So, let’s bring you up to date.\u00a0 Last week, I skipped doing any reviews, because I was still waiting for that week’s books to arrive, and it’s rather hard to review books you haven’t read.\u00a0 Now, those comics duly showed up on Monday.\u00a0 This week’s comic, on the other hand, haven’t.\u00a0 And so what we’re going to do is review books that came out a week and a half ago.<\/p>\n
Not that I’m particularly bothered, to be honest – I have a pile of trade paperbacks waiting to be read as it is.\u00a0 But that’s why we’re running a week behind schedule here.<\/p>\n
Oh, and before anyone asks, no, I haven’t read the Sentry story, and no, I’m not planning to.\u00a0 It does sound god-awful, but it’s the sort of god-awful which gets quietly forgotten after a fortnight, so who cares?\u00a0 Perhaps it’s an ironic meta-twist: for the Sentry to save the Marvel Universe, everyone must forget him again, and to achieve that, he strives to appear in the sort of stories everyone would prefer to pretend they never read.<\/p>\n
Amazing Spider-Man<\/strong><\/em> #630<\/strong> – The first part of “Shed”, a Lizard story by Zeb Wells and Chris Bachalo.\u00a0 There’s a tried and tested formula for Lizard stories which has been in use for over 40 years; well-meaning Curt Connors tries another experiment, it all goes terribly wrong yet again, and he turns into a man-sized lizard and goes nuts.\u00a0 “Shed” doesn’t depart from that formula, so much as do it in the creators’ own style.\u00a0 And it works well; there’s a nice slow build to the inevitable, and Bachalo is clearly enjoying himself with the transformation.\u00a0 Actually, this is some of the best work I’ve seen from Bachalo in ages.\u00a0 For a good long while, he was producing work which was visually interesting but frequently obscure or downright unintelligible.\u00a0 This, however, is visually interesting while being absolutely clear and easy to read.\u00a0 Okay, a couple of his characters seem a bit off-model – his Peter Parker still doesn’t look quite right to me, even allowing for differences in style – but that’s minor.\u00a0 A good issue.<\/p>\n Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine<\/strong><\/em> #1<\/strong> – The first release from Marvel’s new, vaguely-defined Astonishing<\/em> imprint.\u00a0 From the sound of it, the idea is that these ought to be continuity-light stories.\u00a0 They’re being sold as entertaining stand-alone comics that don’t require any knowledge of history and don’t interact with any other stories.\u00a0 Not sure I’d have chosen a cod-Silver Age adjective as the brand, but it doesn’t really matter.\u00a0 This miniseries is by Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert, and it opens with the heroes already stranded back in prehistoric times.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the meteor that annihilates the dinosaurs is on the way.\u00a0 It’s a solid opening, but one that leaves you wondering whether six issues of Peter and Logan trapped in a jungle might be a bit much.\u00a0 But then the story races through an explanation of how they got there (kind of), and then it ramps up the plot to a whole other level of epic madness by the end of the first issue, so that instead of stretching the concept to six issues, Aaron is actually bashing through it in an issue and moving on to something more.\u00a0 And Adam Kubert gets to draw a lot of weird stuff.\u00a0 It’s a fun, unpretentious and fast-paced action story, and that’s good enough for me.<\/p>\n Batman & Robin<\/strong><\/em> #12<\/strong> – Erm… I have a sinking feeling that I’m not really very interested<\/em> in any of this.\u00a0 We’re now in the territory of setting up the return of Bruce Wayne and messing around with established members of the cast who don’t particularly interest me.\u00a0 And there’s some decidedly ropey fill-in art in the middle of the issue, which doesn’t help.\u00a0 But I just don’t find myself with a reason to care about any of this.\u00a0 I suspect I’ll be dropping this book quite soon.<\/p>\n Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight<\/strong><\/em> #35<\/strong> – Evidently building to the big climax, as baddies invade the earth and supporting characters get together to help fight them.\u00a0 Brad Meltzer, writing this arc, certainly has decent instincts for pacing a comic.\u00a0 And there’s an interesting idea in here somewhere, with Angel wanting him and Buffy to move on a higher plane and leave the world behind them to sort itself out.\u00a0 The problem is that the outcome of their dilemma is never really in doubt – aside from the fact that we all know the title character isn’t going to write herself out of the series, it’s never really presented as an attractive enough option to make it a properly dramatic dilemma.\u00a0 If anything, the big mystery here is why Angel thinks it’s such a good idea.\u00a0 For this to work, Buffy and Angel have to at least be toying with the idea that it’s All About Them.\u00a0 And of course, since they’re the lead characters, in a sense it is<\/em> all about them.\u00a0 But there’s a leap of logic in making that the basis of a dilemma, which isn’t quite convincing.<\/p>\n Hellbound<\/strong><\/em> #1<\/strong> – Or, if you prefer, X-Men: Second Coming – Revelations: Hellbound<\/em>.\u00a0 But I’ll go with just Hellbound<\/em>.