POBB May 1, 2019

Pick of the Brown Bag

May 1, 2019

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag.  Consider for your amusement these timely reviews of Batman, Ghost-Spider, Marvel Team-Up, Red Sonja and The Six Million Dollar Man. In addition I'll examine new books Hashtag Danger and Queen of Bad Dreams.  Should you not have time for the total POBB experience you can look me up on Twitter: #PickoftheBrownBag.

Queen of Bad Dreams from Vault Comics turns out to be better than I hoped.  The concept of dream police existed since the early nineteen-hundreds where Winsor McCay introduced Little Nemo, a tyke that travels to Slumberland for vivid adventures.  A bit closer to our subject is the 1984 film Dreamscape in which a psychic played by Dennis Quaid must save the President by entering his dreams.  Queen of Bad Dreams writer Danny Lore doesn’t just regurgitate the concept.

Daher Wei is a an Interceptor Judge.  She and other I.J.s confront dreams that have “fallen out” of the dreamer’s psyche into the real world.  What’s fascinating about Lore’s story is its attention to legality.

I love the idea that a Judge can decide to give a dream citizenship in the real world.  That’s so kind and fair.  The reworking has the legs to carry Queen of Dreams for decades.  Lore adds a number of elements that oils the gears of his machine.  The name choices, the diversity of the cast and hard-boiled narrative feed into the quality of the book.

Artists Jordi Perez and Dearblha Kelly complete a perfect fusion of creative talent.  Perez opens the story with Daher’s well-staged fight against a nightmare.  He's however not a one trick.  Perez demonstrates a skill for animation.

As well as expression.

The woman with the pink hair is Ava, the figment in question.  The mystery lies in why she suddenly became disenchanted with her dreamer Emerson Chase, a connected political wannabe and how she escaped his dream.

With this issue, the Knightmares end.  Batman proceeds to beat up every Arkham Inmate standing in his way.

Seriously.  That’s all this issue is.  There’s a certain visceral pleasure in Batman running a gauntlet and the fact that not a single one of his enemies can stand against him more than five seconds.  He’s Batman after all, and that’s I suppose Tom King’s point.  

In order to truly succeed against Batman, each of these rogues must be in charge of a masterplan.  Physically they’re no match for Batman which is why they can only slow him down with henchmen and catch him surprise.  The problem is that Batman faces each of his enemies, and they face him.  

In Ghost Spider the day in the life of Spider-Gwen goes awry.  It starts out well enough with Gwen apologizing to date Harry Osborn.

Harry is a stand-up guy in this alternate universe.  In fact, he’s ex-SHIELD.  Most importantly.  He’s sane.

Gwen harbors another reason for hanging out with Harry.  She needs the services of her suit-maker Dr. Elsa Brock.

Gwen does not wear a parasitic alien pair of pants.  Her suit is an intermeshed group-mind of lab-created arachnids.  However, terrestrial.  Brock appears to have high-tailed it.

Gwen's universe is so cool that it has its own version of Veronica Mars.

With that avenue closed, Spider-Gwen gets back to the Mary Janes.  

The awesome Mary Janes are a rock and roll girl band comprised of names familiar to readers of the Marvel Universe proper.  

Mary Jane Watson heads the group.  Gwen is the drummer extraordinaire.  Gwen’s been in trouble with MJ since the day she received the radioactive spider-bite.  Perhaps earlier.

Like Spider-Man, Gwen vents her frustrations on the criminal element.

The smackdown is a little too harsh for the burglars.  And in hindsight for Gwen.

The Big Bad, another familiar name to Spider-Man readers, becomes a de facto Killer Moth.  Though Killer Moth became Batgirl’s arch-enemy, he is actually a 1950s character meant to be a criminal Batman.  If a score went wrong, criminals summoned the Moth.  For a price, he became the solution to the problem.

All things lead to the Mary Janes’ return which goes smashing until…

This all seems to be a bid to kill Gwen Stacy, whose secret identity due to jail time is on public record.

