This week: Reviews of Dark Reign: Hawkeye #5, Fall of the Hulks: Red Hulk #1, New Avengers #61 and Superman: Secret Origin #4! (continue reading…)

Oh dear. Ever since the “Ultimate” comics staged a Reggie Perrin-style fall and rise, things have been going fairly well. Ultimate Comics Spider-Man is a revitalised version of its predecessor. Ultimate Comics Avengers has brought back the crystal clarity and panache (if not the sheer inventiveness) of Ultimates to the line. After the widely-panned Ultimatum, any forward momentum is an improvement, so these days, it takes a lot for an Ultimate series to look bad.

But then you have Ultimate Comics Enemy. After one issue, the disappointing truth seems clear – it’s a Bendis Crossover-by-numbers. In this issue, an amorphous threat (quite literally speaking) upsets various characters’ status quo. We get disconnected snippets of characters, until 22 pages in, we’re left blinking and dumbstruck, but with absolutely no story to hang onto besides “what just happened?” – and these days, when you’re paying $3.99 per instalment, that’s not enough.

It’s also a shame, given Rafa Sandoval’s excellent depiction of a city being subsumed by a giant pink blob, that in a post-Ultimatum universe, threats of this magnitude just don’t seem credible. Last time something on this apparent scale happened, we had a year’s worth of promotion and hype. Arguably, now is not the time to rush into a giant, overwhelming threat that can’t be punched into submission, because it can’t possibly follow through like Ultimatum did – but that’s what we appear to be getting. The best scenes in this issue are actually the small, character moments that allow us to explore the new “disbanded” status of the Fantastic Four – but set against such a massive threat, such material pales into insignificance.

However, the truly sad part is that no matter what we’ve been told about “Ultimate Comics” being the new future face of Marvel, it’s all so painfully rooted in the past. This entire issue is plagued by exactly the kind of decompression that Bendis was pioneering in the first half of last decade. Where it once looked nuanced and inventive, it now looks flabby and unadventurous. I don’t like to spend too much time criticising an individual’s signature technique, but three pages for Nick Fury to get attacked while eating dinner feels like a poor use of space. An entire issue in, I feel like I’ve just seen the pre-credits sequence to a TV show. The only difference is that on TV, I only have to wait seconds for the story to continue, whereas there’s nothing here that’s going to bring me back in a month’s time.

It’s hard not to feel like the comic version of Kick-Ass has been overshadowed somewhat. In the time it’s taken for its eight issues to be released, a movie version has been developed, produced, prepared for released and subjected to no small amount of hype and excited anticipation. While we’re still a couple of months away from it hitting cinemas, if advance word-of-mouth is anything to go by, it seems that Millar and Romita’s great legacy in creating this property will come from a film that looks set to be a huge hit rather than a comics miniseries that has provided moments of brilliance but been, on the whole, rather patchy (not to mention having its momentum stalled by a slow publication schedule).

But that said, the book has seemed to get somewhat better in its closing issues – I don’t know if it’s the influence of the in-progress film, but shifting the focus onto Big Daddy and Hit Girl has worked wonders for its entertainment value, with every issue since (and including) their “origin” adding up to something generally better than the first half of the series. There was a strong air of cynicism in those early issues, and it led to a book that it was possible to admire for its craft, but in a rather detached way; however, with an increased amount of sympathy applicable to Dave, and vulnerability to Hit Girl (particularly evident in one very well-judged moment late in this issue), it’s become a lot easier to like.

Not that it’s not still, on the whole, a ridiculously violent near-piss-take of a comic, with Millar delighting in the sheer excess (and Romita being… well, as good as Romita ever is, which is “one of the best artists in comics” good) . Plot-wise there’s barely an unexpected moment – it’s not like any further twist could top #7’s briefcase revelation anyway – even down to the somewhat cruel resolution of the Katie subplot, but this is really just about giving the baddies their comeuppance and revelling in a succession of amusing (if often distasteful) moments. Lines about a Hello Kitty bag and a photo on a cellphone are among the smirk-worthy points, as is the very last line of the issue (even though it’s deliberately nicked from somewhere else). There’s also a rather excellent callback to a throwaway joke from a few issues ago.

