Mixed Plate Comics- Week of 10.12.2011

A crap load of books to consume in Eastcoast swing week of NYCC.  Don't pubs know that we don't have that much time to read with all the juicy news feeding our mental on the daily??  Finally caught up and put these books in the library:  Suicide Squad #2 / Orchid #1 / Mister Terrific #2 / FF #10 / American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest #5 / Deathstroke #2 / Shade #1 / Green Lantern #2 / Batman and Robin #2 / Demon Knights #2 / Batgirl #2 / Uncanny X-Force #16 / Batwoman #2 / SHIELD #3.  And the meanest books that I was really feeling are...

5    The Shade #1   James Robinson & Cully Hamner

Shade comes back in The New 52 with a year-long celebration of immortal, dark, brooding misadventures in his beloved Opal City.  I never caught the classic tales of James Robinson's Starman (in the queue tho) in the mid-90s but was hooked into the character of Shade in The Blackest Night Starman one-shot.

With an entourage of fly artists- Cully Hamner, Fazier Irving, Darwyn Cooke, Jill Thompson and others to share in the visuals...well, count me in for the Master of Darkness.  Scenes sweeping smoothly from his deck with Mikaal over tea, to his bed with Hope, a promenade thru the park and some shadow-puppet fun with Deathstroke. 

Robinson's conversational dialogue is delectable to the voyeur in all of us and sick to see Hamner busting his pencilwork on one of the many redesigns he took part in *pointing at Slade.  Some shit when Deathstroke's 3 page cameo is better than the last of his 2 books.  This read like many of Robinson's  best work seems to read too fast yet be gratifying enough as a fully encapsulated oneshot.  Definitely back for more in November.


4    Batwoman  #2  J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman
JHW3 is back with his sequential art seduction and tantalizing panel porn.  Bom-chika-wow-wow!  From the opening flip you get modernized, future-now like storytelling of Kate Kane and her cuz breaking bones, balls and the conventional comic as we know it.  You see his influence in everything these days be it Manapul's exhilarating experimentation in typesets flowing to the art or even the signature Bat logo used for framing in

other Batfam books.  Last ish, Batwoman made a fan in Black Mask and finds another in the Department of Extranormal Ops with all of her freaky-deaky affairs.

Kate takes out Det. Sawyer for a drink and we get a well crafted panel spliced-splash of them in a bar and an onlooking Desolation Jones playing lurker (how tasty would it be to get him in the New52?!)

Batman follows up with his offer to Kane on repping Batman Inc. and is offered advice on how to avoid creating sidekicks into future supervillians.  Does that make Red Hood/Jason Todd that in the DCnU?  Hmm...  Kate investigates the point of origin to the kiddie-abductor ghost and gets washed away into the phantoms grasp.  What happens next?! 


3   Uncanny X-Force #16  Rick Remender & Jerome Opena
The Dark Angel Saga, a new school classic in the making-- hits the crescendo with Fantomex, Deadpool and Deathlok on the hunt for Archangel, his Horsemen and other followers of Akkaba.  Psylocke in captivity has hope that Warren is still within the evolving Apocalypse and makes attempts to reach out with fail.  AOA Blob make a disgustingly, nasty entrance by treating Fantomex to a tour of his innards and Deadpool jumps
into battle with AOA Iceman who goes ice-god on his ass.  The art team of Opena and White combine to flesh out a crazy barrage of visual storytelling that dresses up the script to the nines.
 
Pestilence regains consciousness, burns down Ship and Logan within it.  For like 3 pages that is...when Wolvie re-enters the stage with a slicing and dicing to end Pestilences' deadly music career.

Archangel goes the way of Dr. Frankenstein with the world-seed and shanks Betsy in the back to re-animate her as his perfect companion.  The next ish sports a cover that shows Psylocke in a very Lady Mandarin-like look.  Ah the 90's nostalgia, love it Remender!  Why do we need Regenesis?!  Thankfully, we will still have Remender the title and on Secret Avengers after this magnificent run ends at #19. 

2    Batman and Robin  #2  Peter J. Tomasi &Patrick Gleason 

All the talk of shops going down in excitement and sales with the #2s vs. #1s is understood from the major influx of casual to non-comics heads jumping in and out of the shops to be a part of DC's New 52 marketing bandwagon, but for those that have read on to at least the second ish should be pleased with story dev.  I know that I am.  For the most part each second book has been better for me being that we are past the intro& basic origin-- moving into the nitty gritty of the writers subplots and what not.  Tomasi brings us deeper into Bruce's concerns with his son's ninja-assassin upbringing via Talia and the League of Shadows. 

Gleason/Gray/Kalisz portray brooding pictures and ambiguous angles of Damian that make us wonder, is it possible for Batman to steer this Robin in a different way then his failure with Jason Todd (Red Hood)?  The intimate scenes between father and son almost seem like Bruce is getting played.  

Alfred gives Bruce some pointers and also provides us with a third party observer of the two (without the unnecessary monologue). As Batman and Robin, the duo team up in a way that looks practiced to perfection.  But when we go back to the cave and witness the odd complexities of their chemistry and bear witness to the haunting image of Damian catching and choking out a bat, that's gotta be some foreshadowing of whats to come. 

The twist of bringing in Ducard (one of Bats primary mentors -- in detective work/firearms, for more read Blind Justice and no he is not Ra's) is tight.  So Nobody is actually a mean cat named Morgan that Bruce is familiar with and oh hey, looks like Damian will be getting a new doggy!



1    Green Lantern #2    Geoff Johns & Doug Mahnke
Yeah boyee!!!  Sinestro really is the greatest Green Lantern afterall.  We experience this in a number of ways by first seeing how he is able to create a ring for Hal to use (like his yellow rings of Fear), teaching Hal that acting on impulse is a limited scope in dealing with things-- like rather than saving one hawt chick falling from a bridge-- why not fix the bridge, lift the cars /people and multiple things all in unison.  Whoa. 

Johns promised at NYCC that we would be treated to Sinestro using willpower like we have never seen before.  So, so sick.  Maybe this is Sinestro realizing how much potential Jordan actually has when he single-handedly destroyed a Guardian, or this could just be his means of using Hal as a wingman for villianous deeds he is concocting. 
 
Up next, Sinestro and Hal vs the Sinestro Corps!!  So does this mean they will just be called the Fear or Yellow Corps now???!!  Mahnke is fucking incredible.


This post was written by:
big O