POBB January 30, 2019

Pick of the Brown Bag

January 30, 2019

by

Ray Tate

The Pick of the Brown Bag returns with all new reviews of Batgirl, Detective Comics, James Bond, the Lone Ranger, Scooby-Doo, The Shape of Elvira, Unstoppable Wasp and West Coast Avengers.  It’s actually a pretty short POBB this week, but if you haven’t the time, you still have the option of even teensier reviews on Twitter: #PickoftheBrownBag.

Greg Pak’s and Marc Laming’s crack at James Bond introduced John Lee.  Perhaps the descendent of the classic Bond villain from novel and movie.  

SIS or if you prefer MI-6 tasks Bond with the surveillance and termination of a courier.  John Lee interferes.  Some remarkable fights break out between Lee and Bond.  They also engage in an exciting speedboat chase.  

The Courier gets away and a villainous player steps onto the stage.  In addition, we learn that Lee knows something James Bond does not.  Killing the courier will set off a bomb in the McGuffin, a briefcase.

This issue of James Bond opens with M and his South Korean counterpart conducting diplomacy.  

South Korea is a western ally.  So, it’s certainly plausible that headway can be made.  Especially since Mr. Park confirms John Lee’s intelligence associated with the case.  While the parlay occurs James Bond follows his own agenda.

Bond hopes his stunt ferrets out Mr. Lee while he hunts down the courier and the case to what appears to be a legitimate military base situated in Australia.

If it were simply a mercenary installation, the guard would have greeted James with a hail of bullets or at the very least, gun raised.  Infiltrating the base, Bond discovers two surprises.

Naturally, Lee’s presence and Bond’s stubbornness institute another duel and another draw.  With Lee in the wind, Bond resumes his primary mission.  

Incidentally, while Bond engages Lee and the unfriendly agency behind the courier and the case, Moneypenny serves as Bond’s handler.  Her voice reverberates continuously through his ears.  She adds reason and contrast.  Most of all Moneypenny builds on the already impressive entertainment value of James Bond.

Once Bond infiltrates the site.  Things grow dicier.  The female villain introduced last issue demonstrates uncanny skill.  Park furthermore grants Luka the until now nameless courier a little dignity. 

The villain's organization ORU is a fabrication, but Pak grants his fictional terror cell weight by connecting them to the 2004 train bombings in Madrid.  It’s an excellent idea especially given the uncertainty.  Hopefully, Pak will detail ORU's precise goals.   World domination? Power through world destabilization? Simple greed?

When the smoke clears, Bond and Lee ready themselves to resume their fight.  The geopolitical reality of their two firms precludes their grudge-match, and the chapter finishes with strong imagery and a potent cliffhanger.

Greedy ranchers began to barbwire territory claimed after stepping over the bodies of the rightful property holders.  At first the Lone Ranger sought a lawful means to end this bloodshed.  Alas, the savage ways of the Texan robber barons thwarted his efforts.  So, he begged Tonto to rejoin his pursuit of justice.  Together, they became wilier, and last issue the duo arranged for their enemies to diminish their own ranks.

Clearly the Lone Ranger and Tonto far outmatch the cadre of ranchers taking part in this naked land grab.  So, the leader of the pack contacts an outlier to end the Ranger’s and Tonto’s threat.

Connor isn’t like any of your ordinary hired-hands.  He’s a predator of extraordinary caliber.  A man changed by his experiences at the true life prison Camp Douglas.  

There’s no real reason to include the history of Camp Douglas in The Lone Ranger, but writer Mark Russell’s depiction is one-sided.  Readers should check out the before and after picture of history.

The battle between Tonto and Connor is a pivotal moment in this chapter of The Lone Ranger.  For once, Tonto seems to find a worthy opponent.  The Ranger appears outgunned. Have the horrors of the west caught up with our heroes? More than most, writer Mark Russell an Bob Q replicate the feeling of a serial that leaves you hanging until the next issue.

With its depiction of gang intimidation, this issue of Scooby-Doo Team-Up is one of the most mature.  

Oh, it’s still good for kids.  It just dips a little more into reality than most.  The plot also has nothing to do with cracked real-estate schemes.  

I liken the tone to Scooby and the Gang’s team-up with Black Lightning to their time-travel encounter with the Justice Society. 

The gang give a talk to Jefferson Pierce’s students about their exploits and stumble onto a ghostly challenge between old time gangsters and Tobias Whale’s The 100.

When Tobias does show up, the superb artist Dario Brizuella departs from the Bronze Age model and pulls more from Black Lightning actor Marvin Jones III.

In addition to a Tobias Whale/Black Lightning battle and a superb rationale behind the hauntings, Sholly Fisch also includes Black Lightning’s mentor Peter Gambi in the adventure.

Gambi's presence gives Brizuella the opportunity to have some fun with the fashions of the nineteen seventies.  This is less frivolous than you might think.  Fisch's plot twist actually anticipates a naturally evolving development that would have hampered the done-in-one nature of Scooby-Doo Team-Up.  That story element furthermore is one of the things that make this issue thematically different.

Detective Comics presents a terrific trap from which Batman and his escapologist teacher Thaddeus Brown, the original Mister Miracle must extricate themselves.  

Peter Tomasi demonstrates that Tom King isn’t the only Batman writer with an extensive memory of Batman history.  He employs one of Batman’s utile costume accessories from the Bronze Age to facilitate his and Brown’s freedom.

The culprit behind this and prior attacks on Batman’s past remains anybody’s guess.  The thing from last issue returns, and I still have no idea why its significant.  It’s certainly not intelligent enough to prepare these devices, and I think it mainly exists to give something Batman to punch.

