New Comics 6/27

It’s hot as sin outside, and I’m stuck in a freezing cold classroom that smells like feet. Comics!!!

Prophet #26 (Writer & Artist: Brandon Graham, w/back-up by Emma Rios)

Prophet has been awesome for so many reasons, but the best has been the rotating roster of amazing artists. In this issue, Graham himself provides the pictures and they are fantastic. His style is quite different than anyone else who has worked on the book. It feels more cold, detached, and clinical (not the disgusting of Simon Roy, certainly). The coloring in this book is fantastic; muted grays, greens, and tans in the beginning; black and bright red in the end. It makes me wish we could get a colored version of King City (which I will be writing about soon). What I think we get here, in the style of DC, is a #0 issue (of sorts). This issue follows a robot model called “Jaxson, one of old man Prophet’s unhatched eggs.” He is awakened on a planet that has been moved (awesome) by the scent of the Earth Empire’s signal. He traverses the landscape to find another Jaxson that he can smell and together, they travel through the Cycolops Rail (man made wormholes connected across the galaxy) to try and awaken John Prophet. To do this, he sends a signal through a creature named Brainrock that is a planet sized creature attempting to turn itself into an actual planet. It’s so stupid in words but so awesome on the page. What I truly love about Prophet so far is that this might be how John Prophet awakens in #21, or it might not. If so, awesome. If not, still awesome.

The Emma Rios short story is up on Graham’s blog too; it’s extremely weird and nasty:
http://royalboiler.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/more-hawk/

Grade: A

The Manhattan Projects #4 (Writer: Jonathan Hickman, Artist: Nick Pitarra)

It’s fitting that The Manhattan Projects and Prophet come out on the same day. Ridiculous sci-fi rules the stands. We finally get an Einstein centric issue and a guide to that weird monolith he’s been staring at since issue 1. Naturally, it’s a door to alternate dimensions and naturally, assumptions are turned upside down. It’s particularly amazing that we are four issues in and a plot hasn’t necessarily developed, yet, each issue is slam packed with stuff. Things are happening; things are being revealed; things are getting killed, but a story isn’t progressing in a normal way. It’s really just accumulating. Hickman can take his damn time so long as each issue is this much fun. And to Nick Pitarra, thank you.

Grade: B+

Batman Incorporated #2 (Writer: Grant Morrison, Artist: Chris Burnham)

After the full-throttle action of last issue, this is a perhaps too direct explanation of what is going on. Here, we get the New 52 backstory for Talia al-Ghul, head of Leviathan. Lazarus Pits. Damian in a bottle. Batman dressed up like an old lady. Perhaps it isn’t too direct, but it feels a little bit too, “Here’s how we got here, from the baddy’s perspective now!” Maybe this has been earned after a meandering, albeit awesome, pre-52 run. It is still fun, but I think the people who are truly going to enjoy this are the ones who’ve been with Morrison for his entire, epic run on Batman, which I haven’t. I can tell things are being referenced that I should understand, but I just don’t. Someday, I’m going to read this whole monster from start to end and then I’m sure this will stick out. I think the biggest downside of this issue is that Chris Burnham never really gets a chance to go crazy. Sure, he does amazing character work, but after the blood-bath of last issue, I’m left wanting more.

Grade: B-

Fatale #6 (Writer: Ed Brubaker, Artist: Sean Phillips)

Name that movie!

Fatale, the Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips foray into horror (still more noir than horror) starts its new arc by moving forward about twenty years to 1978 Los Angeles. We’ve got low-life actors, cults, snuff films, and bizarro murders. Josephine is still alive and terror just seems to pop up wherever she’s at, whether she ventures out into the world or not. I love this setting for Fatale. There is so much weirdness in 70s Los Angeles for Brubaker to mine from. And Phillips’s art already has a dingy, 70s vibe to it. He could have provided illustrations for The Long Goodbye and it would have worked. This is a fantastic, dense read and I’m anxious to see where this arc goes.

Grade: B+

Day 52 – New Comics 5/23

School’s out for the next two weeks. Once I grade my Comp II papers, it’s off to Minneapolis for a wedding and back to Omaha for relaxation. But today is Wednesday, new comic book day. I’ve wanted to do short, capsule reviews of the comics I get for the past, oh, 15 Wednesdays, but never did. Now I’m doing it, albeit in an incredibly informal manner.

Batman Incorporated #1 (Writer: Grant Morrison, Artist: Chris Burnham)

I re-read the Leviathan Strikes one shot last week in anticipation, and I had no idea what was happening in the absolute best way possible.  Talia, Robin’s mother, is head of Leviathan, Robin killed a dude, and we saw the last of Stephanie Brown. The Hood died, Batwing died, El Gaucho died, the Outsiders died, and Jezebel Jet died. Alright, here we go.

After a somber, ominous opening, we shoot back in time, presumably after Flashpoint? Batman and Robin are chasing a dude in a goat mask through a working slaughterhouse. God, I love Grant Morrison.

 Looks like Grant is back to his Animal Man, animal rights side. So. Much. Blood. And Damian becomes vegetarian while adopting a cow!

