Right, there isn’t actually much time before it’s Wednesday, which to most people reading this (i.e. our friends in the West) is new comics day. So regardless of the fact that I’m just back from the pub, it’s time to review the books of last week. It’s an exercise in random impressions and possibly completely unfair snap judgements – it’s Last Week in Comics!

THE SHIELD 1: I should point out at this juncture that Paul is just back from his holiday in the States (literally just back – he landed this morning. Although he did make it out to the pub this evening, which is fairly heroic, to be honest. But anyway.) and so we haven’t had time to put our heads together and decide what we’re going to be reviewing on this week’s podcast. I had originally ordered this book on the basis that it might make for podcast fodder, but to be honest, it’s rather unremarkable in what it does and it’s unlikely to make the cut. Reader’s Digest version: DC licensed the Red Circle heroes years back from Archie Comics, they published the !mpact line, and have recently re-licensed them in order to publish a couple of ongoing titles – the Shield, with a backup strip starring Inferno, and the Web, with a backup strip starring Hangman. Now, taken completely in isolation, the Shield isn’t a bad book at all. It’s a fairly generic patriotic hero, and aside from the rather over-the-top flag-waving might makes right message in this first issue, it’s perfectly palatable. The backup is nigh-incomprehensible (the hero has a different physical appearance when his powers are activated? Maybe? I have no idea) but the main feature is inoffensive enough. That’s the first sign of the problem, though. Who was asking for this character’s return? Who was asking for Eric Trautmann to write it and for Marco Rudy to draw it? Why is this comic being published? There’s nothing particularly outstanding about the writing, there’s nothing particularly dazzling about the art, and there’s certainly nothing compelling about the concept (nanotech-powered patriotic superhero operating in warzones, with no apparent nuance and some presumably unintentionally humorous moments). It’s the same problem I had with the first issue of Marvel’s Torch last week – is this just being published because DC can? Because that’s not a very good reason. I mean, fair’s fair. There’s not a whole heck of a lot that’s actively bad about this book – overly-simplistic depiction of war and the military aside. To say that is to damn with faint praise, though. If I can’t be motivated to evangelise about this book, why should anyone else be expected to? The audience for this book seems to be people who wish DC had their own Captain America, or the presumably miniscule fanbase for what is unarguably a footnote in comics history. If you’re excited about this book, then that’s great – it’s not a bad comic. If you’re not excited about it, then don’t worry, because taken purely on its own terms, it’s really not that exciting.

INCREDIBLE HERCULES 134: Back with Herc for the second part of his story while the late-summer bi-weekly overlapping stories run, and things are hotting up for the gung-ho faux-Thor, as he lets his libido lead him into what turns out to be a thoroughly ill-advised dalliance with the queen of the dark elves. As with the last few issues of this book, it’s a great rollicking read, with a few nice twists and turns in the plot to complement the always sharp dialogue, and a superbly amusing final scene. Greg Pak and Fred van Lente again turn in the kind of story that puts most of the rest of Marvel’s output to shame, and while Hercules may be the best-kept secret in Marvel’s line-up, it’s one that rewards its faithful every time.

