Pick of the Brown Bag
February 12, 2019
by
Ray Tate
Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag. I'm Ray Tate, and I review the best and worst comic books of the week. For this post, I look at Doctor Who, Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey, Hawkeye Free Fall, Immortal Hulk, Thor, Vampirella and Red Sonja and Wonder Woman. The tweets for those who haven't the time to delve deep into the critiques are already live. Check them out on Twitter: #PickoftheBrownBag
After being horribly burned by Batman: Damned, I never intended to buy another Black Label title again.
Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti return to the Harley Quinn Universe. They continue their outstanding comedy series under a Black Label aegis. 'Nuff said. You got me.
I knew Palmiotti's and Conner's newest Harley Quinn excursion would be good. Mainly because Conner's drawing it. So even if Palmiotti's story wasn't up to snuff, unlikely, the art would at the very least be stunning.
What I couldn't expect is how stunning DC shells out big bucks production values for their Black Label titles. Harley Quinn is no exception.
The book is unusually sized, with greater width and height, though not as metric as Damned. Because of the change in format, you can pick out more detail in Conner's art.
You get a greater breadth of her sense of space, visual narrative flow and an ability to convey the illusion of animation. The paper stock of the Black Label series furthermore picks up Paul Mounts colors and facilitates even more lushness.
One of the purposes of Black Label is to provide adult entertainment in comic book form. For some reason, Batman Damned translated that into a cacophony of crotch shots. Palmiotti and Conner on the other hand don't go much farther than they did in their original Harley Quinn series. Sure, there's swearing. It's a shade more over the top violent, but all of the explicitness exhibits a tastefulness woefully absent in Damned.
Conner and Palmiotti's story is a classic crime drama. Harley took out a loan from a firm of sharks to save her building. When she's late on the payments, Defeo takes it out in the hide of one of Harley's closest friends.
The trouble for Defeo is that Harley Quinn when stripped down is the epitome of the hardboiled protagonist with a past. She uses the experience of that past to seek revenge.
A Princess Bride riff to boot.
When Palmiotti and Conner add layers to Harley Quinn, then you get such things as the dream-enhanced memories with Poison Ivy and guest appearances by former Wonder Woman villain Egg Fu. Power Girl shows up for no reason at all other than Conner and Palmiotti really like Power Girl. The way in which Harley exacts her pounds of flesh are less Elmore Leonard and more Bugs Bunny, which is exactly right.
Three of the Birds of Prey show up in the book, and they exemplify Conner's and Palmiotti's ability to make me care about characters.
As anybody who has gleaned anything from this blog knows, I love the original Huntress Helena Wayne. Conner and Palmiotti give me a new Huntress to think about. A woman of color like the New 52 model, freaking dangerous like Helena, and she knows Harley Quinn either because of some adventure I didn't read or just because the writers felt like it. Hence the Harleyverse.
Cassandra Cain in the post-Crisis is a fake Batgirl. This one appears based on the film version and mute like the original. Again this is a case of where the strength of the art and writing overcomes my immediate instinct to disdain.
I praised Steve Orlando's inventory issues of Wonder Woman before, and if you haven't picked up that brief run, check out the trade paperback. The artist Aco rendered most of the illustration. So, it's a combination of a writer plugged into Wonder Woman and highly sophisticated psychedelic illustration.
Now, Steve Orlando and Bronze Age artist Jan Duursema take over Wonder Woman, bringing a new status quo that nevertheless respects traditional Wonder Woman history.
Thanks to John Byrne, Wonder Woman made Boston her home. In Orlando's new writing, Wonder Woman returns to Boston only to find a less than friendly welcome.
That's Nora Nunes, hopefully not a relative of Devin. the man who wants to birth Donald Trump's baby. Nora is Boston PD and sent to determine whether or not Wonder Woman is a catalyst threat to Bean Town.
It's a weird role for a police officer hearkening back to the old west. I'm not sure it's legal. You never hear of police officers or even sheriffs running people out of town anymore, but it's certainly interesting.
In any case, Nora watches Wonder Woman save the people of Boston from the weather inspired no doubt by climate change but erupting from supernatural sources.
Not to worry. The story isn't really about these weirdos. It's about Wonder Woman instilling hope and courage in all. Seriously. Orlando just gets Wonder Woman.
Along the way, we glimpse Etta Candy's new lease on life. Fitting for the long-time cast member. In the end, Wonder Woman's innate goodness wins out--spoiler ahoy, I guess--and she turns antagonist into friend. That's always been Wonder Woman's greatest strength. Her belief that anybody can become a better person.
This is a sore spot with me, but the lion's share of Wonder Woman is utterly enticing, attractive and entertaining.
This issue of Vampirella and Red Sonja is skippable. Babs Tarr's cover is the best thing about the book.
Jordie Bellaire seemed to establish the premise in the first story. V left Drakulon late in the 1960s. She established herself on earth for a year and become involved in a real-life mystery. There she found Sonja. Together they smashed a Russian military base. It's scientific head attempted to reverse engineer one of V's people.
Instead of however going on from there, he went backwards. First a Hyborean Age Sonja issue. Then a sixties Vampirella issue. Okay. Place holders I thought for the next big story.
