Friday Comic Con Round-up!

Marvel has introduced Generation Hope as its new X-title, a book about new mutants appearing for the first time since Messiah Complex. Kieron Gillen (Phonogram) is writing, but I still can’t bring myself to be that interested.

Axe Cop co-creator Ethan Nicolle mae an appearance at the Dark Horse Comics panel, but it remains unclear whether or not this means a Dark Horse-produced collection of Axe Cop. Doctor Spector and Mighty Samson will both be joining Shooter’s Gold Key revival. Reminders of the upcoming Conan: Road of Kings by Roy Thomas and a return to Dark Horse Presents. Andrew Vachss is also returning to Dark Horse with a new project called Heart Transplant.

One of the most interesting panels was for a movie by writer/director James Gunn called Super about Rainn Wilson as a would-be hero. Ellen Page plays his slighly psychotic sidekick with Kevin Bacon, Nathan Fillion, Liv Tyler, and Michael Rooker rounding out the cast. Check out Newsarama for more on the film.

DC introduced Grant Morrison’s new book Batman Inc. which Morrison claims is inspired by the Batman Brave and the Bold cartoon series. Art is by a favorite of mine, Yanick Paquette.

DC has a preview up of its new Young Justice series. Check it out on Youtube:



Image Comics presented a panel that introduced Mark Guggenheim’s new imprint Collider Entertainment, which will include Utopian, a superhero book set in a (wait for it...) utopia, and The Mission, which has to do with serial killers and the voice of God. Ron Marz is producing a creator-owned samurai-vampire series for Image Central with Shinku drawn by his Dragon Prince co-conspirator Lee Moder. A Top Cow-produced Firebreather Dragon Prince limited was also announced. Otherwise they only previewed already announced books (which isn’t unusual for Image as they rarely have publishing schedules set a year in advance.)

Super-Powered Comics: X-Men Misfits

A couple years ago, Marvel teamed up with Del Rey Manga to bring its X-Men franchise to manga. The results were the abysmal Wolverine: Prodigal Son, a dismal attempt to tell a Wolverine story without all the concepts and ideas that make him Wolverine. I don’t care how much you like Wolverine, do not read it. It is an act of utter terribleness.

On the other hand, X-Men: Misfits is a much cleaner, more focused product. The concept is simple, young student Kitty Pryde learns she is a mutant. It causes her life to become miserable in her ordinary school, until the staff of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters invites her to come to their special academy. The kicker, though, is she doesn’t realize until she arrives that she is the school’s only female student.

She quickly ends up as an object of desire for both the super cool Hellfire Club and the more stable forces of the X-Men, but she faces the terrors of pre-pressure in the process.

What makes Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman’s story work so much better than Wolverine: Prodigal Son is that they understand that they need to alter the X-men story without losing the themes of the book. Much like the animated series X-Men: Evolution, their focus on a high school setting helps fit the idea perfectly, even as we redesign the characters in a shojo-style.






That’s the Beast. And yes, I am pretty sure he is supposed to bear an uncanny resemblance to Totoro. But he is still Hank McCoy with all the personality traits of the character we know. It makes it easy for us to continue in to the story while chuckling at the redesign of the character.

It’s fun and it carries some of the silliness of true manga, but it never loses sight of its story and the X-Men. It does pull a regular manga move and ends on a cliffhanger, but the plot is just thick enough to carry the reader through. It is by no means perfect. Artist Raizu sometimes makes the art just too damn busy. But it still features just enough fun to keep things interesting.

Need more?






Storm has a mohawk again.

I rest my case. Recommended.

