With the long-running ‘War on Kings’ event now wrapped up, the cosmic corner of the Marvel Universe continues to tick merrily away, putting out a series of reasonably solid but undeniably antiquated adventures. This issue of Nova is a good example. On paper, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning continue to do everything right, with foreground action backed up by low-key ongoing plot development and an intriguing scenario linked across all of the sub-lines’ array of books. The implausibility of the situation, however, threatens to sink the entire venture.

The Sphinx’ self-improvement drive continues, but his younger self stands poised to resist his retconing. It’s up to the schizophrenic villain’s appointed champions to decide the day, but a rogue element looks set to be the deciding factor. The overwhelming feeling of the tale is artificiality, with the ritualise magic deployed being presented as an excuse for a tag-team “contest of champions” which would have appeared clichéd back in the early eighties. The florid dialogue adds to time impression of a forgotten backwater of the Marvel Universe. Reed Richards is particularly poorly-served, being happy to deploy a stratagem “if it means your munitions miss me”.

In many ways, Mahmud Asrar’s art is emblematic of the entire venture. He’s able to command attention during the big moments, despite some slightly clichéd character posing, but the end product fails to gel. The bold signature images and smaller pieces of storytelling are both sound of themselves, but there’s no link between the two. The irritations keep mounting up, with expressions miserably failing the match the dialogue, and some extremely shoddy anatomy drawing. With the comics line firmly established, Nova’s position appears secure, but he won’t be bringing many new recruits to his Corps without a serious increase in quality.

This week: Reviews of Cable #23, Red Robin #9, Superman: World of New Krypton #12 and Wolverine: Weapon X! Continue reading »

Everyone deserves their shot at rehabilitation. Just because Jeph Loeb committed some of the worst crimes against comics of the last few years, it doesn’t mean we should judge a new work of his – particularly after a little breathing space – with any sort of preconception or prejudice (even though, let’s be honest, working in the Ultimate universe again would seem to be asking for trouble, given everything that’s gone before). But with Ultimatum now a distant memory, and signs that even his Hulk run is starting to improve a smidge, has the writer finally regained the ability – one that he certainly had in the past – to write a good comic? And is Ultimate X (or Ultimate Comics X, or whatever the hell it’s actually called) it?

Well, yes and no. This isn’t amazing, but nor is it wretched. It does some things fairly well, while others don’t quite hit the mark. At the very least, what it does have in its favour is that it’s an attempt to do something entirely different with the Ultimate universe – at least, notwithstanding the fact that a son of Wolverine’s has also shown up in the main Marvel universe in recent years. If the line of thinking goes that books like Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four simply turned too quickly into parallel universe doppelgangers of the “main” series and characters, and that a change of approach towards creating completely original characters with which to populate this world has become necessary, then that’s to be applauded (you can argue that USM has already made enough significant-yet-worthwhile changes to its cast’s personalities and settings that it justifies its existence). It’s even almost enough to make you forgive Loeb’s continued lack of awareness of some of the originally-established differences between the Ultimate and 616 universes (I’m fairly sure that Ultimate Wolverine was originally much younger than he’s portrayed here and in other Loeb books; and yet using that “Timesweek” cover from one of Millar’s best UXM issues shows that maybe he has got round to actually reading some backstory).

The main problem, really, is that there’s no story here. It does a not-entirely-terrible job of setting up the existence of a new character – Logan’s son, James Hudson (whose adopted father would appear to be a non-powered version of Alpha Flight’s Guardian) – with Kitty Pryde showing up to tell him about his origins just as his claws conveniently pop for the first time. None of this is done especially badly, aside from the fact that it’s just so slow – and almost everything is exposition. It’s practically a Handbook of the Ultimate Universe told in strip form. As such, it’s difficult to sustain interest – particularly as, so far at least, Hudson is hardly the most exciting of characters.

The presence of Art Adams, meanwhile, immediately makes this better than previous Loeb Ultimate books (David Finch, anyone? Thought not.) That said, it’s not quite the excitement-inducing prospect for me as it is for others – I imagine the way I feel about his work is the way others often feel about Frank Quitely; I can see that he’s technically a very strong composer and storyteller, but his actual character style isn’t really for me. Hudson is admittedly quite distinctly defined, but Kitty, for example, falls victim to his “all his women looking the same” trap. But his briefly-appearing Logan is great (even if, as mentioned, it’s the wrong version), as is a lovely and very well-coloured final page. Indeed, the look of it sums up the overall quality – promising in places, better than probably expected, but ultimately a little hollow, and wanting for a little more if it’s going to match the strong launches of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man and Avengers. But in this day and age, a “passable” Loeb comic is something of an achievement, and it even bodes a little well for the upcoming Ultimate New Ultimate Comics Ultimate Ultimates...

The first series of Demo was, to put it bluntly, fantastic on just about every level. In a time when it seemed everyone wanted a comic to service the reader purely as an instalment of a larger collection, Wood and Cloonan made issues that stood deliberately, powerfully alone. They even went so far as to include “backmatter” in every comic, never to be reprinted, as an incentive to make people buy the individual issues.

The high concept of Demo is familiar to virtually any comics reader: How would your life be affected if you had an unusual, supernatural ability? However, unlike most takes on that concept, these aren’t stories about donning a mask and cape and fighting crime – indeed, they’re about anything but. In this issue, The Waking Life of Angels, a woman named Joan receives visions of someone, somewhere apparently falling to their death, and finds herself compelled to investigate.

