It’s been what seems like years in the making, but Mark Millar’s fumetti-turned-regular comic has finally hit the shelves, and it’s really, gloriously off the mainstream beaten track, with a kind of Kickass-meets-Marvels feel to it.

It’s immediately obvious why this was originally envisioned as a photo-comic – it takes place in the “real world” of, ostensibly, 1985, where kids read Marvel comics and there aren’t any superheroes or supervillains. Instead, the story follows Toby, a child of divorced parents who’s turned to comics to help him deal.

The plot, which sees Toby discovering that the Marvel supervillains might have arrived in “our” world has an interesting undercurrent that suggests it might just all be in his head. After all, he’s suffering from depression and stress, and turned to the comics to escape reality for a while – perhaps that’s actually what’s happening to him? How much that theme gets played with in future issues will certainly be of great interest.

There’s something remarkably refreshing about reading this kind of street-level, emotionally-driven comic from someone like Millar, who has been shoving out action-blockbusters of a ridiculous scale for years now. In fact, confining this story to four issues shows remarkable restraint, and I’m going to be interested to see how Millar actually pulls it off.

Tommy Lee Edwards’ art is infinitely more expressive than a Fumetti would’ve been, with a muted pallette and and incredible attention to detail. There’s a lot going on in the background of this comic and you could examine some panels for hours. The one time it doesn’t really work is a splash towards the end where it’s not entirely clear what’s going on – I get the sense of it, but not the details.

There are a few anachronistic-feeling elements – Millar’s vision of a 1985 comic shop seems designed to critique the current state of the industry rather than reflect the genuine attitudes at the time. And hey, Cerebus and Love and Rockets references! It makes things feel a little like “That 80s Comic,” which is a bit distracting. There are a lot of timeless elements to the narrative, though, and one wonders why 1985 was chosen as a specific start point. Is it merely for nostalgic purposes or is there something more to it, somehow? It’s the only element of the book that didn’t immediately win me over, which is a bit of a concern when it’s the, er, title…

Even so, in reading the book to review it, I’ve gone from being largely disinterested to oddly curious. It’s certainly a preferable follow-up to Millar’s Ultimates than his “more of the same” run on Fantastic Four is, demonstrating increased range and unique vision. It’ll be worth watching to see whether it stumbles with the second issue as Kick-Ass did to some degree, but as an first issue, it’s really got my attention.

Another week, another first issue of a Grant Morrison-penned “event” story. But where the opening two parts of Batman RIP have thrilled, the first chapter of Final Crisis underwhelms. The technical quality is there, but the story fails to deliver on the promises that this will be something huge, significant and epoch-making.

The main problem, really, is that it’s difficult to see anything in the series so far that’s particularly original or compelling. It’s far too rooted in recent DC history and style – and so a number of pages are devoted to a scene featuring the staggeringly dull Monitors, something which will make absolutely no sense to anyone who didn’t read the interminable Countdown (that’s, er, most of us then), and for what should be a self-contained miniseries accessible to new readers popping in to see what all the fuss is about, this is pretty criminal. Perhaps the strongest element of the issue, meanwhile, is in having much of the action take place through the eyes of longtime Superman supporting character Dan Turpin. It’s good that Morrison understands the need to provide a human counterpoint to the metahuman drama – it’s something that Infinite Crisis, for example, sorely lacked – but even this feels like a huge retread of the character arc that 52 built around Renee Montoya (even down to the fact that Montoya herself appears, in her new guise as the Question).

Despite this peripheral material, there’s a sense that there are two main plot strands – which will presumably converge at some point – but again, neither are hugely interesting at this point. Another story where the villains all band together to take on the superheroes? Didn’t they do that (largely in the background) during Infinite Crisis? And for all that Morrison might talk up in interviews his neat idea of bringing back a forgotten villain from the ’70s as a terrifying new threat… I’m just not feeling it yet. The action that puts Libra on the villain map, as it were, feels nowhere near as landmark as it should – despite being the death of a long-time and well-respected Justice League member – as the storytelling is a little muggy, the character in question barely gets to utter a line before being offed, and his death is only subsequently confirmed off-panel.

