Daredevil’s current arc – Return of the King – sees Brubaker really hitting his stride on Daredevil, though it’s interesting how this happens just as he loses steam on Captain America, and now that his departure from Daredevil is confirmed.

It’s something of a concern to me that all any writer seems to be able to do with Daredevil is shuffle around the same combination of characters – it always comes back to Bullseye, Elektra and The Kingpin – but to Brubaker’s credit, he’s approaching things with a slightly new angle – a genuinely repentant Kingpin enlisting Daredevil’s help to enact his final revenge on the criminal underworld that betrayed him.

It makes for some great material for the character, and over the last two issues, the comic could more accurately be called “The Kingpin” rather than “Daredevil” – but that suits me just fine. Arcs from the Brubaker run’s latter-day stories weave in and out of this title, from Lady Bullseye, to Milla, to Dakota North, and it really rewards readers who stuck with the book during Brubaker’s initial warming-up period. From the Kingpin to Master Izo to Milla’s parents, not a single character in the book is treated badly, and the supporting cast of the series is as strong as it’s been in years.

As ever, lark’s artwork is fantastic, and he does particularly well with some snow-storm fights, which give the arc a unique feel, distinguishing it from the usual grey, rainy scenes we’ve become used to reading in Daredevil. On every level, the series is at its best since Bendis’ heyday, and that promises to leave incoming writer Andy Diggle with some positively huge shoes to fill. Following not one, but two critically lauded long-term runs on the series? The anticipation of that alone is enough to keep me on-board. For now, though, it’s time to simply enjoy Brubaker’s run all beginning to culminate masterfully, before he moves on.

To my eternal discredit, I’ve never been very good at showing up to small press events and supporting up-and-coming indie creators – but when one takes place a short bus ride away from my flat, and I’ve been paid the preceding week, I really have no excuse whatsoever. And so it was that I found myself on a D6 to Mile End on Saturday for the 2009 UK Web & Mini Comix Thing, hoping to pick up a few exciting odds and ends and discover some new writers and artists to enjoy.

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Of course, the first thing I did upon arriving was to head over immediately to the table of a writer/artist that I already knew rather well – certified Friend Of Comics Daily Marc Ellerby was there, launching – excitedly – not one, but two brand new books exclusively at the event before their general release online. Volume three of Ellerbisms was of course an exciting prospect – having already followed the strips online, it was clear that this would be the best volume yet (complete with cameo appearance from Superstardom’s Jamie McKelvie), with the increased prominence given to the life of Marc’s girlfriend Anna (to the extent that the cover blurb describes the book as being about both their lives rather than just his) adding a new dimension to the series, and the “bonus material” of the pull-out hourly mini comic a neat touch – but the real Ellerby news was the launch of his new mini, Chloe Noonan : Monster Hunter. A short story designed to help push the planned graphic novel to potential publishers, it’s an absolute joy that sees Ellerby moving out of his comfort zone somewhat. There’s action – although not quite as much as the title would suggest, as both Ellerby and his characters are keen to push that this isn’t just a Buffy knockoff, and is as much about going to fight monsters as actually fighting them – and a somewhat different art style to go with it, with a lot more use of heavy lines and black than in the likes of Love the Way You Love. And in getting to string something he’s written out over more than a couple of pages for once, we see that Ellerby is actually a pretty damned good storyteller, with some lovely stylistic tricks. Complete with some genuinely laugh-worthy moments and an awe-inspiring moment of music referencing, Chloe Noonan is a terrific introduction to the character and concept, and a full series can’t come soon enough.

My next couple of purchases were both bought on recommendation, but were both worthwhile ones. Adam Cadwell’s The Everyday is a diary comic along similar lines to Ellerbisms (the two have even engaged in crossover), and I was faced with a choice of three volumes to try out – I went for volume three because of its utterly lovely cover, and was glad I did, as it not only featured a strip set in Crosby Village (my hometown, fact fans), but also one where Cadwell can’t stop himself from nitpicking at a lovely text message from a girl that doesn’t hyphenate “Spider-Man”. Cadwell’s strips might not be as frequently laugh-out-loud funny as Ellerby’s (although they have their moments), but his art is nothing short of fantastic, and already he’s someone I’d really like to see get a lot more exposure (he’s already done a pin-up for Phonogram and worked with Ellerby on Love the Way You Love – but further recognition must surely be forthcoming). It’s an impressively up-to-date collection, too – the final strip is actually the most recent one featured on Adam’s website, and is dated 18th March.