It’s hard to tell, though, whether this feels more like a coda to the whole thing – some strands you suspect are definitively tied up – or a setup for more (the back cover blurb, and hints throughout the issue, suggest that this should be seen as Kick-Ass’ “origin” story rather than his entire one). I wouldn’t be averse to seeing the world and characters revisited – but I just wonder if making it less self-contained, and more of an ongoing property, would defeat the object of the unique little niche it carved out. As it stands, though, it’s an often fun, occasionally brilliant – but perhaps a little over-confident series, and will at least stand as perhaps the purest distillation of the brassy excess its creator is so often famed for; the most “Millarish” book that he’s ever put out. Now, though, about that movie…

You’ve read us yakking about Alias enough on here by now, I’m sure. But a comic that you might be less aware of, one that got even less of a chance to fully establish itself, was Bendis’ follow-up series, The Pulse. After inadvertently bringing Alias to a natural end point, he shuffled Jessica Jones and Luke Cage over to a new series and setup, where Jessica would work alongside Ben Urich and Kat Farrell at the Daily Bugle. It was a nice idea – not least because it involved putting Jessica and Urich, two of Marvel’s best characters, in the same comic – but managed to find itself caught up in crossovers and tie-ins (not to mention stuck with a rotating cast of artists – all strong in ability, but it led to an unconsistent “feel”) for almost the entirety of its run. Only with its last arc, Fear – which culminated in this, the penultimate issue of the series before the lead couple would move over again to New Avengers – did it really manage to do the kind of story you suspect it was always designed to.

By this point, however, Jessica had already angrily quit the Bugle, meaning that the series’ setup lasted for an even shorter time than its publication. As such, although there’s a linking thread involving the paper trying to cover Jessica and Luke’s baby’s birth, the issue’s pretty much split down the middle between the “main” plot – that of said birth – and one involving Urich. The Jessica scenes – wrapping up a story that is essentially a little coda to Alias itself – are good, particularly a nice moment where Ms. Marvel is made to recount the circumstances of her own… offspring (a neat bit of meta-commentary by Bendis on a controversial and best-forgotten moment in Carol’s history), but if truth be told, it’s not the primary plotline that makes this such an unmissable issue. Rather, it’s the subplot, involving Ben Urich tracking down a rather pathetic, fallen C-list hero called D-Man, and learning just how far it’s possible for the heroes that the MU’s citizens take for granted to fall.

I didn’t know the character before this arc – his schtick is that he’s a former wrestler and massive Daredevil fan, who dresses in a replica of DD’s old yellow costume and a Wolverine mask – but his story as portrayed in this issue is devastatingly touching. Ravaged by a mental illness that leads him to believe he’s on a “quest” to retrieve seven “Infinity Gems” (actually trinkets almost unwittingly stolen from jewellery stores), he’s living in a sewer off scraps of food. His earnestness in the face of his horrendous situation is deeply poignant – and rendered quite superbly in the facial expressions drawn by the welcome-returning Michael Gaydos, who’s possibly never been better than in these scenes – and Bendis’ mastery is in having this poor, wretched soul be discovered by Ben Urich. Not only does this allow for a splendid piece of pontificating narration from the journalist, but it makes for a warm – yet still quite sad – conclusion as he gets his friend Matt Murdock to intervene. Maybe this wouldn’t get everyone the way it seems to strike at me – I suppose different “issues” are meaningful to different people – but by gum it’s difficult reading, yet at the same time a rare and welcome musing on a topic rarely explored in this medium.

There are many who write off Bendis purely on the strength of reading the type of comic he’s generally weakest at (i.e. Marvel’s big summer crossovers, or his first attempt at “doing” the Avengers). But it’s hard to deny, when he writes a story as moving, powerful and rooted in humanity as this, that he’s capable of standing up there with the best of this generation of creators. It’s partly the fact that he does something that so few other writers would have thought to do, as much as it is the compassionate and innately empathetic execution. It’s a shame that The Pulse was so short-lived, considering the story potential it held, but I’m thankful that we at least got another quick shot of that Bendis/Gaydos magic.

I’ve been casually reading Power Girl ever since it was launched a few months ago – first with a kind of tentative curiosity, but more recently with genuine enthusiasm. As a die-hard Marvelite (can’t say Marvel Zombie anymore, unfortunately…) it’s rare for me to get involved with a DC book on a month-to-month basis, and yet even though it’s snuck up on me a bit, these last two issues made me realise that I’m actually finding Power Girl more entertaining that almost any other superhero book I’m reading right now.

