There’s plenty of news worth commenting on straight out of Wizard World Chicago as the Summer’s con season truly gets going, including reflections on the unfortunate passing of Mike Turner, Ghost Rider news (seriously), the near-mythical Superman 2000 pitch and Eric Stephenson’s recent promotion.
Continue reading »

I can’t remember a week of comics as good as this in a very long time. In a way, it’s a reflection of just how badly things tend to be scheduled – and certainly, for a writer of a site where we can only review four new books a week, it’s frustrating to have to miss out so much stuff, when there are other weeks in which we’ll barely have anything of interest to say. Nevertheless, the disappointment of Final Crisis aside, we’ve had customarily superb issues of Astonishing X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man and Batman, the possible sleeper-hit of 1985, and somewhat surprisingly, two books by Geoff Johns (Action Comics and Green Lantern) that were both perhaps the strongest issues of his recent runs. But of course, at the head of all of this – in much the same way as it stands at the head of pretty much the entire mainstream comics field – is All-Star Superman.

One issue to go! How will we cope in its absence? I’m genuinely not sure. Sure, the scheduling has been erratic (although, hey, it’s actually managed to overtake All-Star Batman now, by virtue of actually successfully hitting a bimonthly release for the first time), but by gum, it’s a comic that lights up any week in which it deigns to appear. It goes without saying by now that Morrison and Quitely have crafted one of the finest Superman stories of all time – an absolute masterclass of comics creation on every conceivable level. In fact, is there really anything left to say about it?

Well, it is worth noting that perhaps the weaker issues of the series have been the ones that revolved a bit more around action, rather than emotion or metaphysics. Not that the action hasn’t been well-done – it’s just that the more memorable moments of the series (the one with Clark’s dad, the two “replacement” Kryptonians, and of course the incredible issue #10) have tended to be when it’s reflected on the deeper meaning of Superman and his existence. What’s surprising about #11, then, is that in setting up the big-bucks series finale (short version – Lex Luthor has powers for twenty-four hours) it provides perhaps the most thrilling “action” issue the series has seen to date - and it’s one that takes its place alongside the “reflective” issues.

Not that it doesn’t get reflective, of course – there’s an absolutely wonderful moment where a valuable whole panel is used to show the sole remaining Superman Robot left to guard the fortress alone in the dark – but really, this is about giving us a proper, explosive grand finale. The confrontation proper doesn’t yet begin – Luthor lurks menacingly in the background after brutally escaping his own execution, leaving his brilliantly malevolent niece (another dusted-off Silver Age obscurity) to steal the show, while Superman is kept busy having a punch-up with a sentient red sun – but everything is set up for what will basically be “the General Zod fight from Superman II done better”. At the same time as it’s being darkly ominous (the wonderful cover image of a headline “SUPERMAN DEAD” with a byline “by Clark Kent” - so simple and classic that I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before - does actually appear in the issue proper), it’s playful and thrilling in turn.

But while Morrison is clearly just having fun throwing ideas at the page and watching them come beautifully together (not to mention throwing in such gems as having Jimmy say “quite frankly”), Frank Quitely is – on an entirely serious level – once again showing everyone just how it’s done. I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but I’ll keep repeating it until the idiots who bleat things like “his people are pudgy and ugly” shut the hell up : he is the singular greatest artistic talent currently working in the industry. His senses of storytelling and composition alone deserve to elevate him up among the all-time greats (the pair of panels in which Superman is shown about to deliver the final blow to Solaris, followed by a city-wide shot of a red explosion, feel like Scott McCloud could use them in an essay about using the gutter properly), but with his startling level of detail and precision (and again, inker/colourist Jamie Grant deserves almost as much credit here), I simply can’t see how anybody could ever complain about his aesthetics. He can do large-scale as well as someone like Cassaday, and if there’s a criticism, it’s that on occasion he’s a bit too over-reliant on those trademark wide shots – with small characters picked out amid a huge empty background – when sometimes, as brilliant as his use of space is, a close-up would add a bit more humanity.

Such details feel like nitpicking, though, because it feels faintly ridiculous telling the creators of All-Star Superman what to do. I’d go so far as to say that this is the first time, in my experience of regularly buying comics (as opposed to just reading whatever fell my way, which was how I did things up until I went to Uni), that I’ve known what it must have felt like as Watchmen or Sandman drew to a close. And if that sounds like hyperbole, and if you’re amazed that such things could be said about a Superman comic, of all things – well, that’s just a reflection of what Grant and Frank have done with this magnificent series. It’ll be a very, very long time before we see its like again.

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.

The standard cry of the Grant Morrison fan, when confronted with a weak or underwhelming issue, is to declare “It’s all leading up to something!” It’s certainly been an issue that’s cropped up at various points during his Batman run, with later issues opening up earlier chapters to enlightening re-reads - and now, after the distinctly filler-ish #675, we’ve finally hit the “something” that everything has, indeed, been building up to. Batman RIP is here.

And bugger me, it’s a cracking start. Yes, it’s true that a lot of it consists of recapping disparate elements of the run so far - but as it does, it highlights those parts that were significant (including bits that we may not have already flagged up, such as the arch-nemeses of the Club of Heroes to whom we’re tantalisingly introduced at the beginning) and begins to draw them all together into the cohesive whole. Not a huge amount happens, but as far as setup issues go, this is almost a textbook example of how to do them.