ELEPHANTMEN 21: I’ll put my hands up and admit it – I’m a sucker for the world of Hip Flask. Ever since that first one-shot came out years ago, I’ve been a fan of Richard Starkings’s hippopotamus PI and his bizarre milieu. What we get in the current issue of the regular Elephantmen series (there is technically a miniseries, with art by Jose Ladronn, also running at present, but that’s been running for the last five years so it’s touch and go whether we’ll see it completed before the eventual heat death of the universe) is simultaneously a perfect jumping on point and part six of an eight-part story, and there aren’t many books that can claim that. In this installment, the remnants of the evil Mappo corporation decides that they’re going to test out the chips that had been implanted in the spinal cords of the Elephantmen back in the days of their bloody war, and pick Hip’s pal Ebony Hide as their test subject. What follows is a brutal fight sequence between Ebony and a number of alligator Elephantmen, with overlaid narration calmly discussing the role the Elephantmen played in the war, coldly at odds with the violent acts Ebony is carrying out on his enemies. It’s a great primer for the series, and a nice way to get new readers on board. My only issue is with the art – some of Boo Cook’s work on this issue is a little reminiscent of the kind of art you used to get on late-90s Image and Wildstorm superhero books, and isn’t representative of the kind of light work Marian Churchland and Moritat usually turn in. That’s a small complaint, though, and it’s one which is balanced out by the first sign of the book’s meta-plot moving forward for the first time in a while. Worth a look if you’ve been curious about this book.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 604: It’s that man again, as Fred can Lente once more puts his head above the parapet to take the slings and arrows of the notoriously hard to please Spider-Man fanbase. Thankfully, behind the cover from Leinil Yu (which manages to be both symbolic and literal at the same time, which is something it’s hard to get away with outside of Chameleon stories) there’s the final part of a story which has been one of the most satisfying since the Brand New Day direction began. Van Lente manages to make Chameleon into a genuine threat, something which hasn’t been done with him for quite some time, while also making him a properly creepy villain into the bargain. J Jonah Jameson also gets a few good lines in, a particular high spot being the moment when he declares that his lawyers have decided that Spencer Smythe’s work on the Spider-Slayers was work for hire and therefore Jonah owns it, although it’s probably about time that the Spidey office dialled JJJ back a little – he’s really coming across as a one-note, two-dimensional character at present and he works best when he’s a little more rounded. Mary Jane’s return to the book has been very well handled, her interactions with Peter being played fairly low-key – you get the impression that Peter and MJ are a couple who are bonded by more than just their erstwhile nuptials, and while I’d be surprised if they aren’t reunited romantically in the fullness of time, the path that’s being taken to get there is fine for the moment. Two small niggles, though – first off, if all these stories are going to tie in some way into the Gauntlet, then the Gauntlet should hurry up and get started, because at present it’s just made for a really abrupt end to what was otherwise a first-rate Chameleon story, and second, can we please have a moratorium on the faux-Boston accents in this book?

I also read the Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Exodus one-shot (liked it, on the whole, although there are a couple of points that grate) and the Avengers: The List one-shot (about which I had more in the way of reservations) but as I say, I’m not sure what we’re going to talk about on the podcast and both of these are definite candidates – I’ll write more about both once I know what we’re going to say on House to Astonish proper but for the moment I’ll hold off.

What did you read last week?

Good old postal strikes, eh? Between localised industrial action and holiday-induced late shipping, I’ve received this week’s books in the twilight of the week again, so this might all seem a little old hat to you cutting-edge kids. You’re probably all twittering about next week’s comics already. Bah! Get off my lawn. Anyway. I’ve got the new Brendan Benson album, I’ve got comics, let’s go!

THE TORCH 1: This is another of Marvel’s 70th anniversary commemoration books, like The Marvels Project, Cap: Reborn and Finding Namor*, this one dealing with the least celebrated of their original Big Three, the Human Torch. At least, that’s the theory. In this Alex Ross/Mike Carey/Patrick Berkenkotter book, the Torch appears in a non-flashbacky way in one panel. In his stead, we get the handwavingly-resurrected Toro, the Torch’s old-school sidekick, and his spirit guide, the Spectre Golden Age Vision, who’s kicking around for no real reason and to no properly explained end. The plot, such as it is, features Toro having a big old complain, then deciding to take down the Mad Thinker (who has dropped the ‘Mad’ from his name, presumably for public relations reasons) and coming a bit of a cropper in the process, while the Thinker is working on a super-weapon for AIM. If it sounds slim, then you’d be right – my sketchy summary above is essentially all that happens in the first issue. Mike Carey manages to salvage what would otherwise be a bit of a shambles by dint of his usual well-crafted script, but the shadow of Ross’s necromantic hand is all over this book, the art looks like Igor Kordey’s rough work and the colours make everyone look like they’re claymation models. The words are good enough to let you overlook the art, but the basic purpose needs to be questioned – why has Toro been brought back, and why is the Torch being brought back? What is the reason for this story? Why are these characters important or compelling or necessary? These questions should have been asked before this was commissioned, and if they were, the answers aren’t apparent.