Talia put a $500 million bounty on Robin’s head, which is a really, really shitty thing for a mother to do. Needless to say, Gotham is flooded with psychopaths trying to kill Damian. In this issue, we get a guy named Goatboy with a “rocket rifle” (?!) trying to get his half-a-billy. And Leviathan is setting up shop in Gotham.

I was wondering how they were going to get away with Batwing being dead, while he somehow has his own series in the New 52, but we find out all those deaths from Leviathan Strikes were faked (except for Jezebel Jet) to establish an even more secret than the already secret Batman Incorporated, the Dead Heroes Club, home-based at Batcave West.

The issue concludes with an intriguing cliffhanger, and overall, it is a really great issue. Morrison and Burnham pack more into 22 pages than you could ask for, and Burnham’s art in particular is fantastic. It’s so mangy, bloody, and weird. I’m super pumped to have Batman Inc back. DC has really nailed this Second Wave of titles: this, Dial H, Earth 2, and World’s Finest have been great.

Grade: A-

Prophet #25 (Writer: Brandon Graham, Artist: Giannis Milonogiannis)

Prophet is unlike anything else I read, and it is consistently one of my favorites. Graham takes a unique, bizarre approach to these stories and he keeps plugging in brilliant artists to fill out each issue.  Last issue, Prophet landed on some machine planet in a bubble-suit when he finds some weirdo-baby with a giant head. No idea, but it ruled.

I feel like this was maybe an issue out of order. It certainly doesn’t pick up from last issue. Here, we’ve got 3 new Prophets on a mission searching for giants on Kartanus, in a system far beyond Humanity’s prior reach. It’s a nasty planet and they quickly lose a Prophet before they find a giant. Somehow, in the slaying of the beast, the original John Prophet is reborn, “The one man the Earth Empire fears…It has started again.”

Milonogiannis’s art is like dirty anime. It’s probably my least favorite of the Prophet artists so far, but that’s like saying Season 2 was the weakest Mad Men season. Like most of Prophet, I don’t know what the hell happened and I don’t care. Weird. Nasty. Awesome.

One other amazing thing that Graham has been doing in Prophet is including short, individual stories from other writers and artists at the back of each issue. It is definitely exposing me to stuff I would never know existed. This month, there is a continuation of a story by Frank Teran that started in Issue 23 (which furthers my theory that this was pushed back because of art delays or something). It is a beautifully illustrated little story about 2 astronauts exploring a weird, liquid planet. For $2.99, you can’t beat Prophet.

Grade: B+

Justice League Dark #9 (Writer: Jeff Lemire, Artist: Mikel Janin)

JLD was one of the first books of the relaunch I dropped. It wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t great. I picked up this issue because Jeff Lemire is taking over and basically internally rebooting the series. I love Lemire’s other relaunch stuff, so I thought I’d give this a try. Plus, Constantine is running the show, and he is a character I’m definitely intrigued by.

First of all, this is going to interact with Justice League in a big way. Steve Trevor is here. The Black Room from the Free Comic Book Day issue is here. So DC has brought Lemire in to straighten the ship and aim it towards the first major New 52 Event, The Trinity War. And I just re-read the FCBD issue, and yep, wow. They really worked to bring Dark in with the real Justice League.

This issue works better as a team story than Justice League has ever been able to. You can tell Lemire loves Constantine and really goes nuts with him. The rest of the team is interesting enough and I’m definitely interested in where this is going to go. I don’t love Janin’s art, though. It feels thin and wimpy. I’ll give it another issue.

Grade: C+

Mind MGMT (Writer and Artist: Matt Kindt)

This was sort of an off-the-cuff buy. This book has been getting lots of hype from other creators on the Twitter. It’s supposed to be weird, which is fine by me. It’s also the first Dark Horse book I’ve ever bought.

So, I have no real idea what to make of this. The basic story is that there is this CIA type organization that uses mind control (Mind MGNT) to do their bidding. Also, two years ago, a “Flight 815” landed with every passenger, minus a 7 year-old boy, having developed amnesia, and one passenger is missing (“Henry Lyme”). Present day, our protagonist Meru, a novelist, decides that the Amnesia flight should be the subject of her new book. She ends up down in Mexico looking for Lyme and gets rescued from would-be assassins by a CIA agent.

Kindt uses a dreamy, watercolor art style to tell his story. The book itself is set-up to be a report from within Mind MGNT. Does this mean that Meru is an agent? Is she an agent, but she isn’t aware of it (she doesn’t remember things)? Kindt has done a nice job making the comic interactive, and that’s how we find out most of our info about the Mind MGNT organization itself. We get little rules from the Mind MGNT Field Guide on the border of each page (“1.4 Corpse removal is a team effort. After body disposal, Cadaver Disposal requisitions must be filled out within 24 hours”). We learn of the orgs foundations trying to prevent World War I: the group actually stopped the first assassination attempt with a magic umbrella, but ol’ Ferdinand forgot it when the second assassin struck). We also find out about a renegade agent who can read everone’s (and animal’s) mind in a 5-mile radius. Thus, he can see the future, hence his codename, “The Futurist.”

There is so much happening here that comic can go one of two ways: mind-blowingly awesome or Mt. Everest sized frustrating. Again, I’m willing to stick around to see which way it goes.

Grade: B-