Super-Powered Comics: Diamond Destinations for March 2010

I have wasted not an ounce of time this month and can proudly say I have brought my monthly Previews recap to you literally a day after its release. Here are the new and continuing superhero series I find most notable, as well as some of the zanier item you might come across. As always, your comments are welcome.

p. 56: Ghost 12” Action Figure: A beautifully sculpted figure, but I can’t really say I see a lot of demand for a comic character Dark Horse hasn’t even published for the better part of ten years. Especially with a $100 price tag.

p. 73: DC Universe Legacies 1 (of 10): This is Len Wein’s new take on the History of the DCU aiding in the first issue by Andy and Joe Kubert. The art is sure to stun, but Wein’s writing left me flat recently on Human Target and Justice League of America. This could be really hit or miss.

p. 82: Mighty Crusaders Special 1: “The Red Circle” has been hit or miss so far. Sales haven’t been too good either. But DC is trying to push the line further with this special. I actually hope that we don’t get a Crusaders team out of this book. I think many of the reimaginings DC has created have been weak at best, and neither Inferno nor Hangman seem designed for super-team use. I hope this book succeeds and for $5 for 56 pages, it seems to be a pretty good deal.

p. 83: Legion of Super-Heroes 1: My only complaint with this issue as with the debut of the new Flash book is that they didn’t resume the old numbering. But Levitz made this team what they are today and if anyone can keep that spirit alive, it will be him. Yildiray Cinar is a great artist. His work on Noble Causes was nothing short of amazing. This book has the potential to launch him in to superstardom, much as the Legion did for Olivier Coipel several years ago.

p. 113: I, Zombie 1: I am still not sure what to make of this book. The story in last years House of Mystery Annual didn’t give much of a hint of the book’s direction. But with Mike Allred art for $1, no one should pass up the first issue of this!

p. 148: Shadowhawk 1: The dead have risen in the pages of Image United and it seems in the aftermath of that event, Paul Johnstone, the classic back-breaking Shadowhawk is back. The book promises to almost certainly have a dark tone as horror writer Dan Wickline and former Violent Messiahs artist Tone Rodriguez are the creative team. Steve Niles and creator Jim Valentino provide the back-up story. I would have preferred a full book from Valentino, but this book definitely has an interesting concept behind it. How it plays out will determine how long this new take on the character can survive.

p. 154: Astounding Wolf-Man 25: It is by no means the book to start reading the title with, but the adventures of Wolf-Man come to an end with this issue. Robert Kirkman and Jason Howard did some crazy things with this title, but I don’t think it ever reached the heights that most of Kirkman’s work can reach. Instead it just felt like Invincible-light. But even Invincible-light is better than many of the books on the stands. Goodbye, Wolf-Man. Let’s hope Kirkman & Howard’s next project can top you!

p. 172: Velocity 1: I am usually generous with Top Cow, but this book is a load of crap. Over two years after being selected for Pilot Season, over a year since Joe Casey and ChrisCross were unceremoniously dumped from the project while somewhere on issue two, Top Cow introduces the four issue limited series with the new creative team of Ron Marz and Kenneth Rocafort. While I like most of Marz’s Top Cow work, his previous Cyberforce work felt phoned-in. And I just cannot get behind the art style of Rocafort. He may be someone’s cup of tea, but he isn’t mine. And to make me just a little more grumpy, we included ChrisCross cover from the previous series as the variant. Classy, Top Cow. Classy. (FYI: When this comic was solicited fifteen months ago, the ChrisCross cover was the regular cover and the Rocafort was the variant. Glad to see they didn’t let them go to waste.)



p. M8: Astonishing X-Men: XenoGenesis 1 (of 5): The idea of running this book as a series of miniseries is a good one, but that isn’t the reason I posted this. I mostly wanted to show off the cover image by series artist Kaare Andrews. While the vagina-exposing costume of the White Queen seems a bit preposterous, I have much respect for the return of mohawked Storm. Bravo, Mr. Andrews. Bravo.

p. M34: Atlas 1: In case you haven’t heard (and if you are a comics fan I can’t imagine how you missed it), May begins the Heroic Age at Marvel. They have promoted a whole bunch of new titles for this month, but the one everyone really needs to buy is this one. Agents of Atlas was probably the greatest concept Marvel has released in the last five years, and the death of the last book still irks me. Now here is your chance to rectify that mistake. Go buy the new book, complete with new member 3-D Man! Finally everyone can experience the awesome.