SWEET TOOTH 1: Jeff Lemire, Eisner-nominated writer/artist of the Essex County trilogy, has just started his new Vertigo ongoing, featuring a mutant kid (but not the comic-book kind of mutant. The unfortunate kind) who lives in the forest with his dad, who unlike his son does not have antlers or deer-like facial features. This first issue gives us Gus, who is cared for by, and who in turn cares for, his ailing father. They struggle by, his dad getting sicker every day, until hunters turn up – and they’re not interested in rabbits. Lemire’s quiet, considered scenes are hugely atmospheric, and he can even turn something as ostensibly uneventful as Gus and his dad eating dinner into a moment of creeping dread. The backstory amplifies that dread, what little of it we get; it seems there’s been some kind of incident that’s led to people getting sick and dying, and kids being born with physical mutations, which suggests radioactive fallout, but the answers aren’t laid out on the table for us and we’re expected to pull our own weight. We get little help from the narrator; Gus is not an obvious protagonist – he’s simple, nervous and gawky – but his plain language is without artifice and if any reader of this book doesn’t fear for him by the end of the first issue and want to protect him then they’ve got no soul. Lemire has a fantastic way with both words and pictures, which is essentially all comics are. The fact that he’s nailed it so perfectly in the first issue is a real sign of good things to come.

YOUNG LIARS 18: A review of this Vertigo book, on the other hand, is kind of redundant. If you’ve been reading the series so far, you’ll probably already have read this issue, and if you haven’t, then for pity’s sake don’t read this issue, because it will make absolutely no sense whatsoever and possibly sour you to the entire concept. I think the series as a whole probably deserves a separate post at some point down the line, once I’ve re-read the whole thing, but in short this is as good an ending as there is likely ever to be for what will go down in Vertigo history as one of their strangest and most polarising books. There are, I’m almost certain, no comics readers who have tried Young Liars and come away from it thinking “Yeah, it was okay, I guess”. Either you’re like me, and have been gleefully holding on for dear life as it pinballed around from normalcy to Mars and back, or you’ve written it off as willfully obtuse and precious nonsense. I’ll give the detractors one thing – if you’re reading Young Liars looking for a story that will reveal its secrets on a first or second or ninth reading, you’re likely to be disappointed, because it doesn’t reveal its secrets at all. It’s a series where what you get out of it is whatever you take from it, not one red cent more, and it’s completely unapologetic about it. So, yeah. Young Liars. I loved it. Make of it what you will.

CHEW 4: Look, if you’re not reading this, you are demented, so there’s nothing I can really say that will change your mind, but if somehow you just haven’t got round to it yet, please do. In this issue, Chu and Savoy go to a remote observatory and fight some people who may or may not be vampires but are definitely Russian girls in their underwear while investigating the death of a secretly criminal Senator and Tony’s brother Chow gets pursued by some gangsters that look like they could snap him in half. Layman and Guillory are firing on all cylinders here. This is great comics.

RUNAWAYS 13: Delayed from last week but better late than never. Kathryn Immonen’s story is starting to look a little shaky on its feet here, with random and slightly inexplicable hookups, an inability to decide whether Hunter Stein is actually a bad guy or not (Chase seems to think he is, and he’s clearly wrapped up in something shady, but none of the other kids seem too bothered) and what looks like a circuitous route back to something resembling the BKV-era setup all whacking at it with hockey sticks in an attempt to take it down. The three parts of Homeschooling so far have had a slightly dreamlike quality to them, with some perfect moments and a feel for the characters that’s been lacking since Vaughan left, but like a dream the plot appears to be moving in odd directions and at an uneven pace. Events like the recent death of a major character get minimal amounts of attention given to them, and the kids have only clapped eyes on the story’s real credible thread for a few seconds. If the book’s going on hiatus (and it appears that that’s the case) then this is a slightly strange way to wrap up the series, but Immonen’s got one more issue to pull it back – the first two parts of this story were a lot more satisfying and I’m easily prepared to chalk this issue up as an atypical mis-step. Sara Pichelli and Christina Strain keep hitting the high notes, though, and to be honest, this is still the best the book’s been in a few years, and if it suffers by comparison to Immonen’s first two issues then at least part of that is because they were very good.

