Lost job, crashed car, and family health issues have put me a bit behind the eight-ball, at least so far as keeping up with Shanghalla goes. So, I'm taking today off from the world and spending it on comic books, catching up with February reviews, starting first with items released Feb. 4 — or at least those things released that week that made it into my pull file. It was a short week, however, with just six new comics for me. Interestingly, four of the books — Jungle Jim, Ms Marvel, Stray Bullets and Superman — were solicited in the Diamond Previews catalog for release in January. Anyway, here's the run-down:
Dynamite Entertainment, $3.99
[MILDLY RECOMMENDED]
So far, with Prince Valiant yet to be released, this is the best of the King Syndicate books, which is somewhat ironic in that this was the title I also was anticipating the least. This one reads better than the rest, I think, in part because Jungle Jim is less well-known than Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, The Phantom, and even Mandrake the Magician. As such, writer Paul Tobin was allowed to take great liberties with the character. Here, he is a jungle god on Arboria, a planet within the realm of Flash foe Ming the Merciless. He is apparently able to both control animals and assume their shape, which is, I'd say, a fair leap from his original incarnation.
This book also does a better job that some of the the others in this new wave of King licensed books in making it clear that all of the characters live in a shared universe, where Ming's attempted invasion of Earth has just occurred, knocking Earth technology back to the start of the 20th century. That's the era, perhaps intentionally, when most of these characters first appeared.
In this issue, a stereotypically spunky Arborian girl, unable to locate Flash Gordon, wants to enlist Jungle Jim in helping to free her brother from Ming's prison. Prince Barin gives her a couple of beast men as her retinue and off they tromp into the forest to find a man who may or may not exist. It's not really clear to me if this version of Jim is still an Earth man. I presume not as he'd hardly have had time since Ming's invasion to travel to Arboria and become a mythological figure to its people.
From there it's a fairly standard search plot, with the company picking up a female village scout along the way, although there is a nice bit of bonding between our spunky lead and her hippo-man companion. We end the issue with the group finding Jim in the guise of a monkey that's been following them. Given that this series is to last five issues, it might've been more interesting if Jim had played the McGuffin a bit longer, or, perhaps even more interestingly, if the group eventually discovered he really is just a myth. But, it is what it is and I have to wonder if this series is fated to jump the shark once Jim emerges from the Jungle for the eventual prison break sequence?
The art by Sandy Jarrell, who also handles the colors, is just a step above serviceable. It's not bad, just bland, and I would have preferred a good inker to really embellish the drawings, most of which are the merest contours, with texture and shadow and definable light sources. Of course, part of the problem is that with a series like this, one really wants someone of the level of the Franks, Cho and Frazetta, or a Mark Schultz.
(Read Time: 10:45)
STORY GRADE: B
ISSUE SCORE: 66.50
[Cover: 8:0 | Plot: 7.50 | Script: 7.75 | Layout: 6.75 | Artwork: 6.0 | Editing: 5.50 | Colors and Production Values: 7.25 | Dollar Value: 5.0 | Collectibility: 5.75 | The Gosh-Wow Factor: 6.0]
Marvel Comics, $2.99
[MARVELOUSLY RECOMMENDED]
There's really not much to say about this issue, except that it's a good example of why I love this title. Basically, Ms Marvel is the hero I want in my comics — someone who is a little bit geeky, like me, but who has a strong moral compass and is always trying to do good. In many ways writer G. Willow Wilson is depicting, different gender and power sets aside, the Spider-Man of my youth. The big exception, of course, is that while this issue brings the concluding chapter of Ms Marvel's first story arc with the defeat of The Inventor, and The Inventor's inventor, after 11 chapters, the typical Spider-Man story of the '70s wouldn't have lasted more than an issue or three.
The art by Adrian Alphona continues to charm. The characters are a little too cartoonish in places, it's true, and the layouts are not always as clear as they could be in battle sequences, but he's given the character and her supporting players a definitive look that's bound to carry over if and when Ms Marvel makes the transition to other media. Ms Marvel is easily in my Top 5 among comic books currently being published.