p. 232-233: Green Hornet Strikes 1 and Kato Origins 1: Hi, Dynamite, nice to see you today. I have something to tell you for the sake of honesty. You may be producing too many Green Hornet titles. With these two books, the total comes up to five. And honestly, we all know Kato does not need two books. Now let’s get it under control, especially since you seem to think they are all worth $4. (They’re not.) Thanks for your time, see you later.

p. 242: Wild Cards: The Hard Call 6: Damn it, it may be over a year later, at a new publisher, and a $1 more expensive, but I have much respect for Dynamite when they made sure they got this book out. I dreaded the thought that I would have to get a collected edition just to read this, so despite my mockery of your Green Hornet obsession above, thank you, Dynamite Entertainment.

p. 277: Tales of the TMNT 70: This right here is it. The end of TMNT as we know it. The final issue of Mirage’s book takes us back to the time of the epic “Return to New York” storyline. The issue is totally standalone, so I highly recommend everyone go out and buy it, just to celebrate the decades of Turtle action Mirage has given us.

p. 292: WWE Heroes 3: Did WWE not learn when Benoit died that having a death storyline in a world where death comes far too often isn’t so hot an idea? Apparently not from the look of this cover.

p. 319: May looks to be a good month for super-powered fiction with two new titles, the steampunk hero of George Mann’s Ghost of Manhattan and Chelsea M. Campbell’s super-villain fueled Rise of Renegade X. So be sure to flip to the Book section and give these titles a once over.

p. 380: Tru Blood Soda: Proof that there is such a thing as too many marketing tie-ins. And it’s only $6 a bottle!

Super-Powered Comics: Astro City: An Introduction

When I started reading comics, my first two books were G.I.Joe and Transformers. Until the late eighties, pretty much all my comic purchases focused on those and other toy/cartoon tie-ins, from C.O.P.S. to M.A.S.K. to Super Powers and beyond. As I got older, I started in on X-Men and the Avengers while the “Panic In the Sky” storyline brought me in to Superman. In those pre-teenage years I quickly became voracious in my comics reading. I bought every book I could off the newstand, whether they be Marvel and DC, or Image, or the Ultraverse, or even Dark Horse. I bought every issue of Wizard and Hero Illustrated, always wanting to learn more about my new hobby. I learned about the history of these characters over years and decades. I grew to love the superhero as a setting (or genre if you prefer).

So it should come as no surprise that one of my favorite titles ever is Kurt Busiek’s Astro City. Over the next few months, I plan on posting regular retrospectives about the characters, stories, and storytelling that Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross bring to a book that everyone (and I do mean everyone should be reading). My plan is to cover a story arc (or so) every week and hopefully by the time I am finished, we will only be weeks away from the return of Astro City as a regular series.

Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross made a beauty of a book named Marvels only a couple years before. Marvels changed the way a lot of people looked at the superhero comics they read, and I strongly suspect its human interest angles mixed with classic continuity are an inspiration for many books on the market today. (Geoff Johns should stand up and wave right here.) It made household names out of two creators who up until this point were rather unknown. Ross’s only major published work at this point was The Terminator: The Burning Earth for Now Comics. Kurt had written Power Man & Iron Fist, Liberty Project, and numerous fill-ins at this point, but was still probably best known as the guy who came up with the way to bring Jean Grey back for X-Factor. Marvels changed the careers of both men, and in its aftermath came a creator-owned project: Astro City. Ross would provide the covers and long-time, under-rated penciler Brent Anderson (most famous for X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills) would draw the interiors.

I will start with a book that remains one of the most unique tales of the book: Astro City 1/2. The story focuses on every-man Mike Tenicek, just a guy haunted by dreams of a beautiful woman and their love affair. The dreams haunt him, consume him, until an appearance by the entity known as the Hanged Man (sort of a less kill-happy Spectre). And in the process, we get a view of the numerous big-time crossovers, massive crisis events, and the like. I will not say more than that (I may have spoiled too much even there), but I will say it is one of the most emotionally impactful super-powered stories I have ever read. Don’t believe me? Even the folks at Wizard have named it the 16th best comic in the history of their publication. I honestly would rate it even higher, at least in the top five.