So that’s what I read this week (that and the Secret Six tpb, of course, which also deserves its own post). What about you?

*Not really, but it would be good, right? And if I hadn’t referenced the Disney thing you’d have been disappointed.

Yes, it’s only technically still the week that these books were released, and tomorrow there’ll be a whole new bunch. But still, these are last week’s comics. So! Onward!

DETECTIVE COMICS 856: JH Williams continues to use this book as, in essence, an instruction manual for artists who really want to dazzle a crowd. Lots of eye-poppingly gorgeous two-page spreads, inventive use of panel layouts and a pretty neat division of art styles between the halves of the lead character’s double life (more dark and painterly and with more irregular panels for the Batwoman sections, more clean pen-and-ink and regular panelling for the Kate Kane moments) mean that this continues to be the most beautiful Bat-book being published at the moment (sorry, Mr Quitely). In terms of the story, in this issue we finally get a bit of light shed on what Alice’s nefarious plot actually involves, and it’s a bit of a let-down – such a crazy villain surely shouldn’t have such a prosaic goal in mind? That aside, Rucka keeps the plot rolling and even manages to give us some bittersweet moments that remind us that this book’s two stars are linked by more than their sexuality. The backup (Co-feature! Erm, Second Feature! Oh, come on, backup) suffers a little from being completely breakneck, without a second to catch a breath – with only ten pages to play with, there isn’t a lot of time to slow down the action, but a few more quiet moments wouldn’t go amiss. Not quite the strongest issue of this run so far, then, but still a hundred miles better than most Big Two books on the stands.

INCREDIBLE HERCULES 133: The headline character of this issue only shows up in flashback, as the seventh smartest man in the world gives us the Reader’s Digest version of his origin story and career highlights while reading up about the Hero’s Journey. Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente (who has been moved to a new, larger enclosure that was paid for by your donations) give us a story that’s great for new readers, I’ve no doubt (particularly given that Amadeus Cho’s backstory is to be found in half a dozen different titles), but for old hands who’ve been following the character since his debut this is little more than a clip show with a cute conceit. Still, the introduction of the sixth smartest man in the world at the end of the issue (and the fact that he’s not just an evil version of Cho) bodes well for a storyline to come that’s more in keeping with the standard of quality that this book’s had to date. That’s not to say this issue’s bad – these guys are skilled enough to make even a recap book worth reading – it’s just not quite up there with the rest of the run.

INCREDIBLE HULK 601: Speaking of Greg Pak, he finally manages to wrest the Hulk away from Jeph Loeb again and almost instantly, as if by magic, manages to make it a book worth reading again. The brains-and-brawn double act of Banner and Skaar (a character whose name never becomes less embarrassing and painful to type) are set on causing a bit of trouble, and Banner sets about hoodwinking six of the eight smartest people in the world into inadvertently helping him out with that aim. Ariel Olivetti’s figurework continues to impress, and if there was ever a character for whom his propensity for musculature was appropriate it’s the mega-Conan muscle-lump that is Skaar (nngh), but the constant Photoshopping of backgrounds is getting beyond annoying now. The promise of a fight with the Juggernaut in the next issue is enough to bring me back for that, but the first issue of this new direction doesn’t actually do much to demonstrate the, y’know, direction. The Savage She-Hulk backup strip isn’t the strongest work any of the creators involved have put their name to, but it’s always nice to see Michael Ryan’s art and the second-tier Gamma Squad are a nice surprise, particularly given that it appeared the concept had been entirely forgotten about.