Chris Doherty’s Video Nasties was another “I’ll give one issue a try and see what I think” job, but I came away from it wishing I’d gone for at least the second as well – it’s an ongoing narrative rather than a series of strips, and it’s an intriguing little story about high school kids making a documentary about former students that once went missing. The first issue is fairly straight down-the-line, but I’ve seen enough in the way of pages/panels from later in the series to suggest that it all gets rather more sinister. It’s generally a good-looking comic, but what really struck me about it was the quality of the dialogue, in the way that it pretty accurately captures the vocal mannerisms of British teenagers without it seeming forced. It’s effective in setting up the book’s “world”, and helps you buy into it. Although not a huge amount happens in the first issue, enough about it hooked me in that I’m eager to carry on with it.

man on fire dvdrip download Unfortunately, I have to admit that just about everything I bought at the event was overshadowed by my final purchase, thanks to the fact that Roger Langridge had a table there. Langridge is, of course, already known to me – fellow CDer Julian is a huge fan, and while I’ve not read as much of his work as I’d like, I’ve seen enough (including an absolutely wonderful Doctor Who strip) to suggest that he’s a particularly rare talent. I picked up issue one of volume two of his Eisner-nominated Fred the Clown, and it’s truly magnificent. It’s some of the finest tragicomedy I’ve read in a long time, and his meticulous artwork is often laugh-out-loud funny simply in and of itself. He also very kindly let me have two of his uber-mini productions – Henry Plib’s Got Two and Frankenstein Meets Shirly Temple – for the price of one, and both are fairly entertaining in their own way, but Fred the Clown is nothing short of a masterpiece.

I’d also been hoping to pick up the Jump Leads anthology (written by Red Dwarf fandom compatriot Ben Paddon), but a shipping crisis had put paid to their actually having anything to sell (although interest in the book from punters was pleasingly still healthy) – we’ll have a review of it on here at some point, though, when I get hold of one. I did, though, take the opportunity to pick up the show’s anthology, themed around “Mars”, although it’s a shame both that none of the people I bought stuff by made an appearance in it, and that I didn’t have a chance to read it before stalking the tables, as I might have got more hints on books worth checking out. As you’d expect, it’s a mixed bag, but strips by Reckless Youth, Andrew Livesy and Arthur Goodman all made me chuckle and marked out their creators as worth checking out in future.

All in all, while not a massive haul (hey, these things ain’t free, y’know), I was particularly pleased with my selection, with not a dud among them. All the works mentioned are very worthy of your time, and as a demonstration of the fact that I should really be heading along to more of these things and spending more money at them, it was spot on. Marvellous!

This week, we serve up more capsule reviews for Captain America #48, Dark Reign: Elektra #1, Thunderbolts #130 and X-Men: Sword of the Braddocks #1.

(continue reading…)

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to die for divx Messiah War is the sequel to Messiah Complex, the 2007 story that re-energised the entire X-franchise and managed to turn it back into a coherent entity. Chris Yost and Craig Kyle, whose superlative and self-aware work on X-Force has proved a massively enjoyable book, have masterminded it. And it places Cable, one of the more textured and interesting X-Men, at the forefront of the story. So why do I feel underwhelmed?

The answer is the quirk known as the “Twenty Years Rule”. This arises due to the fact that it takes twenty years from reading a comic and being inspired by it to rise to a position in the industry from which you can write your own riff on those concepts. Twenty years after Chris Claremont killed off Jean Grey, Grant Morrison constructed a 40-issue arc in which he did exactly the same thing. Twenty years after Frank Miller reduced the light-hearted side of Batman to a throwaway addition, Chris Nolan gave us Batman Begins. And about twenty years after Steve Parkhouse and co used the pages of Doctor Who Magazine to throw the fifth Doctor into a stream of mind-bending adventures, Alan Barnes took the character back to Stockbridge. And what’s happened now? The clue lies in the return of Nathan Summers’ shoulder pads. Twenty years after Cable was introduced as being locked in a bitter conflict with Stryfe, his clone has been dusted off to resume his position as the character’s nemesis. Just as Mike Carey’s decision to work Sinister into the fabric of X-Men Legacy was a stretch too far for that book, so the return of the one dimensional “Chaos Bringer” threatens to overwhelm this title.

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It’s a monumentally uninspiring development. While Kyle and Yost have created something wonderful out of the disparate stands of history that X-Force has woven together, this early nineties dynamic has little appeal so far other than nostalgia. Mike Choi continues his strong work from recent issues of X-Force, although his Bishop looks a little too youthful. This is off-set, however, by the attention that the artist pays to the difference in age that has now emerged between Nathan and Stryfe, with the former now considerably older due to the time he has spent looking after Hope.  Kyle and Yost are obviously still firing on all cylinders here, with a magnificent one-line gag about Warpath’s Warren Ellis-granted flight ability and Deadpool receiving some of the best jokes he’s had since Gail Simmone was writing the character. As a stand-alone issue, it’s a solid effort, with the previously trailed elements of the story all introduced with speed, to allow new material to take centre stage from this point onwards. It’s perfectly possible that the writers have a new concept lurking in the wings, ready to work the same alchemy on Stryfe that they bestowed on the Leper Queen earlier this month. But in seeking to revive what’s unquestionably the X-Men’s dullest villain, they’ve set themselves a very difficult task.