One of the essential challenges of a single issue story is to make the reader care about the lead. Wood and Cloonan instill an instant, if wearied humanity in Joan. Given a cause, however tenuous, she’s happy to drop her life at home in pursuit of this new role. When the vision arrives, it (as you might expect) doesn’t quite occur how she interpreted it – but despite this, someone is saved and she perhaps even begins the new chapter in her life that she was looking for.

One of Demo’s selling points is the polymorphic art of Becky Cloonan, who demonstrated a range of styles in the initial series. In this, the style is stark and architectural – except when the real world dissolves into a dream, at which point things become intricate and elaborate, almost more real than Joan’s actual reality, which helps demonstrate the seductive charm of her obsession – it is, after all, far more interesting than what she leaves behind in pursuit of it.

Although the issue stands firmly alongside those fromthe previous series, it nonetheless tends towards the weaker end, which is a little disappointing as an opener. The story’s twist is predictable from the outset, with a inevitability to it that previous issues of Demo lacked. Personally, I’ve found the series is its best when telling one of two types of story – the traditional twist ending (Bad Blood; Stand Strong; Girl You Want), and the mood piece (NYC; Mixtape; One Shot, Don’t Miss). This one falls right in the middle of those types of stories, neither one nor the other – the mood isn’t powerful enough to be the centre of the piece, and the twist isn’t strong enough to define it.

Perhaps future issues will give this one a little more context in terms of Demo’s re-appearance – however, even if that isn’t the case, one of the best things about Demo is that by showcasing a range of styles and approaches from its superb creative team, every issue is worth a look, regardless of the ultimate quality. It’s already objectively good, the only matter to resolve is how much you, personally, enjoy it.

Competition, you say? Yep, that’s right! Comics Daily has gone partially legit, courtesy of Titan Publishing, who have marked out two copies of this fine prose addition to the Iron Man movie-verse especially for Comics Daily readers. To enter the competition, simple e-mail ComicsDailyTeam@gmail.com with the subject “Iron Man Competition” and the name of your favourite series in the e-mail body (so that we can see if there’s anything we should be giving more coverage to!)

Closing Date is one week from now, Wednesday, 10th February. The winners will be the first two entries picked out of the inbox by What-Oh, the Comics Daily Watcher, and will be notified by e-mail on the 11th February. Please note that  the contest is only open to those who can provide a UK address for the book to be sent to.

Details of the book are below:

Iron Man : Virus
In the clear blue skies above Long Island, two airplanes collide. Tony Stark watches the scene in horror and wishes he had the technology that is almost within his reach—a new hyperintelligent instant control system that could have given the aircraft advance warning. But Stark, an obsessive, increasingly troubled recluse, doesn’t know that his invention has been compromised.

In fact, the collision was a carefully crafted hit on Madame Hydra, the final stage in Arnim Zola’s plan to seize control of HYDRA and get rid of Iron Man once and for all. The cunning adversary has already infiltrated Stark Industries security to develop a version of the instant control mechanism that will take over the armored suit and turn it against Stark and S.H.I.E.L.D. While Tony races to track down the source of the intrusion, Zola unleashes direly ingenious computer viruses and the ultimate secret weapon: a murderous clone army based on Stark’s most trusted friend. A puppet master of self-replicating terror, Zola is plunging a city into a war that threatens to consume all in its wake.

This brand new, original novel goes beyond the movie story to continue the adventures of Tony Stark!

Something really strange is happening. Really, really strange. Because X-Men Forever is about as good a series as Claremont has written since… well, since he left the book the first time. Sure, the book’s adherence to its own premise is shaky, and yes, his usual tics are (sort of) there – but all that pales into insignificance when you get an issue like this, where Rogue and Nightcrawler buddy up and we get the “As Claremont Intended” version of their familial relationship story.

Intertwined with this are advancing sub-plots about the traitors in SHIELD, and the mutant “burn-out” phenomenon, both of which also tie into Mystique’s appearance. Between the book’s pacey schedule and its old-school issue-oriented structure, this actually does feel like the X-Men in the same tradition that made them popular.

Alongside that, Claremont reallys gets these characters. The exchange between Beast, Moira and Xavier is as memorable a scene as Claremont has ever written. A flashback to Nightcrawler and Sefton’s parting is understated and atmospheric. Rogue’s past is explored in a way that first seems like mere character-building then unexpectedly becomes relevant to the plot. The initial twist is believable, but the final page cliffhanger recalls the kind of status quo shift that used to be possible when Claremont was the only man steering the X-Men ship. In almost any other comic, it’d be an obviously temporary state of affairs – but in X-Men Forever, the stakes feel real.

Graham Nolan deserves his own kudos, too, in part for the way he translates the raw emotions of the script onto the page. Due to its frequency, the title has gone through a fair few artists in an effort to keep on schedule, but Nolan is towards the top end of its spectrum – though while we’re talking about art, it’d be nice if the art kept Mystique’s eyes the correct colour, given that it is referenced as a characteristic she shares with Nightcrawler…

Although there are plenty of things about the issue that can be called a mistake – not least the logic of how Mystique’s longetivity, apparently a function of her shape-shifting, would be “inherited” by Nightcrawler – but we can let that slide for now, because the rest of it is actually, against the odds, becoming more and more interesting as time goes on.