POBB: October 4, 2017

Pick of the Brown Bag

October 4, 2017

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag.  I’m Ray Tate, the Big Cheese of this reviewing shindig.  The format is simple.  I review the best and the worst of the week’s books.  For this edition the POBB takes a peek at Batman, Green Lanterns, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Motor Girl, Spirits of Vengeance and Superman.  Should you not be able to experience “the rich, Corinthian leather” of the Pick of the Brown Bag, you can always check out my Tweets: #PickoftheBrownBag.

Batman concludes “The War of Jokes and Riddles,” and what a payoff!!!  I know.  Three exclamation points.  My teachers always stressed to use the exclamation point sparingly.  Overall I follow and agree with that practice.  The exclamation point usually isn’t necessary.  It’s visual hyperbole, but Tom King’s and Mikel Janin’s Batman deserves at the very least thirty exclamation points.  It’s that good.  No.  It’s that great.  No.  It’s that majestic.

Batman beating on the Riddler and the Joker simultaneously is make no mistake incredibly satisfying, but that’s not the reason why Batman is a such a remarkable achievement.  The finale satisfies on multiple levels of enjoyment.  The characterization of Batman, the Riddler, the Joker and the guest I cannot reveal is defining.  Every chapter in “The War of Jokes and Riddles” is interconnected yet can be read on its own.  The climax in this epic relies on Batman’s humanity, and the reason why Batman felt the need to divulge this secret makes sense.  It’s worthy of keeping hidden from all until the monumental turning point of Batman mythology within these pages.

Trust me.  The entire “War of Jokes and Riddles” cannot be missed by any Batman fan, and I won’t tell you a single thing about it because that would ruin the entirety.  Batman, “Hell, yeah.”

In the last issue of Superman, Lois Lane sought an interview with Deathstroke.  The ace reporter scored, but after she printed the story, Deathstroke returned with a new statement.  Somebody had hired him to kill her.  Is this the end of Lois Lane, and was she the target in the first place? 

Suffice to say that James Bonney’s story is a convoluted beast that throws cold water in your face at the conclusion.  It’s also an exceptional comic book story because its two parts work in tandem to create three different character studies.  

The first part focused on Lois Lane and Deathstroke.  This part turns the spotlight on Superman and Deathstroke.  Although Deathstroke appears to hog the meat of the story, he’s still mostly an enigmatic mercenary.  However, this is the new 52 Deathstroke, and in his history, he never crossed swords, literally or figuratively, against the Teen Titans.  He never slept with an underage girl.  He never exploited that girl to destroy the Titans from within.  These corruptions never took place.  When Wally West returned, so did some of Slade Wilson’s memories, adjusted for the new 52.  The new 52 Deathstroke nevertheless is—to paraphrase Lois Lane’s words—more discriminate, and you’ll see just how much in the finale of Superman.

Green Lanterns Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz return to present day earth.  Before their unwanted excursion to the past, they both agreed on one thing.

Alas, breakfast must wait since a non-sentient incursion occurs.

Simon and Jess also attend a House Party.  

Sira, Simon’s and Nazir’s sister, promptly exposes her brothers’ formative years.

What’s enjoyable about this story is how Sam Humphries combines unlike elements to weave seamlessly.  Though Scott Goodlewski illustrates the creature well, the opening beast is clearly a throwaway, but Humphries uses the scene humorously later during the party when Tina and Sira try to coax Jess out of her introverted shell.  

It’s perfect timing with an equally perfect expression.  I also liked how the creative team formed characters and plot out of nothing but small talk, pancakes and doughnuts.  The quarreling brothers have a heart to heart that’s fun rather than deep, and the Lanterns finally heed John Stewart’s advice to expand their horizons beyond the earth.  Just good solid writing in a story that could have been boring, no excrutiating, in less skilled hands.

Guardians of the Galaxy focuses on Rich Ryder, the Man Called Nova.  So, confession time.  I know beans about Nova.  Oh, I’m fluent in Bronze Age Nova, and I know how he ended up powerless through sacrifice in Rom the Space Knight.  I also know that somehow he got reenergized to rejoin the New Warriors, where he botched being with Namor’s cousin Namorita.  Namorita is a birth clone of Golden Age hero Namora, but I haven’t a clue as to how he became Rich became Nova again, how the Nova Corps turned into Marvel’s Green Lanterns, or when and how Nova’s little brother Robbie became a Nova as well.  Apparently that’s what happen.  We find Nova in space searching for his brother.  

Most science fiction writers that orchestrate space operas seek to negate the distance of space and time.  They’ll use hyperspace and wormholes and warp drives to cut to the chase.  Sometimes, literally.  What’s intriguing about this issue of the Guardians of the Galaxy is that the story depends upon the vastness of space.

Richie is being dutiful in his search for his brother, but in a rare moment of absolute seriousness, Gerry Duggan demonstrates how an almost impossible task this would be even with clues to the whereabouts.  He juxtaposes Nova’s search with Robbie’s plight, and continuously hammers home that despite Marvel’s universe teeming with life, you are nevertheless alone.  Horrible things can happen just because your searchers are unlikely to catch up.

The illustration by substitute artist Roland Boschi is suitably dark for this interlude from the antics of the Guardians, and if you’re wondering how this ties into the Guardians of the Galaxy, you’ll quickly find out as Duggan builds on the Guardians' antagonists to give them depth and devilry.

I like dark, deep, rich Frazetta styled art, and I like cartoony Bruce Timm artwork.  I just want it to be good.  Monsters Unleashed’s David Baldeon’s cartoon sensibilities evoke the surreal side of the supernatural and tempers the darkness with good guys from over the fence.  