(Read Time: 9:10, plus 3:40 for recap page/lettercol)
STORY GRADE: A–
ISSUE SCORE: 71.75
[Cover: 6.25 | Plot: 8.0 | Script: 9.0 | Layout: 6.75 | Artwork: 8.25 | Editing: 5.50 | Colors and Production Values: 7.75 | Dollar Value: 6.50 | Collectibility: 7.25 | The Gosh-Wow Factor: 7.00]
Image Comics, $2.99
[RECOMMENDED (UNFORTUNATELY) ONLY FOR ADULTS]
In an increasingly common occurrence, my retailer got shorted on this when it first came out. He had to place a re-order, which finally arrived March 4. However, what finally came in was a second print. The cover to my copy has an orange tint, as opposed to the green, seen at left. Clearly, my tiny shop in central Maine got its order allocated to a larger customer when advance re-orders came in higher than expected. That's my assumption anyway. Meanwhile, my assumption about the issue itself, as with most things written by Grant Morrison, is that he was strung out on something strong when he wrote it.
The first half of the book is typical Morrison weirdness. There's a nameless man searching Indiana Jones style for a forgotten relic. He's pursued — again Indiana Jones style — by a fish-faced infantry. And he'd captured by a priestess possessed by a parasitic larva. All stuff that would ordinarily peg the gosh-wow meter on my inner 12-year old. However, Morrison's script is so sprinkled with drops from his stream of consciousness as to be, for me at least, off-putting. I have trouble sinking into a story when I have to stop every third panel and wonder, "Now what the HELL does that mean?!" Some fans enjoy that kind of writing. Me, not so much. That's partly because, with Morrison, it always feels so practiced, like he's trying to hit me over the head with the fact that he knows more than he's telling at the moment. But also because, more often than not, it also feels like he's just making shit up as he goes along and, like the last episode of Lost, some plot threads will never be completed.
Speaking of "shit," it seemed odd to me that the word was spelled "shite" in the first half of the book, then "shit" in the back half. Knowing Morrison, I wondered at first if that was on purpose and, once I noticed the change, I went back to verify if it had been spelled differently in captions and word balloons. Maybe, I thought, because Morrison's stories always require more deciphering that should be necessary, that's a clue to something. But, no. it was used the same way in both captions and word balloons. It was just the British spelling in the first half of the book, then the American way at the end, as if Morrison — I see no editor listed on the book — decided, what the hell, might as well spell it the American way for the American audience, and never went back and edited the first few pages.
Of course, there was no good reason for the word "shit," to appear at all in this book, regardless of spelling. Nor "fuck." And certainly not "cunt," even once, let alone three times. This could have been an awesome all-ages book but for the language. It would have been just as easy to get across the uncouth nature of Mr. Nameless with a few less vulgar euphemisms, dashes in place of some letters, or even symbols to indicate swearing. And doing so, in my ever so humble, would have done nothing to insult the integrity of Morrison's writing.
Chris Burnham's art is very nice, and rather reminiscent of Frank Quitely here. Although he seems to lose interest in the latter half of the book. Just as Morrison's work, both plot and script, grow more conventional toward the end of the issue — turning into a story about an imminent impact from an asteroid that just happens to have a three-mile-long glyph exactly like the one on the temple Nameless raided —Burnham's layouts become less bold, his drawings more static. But maybe that's some sort of meta-textual commentary. With Morrison, you just never know.
(Read Time: 10:50)
STORY GRADE: B
ISSUE SCORE: 72.75
[Cover: 8:50 | Plot: 8.0 | Script: 6.75 | Layout: 8.0 | Artwork: 9.25 | Editing: 3.25 | Colors and Production Values: 8.50 | Dollar Value: 6.25 | Collectibility: 7.25 | The Gosh-Wow Factor: 7.00]
STAR WARS #2
Marvel Comics, $3.99
[ARTISTICALLY RECOMMENDED]
The best thing that can be said about this new Star Wars series is that writer Jason Aaron successfully captures the "sound" of the various characters, while artist John Cassaday absolutely nails their likenesses. Darth and the droids are pretty easy to depict, of course, but it's impressive how Cassaday makes Han, Luke and Leia look exactly like Ford, Hamill and Fisher, and not just occasionally in a panel that could have been taken from a movie still, but in each and every shot, from every possible angle. So, bravo there!
The drawback is that, at seven minutes, this book is a quick read for $4 and, as such, I'll probably drop the title before long. Frankly, there's not much plot here. Basically, the whole issue is our heroes trying to escape from the failed raid on Cymoon 1, the Empire weapons factory they landed on last issue.
