POBB January 30, 2018

Pick of the Brown Bag

January 30, 2018

by

Ray Tate 

Brace yourself for a massive POBB.  This week I review All-New Wolverine, The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows and The Apocalypse Girl.  I’m not absolutely sure that I’ll get to the tweets of this extraordinary yield of comic books, but if so, you can find them via #PickoftheBrownBag on Twitter.

Writer El Torres would like you to think that Apocalypse Girl is about a pimple and the title girl’s period, but these normal hum-drums are incidental to an otherwise fascinating post-apocalyptic mashup of ideas.  For example, in 28 Days Later, a woman needs to not only worry about zombie attacks, but also about being rescued by Christopher Eccleston’s Henry West.

This guy thinks its a great idea to rape women in order to Adam and Eve the decimated planet.  Every save is an act of fundamental betrayal.  El Torres addresses Henry West in The Apocalypse Girl.

Our fearless leader Mac starts out with a mad look in his eyes, but as the scene progresses, we discover his concern for Metis, the Apocalypse Girl, is borne out of humanity not commodity.  To emphasize the point, El Torres simultaneously uses him as a representative of the LGBT community.  In other words, Mac’s ethics are above board.  He has nothing personal or unsavory riding on Metis’ safety.  He just thinks its a good idea.

We get a glimpse of angel technology.  Thus, El Torres combines several conspiracy theories into one.  Angels as aliens.  Angels as warriors of the End Times.  Aliens in the End Times.  However, the angels cannot be considered the perfect, celestial beings of religious scripture.  Bigendered, they argue and bicker with each other.  Furthermore, the chance of losing the war against the devils persists. 

El Torres excels when characterizing the devils.  Rambo Borrallo impresses when visualizing them as crosses between Hieronymus Bosch and Maurice Sendak.  The devils entertain for the majority of scenes.  Their double speak thought balloons and strange powers uniquely amuse as well as unsettle.

As weird as the apocalypse appears to be in El Torres' destroyed world, there’s still room to question what the Apocalypse Girl sees.  Her mother is in fact a mummy.

Metis took refuge in a museum.  She hears the voice of her mother in the form of the mummy.  Given the war between Angels and Devils and giant monsters destroying civilization, a mummy isn’t too hard to swallow, yet only Metis hears her.  So, this could just be a delusion created from loneliness.  The voice disappears when the gang reunites to fight the invading devils.

This bloody act and the nudity of the angels indicate that while the heart of Apocalypse Girl is an all-ages idea of overcoming the odds with the embrace of unity it’s in fact an excellent mature drama laid out in comic book form.

Jody Houser picks up Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows with the interruption of Parker Family Fun Day.  The Lizard interfered in the Parkers’ trip to Coney Island, but last issue, he made this startling request.

Inspired by 20th Century Fox’s The Alligator People, Stan Lee’s and Steve Ditko’s Lizard originally was the well-meaning Dr. Curt Connors.  

Connors’ attempted to heal the world’s amputees with the regenerative powers of reptiles.  This isn’t at all far-fetched.  Reptiles and mammals share a common ancestor.  Scientists in the real world progressively sought to isolate the genes associated with reptile regeneration.  They furthermore still hope to replicate the feat in humans.  

Over the years, Curt struggled with his dual nature.  The nihilistic modern age lobotomized Curt Connors in favor of his scaly alter-ego.  While Jody Hauser doesn’t reverse the process, she does grant the enterprise hope, familiar to any Bronze Age fan.

The meeting of the minds catalyzes a number of paths in Renew Your Vows.  The most obvious is a classic right vs wrong scenario perpetuated by a lunatic, or is he?

Houser takes a number of twists from the tried and true method, leading up to a killer cliffhanger.  But that’s only the physical attribute of the big reveal.  The less tangible qualities of the scene demonstrates Spider-Man’s experience and his willingness to impart that knowledge to his daughter.

Thus, creating a splendid moment of self-worth realization, also beautifully rendered by artist Nick Roche.  You may go into Renew Your Vows thinking that it’s a bit of harmless fluff, where Mary Jane has spider powers and she and Peter have a daughter, but when you come out you’ll find yourself most satisfied by a superb speech from Spider-Man, nuanced interactions and ethical quality.

The current story arc in All-New Wolverine started out with a group of crackpots called Orphans of X deciding to kill the X-Men.  Their first move, declaw the group by eliminating the Wolverine Family.

Tall order, but made a little easier thanks to the original Wolverine seeking out a Japanese sword master to anneal a blade capable of ending his son Daken.

Back in the day, nobody liked Daken, and why should they? He was a stupid, emphasis on stupid, Wolverine clone, that actually wasn’t, with two claws instead of three.

The designers of the character appeared to be saying he’s almost but not quite Wolverine.  Oh, and he constantly joins up with the villains.

That changed in All-New Wolverine.  In writer Tom Taylor’s view, Daken is essentially a misanthrope who received a taste of what it’s like to be a hero thanks to the events on Roosevelt island.

Taylor draws in the threads he’s been weaving since he first began the book.  He granted Laura a Robin in the form of her diminutive clone Gabby here now known as Honey Badger.  Gabby’s the voice of reason and the moral compass.  She’s also the one that convinced Laura to trade in her tights for practical battle gear.  It likely inspired her idea to defend her family.  

Taylor challenges Sabertooth’s statement, and he even convinces me somewhat.  I first encountered Sabertooth in Iron Fist.  He was essentially what Jaws was in James Bond and Dark Vader was in the original Star Wars, a henchman.  As with any X-Men character, his history became much more complicated.  Chris Claremont intended for Sabertooth to be Wolverine’s father.  That origin fell by the wayside, and instead Sabertooth became another product of Weapon X.  The Wolverines are victims.  That’s key to evolving a satisfying ending that doesn’t just rely on slice and dice but empathy and understanding.