic (if not overtly crass) dialogue. His characters have interesting back stories and the vague relationships keep the reader guessing who’s on who’s side. I’ve loved Martinbrough’s artwork since I first saw it in DETECTIVE COMICS many years ago. The scenes are shrouded in shadow, and he really brings the tone of the scenes to life. His sex scenes are sexy, and his mysterious interactions leave you guessing.

It’s definitely one of the more unique Vertigo books out there. I hope to see another mini around after this ends next month.

Also with the new and interesting, I’ve got Bob Harras and Marcos Martin’s maxi-series BREACH and Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning’s MAJESTIC ongoing.

With MAJESTIC, Abnett and Lanning take the Wildstorm Universe super-man back to his dimension and he’s found that the inhabitants of Earth (all animal life) have been stolen. Majestic finds some clues and sets off across the universe looking for the culprits.

DA & AL fleshed out Majestic a bit in the last mini-series with Karl Kerschl and now it’s returned to its over-the-top roots that Joe Casey planted all those years ago.

A big part of this is the artwork by Neil Googe and Trevor Scott. I’m very familiar with Scott as both an inker and a penciler from his early days at Wildstorm, but Googe was a bit of a surprise. At times, the line work of the first issue was generic and uninspired but the second issue is really quite stunning. The layouts are huge and the storytelling is very easy to follow.

Majestic is coasting through the universe at inhuman speeds, piloting a sort of solar-wind surfer with beautiful sails. A lot of the artistic praise must go to colourist Carrie Strachan, because she worked in a lot of real life cosmic images into the pages. Googe and Scott leave a lot of room for this, while at the same time, the close-ups are excellent. The book is lots of action and larger-than-life.

BREACH is a little harder to sum up, but it does cover the same sort of character. Breach is a result of a government project gone wrong (but really, who isn’t?) and it looks like he’s become the most powerful being in the DC Universe.

Harras is slowly and steadily introducing the characters and their use in the world. There are a lot of questions left unanswered at this point, but I’m intrigued and looking forward to what will soon be revealed.

Martin (and his inker Alvaro Lopez) have a distinct style that I wouldn’t think would work with such a formidable character. I think the utterly lack of flash fits the tone perfectly. This is one of those ‘under dog’ books that everyone should be checking out.

I was also sort of surprised by YOUNG AVENGERS. I loved how this was more of a Pulse book than THE PULSE, and it's been all of 10-15 pages of one issue. I like how the YA are really silly and I'm curious to see who they are and what the story is. I don't see this lasting very long, but it's not bad. The artwork is good, too – I think it has a lot to do with John Dell's inks. Jimmy Cheung is looking less ‘Cheung’ – which is good. There's almost a Brett Booth (remember him?) look to it. (Mostly like the early BACKLASH issues. What? What are you looking at?)

On the other side of the coin, I finally sat down and read AVENGERS: Disassembled with Bendis’ "read it again, knowing what you know" attitude. It’s a pretty ridiculous story on a whole. For someone who is notorious for slowly paced stories, this was a complete 180 with all the interesting bits happening in the first 15 or so pages. It’s all KA-BOOM and THWAH-KOOM and all that and then the end is Tell tell tell… tell-tell tell. Not his best work by any means. I found Chris Priest’s CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON story to be much more interesting. It’s subtle and clever and in the end Cap’s totally thrown for a loop. That’s how you ruin the day. You don’t tell me “this is the worst day the Avengers have ever seen.”

That brings me to THE NEW AVENGERS, which you know, this isn't bad, but Bendis needs to stop doing interviews and talking about this shit. The motivation is fine and it all makes sense, but he told us about that months ago. It kind of kills the drama when we know the under lying plots. It's like when Mark Waid talked about his cool ideas for Reed Richards (the sounds of a hand going over a blown up balloon and all that). When we finally get to something cool and unique in the book, we already know about it. Wasteful.

I do have some old reliable books. THE INTIMATES by Joe Casey, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Sandra Hope hit its fourth installment. It was another awesome issue. It's really everything a teen comic should be with all the superheroic trappings. Casey put these info scrolls across the bottoms of the pages that act as both tips for teens as well as footnotes for the characters on the rest of the page. At first they were hard to get into due to the light yellow font, but as you read the issues they get more and more comfortable. Some of the best lines are down there, letting Casey go all out.

The artwork is great, too, drawing the characters like teenagers, rather than just little grown-ups. There’s a lot going on in these pages, but it’s easier and easier to get into these characters. The students are all super-powered in some way and they’re contained in this compound until they graduate. It’s like a high-tech X-Men Academy, except it’s much more fun. The teachers are all former super-heroes themselves and it’s interesting to see Casey use the powers in more mundane ways. The guidance councilor is a former speedster so he speaks so fast you can’t tell what he’s saying. It’s very interesting.