In her first story, Mairghread Scott acknowledged the damage done to Babs’ physicality and mentality after the Joker crippled her.  This tale reads as if Batgirl never experienced a particularly nasty interruption in her adventures.  She sounds like herself.  She behaves like herself.  She fights crime like herself.  

With Paul Pelletier on hand, Batgirl becomes a powerhouse of martial prowess and an exemplar of female anatomy in violent motion.  

Pelletier enjoyed embellishing Batgirl in the past. He demonstrated artistic insight into her character.  The latest costume change as a result is practically unnoticeable.  You would simply know her by sight even if you never read a Batgirl story before.

Scott’s and Pelletier's latest Batgirl shares some similarities to “Batgirl’s Last Case” from the Bronze Age.  In that story, Babs became a Congresswoman.  Here she volunteers for another woman running for Congress.  

By the time “Batgirl’s Last Case” unfolded, Jason Bard had already become a semi-regular cast member in the Batgirl Bronze Age era.  Bard is a fixture in Scott’s story.  

Scott makes Jason Bard more interesting by using his ne’er do-well history from Batman Eternal to give him a scuzzy edge.  He believes that Gotham City PD is corrupt.  That's why he's working for a candidate promising to clean up the department.  Instead of being Philip Marlowe, Bard is the head of a security firm.  He’s also willing to skirt the law to serve the needs of his client.  In an improvement of his character, Scott eliminates Bard's pathological hatred for Batman and the Batman Family.  

Scott also adds depth to her politically-themed mystery through the addition of a rival volunteer who hates Babs Gordon out of principle.

Izzy however is mere flourish when compared to the surprising complexity behind the detective story.  These types of puzzles usually go one of two ways.  Either the rival hires a spoilsport to cause his opponent trouble, or the target is behind the crime in a bid to paint herself the victim in order to gain publicity, sympathy and votes.  Batgirl falls to none of these tropes.

When wearing a low-cut black dress that appears to be more like a shroud and a beehive black wig, Cassandra Peterson needs no introduction.  She’s the voluptuous Elvira, horror hostess.

Elvira cracked wise on television stations and even streaming platforms.  She enlivened usually bad movies just before the commercial breaks.  

Sometimes Elvira’s risqué.  Other times, she reminds people that her looks aren’t just for show and she’s one of the monsters.  Most of the time, she’s a mistress of camp comedy.

As you can see, artist Fran Strukan brings the nuances of Cassandra Peterson’s performance to the comic book reflection of Elvira.  He draws upon these visual facets for a story that places Elvira in demand.

Elvira goes to meet her director, but instead finds a cast of strange characters in an edifice that houses mazes and perhaps monsters.

No.  No monsters.  Perhaps Just the amusing talent the director collects.  Elvira’s interaction with the cast sends up the cult movie industry with insider jokes and smart humor.  Perhaps writer David Avallone has experience in such matters.

Unstoppable Wasp turns into a serious depiction of bipolar disorder which Nadia van Dyne nee Pym inherited from her father.

Defeat served as the trigger.  Nadia escaped from the Red Room to gain a better life in her father’s country.  Nadia also wanted to prove that women were underserved, and that intelligence arises in all genders.

To work on the latter, Nadia collected girl geniuses.  Along the way, she picked up a step-mother, Janet van Dyne, who adopted her, freed her friend Ying from her former masters and reinvigorated Bobbi Morse’s love for science.

Were you aware of Mockingbird's connection to the super-soldier program? No? It's actually not a retro-plant.  Attempting to replicate the super-soldier formula is part of Bobbi's origin story, from the magazine Marvel Super-Action.   It's mention shouldn't be taken lightly either.  Jeremy Whitley  restores things forgotten or fudged.

The attack on G.I.R.L. ostensibly instigated by AIM was in fact the brain-child of a group of female villains.  So, it wasn't the male of the species that undermined Nadia and her team, but a group of equally prepared femme fatales, one of whom was a former hero from The Avengers Academy.  AIM are still "adorable ineffectual bee-keepers."

Because Nadia never failed quite so badly before, she attempts to fix everything.  That ain't healthy, and she becomes progressively worse as the book draws to a conclusion.  

Whitley is careful however to differentiate the way the condition manifests in Nadia and her father.  Indeed, Hank Pym's often violent mood swings were more of a plot development than a faithful depiction of a real-life mental disorder.  Whitley demonstrates that you can treat people afflicted with a mental issue with respect while still incorporating the problem in a strong superhero story with a feminist tilt.

After an attack by MODOK, the West Coast Avengers found themselves fighting Madame Masque and the New Masters of Evil.  These battles led to their capture in a bread and circuses affair.  

Most of them.  Kate Bishop remains at large, and two new spins kept her that way.  First, she discovered that her supposedly dead mother is working undercover with the Master of Evil.  On the other hand, mom could be genuinely an employee who simply doesn’t want her daughter to die or face injury.  The other surprise is on the cover.

I know nothing about Marvel Boy other than what I gleaned from this issue of West Coast Avengers.  He seems quite competent with a poor understanding of human social interactions.

With Kate free and Marvel Boy providing enormous distraction, the West Coast Avengers soon extricate themselves from the Masters of Evil's torture chamber.

Most of the issue is art above writing, which isn't a bad thing, especially in the fourth act which should be and is action-packed.  Satana takes the spotlight with her hellfire creations combatting the Avengers.

Kelly Thompson's writing comes to the fore in the relationship between America and Ramone.  She also delights giving Kate what appears to be the worst day of her life and Gwenpool's best.