The best moments really come at the very beginning and end. The teasing opening splash is brilliantly bombastic and melodramatic, and is followed by our first hint of the faces behind the “Black Glove” - although both are sequences that raise more questions than they answer. And the closing few pages are superb - a genuinely disturbing scene featuring the Joker (some of it in his head, some of it in reality - it’s a bit tricky to follow on a first glance, but opens up as you read more carefully). I’m sure there are many who won’t care for Morrison’s current version of comics’ greatest villain - but I think he justified the creation of a new “incarnation” perfectly in the prose issue a while back, as well as providing a get-out clause for subsequent writers to restore him to his “classic” style. Here, though, he’s an unsettlingly twisted and demented creation, sneering from behind his scarred face and counterpointing his bloodthirsty nature with his white, almost surgical garb.

Crucial to the creepiness of the Joker is the work put in by Tony Daniel - and as he makes use of Morrison’s established themes of red and black, it’s just as memorable visually as it is for what’s actually happening. I’m extremely impressed by Daniel’s work throughout, in fact - this is the first time he’s felt to me like anything more than a “substitute” artist, and he nails every aspect of the issue, helping to define its look and feel. You suspect that Morrison is tailoring his writing to his strengths for the first time - but by the same token, he’s certainly complementing the writing, especially in that Joker sequence.

Elsewhere it’s all about the neat touches that show you how both writer and artist are in flying form. The fantastic new Batmobile finally makes its entrance (and you can’t help but feel that the line “It’s not how I saw it when I first had the idea” is a reference to the change in artist), Tim Drake gets a significant amount of time as the focal point, and there are some great examples of panel composition, especially when Bruce and Jet are at his parents’ grave. Morrison’s ideas are clearly bursting from his head at a rate of knots - the “Club of Villains” characters, not even introduced by name, are almost too much to take in at once, and he even comes up with an entertaining random rent-a-crook to serve in an early chase sequence.

This is just confident and classy comics, in just about every aspect from the top downward; and that even goes as far as the cover - not just for Alex Ross’ marvellous painting, but the entire design and layout. It’s true that we haven’t yet hit the real “meat” of the story - but what this first part does is enough to suggest that when it does arrive, it’s going to be a hell of an experience.

It’s been a fair while since I read a DCU comic - almost nothing since the end of 52, in fact. Still, even someone as largely disinterested in DC Universe comics can’t fail to notice that big things are happening. DC’s second weekly series, Countdown, has ended, apparently without getting to the place it was supposed to. Whoops. Someone get Grant Morrison on the horn. Enter DC Universe #0, which sets the stage for Final Crisis in all the ways that Countdown managed not to. Apparently.

DC Universe #0 isn’t so much a story as a guided tour of the current state of the DCU. Both Marvel and DC have been screwing around with mega-crossovers for years now, and just keeping up with continuity is getting to be a harder and harder game than ever. DCU #0 tries to explain where most everyone important is and what they’re doing, with the notable exception of the Shazam family of characters. The problem is, it neither explains who anyone is, nor what situation they’re in. It just shows them doing some stuff and you have to try and piece it together from what’s going on in their parent titles. The Batman segment is especially impenetrable. It’s Batman and the Joker! I know those characters! I shouldn’t be left unable to understand a damn word of their conversation.

The opening description of the recent Crises is almost impressively succinct for what’s been going on, but the rest of the book is a jumble of characters and situations that fail to engage. It feels more like a sampler than a story in itself, which is a pity because it ends with a fairly important revelation that you suspect really needed a stronger companion material. Narrating this tour is a mysterious figure. (Spoiler time, folks. Please exit the review immediately if you’re bothered.) Initially, I thought this was part of the fruition of Morrison’s “Sentient DC Universe” idea that he was talking about a few years back, but it becomes fairly clear who it is - it’s Barry Allen. If they’re serious about bringing back the man Seb and I once named as our No. 2 Best Death in Comics, it needs to be for a better story than Crisis Nine or whatever this one is, and it certainly should’ve been done in a better comic than DCU #0.

There are some nice touches - the way the caption boxes fade from Black to Red is a great detail, and that final page is a fantastic image. Lopresti’s Wonder Woman is Hughes-esque without being gratuitous, and the Spectre sequence is probably the best of the bunch, appropriately creepy. Perez drawing anything is always worth seeing. On the whole, though, it fails as a book. It’s supposed to be leading into Final Crisis, and yet it doesn’t adequately introduce anything or anyone. It’s the comics equivalent of channel-surfing. My first DCU comic for some time, and probably my last one until this Crisis is over as well…

A busy weekend means a slightly smaller-than-usual column, but luckily Seb’s still around to deliver the goods - an examination of the Spanish Language issue of Blue Beetle, and another Batman theory as Morrison’s run speeds towards the finish line. By contract, I manage to contribute nothing but a couple of links to articles I wrote elsewhere about Spider-Man: Brand New Day and the Iron Man movie press conference! Continue reading »