I wanted to like THE TWILIGHT EXPERIEMENT but, really, it wasn't very engaging. I wasn’t drawn into the story and the characters didn’t appeal to me. It’s too bad, because I’m trying to support Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, but it just didn’t work for me. The art’s okay, so it’ll work for some.

Judd Winick’s BATMAN continues to surprise me. He’s two issues into his run with Doug Mahnke and I’m really excited about it. I haven’t really liked the ongoing BATMAN book for a long time. I liked the Azzarello/Risso Bats, but that didn’t really count since it was out of the current time line. That said, I liked the Batman/Nightwing dynamic that Winick had, which is weird since I haven’t liked Nightwing in Winick’s OUTSIDERS all that much. I also thought the Mr. Freeze scene was nicely handled. He’s a hard character to get a hold of. The thing is, though, it's hard for me to wrap my head around Black Mask because here he doesn't seem all that crazy. Brubaker wrote him crazy in CATWOMAN and this – this doesn't even out. I'm looking forward to next issue, if only to see how they get out of *that* fight.

The artwork is a high point, as well. Mahnke and Tom Nguyen are a perfect fit for the book, with the gritty detail and the ability to do over the top and street level characters. That looks like it’ll come in handy during this arc. Winick has introduced a new Red Hood and it’s looking like it’s going to be former Robin/dead guy, Jason Todd. It’s a bit on the nose, though, and I hope Winick avoids that. That’ll be the real test.

SLEEPER, Season Two continues to kick ass and leave a high body count. The latest issue focused on Miss Misery and she might be the real tragic character of the story. Sure, Holden is a nice guy in over his head, but she’s forced to deal with so much just to live. Brubaker gave us a quick look at a night in the life of Miss Misery and – Christ – it’s not pretty. Sean Phillips continues to be at the top of his game and kicks out some interesting pages. Carrie Strachan is there again to shroud the pages in brilliant colour.

Episode to episode, the plots and interactions get more and more twisted and in the end, I hope – actually, I have no expectations. I can’t imagine this is all going to end nicely for any one, so I’ll just sit back and enjoy it. Issue Twelve is solicited to ship in May, so we just have to wait a few more months. I’ll be sad when it goes, but it’s been a helluva ride.



The cool kids these days are doing their "100 Things I Love About Comics," so here’s mine. Examples are available via Dave’s blog.

Here’s mine (in no particular order):

1. Stackable Cubes
2. DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY
3. Matt Hollingsworth
4. Sean Phillips
5. James Jean
6. John Cassaday
7. URSULA
8. Comicopia
9. Image’s POWERS
10. 1000 STEPS TO WORLD DOMINATION
11. New Comic Book Day
12. WILDC.A.T.s/WILDCATS/WILDCATS v3.0
13. Discount Comic Book Service
14. Dave Johnson
15. Robinson/Harris/Snejbjerg’s STARMAN
16. Tony Millionaire’s SOCK MONKEY
17. Jim Lee
18. Paul Pope
19. CREATURE TECH
20. THE INTIMATES
21. DC: Absolute Editions
22. The Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe
23. Michael Lark
24. Alan Moore
25. Jesse Custer
26. quarter bins
27. JSA: The Liberty Files
28. Ait/Planet Lar
29. Brian Wood
30. Jim Steranko spy comics
31. FILLER BUNNY
32. Khepri dot com
33. Scott Morse’s MAGIC PICKLE
34. Oni Press
35. sketchy comic shops
36. Scott Pilgrim
37. John Constantine
38. Ellis/Hamner’s RED
39. DC Comics
40. COMPLETE PEANUTS
41. Greg Rucka
42. NOWHERESVILLE
43. TERMINAL CITY
44. Adam Strange (character and book)
45. GOTHAM CENTRAL
46. THE TICK
47. old 90s Wildstorm books
48. DC Comics Pocket Super Heroes
49. “pre-Crisis…”
50. MARVEL BOY
51. Lucifer (book and character)
52. BATMAN: The Animated Series: “Almost got ‘em”
53. QUEEN AND COUNTRY
54. Mr. Miracle/Big Barda
55. Scott Hampton
56. Gene Ha
57. Alan Moore’s SWAMP THING (mostly Swamp Thing in Space)
58. SCURVY DOGS
59. TOP TEN
60. Plunkett/Scott’s BATGIRL
61. Fanboy Rampage!!!
62. Todd Klein
63. David Choe
64. 100 BULLETS
65. Batman
66. the ‘Bizarro’ concept
67. Joe Casey
68. Justice League Unlimited
69. Nick Fury
70. Opal City
71. Isotope (never been there, but I love the idea… Someday…)
72. Ed Brubaker
73. DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering
74. Dr. Doom
75. Ghost World (the movie)
76. X-MEN: Legends (video game)
77. David Hahn
78. Morrison/Porter’s JLA
79. Bendis/Maleev’s DAREDEVIL
80. Peter Milligan’s HUMAN TARGET
81. TRANSMETROPOLITAN
82. Grant Morrison
83. ASTRONAUTS IN TROUBLE
84. J. G. Jones
85. KILL YOUR BOYFRIEND
86. Kevin Nowlan
87. The Shade
88. The WEF
89. Tischman/Kordey’s CABLE
90. Frank Miller’s Batman
91. Ellis/Hitch/Neary/Martin’s AUTHORITY
92. Mike Allred
93. HELLBOY/B.P.R.D.
94. Larry Young’s TRUE FACTS
95. Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon
96. THE GOON
97. TEENAGERS FROM MARS
98. Gail Simone’s DEADPOOL/AGENT-X
99. SKY APE
100. The Injustice Gang