Victor Gischler most recently from Angel and Faith begins his tale with Johnny Blaze minding his own business and ending up taking the baton from what may be an angel.  The baton though happens to be a magic bullet, and the competitors come in all flavors.

He’s asked to deliver the bullet to Damien Hellstrom, the Son of Satan.  I honestly don’t care that much about Hellstrom.  He was one of those characters that was always shifting around the outskirts of the Marvel Universe.  His relationship with Hellcat, an odd pairing to begin with, ended tragically.  This however wasn’t Hellstrom’s fault, and Hellcat got better after Hawkeye rescued her from Hell.  Gischler and Baldeon class up Hellstrom, outfitting him like a DC immortal, and it does him a world of good.

From there Damien calls Blade the Vampire Hunter, who I felt was a ridiculous figure in Tomb of Dracula.  Fortunately, Marvel discarded his raincoat and goggles and kept the much better Wesley Snipes appearance.  Satanna is the last protagonist to be called on, but we'll have to wait until the next issue for her to materialize.

What I also liked about Spirits of Vengeance is that they represent a screwed up agenda.

Kudos to the Cenobite look for the henchwench.  The villains didn’t try to lead anybody to their dastardly plan.  This was instead a mistake, with the best evil intentions.  Now, the heroes are onto it, and we’ve got the start of a great little miniseries.

This issue of Charles Soule’s and Carlos Pacheco’s Astonishing X-Men is mostly character-driven.  The Shadow King is playing a game with the late Charles Xavier.  His pieces however happen to be real people.  The game started with an attack on psychics, including Psylocke who did some damage to England.  That led to an SAS strike team and a call to a group of X-Men.  The team went into the astral plane, and Charles and the Shadow King played their mind-games against each other using the X-Men as chessmen.  One of them is apparently lost.  Old Man Logan evinces Shadow King control, but I’m thinking nobody’s lost, and Charles has a trick up his sleeve.

So, I vaguely heard that Charles turned bad somewhere down the line.  To me, that’s never been the case.  Charles Xavier may be a little arrogant at times, but he’s above board.  I’ll kindly just ignore that continuity, as I do most of X-Men continuity.  Take this for example.

Yeah.  Mystique was around in the 1920s.  Sure.  Why not.  Let’s call it magic.  Until X-Men First Class came out, I knew Mystique as the founder of the New Brotherhood of Evil from “Days of Future Past” by Chris Claremont and John Byrne.  I knew nothing else about her, except that she may be related to Nightcrawler.  I also knew that she threw in with Rom to fight the Dire Wraiths upon discovering the ugliest Dire Wraith ever born the Hybrid intended to use all mutant women as breeding sex slaves, because he was essentially a Nazi.  Anyway, here’s how I define Mystique now.  Jennifer Lawrence.  That’s it.  That’s as far as I’m willing to go for Mystique.  So she visited the 1920s.  Okay.  TARDIS.

Soule doesn’t put that line into play to be pedantic.  It’s just there as a bit of color.  Just a little nothing for Jennifer Lawrence people like me and probably more meaningful to rabid X-Men fans.  Mostly, Soule builds on the character through the narration.  He actually dares to answer the question of what Wolverine is best at.  He adds depth to Bishop through a smart use of mutant power.  See, me am so dense at X-Men, I didn’t know what Bishop did other than shoot people.  Fantomex pairs off with Mystique because Lupin the Third and Fujiko and Diaobolik and Eva.  Gambit and Rouge get down in a hot tub, but sadly for the shippers, bathing suits are involved.

Once again, I can’t say that I’m an X-Men fan, but I can say that I’m a fan of resonant writing, and that’s what I’m reading.  The joy of the narrative and the dialogue which sounds like it came from a novel not bad X-Men comics.  Or even good ones.

Terry Moore’s Motor Girl kind of does the same thing when exploring the avenues of PTSD in Sam a soldier who did three tours in Iraq, wound up blown up and then tortured.  

Sam’s delusions culminate in seeing an anthropomorphized Gorilla named Mike.  Mike has his own personality, and Sam is aware that he’s not really there.  Mike’s tragic origin arose from clues from previous issues.  There’s an explanation why Sam sees this particular manifestation.

Motor Girl differs from Astonishing X-Men in obvious ways, but the depth of exploration is similar.  Soule invests that depth to characterization, Moore aims at the horrors of war, but from a welcoming perspective.  Because Moore is the solo talent behind Motor Girl, he can “short-cut” via illustrations of trauma as well as using expression to convey emotions.  Soule’s verbosity is in part due to his not wanting to lose the meaning of his story when accompanied by a below average to average artist.  Soule’s been lucky.  His partners have all been stellar.

Motor Girl opens with Mike’s fantasy.  It’s a weird thing for a delusion to have a fantasy, but if we accept that Mike is in some way a true personality either of Sam’s or perhaps a composition of her units’ various personae, you can accept the plausibility and the comedy.

Indeed, the dream is so masculine that it must be a reflection of an anecdote Sam heard from one of her fellow soldiers.  Although Mike’s appearance is odd, it’s not the most absurd thing happening in Motor Girl.  Unless this entire book is in Sam’s head, a possibility, then aliens are real and cute and mercenaries can experience changes of heart.  The theme that’s striking in Motor Girl is prisoner care.  How does the enemy treat a prisoner? In Sam’s case it wasn’t pretty.  Larry, the aforementioned mercenary discovered his humanity in alien custody, and Walden is just a little more “civilized” to the alien Bik who has never been a prisoner at all.