DARK AVENGERS 8: Betrayals, revealed secrets, the highly ambitious plans of Scott Summers and what by my count are two and a half pages of the title characters of this book make up the penultimate part of the big summer Dark Avengers/X-Men crossover. I mentioned in my review of the last issue of Uncanny X-Men that it would be nice to see more of the Dark Avengers in this story, and that goes double for this issue, particularly given that this is meant to be the Dark Avengers’ book. Given that this appears to set up another major change in the X-Men’s status quo, I’d be a bit miffed if I were someone who was only reading the X-titles – not since Stephanie Brown and Jack Drake were both killed (yes, yes, I know) outside of the pages of Robin have so many important changes to characters’ status quo happened outside their own book, and it’s a little dissatisfying as a result. Also, I know this isn’t Uncanny and thus doesn’t have the little caption boxes introducing the characters, but if there are going to be so many interchangeable blondes there should really be some way of telling who any of them are, and Luke Ross’s Mike Deodato impression doesn’t help shed much light on that. A weak link in what has otherwise been a largely enjoyable crossover, mainly saved by the chutzpah of a Cyclops who’s laying down more smack than he has done in years.

AVENGERS: INITIATIVE 27: New artist Rafa Sandoval comes on board with what is literally a book of two halves, one much better than the other. That’s not to say the second half of this issue, with Hardball helping out the Shadow Initiative grunts as they strive to retake the 42 Negative Zone prison that was lost to Blastaar in War of Kings is bad – far from it, it’s a nice little slice of action that lets Sandoval stretch his muscles on his first time out – it’s just that the first half is so much better. The initial section of this issue deals with the life story of Johnny Guitar, a one-time Dazzler villain (and a real character to boot) and his partner Doc Sax, as the train with the Shadow Initiative. Told as a letter from Johnny Sax, this is a nicely judged story that hits the right balance between sad and touching, as Gage imbues a gag villain with more personality than a lot of other books would care to do – but then again, this is Avengers: Initiative, where there’s no such thing as a ‘gag villain’. On the whole, a pretty great first issue for the new creative team (although whoever took the decision to put four characters on the front of the issue who don’t appear in the book at all needs to ask themselves why they made that choice).

So, what did you read this week?

Now, I don’t want to say too much about this here, because we’re going to be talking about it on the next episode of the podcast in much greater detail (in all likelihood), but if anyone out there is a fan of Lenore by Roman Dirge and is wondering whether the first issue of the new series from Titan is any good, I would say run, don’t shamble, to your finest local funnybook emporium and grab yourself a copy, because it’s sterling stuff.

If you aren’t aware of Lenore, the cutest zombie in the universe, then this is the perfect time to acquaint yourself with something that’s equal parts Jhonen Vasquez and Edward Gorey, but with more subtlety than the former and more visceral gags than the latter. It’s cute and horrific at the same time and is well worth a few bucks of anyone’s money. Forego that holofoil Ultimate relaunch, and get to know the sweetest, deadest, most horrifically superb heroine in modern comic books.

I’ve been on a back-issue re-reading kick for the last few weeks, ever since I decided to tidy out the elephant’s graveyard of comics under the bed (goodbye, issues of Marvel Adventures Avengers, you were great at the time but space is limited and I may not need to revisit Batroc’s Dating Agency any time soon. Actually, scratch that, that one’s coming back out of the recycling pile). I’ve ploughed through all 109 issues of the original run on Thunderbolts (including the Avengers/Thunderbolts mini, but not including the Fightbolts… thing), and while it’s interesting to track the ups and downs of that title and the dips in quality that occur whenever there’s a creative regime change on the horizon, picking the run apart will take more than just one post.

Having finished that, I set about tackling the run of Cable & Deadpool trade paperbacks which I’d accumulated – and by the way, if you were considering buying that series in trade any time soon, I’d get on it pretty sharpish if I were you, because some of the individual volumes are going for a pretty penny on Amazon Marketplace – and it didn’t take me long to remember why I’d bought them in the first place.