\u00a0 This is a three-issue miniseries tying in with the “Second Coming” crossover.\u00a0 As it turns out, that means it’s a story taking place in the margins of the the crossover.\u00a0 Over in the main story, the bad guys are trying to take out all the X-Men’s teleporters, to mess with their transport.\u00a0 As a throwaway part of that story, Magik gets banished to Limbo.\u00a0 This story is about the team who get sent to bring her back – and while the likes of Gambit and Dazzler are in there to make up the numbers and give the cast some credibility, it seems to be mainly a sequel to the story where the New X-Men went to Limbo and got tormented by demons.\u00a0 This first issue is mainly devoted to Cannonball recruiting his team, and I quite like the way it’s played – the younger characters like Pixie and Anole flatly refuse to have anything to do with rescuing Magik until they’re directly ordered to do so.\u00a0 Partly it’s because of what happened to them in that New X-Men<\/em> story, but partly – and this is the bit that intrigues me – they seem to be rebelling against their “second class character” status.\u00a0 They’ve seen nothing much to like or respect about Magik, and as far as they can see, they’re being told to drop everything and risk their lives to save her simply because she’s a more established character.\u00a0 The newer characters chafing against the X-establishment’s glass ceiling… I kind of like that as a dynamic.<\/p>\n iZombie<\/strong><\/em> #1<\/strong> – A new series from Vertigo by Chris Roberson and Mike Allred.\u00a0 It’s one of those “monsters in the modern world” kind of set-ups.\u00a0 Gwen is a zombie, which wouldn’t normally be a promising start for a lead character.\u00a0 But fortunately, she remains pretty much normal as long as she remembers to eat brains once in a while.\u00a0 Which is why she’s working as a gravedigger.\u00a0 For the most part, this first issue is spent introducing Gwen and her similarly eccentric supporting cast, and it’s pleasingly quirky.\u00a0 The plotting is more dubious, though.\u00a0 The story tries to hold back the revelation that Gwen is a zombie for most of the issue, as if this could possibly be a surprise to anyone who had seen the cover or read the title.\u00a0 And it ends with a rather rushed scene where Gwen eats somebody who’s been murdered, and then promptly decides to go and investigate.\u00a0 Which makes me wonder whether the promising sitcom set-up that takes the greater part of the issue is going to end up turning into Tru Calling<\/em>.\u00a0 There’s more good than bad in this first issue – much more – but it’s not an unqualified success.<\/p>\n Shadowhawk<\/strong><\/em> #1<\/strong> – A relaunch of Jim Valentino’s 90s vigilante.\u00a0 It says “#1” on the cover, but I can only assume this is continued from somewhere-or-other.\u00a0 Basically, the original Shadowhawk is (for some reason) back in his old city, with nothing but the costume on his back.\u00a0 While he’s been away, a rather nicer Shadowhawk has been around.\u00a0 What sort of vigilante will he be?\u00a0 That’s more or less the deal. But it’s not very well done for new readers – the book seems to take familiarity with the character for granted, so it doesn’t even try to explain who he is, where he’s been, why he came back, or anything of that sort.\u00a0 From a combination of Wikipedia and guesswork, I’d assume this is something to do with Image United<\/em>, but it would be nice to cover it here… or at the very least to sketch out the premise of the character.\u00a0 Not a good introduction to the character, and a bit clumsy in general – it’s pretty forgettable, all told.<\/p>\n Uncanny X-Men<\/strong><\/em> #524<\/strong> – “Second Coming”, Chapter 6.\u00a0 This is basically a break in the action so that everyone can mourn Kurt and some people can glare at Scott.\u00a0 There’s evidently meant to be some tension here with Scott being blamed (and everyone being a bit unsure about Hope as well).\u00a0 In itself, this is a fine idea, but there are problems.\u00a0 If we’re now doing a story where everyone questions why Hope is so important and where Scott’s obsession with her is controversial, why has nobody questioned Hope’s importance until now?\u00a0 And is Kurt’s death really<\/em> Scott’s fault in any meaningful way?\u00a0 It’s not like he sent Kurt on a pointless suicide mission.\u00a0 As so often with the X-books these days, the frustration is that the ideas are sound but the execution is wonky.\u00a0 “Why is Hope so important and do we trust Scott’s judgment?” is an interesting direction, but it’s a question that the characters should have been asking for two years<\/em>, not two months.\u00a0 Still, there are good moments in here, and the book does go out of its way to give Kurt a proper send-off in his own title – though I’m still not sure which character is supposed to be officiating at the ceremony, because I can’t recognise him from the art…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So, let’s bring you up to date.\u00a0 Last week, I skipped doing any reviews, because I was still waiting for that week’s books to arrive, and it’s rather hard to review books you haven’t read.\u00a0 Now, those comics duly showed up on Monday.\u00a0 This week’s comic, on the other hand, haven’t.\u00a0 And so what we’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}