As someone who’s thoroughly enjoyed JG Jones’ cover art in recent years, meanwhile, I’m a little disappointed by his interior work here. At times it looks lovely – but there’s a slightly soulless quality to some of it, and in places it’s positively static (this is an attribute that harms the aforementioned murder scene – there’s no real sense of action at all). While there’s some nice scope in scenes involving the Green Lanterns, when we catch up with the Justice League there’s some sloppy work, especially a poor opening close-up of Superman’s face. And the colouring doesn’t help, either – again, Lanterns aside, everything’s too red. It would appear to be a specific DC style, having also been an attribute of Infinite Crisis, but it’s really starting to wear thin, and doesn’t help with the overall absence of vibrancy.

There are certainly hints of that quintessential Morrison-ness – the opening pages, while they perhaps go on a bit too long, make for one of his textbook non-sequitur openings, and the image of (a brilliantly redesigned) Metron appearing to prehistoric man is a sharp one. A particularly nice touch, meanwhile, is that because the scene is taking place from Turpin’s perspective, the name of the mysterious red-eyed club owner is always written as Dark Side, even when he’s saying it himself – shades there, I feel, of “Why should I want to know where to find raw shark?” The final page, too, offers a teasing mystery, as we watch an unknown someone apparently waking up in an entirely unfamiliar body.

There’s scope for this to get better – despite being opposed in principle to his return, I can’t help but be excited by the cover of #2 featuring Barry Allen, and indeed the lack of any reference to this plot thread (unless that’s him at the end, which it very well could be) is perhaps one of the reasons for the slightly deflated feel to this issue. Plus, you know, it’s Grant – he doesn’t usually steer us wrong, not when you take the long view. But for the moment at least, Final Crisis has firmly failed to dazzle – and all hope has gone out of the window that anyone but hardcore DCU enthusiasts will want to stick around to the end.

Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

So, for better or worse, they’re bringing back Barry Allen (at least, they appear to be – I’m writing this the day before Final Crisis #1 is due to hit, so I’ve no idea what’s actually contained within its pages). If so, one of the most pivotal moments in comics history, the death of the DC Universe’s “first saint”, will have been undone. And since the “random” element of this weekly feature went out of the window a while back, let’s once again do something a bit topical, and take a look at the story of the second Flash’s original demise.

But rather than tackling Crisis on Infinite Earths #8, the issue in which Allen actually died, I thought I’d take a look at this Secret Origins annual from a few years later – as it’s a story contained within its pages that I feel really set the Flash’s death in stone as a classic comics moment – and, what’s more, created an iconic image that any potential resurrection would surely step all over (unless they use Marv Wolfman’s rather excellent loophole – but then, who am I to predict the actions of Grant Morrison?)

As was par for the course with the Secret Origins annuals, there are actually two fairly sizeable stories contained within. We’ll skim over the first one, though, partly because it’s concerned with Wally West rather than Barry Allen, and partly because it’s not all that great. Wally’s visiting his psychiatrist, grumbling about the fact that his powers aren’t what they were, and basically relays his life story, explores his guilt over not being the hero that he should be in Barry’s footsteps, and repeats ad nauseam that his Dad turned out to be a Manhunter in the then-recent Millennium crossover (hey! We’ve not done one of those yet, have we? Maybe next time!) His psychiatrist is a bit of a tosser, to be honest, and Wally comes off like one too. Despite the nostalgia trip, it’s therefore not a hugely enjoyable read, and really serves only to emphasise how ludicrous in concept and origin Kid Flash always was. There’s also an attempt to add gravitas with a shoehorned-in link to Rudyard Kipling’s If… that feels desperately out of place.

The second half of the issue is somewhat better, however, and revels in its Silver Age origins, as Robert Loren Fleming takes us on an appropriately speedy trip through Barry Allen’s life, with artwork by the man who kickstarted it all in the first place – the great Carmine Infantino. The first section is the standard origin tale, lifted from the original story in Showcase #4, but adding in certain thematic elements to be re-used later (most notably involving thunderbolts). The second part is a fairly typical adventure with the Rogues Gallery, again providing a thematic link by virtue of the “human thunderbolt” villain. All of this is good, Silver Age style fun, and rattles along at an enjoyable pace.