Bellaire though now confounds expectations. For some reason, Bellaire feels the need to summarize the last two focus issues on the individual stars.
This goes on for eight pages. We learn that Red Sonja likes to watch V have sex.
A lot. Because the focus issue suggested that V wasn't engaging in a world record of fornication. She changed partners at the very least daily.
After this, Vampirella and Red Sonja reunite corporeally in some vaguely medieval village where a dragon threatens villagers..
I still have no idea why this whole thing is happening. It's like a short story with admittedly some mildly entertaining repartee wedging a summary and a setup for another time travel based issue followed by a clump of house ads. I mean. I've read worse. The aforementioned Batman Damned, but this issue of Vampirella and Red Sonja is for completists only.
If you want time travel done right, look no farther than Doctor Who. The television series and the comic book.
The Doctor took the TARDIS back in time with the hopes of hitting Woodstock. She found instead her past. Specifically, "Blink" where the Weeping Angels trapped she and Martha Jones in 1969 without the TARDIS. Um. The Doctor was a man back then.
This issue reveals what's been snatching people. Obviously, I'm not going to tell you what it is. Not even a hint, but it's just as surprising as the big reveal in the latest episode of the television series. You just won't see it coming. The Doctor Who comic book consistently lives up to the standard set by the television series.
What I can tell you is how Jody Houser makes Yaz the VIP companion in the tale.
I don't know how artist Roberta Ingranata landed this gig. She seemed to impress everybody when she substituted for Rachel Stott, the primo Doctor Who artist. Ingranata certainly impressed me, but she doesn't yet have a good handle on Mandip Gill who plays Yaz on the series.I don't know why that is. She illustrates everybody else with aplomb. Alternately, maybe Gill never gave permission to use her likeness in a comic book. It happens.
I can also say that the Doctor reunites with Martha Jones.
Incidentally, if you have a Jones for Freema Agyeman, she's on the NBC series New Amsterdam. The Doctor's free with information about the future because she knows when she leaves, Martha won't remember a thing. That's how time travel works in Doctor Who, and it makes sense.
Though, you cannot help but feel sorry for Martha. She's in love with the Doctor, you see. Her Doctor. At this point in time, they're trapped in 1969. She's bottled those feelings so the situation doesn't become worse. That must be infuriating. The Doctor of our respective present shows up. She also knows Martha was in love with her. Martha will likely feel the same emotions over the present time Doctor. Technically, they could act upon those feelings, but even if they did, that memory will be wiped out along with any memory of the future when history realigns. Martha cannot catch a break.
Neither can Beta-Ray Bill. Every time I see Beta-Ray in a comic book somebody's beating him senseless. I just wish he could score a major victory at some point. Just have him smite a minor Eternal. Give Beta-Ray Bill something.
At least the fight between Thor and Beta-Ray Bill has a purpose. Thor's working with Galactus to stop the Black Winter. Beta-Ray Bill just doesn't like Galactus. End of story.
This issue of Thor is definitely an art issue over the writing. Donny Cates provides some interesting insights on Thor's memory, which Doctor Who covered as well, but Thor is primarily Nic Klein energetically battering poor Beta-Ray Bill around through Thor. The colors by Matt Wilson enhance the seriousness of the battle.
Immortal Hulk delves into the heart and history of former Shadowbase employee Dr. McGowan.
This trip down memory lane isn't without purpose, and its significance becomes apparent when the Big Guy battles the hypnotizing alien Xemnu.
The reality of the situation is that way back in the sixties, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced Xemnu as the Hulk in Journey to Mystery.
He predated the more familiar Hulk by two years. It's likely though that Lee and Kirby just liked the name and stuck it on another "monster."
Anyhow, things go from bad to worse, and the full range of Xemnu's power reverberates at the end. It's the only moment in Immortal Hulk where you feel the Hulk is vulnerable and can be beaten.
In Hawkeye Freefall Matt Rosenberg reestablished Hawkeye. He gave readers a glimpse of the man, his skill and his self-deprecating wit. He also connected Hawkeye romantically with the Night Nurse, but more than that, Rosenberg introduced a puzzle. Hawkeye is one of the few heroes that take on new identities. One of them is the swordsman Ronin. Ronin took names at the expense of the Hood. Everybody and their aunt except Spider-Man thought Ronin was in fact Hawkeye until Hawkeye actually fought Ronin.
In this issue Rosenberg comes clean with the mystery of Ronin, but I'm not breathing a word. What I can see is that I don't think I've seen this technique before, and it may be the most original use of a plot device. Certainly, it's imaginative and makes sense.
I also cannot go into the absolute hilarity of Hawkeye's ploys to divert suspicion. He's tired of being accused. This leads to an outrageous scenario with the Night Nurse, and one of the funniest uses of self-censorship.
So what can I tell you about Hawkeye Freefall? Something I'd normally keep under my hat. The Black Widow guest-stars in a substantial cameo.
She figures it all out, and you don't want to miss artist Otto Schmidt's graceful rendition of Natasha Romanov. Another hero also uses his powers to dope out the secret of Ronin. This one sets off the cliffhanger. So, his identity I'll keep secret.
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