The tone of the book has definite shades of She-Hulk about it, a little bit funny, a little bit sexy, but never particularly reductive or titillating (indeed, no more so than any other superhero comic). This issue is the second part of a 2-part story in which Power Girl fights off a beast accidentally brought to earth by the hilariously 70s-influenced alien, Vartox, who is attempting to woo Power Girl so that he can repopulate his race. The idea of an aliens needing humans to mate with is an idea almost as old as sci-fi itself, and this issue is as much a thoroughly wry deconstruction of the idea as it is a pastiche of it -  Vartox’s light-heartedly chauvinistic attitude actually works as a pointed reference to the normal course of this plot, while his fashion sense makes a similar mockery of the way female aliens are presented in series like Star Trek.

As funny as Gray and Palmiotti’s plot and dialogue are, it’s Amanda Conner’s artwork that makes a book like this really stand out. The comic timing is note-perfect, the emotional range vast and nuanced, and the storytelling easily stands alongside the best in the business. Admittedly, the art is fairly cartoonish and not quite as on-trend as some would like – but that gives it a timeless, rather than outdated quality. People often complaining that they want classic superhero books rather than event-driven, mega-crossover titles that take themselves far too seriously, so if you’ve ever found yourself agreeing with that sentiment, then take it from someone who barely ever even reads DC comics: give Power Girl a try immediately.

This really did not bode well. This is Starman – a comic that engenders the sort of deep-seated affection that makes us angry and suspicious if you try to do anything silly like, ooh, I don’t know, bring it back. And while the man doing that is the only person who could be said to have anything approaching the right to – creator James Robinson – it’s fair to say that his recent work for DC has generally been, at best, passable rather than spectacular (and at times, worse than that).

But the first fear is allayed by the fact that this book is in no way about Jack Knight – indeed, it might as well actually be called The Shade #5. For it’s a story of that dark neither-hero-nor-villain, and the city he inhabits and protects (god, that prose style of Robinson’s is infectious, isn’t it?), and that simple fact means that worry number two is taken care of – Robinson simply cannot go wrong when writing this character, and slips back into it likea pair of old shoes. So actually, this special Blackest Night tie-in one-off of a comeback special actually does a strong job of feeling and sounding like it belongs.

It’s also a story that justifies the telling, picking up as it does one of the few lingering threads of the original series that felt incomplete – the burgeoning (or, more accurately, potential) relationship between the Shade and Hope O’Dare. And although there’s a sense of wariness over seeing too much niceness in his life (come on, he’s better when he’s still a bit of a git, isn’t he?), it’s hard to deny him a little bit of schmaltz; and it’s enjoyable to spend time in the company of both characters. The main events of the issue, meanwhile, are standard Blackest Night zombie-hero-returns-to-terrorise-loved-ones guff – but again, this does actually justify itself, given that Starman is a series that already featured the frequent return of the same long-dead character that haunts this issue’s pages (although I can’t help but feel there’s a huge missed opportunity in not calling the issue “Talking with David 2010″).

One thing it doesn’t have in its favour compared to the original series is either of the two superb artists who defined it in its earliest and latest days – Tony Harris and Peter Snejberg (although Harris makes a welcome return to draw the cover) – but with Bill Sienciewicz finishing over Fernando Dagnino’s layouts, it’s lent a touch of class nevertheless. The inker’s trademark loose style is well-suited to the manifestation of the Shade’s powers, and there’s a particularly excellent splash replicating his trademark “tipped-hat” arrival pose and smirk.

It does surprise me to say this, but – while I wouldn’t necessarily want to see it repeated – this is actually quite a welcome return. You sense there’s no other comic in which Robinson could get away with exchanges like “The Shade saving police, where once you’d have sat back and watched their slaughter” “With absinthe and a cheese plate. Perhaps. But long ago.”, but in this one, he does. There is something pleasant and nostalgic about it all – no mean feat for a story that involves a blackened zombie tearing people’s hearts out – and while it probably is best to let the Starman title itself rest for good now, it hasn’t half whetted my appetite to see more of old Dickie Swift. Hopefully Robinson will oblige us sooner rather than later.