Not a bad list, I don’t think.


Upcoming
Items of note shipping February 16, 2005

NOV040037 THE GOON: HEAPS OF RUINATION, VOL. 3 TPB
Dark Horse Books
$12.95

I feel like I’ve been waiting for this forever. It’s the fourth volume of Dark Horse produced full-colour collections of THE GOON and the second volume of the new ongoing, bi-monthly series. Vol. 4 + Vol. 2 = Vol. 3 Dig? So this is the next four issues of the DH book and it’s really, really good. Nice artwork, fun characters – scary and silly stories. Oh, and Hellboy is in it. What else do you need to know?

DEC040306 THE AUTHORITY: REVOLUTION #5 (OF 12)
Wildstorm/DC Comics
$2.95

For those of you who haven’t been following: The Authority is the ruling party of the United States and there are mechanizations behind the scenes that are screwing it up for them. Elderly super heroes from the 40s have been rejuvenated and have taken the fight to The Authority’s front door. Then there was a big explosion – and by BIG I mean Nook-U-Ler. It’s not pretty. Now we get to see the very literal fallout of it all.

DEC040227 BATMAN: WAR GAMES: ACT ONE, TPB
DC Comics
$14.95

This is the first collection of last year’s mis-received Bat-book crossover. The best part, from where I’m sitting, is the cover by the stellar James Jean. Hopefully it won’t be terrible and we can get through this painlessly. I really like the Bat-books when handled correctly, and this could work. I ain’t holdin’ my breath.

DEC040251 BIRDS OF PREY #79 $2.50
DEC040263 HAWKMAN #37 $2.50

DEC040308 EX MACHINA #8
Wildstorm/DC Comics
$2.95

DEC040307 OCEAN #4 (OF 6)
Wildstorm/DC Comics
$2.95

January was a skip-month for these two, for some reason. EX MACHINA continues the Gay Marriage plotline which is very interesting, and OCEAN clips along at a decent pace. Both have nice artwork and are worth the time and money.

DEC040339 TRIGGER #3
Vertigo/DC Comics
$2.95

I should have mentioned this above as a book I’m diggin’. The plot is at a slow boil right now, and it’s going in the right direction. I have no idea how it’s selling (though I’m guessing not very well) so I’m supporting it for a while. The artwork is really slick and Alex Sinclair’s colours really made it pop. I’m excited to see how this issue picks up from the last.

DEC041747 DAREDEVIL #70
Marvel Knights/Marvel Comics
$2.99

I’ve moved to trade paperbacks for DAREDEVIL. I just don’t have the time/cash for this monthly book anymore. I still like it, but it’s lost some of its spunk.

OCT042882 QUEEN & COUNTRY: DECLASSIFIED VOL. 2 #1
Oni Press
$2.95

I'm looking forward to this story, but I'm Waitin' on the trade. I didn't have space for the three issues and it's already running late, so I'll just prepare to wait for the trade to run late. Or something. It should be good, though, focusing on Tom Wallace during the days before the Hong Kong was handed over to the British. Rick Burchett joins Greg Rucka this time around, bringing them together for the first time in years. His style is a nice change of pace for the Q&C, and I look forward to what he does with the project.


I've got something planned for next week, though it's not a column. See you in two.

 


Brian Domingos is the Columns Editor at Popimage.com. Questions? Comments? Love Notes? Email him via brian@popimage.com.


PopImage Forum - Discuss this message at the PopImage forum.


Industrial Archive - Read past Industrial articles