Cable and Deadpool was always a weird book. I mean, just looking at the title, it was neither fish nor fowl from day one. It was launched in the wake of the cancelled Agent X and Soldier X, and reeked a little of Marvel wanting to keep the characters in circulation but not having any ideas on how to do that beyond shoving them together in a room and hoping they would somehow capture an audience by little more than the application of the equation “Cable readership + Deadpool readership = Cable and Deadpool readership”. It was not a particularly auspicious name for a book that nobody expected to last beyond its first year.

Quite aside from the fact that it was a meal made of leftovers, it was also a showcase for two characters who together symbolised the worst excesses of the 1990s. Cable was filed under ‘big guns’, ‘pouches’, ‘mysterious past’, ‘grim’ and ‘glowing eye’. Deadpool was filed under ‘anti-hero’, ‘mysterious past’, ‘pouches’, ‘kills a bit’ and ‘rip-off of another character’ (seriously, if Deathstroke the Terminator was Seth Brundle and Bugs Bunny was an unlucky insect of the order Diptera, then Deadpool was the shambling result of the teleporter accident). By all rights, they should have been consigned to the same 1990s graveyard as Century, Blackwulf and Nightwatch.

What went right with the characters, though, was that creators who weren’t interested in the low-rent origins of the pair got their hands on the characters. Joe Kelly turned Deadpool from ‘evil Spider-Man with guns’ to a rounded character who used his machine-gun quippery to mask his self-loathing, his fear of being a hero, and his fear of not being a hero. Guys like Robert Weinberg, David Tischman and Darko Macan took Cable’s basic premise of a man fighting a hopeless war across time all by himself and extrapolated a lonely, tired soldier’s story from that weak start point.

By the time Fabian Nicieza, himself the co-creator of Deadpool, got his hands on the characters with their joint title he was in a position to really do something with them, and he did. He turned Cable into a modern-day messiah, setting up an island haven for all who wanted to join him (and thus setting himself up on the watchlist of every country in the world) and Deadpool into his buddy-stroke-foil. Story after story played out with Cable as a chessmaster playing a long game, and Deadpool as his favourite pawn. Supporting characters from both of the principal players’ backgrounds (Domino, Weasel, Irene Merryweather) played key roles, as did fairly random guest stars from the four corners of the Marvel Universe (Diamondback, Commcast, the Cat).

Artist Patrick Zircher, a former collaborator of Nicieza’s on Thunderbolts, handled most of the first half of the series after a short initial run from Mark Brooks. Zircher’s angular style, miles away from the Deodatos and Finches so beloved of Marvel both at the time and since, gave the book an unusual look that helped to differentiate it from so many of the other titles on the stands at the time. After he left, the book went through a number of different fill-in and substitute pencillers before finally settling on Reilly Brown, who started with a fairly shaky couple of issues before growing into the role and finally taking on co-writing duties on the final few instalments.

Unfortunately, although Cable & Deadpool was rattling along quite happily in a wibbly wobbly world of its own, the dictates of the wider Marvel line (specifically Mike Carey’s X-Men run) brought down the hammer in the form of the death of Cable. As a book called Cable & Deadpool isn’t a whole heck of a lot of good without, y’know, Cable, the book was only able to limp on for another eight issues as a sort of ersatz Deadpool Team-Up book before being cancelled with issue 50.

While it lasted, though, it was a blast. Gag-a-minute, intrigue-heavy, and for the most part self-contained (well, sort of. It was a continuation of the Niciezaverse, which is the long, single story that Nicieza’s been telling in every Marvel book he’s written for the last ten years, so there were storylines that originated in issues of Citizen V and the V Battalion). It’s the kind of thing Marvel would do well to publish now, when the rest of the line is tied up in Secret Civil Initiative Reign War Hulk. What kind of weird, topsy-turvy world do we live in when the thought of a book starring two thrown-together examples of the nadir of the nineties is an attractive proposition?