Mindless Ones

So, to the business of this weeks comics. One-word summary at the end.

I had a read of X-Men:Divided We Stand in the shoppy because $4 or, I think, £3 – as my shop’s monopoly-mark-up is rather steep – for really 8 pages of Matt Fraction and Jamie McKelvie, just about recognisable buried under the high-rez colouration, doing a story on Scalphunter (did you know he’s a clone, or like an Nth Gen. clone? I did not know that,) Nightcrawler and Christian charity. It was pretty good for free though, I have to say, and I’m kind of looking forward to Fraction splitting duties on Uncanny X-Men with Brubaker, who’s suddenly got good at writing the comic now he doesn’t have to piss about with no-marks like Havok and Warpath. I say “kind of” because I have pretty strong reservations about Greg ‘Sports Illustrated’ Land. Reservations like “what if someone sees me carrying this?”, which are only natural, but Greg Land is an enhancile of that sort of thing. There’s some Skottie Young art in the book, too, and he’s a really interesting stylist who gets up traditionalist’s noses immensely but it looked kind of a winsome, or other antonym of ‘awesome’, story he’d penned for himself, so I didn’t dwell on it. Dear.

Given the ennui that suffused my viewing of the new stuff – which did not include items such as RASL (which… I thought that came out a while ago? If it did, it wasn’t there then, and it wasn’t today. I’d be more adventurous maybe if these things were available to browse, probably) – I picked up the OMAC: Countdown Special. Countdown has been, I’m told, execrable. Perusing the first issue it seemed self-evident that it was heading down shitey lane, so that’s fairly unsurprising. These things are always tempting though, because they all have Ryan Sook doing a ‘lusher than Adam Hughes, almost even James Jean power level’ cover for a start. The contents, well, I can’t say with any certainty I’ll get round to ever reading the Starlin middle-section, it looks so made-of-boring that… look, I cannot believe someone thought it was a good idea to change the eyes and mouths of the Global Peace Agents from zig-zags. That is a phenomenally upsetting image from the Kirby #1 reprinted at the book’s opening; one of many, what with the Build-a-Friend and workplace bullying. What occurs, reading it, apart from how much better it is than the entirety of DC’s output for at least the last five years (excluding two or three Seven Soldiers issues, maybe), is how like Valis the integral concept is. The cover scan seems to have been upgraded for publication, but if you click the pic, I’m sure the right hue of pink emerges. The GPAs are not dissimilar to the scanner-suits from A Scanner Darkly, either. But it pre-dates both. I bathe in that sort of guff, really. Guffy suds, mm. The main impulsion to read it was actually Bobsy’s(?) extremely high recommendation of the last story, a Wein/Perez joint from ’83, where OMAC battles Superman. Apart from the neat, white-suited mystery ending, I couldn’t say I agreed with the contention it was the best Superman story before All-Star #10, really. Superman, I think, without the direct involvement of Kirby, Moore or Morrison is like a vacuum for fun, investment and interest – Dan Jurgens being, as always, the high-power setting – and this did little to dispel the notion. Distressing.

Captain America #37 opens the third year of Brubaker’s consistently excellent run on the book. As amypoodle mentioned recently there isn’t much done here, or anywhere at Marvel, that pushes the formal envelope very far. Flicking through, Steve Epting – who’s been, barring last month’s cover débâcle, nothing short of a brilliant action penciller and delivered one eye-popping frame, or splash, per issue – does actually switch up the grid a great deal, playing with 3,4,5 horizontal panels, using the classic 6 for TV news, moving about the 8. It seems more than normal and I’d be interested to put this side-by-side with Phillips on the last Criminal because I think it’s employing similar tricks. But, yeah, the ambition is evidently to deliver a thickly-plotted, cliffhanger-heavy, espionage thriller; something it does with pretty much utterly unparalleled, panache (I use words of French origin in tribute to the VE scene at the opening). So well, in fact, that Brubaker’s craft is almost invisible, unforced – plot-points are not dinged loudly. Though with this month’s shock! ending! there are a couple unresolved mysteries I immediately turned to, primarily involving whatever Arnim Zola (whose bright, primary look – slight criticism but must be said – has been utterly ruined by over-rendered colouring) has been up to for the last year. It’s an exciting, surprising and engaging read pretty much from inception, this series, and “solid” always seems like damning with faint praise, so… Adamantine.

War is Hell: the First Flight of the Phantom Eagle # 2 is a little bit of a disappointment, though it is the second Garth Ennis comic in a fortnight to have lovers begirded by a pink heart on the cover. I’ve not read The Boys for a while, but I imagine it probably involved menstrual blood? Grown-up comix! This is, comparatively boringly, a commerical transaction in which the john is unaware that it is such. At the end. There’s a blow-job, which you don’t even get to see, which I had thought was surely the point of MAX comics? And then the guy is dead cheerful, like Arseface that time. Don’t even recall any swearing, just a thicker cover which will be $1 extra, plz! Is it water-resistant? It’s a bit of a disappointment this, I can’t even remember which character is the Phantom Eagle – I think he’s the john? Everyone looks quite similar except some of them have moustaches or different hair colour. I think one guy had freckles, and his features were puggishly centred in a smaller radius atop that trademark jutting Chaykin chin. Maybe he was the Phantom Eagle? He seemed pretty cool, cooler than the other guy. There’s some WWI trumpery in barracks. It’s a bit like lots of Garth Ennis comics, but without the better bits. Punisher is still magnificent, bleak, black poetry – I dunno. Carded.

Speaking of comics that are a lot like Garth Ennis comics, which aha! I have arranged my week’s reviews specifically to make this segue, we have Ghost Rider #22. This is the third issue by quite-exciting breakout talent, Jason Aaron, and best so far by miles because it escapes it’s extraordinarily Preacher-like plot (Ghost Rider wants to get to Heaven to kill an angel that gave him his ghost-rider-powers) and locale (which, in fairness, is also the writer’s locale) with flaming bike-stunts, something Preacher was not o’erblessed with. There’s one near the end, and Roland Boschi (after seeing his excellent concept-sketches which melded the aforementioned Young and a more Euro aesthetic, like a lot of these Croat guys; Zezelj, Kordey, even Scalped‘s Guera – I hope they’re all Croatian, uh, former Yugoslavian maybe?) has been kind of a rudimentary disappointment but he just sells the dead-soul gasoline afterburn in this sequence. Additional to the heavy, heavy Ennis-influence there’s some Grindhouse cinema, pinches of Russ Meyer. An interesting blend, if not one I’d immediately turn to for a pick-up. It’s delivered quite goofily, with a sense of the concept’s essential ludicrousness (the character wields a scythe on the cover and within, you know?). This issue – which was supposed to be called ‘Deathrace on Ghost Cannibal Highway’ instead of ‘Hell-bent and Heaven bound, Part Three’ – is not without an amount of Southern charm. Self-deprecating.