The writing by Seanan McGuire Is notable.  McGuire recreates the feeling Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez established in early issues of Spider-Gwen.  At the same time, McGuire incrementally advances the episodic plot to a big story.  

Artist Takeshi Miyazawa has a clean and open style that benefits the always moving narrative.  Miyazawa’s overall good artwork is easy to overlook when reading Ghost-Spider.  

Often he illustrates characters in almost ordinary situations that require no exaggerated gestures or body language, nor super-hero styled action.  

It’s in these moments you can appreciate a superb sense of space and character propinquity as well as timing, often comic as the cast interacts.

In the new Marvel Team-Up Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man during their pursuit of classic Spider-Man foe the Jackal switched minds.

Fortunately the situation doesn’t seem permanent.

Although it is sporadic.  With expressive artist Joey Vasquez, Eve Ewing produces an amusing take on Freaky Friday.

The switched superhero gags offer genuine comedy.  Subtle wit involving adapting to new bodies provide laughs.  

Ewing accompanies these with some hilarity drawn from the cluelessness of those around Peter Parker and Kamala Khan.

The only complaint one can lodge, though for me its not important, is the lack of actual super-hero action. 

Another comedy though darker in mood, flourishes in Red Sonja.  Writer Mark Russell introduced the wannabe emperor of the world Dragan the Magnificent.

He’s more Rufus T. Firefly than your average evil warlord.  Russell is known for infusing comedy to traditionally serious subjects, and visa versa.  Dragan’s latest move concerns chariots.

Hyrkania unanimously nominated Red Sonja as Queen.  In this run, Russell establishes that famed warrior Domo trained Sonja, but in truth, the idea was to exalt Sonja to Queen and run like the dickens.  Instead, Sonja chose to fight.

Sonja leads her rag-tag population of thieves and scavengers in a war of guile versus superior forces and strength. Guile appears to be winning.

One of the more interesting things about the story is Russell’s and artist Bob Q’s avoidance of Red Sonja’s traditional pulchritude.

Sonja is more bedraggled in this story than beauteous.  She stands out amidst her army because of the red hair and the relative shine of her armor, but there seems to be a concentrated effort to downplay Sonja’s sensuality as well as her fire.

It works in this story because Sonja and the Hyrkanians are supposed to be downtrodden criminals and not the much more polished army of the Zamorans.  Still those expecting a lusty, flinty She-Devil ala’ Frank Thorne may be disappointed.

Christopher Hastings’ The Six Million Dollar Man is based on the television series with a few adjustments.  Steve Austin is nearly all bionic.

In the television series bionics replaced his legs, right arm and left eye.  The eye gave him telescopic vision.  In Hastings' story, his eye becomes an offensive weapon.

Previously Steve met his match with katanas capable of cutting through his cyborg parts as if they were butter.  Last issue, he stitched himself together somehow.  This issue, he gains power through lightning.  Hardly a spoiler.  It’s on the cover.  The lightning though empowering Steve produces some unexpected side-effects which help and hurt Steve equally.

Though Hastings departs from the canon of the television series, he nevertheless draws from Lee Majors and makes his Steve Austin such a laid-back, likable fellow that it’s hard not to feel sorry for him when things go awry.  

I have no sympathy for Hashtag: Danger.  Tom Peyer starts out strong with a diversified Challengers of the Unknown updated for the Tweeters out there.  It’s furthermore cool that his strongman is actually a strong woman.

Unusually, Peyer chooses to make his book with the inviting, cartoony Chris Giarrusso art mature in nature.  The characters swear up a storm.  That however didn’t bother me as much as the mission.  

The team has no right to invade the Yeti’s territory, nor “beat the shit” out of it.  It also has no right to commit the crime later in the book.

If the Yeti were a monster that menaces humans.  In other words, invade human territory to maim and kill wantonly, by all means, “beat the shit” out of it.  On the other hand if its just a creature as it appears to be.  Then, it has the right to peace.  Hashtag Danger has the right to study the beast but not capture or injure it.