So, yeah, Astro City knows how to tug on the heart strings too. More reviews as we continue, but for now, you can check out issue one-half in the back of the Astro City: Confession trade paperback. Highly Recommended.

Super-Powered Comics: X-Men Noir #2

The three surviving X-Men, clearly Iceman, Henry McCoy, and Scott Summers, let Angel live. We learn what is made suspect in the first issue: that Chief of Detectives Eric Magnus is the true killer of Jean Grey.

Angel reveals the true mastermind behind Magnus and the rest of the city, a crime boss named Sebastian Shaw. Shaw sends his Chief of Detectives after the city’s Italian crime boss, one Unus the Untouchable even as Peter Magnus realizes his father is a criminal.

Angel tracks down Anne Marie Rankin (Rogue, for the uninformed), a former member of the X Men who reveals there is more to Jean Grey. She had a second beau in the bad part of town. A certain person who carried around a three prong icepick...

All in all, the story is coming together nicely, but I am becoming more and more unsure of why this book exists. I thought the Noir line would combine super-heroes with Noir settings. Instead it seems we’re getting a noir story featuring character names and likenesses taken from Marvel heroes. It seems like a tenuous connection for me at best. Mildly Recommended.

Super-Powered Comics: X-Men Noir #1

I reviewed Spider-Man Noir a few weeks back, and I finally got a hold of a copy of X-Men Noir #1 to follow it up. Fred Van Lente, while often a strong writer, has the ambiance of the period down right, but he doesn’t quite have the strength of voice that the Spider-book’s David Hine possessed. Nonetheless we get an interesting saga that revolves around the murder of Jean Grey, washed up on the docks from a watery grave.

We get to see the body through the eyes of new cop Peter Magnus, son of a very Magneto-looking police chief. Before issue’s end he finds himself inducted in to the police Brotherhood as we build towards the lines of the mainstream Marvel Universe.

The book’s true star though is the Angel. In an interesting twist, this isn’t Warren Worthington at all, but Thomas Halloway, the golden age Angel from forties Timely comics. Tom wants to know why Jean is dead, and the only lead he has is an X tattoo... the mark of the gang known as the X Men.

A visit to their former headmaster, Charles Xavier, sends him on the right track. But when he finds them at issue’s end... his welcome is less than friendly.

The book closes with a scienti-fiction story by Bolivar Trask, a story of futuristic beings known as Sentinels and the mutants they hunt.

X-cameos abound with night club owner Remy LeBeau and his bodyguard Lucas Bishop, Sean Cassidy, Officer Fred Dukes, and a certain red-headed daughter of the chief of police. Nice to see lip service to the extended mutant characters, but we will have to see how far they go with some of thse characters.

My problem with this story (other than another annoying $3.99 price tag) is that the mystery seems to be the mainstream Marvel X-Men’s origin. I will have to wait and see, and hope Van Lente and Dennis Calero have somewhere else to take this book.

Super Powered TV: Heroes 3-15: Trust and Blood

The entire episode seems to be in flashback form, as Nathan talks on the phone to a mystery party.

Mohinder, Parkman, and Hiro form one contingent of escapees. Meanwhile, Peter & Claire run head long in to Noah, gun drawn. Peter is allowed to run, Claire stays with her father, and the US military destroys the wreckage utterly to cover up the crash.

Parkman follows a vision of the African to an abandoned trailer. He retrieves the materials he needs to draw the future again. Mohinder tries to convince Hiro to leave in the mean time, but Hiro refuses.

Daphne finds Ando in Japan, and the two of them realize that they need to find their lost friends. They arrive quickly at the crash and start to worry. Daphne speeds in to camp and steals an already angry (at both her fathers) Claire from their midst.