There are neat bits, of course. This series takes place immediately after the movie I still refuse to call Episode IV: A New Hope, and Arron shows us, canonical or not, our heroes' introduction to AT-AT walkers and the 74-Z speeder bike, making it clear the tech was known to the rebels before The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. There's also a cool bit in this issue where Vader "borrows" a storm trooper's helmet after getting his own knocked off by Han. Still, the action passes quickly in only a few moment's of story time. This would be an amazing few minutes in a Star Wars movie, but therein lies the problem. What Aaron has done here is produce a few really great pages of a movie script. But comics are not movies. Although both are visual storytelling mediums, they each have their own requirements as an entertainment product. Aaron is not to be blamed. For decades comics book creators have gone beyond Eisneresque adaptations of cinema techniques to full-on imitation of film and television methods. That's led to a decompression of the storytelling such that it now takes six months of more to tell s single story in comics. It must be remembered, however, that while a visual medium, comics are, at their heart, a participatory reading experience, not a viewing event. When a comic book does not have a satisfying beginning, middle and end the reader can enjoy in a single sitting, that comic is something of a failure, no matter how expertly it apes how stories are written and directed for the movies.
So, that's my soapbox. What we get here is a great script, and great art, that will undoubtedly be great when collected into a trade paperback. But based solely on how much story we get in this issue, it is not a great comic book.
On a side note, the bit with C-3PO trying to sound tough as he walked down the Millennium Falcon's gangplank, only to drop his gun, was a fun bit that had a very Firefly vibe to it. To my mind, it sort of gave a feel for what the coming round of Star Wars sequels might have been like if directed by The Mighty Joss. It would be cool to see Arron conscripted to write a Serenity series for Dark Horse Comics. Still, keeping with Star Wars for a moment, it would be nice for once to see 3PO do something other than get broken into bits and carted off by scavengers and soldiers. I hope Aaron will allow him to be a hero at some point before I decide this series is not worth $4 a pop and bail.
FWIW, I couldn't find a cover of this issue anywhere online that would format correctly, so that's why there is no image for this section.
(Read Time: 7:00, plus 0:25 for recap page)
STORY GRADE: B–
ISSUE SCORE: 73.25
[Cover: 7:0 | Plot: 6.25 | Script: 8.75 | Layout: 8.25 | Artwork: 9.50 | Editing: 5.25 | Colors and Production Values: 8.50 | Dollar Value: 4.0 | Collectibility: 8.0 | The Gosh-Wow Factor: 7.25]
Image Comics. $3.50
[BRUTALLY RECOMMENDED]
Since its return from hiatus, David Lapham's Stray Bullets has run hot and cold for me. Some issues have seemed insightful, if grotesquely blithe, divinations into the human condition. Others, like this issue, seem like so much snuff porn. Truly, Lapham is the Quentin Tarantino of comics.
Sadly, this issue has a sense of things happening because that's what the plot requires, and people getting blown away because that's what the reader expects. It's kill and re-kill to the point where I've starting to forget who's who. In some ways, this book has started to become a parody of itself. There is an interesting and tense bit in which Skottie and Kretchmeyer engage in a standoff, each with a gun to Amy's head, but even that, for some reason, feels to me more imitative of Pulp Fiction, than inspired by it.
Worse, the attempt to stay on a regular schedule of 28 pages per month is making the work suffer. Stray Bullets has always had the look of an art student's sketchbook to it, and that's been part of its unique charm. But several panels, and even a couple of entire pages, in this issue look particularly rushed, as if said art student was late for class, or stoned, or, most likely, both. Anyway, there are still a lot of fans of this book, but issues like this, in which the violence seems to exist only for the sake of violence, makes me wonder if SB's time has passed, making it part of a grim 'n' gritty zeitgeist better left to the 1990s.
(Read Time: 21:50)
STORY GRADE: C+
ISSUE SCORE: 68.25
[Cover: 7:25 | Plot: 8.0 | Script: 7.25 | Layout: 8.50 | Artwork: 6.25 | Editing: 6.75 | Colors and Production Values: 5.0 | Dollar Value: 7.0 | Collectibility: 6.50 | The Gosh-Wow Factor: 5.75]
DC Comics, $4.99
[BARELY RECOMMENDED]
So, yeah . . . whatever. The Johns/Romita Jr. collaboration comes to a whimpering conclusion that's far more interesting in terms of what it promises for future stories than how it wrapped up this one.