But it’s the third part, which ties everything together and links it with Allen’s death in Crisis, that really impresses. Rather than simply having the Flash run so fast that he causes the Anti-Monitor’s doomsday weapon to disintegrate (as happened in the original Crisis issue), we instead see that his goal was to outpace and catch the tachyon particle that fired said weapon – and which moves faster than the speed of light. Allen was therefore forced to break the light barrier in order to catch it – and this caused his body to disintegrate and him to become a being of pure light. This is what caused the “trip back through time” that we saw originally (with Barry showing up in visions to various characters in the past) – but in this version, it culminates in Barry returning to the scene of his original accident… as the very lightning bolt that caused him to become the Flash in the first place.

Alright, so it’s perhaps a little hackneyed. But it’s a lovely moment, and the entire thing is well-constructed – we can well believe that Barry’s entire life and career were structured from the beginning to lead to that instant – and the idea that he gets to endlessly live the greatest years of his life out over and over throughout infinity is, you feel, a fitting reward for the sacrifice the character made in Crisis. It’s a superb capstone for the second Flash – not least because of the fact that Infantino isn’t just there to add nostalgia, but turns in some genuinely dynamic work even at this late stage in his career – and it’s one that Morrison (and DC editorial in general) would do well to be aware of if they do end up adding Barry to the near-endless list of famous comics resurrections.

Incidentally, just as a quick note about the time period in which this book was released – there are full page adverts contained within for two series “coming soon” from DC. One is for Morrison’s Animal Man run, and the other is an absolutely beautiful David Lloyd piece promoting the DC version of V for Vendetta. What a time to be alive, eh?

With Carey’s increasing handle on the property and Brubaker/Fraction’s promising-sounding run, PAD’s position of writing the best X-book isn’t as secure as it once was, but that reflects the improving quality of the line rather PAD getting any worse. Even so, the events of Messiah Complex meant that the X-Factor’s stride wasn’t simply broken, rathar that its kneecaps were shattered.

To compensate for this, PAD has attempted to writte the events of Messiah Complex into a larger arc, putting X-Factor at their absolute lowest ebb – no plan, missing members and now no office. It does work to a point, but it still feels like a stumble compared to the way the book had been running in the past.

Taking X-Factor out of Mutant Town does make sense – after all, there aren’t any mutants there and since they’re more or less uncovered the conspiracy behind M-Day, there’s little to tie them to the concept of Decimation now. With the Messiah Complex shakeups still evident, it’s time to establish a new status quo, and the first part of that is getting rid of the old one. PAD does this by burning down Mutant Town.

It makes for an issue of fairly standard superheroics as X-Factor run around trying to rescue the few people left, and escape themselves. The sense of scale takes a bit of a knock, though – I get that Mutant Town is supposed to be empty now, but but showing almost no-one turn up to watch it get destroyed, it’s hard to get the sense that anything significant has happened. I gather from the writing that Mutant Town is pretty much gone for good, but that’s not what it looks like on the page, in part due to the small number of extras.

After an issue as the main villain, Arcade is fairly quickly shuffled off, having accomplished his remit of bringing random and pointless destruction to the cast without any discernable motive. It’s not exactly a strong idea, but PAD gets plenty of mileage out of it with some fairly good groaners along the way. Even so, the tone of X-Factor is largely serious, so it’s a pretty odd juxtaposition to have Arcade running around like a 60s Batman villain, and his flamboyant character design doesn’t remotely work in Raimondi’s fairly conservative style.

It’s not the best issue of X-Factor by a long shot, but it does at least do everything it needs to. Next issue establishes where the title’s going from here on in, and as such, it’s an ideal starting point for anyone looking for a good read. By comparison, this issue’s very much a sendoff, and with a strong sense of melancholy there’s no doubt that it certainly feels like one.

Once again, no update today due to the UK Spring Bank Holiday. Normal service resumes tomorrow!download vengeance dvdrip

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The weekly news-commentary piece returns after a 2-week, Bristol-motivated absence to discuss the industry’s latest developments, with a look at James Robinson and Geoff Johns’ Superman, Jim Mahfood’s latest announcement, some stuff about the book we all love to hate, Ultimates, and links to a couple of columns about the tenuous relationship between comics and Hollywood.

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