Daphne is shot down by the enemy, and so is Claire... but Parkman takes control of a shooter and lays waste to the other gunmen before Danko, head of the attackers, shoots down his own man. Parkman is pulled away by Hiro, Ando, and Mohinder.

Mary and Luke Campbell receive an unfortunate visit from Sylar just a few doors down from the taxidermist. Sylar threatens to torture them in front of the injured agent he has captured. Sylar tortures Mary and Luke uses his heat powers (surprise, surprise) in an attempt to rescue her. Luke then uses his powers in front of his mother and kills the soldier. His mother is horrified, but Sylar leaves without killing anyone. Luke tries to follow Sylar, and Sylar takes him along when Luke admits that he knows the father's whereabouts. Sylar takes him in his mother’s car with a shade of Magneto and Pyro following in their midst.

Peter meets with Tracy in the woods. They waylay two different soldiers to steal their clothes. We learn the nature of Peter’s new ability: he can only hold one power at a time. Much more convenient for storytelling purposes. Tracy steals a phone and immediately sets out to try to be a deal maker: she offers to trade Peter to Nathan in charge for her freedom. Tracy’s double play plan goes back towards Nathan, but Peter gets in the way. Soldiers target both Peter and Tracy, but Peter steals Nathan’s power and flies away, while Tracy is dragged off by government goons.

Peter joins the other four and they begin to lay a plan: a plan of attack. Peter places himself as a leader: a leader in a war none of them (except Parkman) want to fight.

Back home, Claire receives a text message from someone named Rebel. Who Rebel is... we don’t know although Hana Gitelman could be a good guess.

We learn the phone call is to Angela Petrelli. Angela washes her hands of the situation and leaves Nathan in the able hands of his own government even as Nathan sacrifices Tracy to internment in the name of the “greater good”.

All in all, a very good episode. Even though I clearly see the X-Men vs the Brotherhood vs the government parallels in this storyline, for the first time it feels like Heroes isn’t just trying to be X-Men. The characters all act true to established form, even as Nathan pushes himself farther and farther in to the dark side.

One more episode to go to catch up. Stay tuned for that one soon.

Super-Powered Prose: X-Men The Legacy Quest Trilogy

So I picked up X-Men the Legacy Quest Trilogy by Steve Lyons at my local Half Price Books (the best store ever!) for three whole bucks. Three novel omnibus for three bucks, not a bad deal. Too bad the tale inside is disappointing on so many levels.

The three books are loosely connected stories revolving around Hank McCoy’s quest to find a cure for the Legacy Virus. (The original edition of this book came out in 2002, which was well after the cure of the Legacy Virus in the comic book, but apparently nobody told the folks at ibooks this.) Hank ends up making a deal with the devil, Sebastian Shaw, who is looking for the cure for his own ends. This leads to a battle between the X-Men and the Hong Kong branch of the Hellfire Club (populated by such luminaries as Fitzroy, Goblin Queen, and a thoroughly erroneous version of Tessa). Hank, weakened by injecting himself by his own virus, finds his cure, only to be kidnapped by Selene to set up book two.

Book two takes the plot to even more preposterous places in a dark future New York where everyone in the world seems to have started to suffer from the virus. The threat proves insanely dull at best, which leads in to book three... where Magneto turns out to be the true villain. While the portrayal of Genosha infected by the virus does bring pathos to the book, it still serves to only very poorly bring the quest to an end.

While his portrayal of the X-Men characters usually stay true to form (with the possible exception of the insanely whiny Beast), Lyons fails to do anything remotely original with them. They all seem to have taken a step back in their progression as a team before this book. Nobody involved seems to have a clue how to act as a member of a team, nor do their personalities seem to have developed past their original Claremont/Cockrum days. And the villains... well, only Magneto really seems to be anywhere close to on track. And his plan to destroy all the humans on the planet seems to fly in the face of everything established about the character in the nineties.

While X-Men novels are a hard feat to accomplish in my opinion, X-Men The Legacy Quest fails on pretty much every level. Instead everyone should consider grabbing a copy of Marjorie M. Liu’s superior Dark Mirror instead.