This arc is the perfect embodiment of what I complained about in the Star Wars commentary above. The story begun by Johns and Romita in Issue #32 has taken seven issues (released over more than eight months) to tell. And yet, this tale of Superman's forth-dimensional reverse doppelganger hasn't really contained more than three or four issues worth of actual plot. Hell, back in the Mort Weisinger era, this story would have been told just as, if not more memorably in a single 12-page back-up story.
I also have to say I've been a little disappointed with John Romita Jr.'s work. He's a good artist, with very strong storytelling skills in the layout department, but his style just is not well suited to Superman, in my opinion. I felt when reading this issue how I imagine comics fans must have felt in the 1970s when Jack Kirby came over to DC. As I read each issue in this arc, I kept finding myself hoping that, with the next issue, someone would bring in Jose Luis Garcia Lopez to paste new heads on Superman and the other main characters.
Superman's new power, unveiled here, is interesting, and a logical extrapolation of how Superman's powers have been explained post-Byrne. Cool ideas, if not concise plots, have always been Johns' strong suit. That said, I don't expect Human Bomb-Superman to last any longer than Electric Blue-Superman, which (fool me twice) got a lot more coverage in the mainstream press. I am, however, gratified to see Johns put a lot of things back where they belong with this issue. Although I came of age during an era when Clark Kent was a TV news anchor, he really belongs at the Daily Planet, and the whole Jimmy the Billionaire thing was an amazing transformation that played out for far too long.
Finally, while it makes perfect sense in the New 52 universe — in which Clark and Jimmy are far closer to being peers than they ever were in the Silver or even Bronze Ages — for Superman to reveal his secret identity, I have to wonder how that will play out. Well-meaning Jimmy is bound to spill the beans at some point, and that can't go well, which may be why the last panel of this issue, even though it's an unnecessary double-page horizontal spread, is my favorite.
(Read Time: 9:00, plus 1:15 for promo pages)
STORY GRADE: B
ISSUE SCORE: 64.50
[Cover: 4.25 | Plot: 6.75 | Script: 7.25 | Layout: 8.25 | Artwork: 6.75 | Editing: 4.75 | Colors and Production Values: 6.50 | Dollar Value: 4.0 | Collectibility: 8.75 | The Gosh-Wow Factor: 7.25]
STAT ATTACK!
TOTAL RETAIL COST: $22.45
MY COST (retail - 20% LCS discount + 5.5% ME sales tax): $18.53
COVER PRICE
High: $4.99 (Superman #38)
Average: $3.74
Median: $3.75
Low: $2.99 (Ms Marvel #11, Nameless #1)
PRODUCT PAGE COUNT
High: 40 (Superman #38)
Average: 30.67
Median: 28
Low: 28 (Ms Marvel #11, Nameless #1, Star Wars #2, Stray Bulletts: Sunshine and Roses #1)
STORY PAGE COUNT
High: 30 (Superman #38)
Average: 24
Median: 23
Low: 20 (Ms Marvel #11, Star Wars #2)
STORY COST (price/story page count)
Best: 19.95¢/page (Star Wars #2)
Average: 15.77¢/page
Median: 15.79¢/page
Worst: 12.46¢/page (Nameless #1)
STORY READ TIME
High: 21:50 (Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses #1)
Average: 11:10
Median: 10:55
Low: 7:00 (Star Wars #2)
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE (price/story read time)
Best: 57¢/minute (Star Wars #2)
Average: 37.64¢/minute
Median: 34.87¢/minute
Worst: 16.03¢/minute (Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses #1)
PANEL AVERAGE (panels/story pages)
High: 7.29/page (Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses #1)
Average: 4.94/page
Median: 4.62/page
Low: 3.53/page (Superman #38)
WORD AVERAGE (words/story pages)
High:
Average:
Median:
Low:
ADVERTISING PERCENTAGE (total pgs inc. covers/(ad pgs - house ad pgs))
High: 18.75% (Star Wars #2)
Average: 9.31%
Median: 10.60%
Low: 0% (Nameless #1, Stray Bullets: Sunshine and Roses #1)
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