New Avengers is a title under the fairly real threat of losing its “top billing” status at the moment. A price hike combined with the end of the title’s long-running lynchpin, Secret Invasion, has left the book feeling a little superfluous to requirements, especially now that Dark Avengers is, for now at least, taking over the series’ position as Marvel’s “event” title. Meanwhile, regular artist Billy Tan, despite improving in leaps and bounds over the last year, is still far below the required level for “New Avengers” talent.

Tan’s attempts to convey the subtler expressions demanded in the opening scene where Carol watches TV are fairly painful – though more worryingly, out of costume, the character isn’t even recognisable through art alone. Elsewhere, Jessica Jones, previously a noteworthy example of a female character who wasn’t all breast and thighs is reduced to sporting the interchangeable T&A look that Tan seems incapable of deviating from. If an artist can’t even the features and body language of Marvel’s most well-defined female character right, one has to question whether they’re really ready for New Avengers.

Still, someone seems to be aware of this – alongside Tan’s sequences, we also see artwork from Chris Bachalo, who turns in some of his best work in years. A perfect choice to illustrate Dr. Strange’s sequences, Bachalo has shown a tendency to allow his love of experimental page-design to override his storytelling, but in this issue, the balance is perfectly pitched. Sadly, such work largely serves to highlight Tan’s inadequacy.

Of course, art rants aside, New Avengers #51 shows that Bendis and Breevoort are aware that the series has to raise its game. The writing is as good as New Avengers has ever been – the issue contains several sequences that’ll leave fans grinning, not least of them the long-awaited “first meeting” of Jessica Jones and Peter Parker, finally following up her retroactive insertion into Amazing Fantasy #15 back when Alias was wowing readers with “The Secret Origin of Jessica Jones”.

The overall arc, a quest for a new Sorcerer Supreme, is less instantly engaging, but still shows promise, bringing together Marvel’s various magic-wielders for an apparent magical epic the likes of which New Avengers hasn’t tried before. If that’s the direction the series is going, then it will, if nothing else, herald a return to the stand-alone, Marvel Universe-trotting arcs that made New Avengers a success in its early days, and that can only be a good thing.

Every month the bodacious Comics Daily dudes take the phone booth back in time through their most resplendent longboxes and totally give their thoughts on a non-heinous back issue

How’s it goin’ Comics Daily reading dudes? Whoa. Okay. So, in 1991, in the wake of the most triumphant movie Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the righteous dudes at Marvel comics decided to publish a spinoff comic featuring the totally unprecedented ongoing adventures of Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan, together known as the righteous “Wyld Stallyns”. Beginning with an equally triumphant adaptation of the previously mentioned theatrical feature, the truly stellar writer/artist Evan Dorkin carried on for thirteen most excellent issues before the comic was subjected to a totally bogus cancellation.

Ahem. Right, enough of that (you’re just lucky I decided against carrying it on for the entire review). Anyway, Evan Dorkin’s Bill & Ted comic is a marvellously fan-pleasing effort that maintained the spirit and style of the two excellent (sorry) movies moreso than any other spinoff venture (the first series of the cartoon having been entertaining but a little lightweight, and the less said about the live action series the better). This first issue carried directly on from the remarkably faithful Bogus Journey hard rain free

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download caretaker the adaptation (which had also included deleted scenes from the film), and is a particularly successful merging of the two distinct setups of the movies – you’ve got the various historical figures from Excellent Adventure gathering in the same place as Bogus Journey’s Death and Station (the occasion being the “second wedding” of the boys and the princesses, with the slightly flimsy rationale that the offscreen/panel weddings in Bogus Journey hadn’t had their families and friends present), and the characterisation (along with Bill and Ted’s unique speech patterns) is pretty dead on in terms of consistency with Solomon and Mathieson’s original scripts.

Speaking of characterisation, it’s Death that’s the real standout of the comic. Setting up a subsequent plotline in which he’d get fed up and give up his duties (one that was published, funnily enough, only shortly after Terry Pratchett’s similarly-plotted novel Reaper Man), the Reaper gets most of the best moments – getting drunk, telling off Billy the Kid for blithely firing his guns into the air (”I’m not working today! You hear me, kiddo? Don’t mess with a guy who knows how you die!”), and attempting to get up and tell jokes before being pelted with bricks. Death aside, the comic’s not desperately

funny – but that too is in keeping with the movies, with a warm and gentle feel allied to a trademark sense of the surreal.

Dorkin’s art is a draw, too – it’s initially disconcerting, as his dense, black-and-white style is perhaps the one thing that sets the book apart from the films somewhat (you can’t help but wish, on occasion, that it had some of Bogus Journey’s veritable explosion of colour), and with the odd exception, he shies away from trying to make the characters look like their movie counterparts (particularly Death, although in that instance he was hamstrung by having drawn the character in “classic” skeletal form for the movie adaptation before it had actually been made). But it’s an energetic and vibrant style, bursting with background detail that rewards a slower and more meticulous read than the pacey action and dialogue would suggest. All in all, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Comic Book is a most triumphant continuation of the films’ mythos, and generally a non, non non, non non non, non heinous comic-based expedition.