The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 288: Weirdworld #5, December 2015

I finally got around to picking up the last issue of this Secret Wars crossover. There's an incredible splash page in the center of this book of Crystal Warriors and Magma Men, Eyemazons and Ogres, Man-Things and nuclear-bomb carrying butterflies which is unfortunately too big to fit on my scanner, so you'll have to take my word for it. But the best part, the most wonderful part, of this comic is the final page that proclaims we're getting a new series starting this very month. Colour me excited. I'm hoping it's the same creative team, but even if it's not, the setting has hooked me, and I'm thoroughly intrigued to see how this odd little dimension will fit into the post-Secret Wars Marvel U.

Fair warning, there's a bit of a spoiler for Secret Wars in this issue, but I think we're all going to just have to deal with that since the series is trending a bit longer than I think was intended. And we always knew that a reconstituted Earth was somewhere on the horizon. The fun part is seeing how we get there.

Right, so that's another of my forays into the Secret Wars completed. Just gotta get that last issue of Squadron Sinister, and hope that poor Doctor Zero makes a recovery.

I'm not holding my breath. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 250: E is for Extinction #4, November 2015

As I started reading this issue, I wondered why Doom would ever let something like a Phoenix Egg sit around unattended considering the sort of power such things contain. Then I remembered that thing with Cyclops in Secret Wars. So, anyway, the Phoenix Egg hatches and inside is a Cassandra Nova-possessed Jean Grey, manifesting all the powers and fashion sense of Dark Phoenix.

Which, honestly, is a pretty amazing way for that showdown between Professor X (now possessing the body of Quentin Quire) and, as the title of the issue suggests, "Supernova." Though there's a divergence there, the battle between the two seems to have been fated, regardless of the version of the universe they exist in.

I've been thinking about this idea of "Secret Wars," and how Hickman is deploying it. It obviously hearkens back to the original, and the idea of the winner getting all they want, their hearts' desires. You know who gets that in this version of the story? Doom. He's got Susan, he's got Valeria and Franklin, he's got a people who fear and worship him, and a world that, aside from a few inter-zone skirmishes, the "Secret Wars," an ordered world.
But the Wars themselves, the mini-series, much as they're all nicely skewed toward telling us a satisfying story, are also providing a subtext to Doom's thinking that his world is ordered. Each of these minor skirmishes demonstrates the fundamental volatility of a collective like Battleworld. With so many versions of so many significantly-powered individuals who have vast amounts of experience with reality-shifting crises, how could Doom possibly keep things together?
Of course, in the actual series, we're seeing just how much he's not, as well as numerous other intrigues at the highest levels of Battleworld....I was going to say politics, but it's actually at the highest levels of existence in this particular reality. Doom fights a Secret War as well, and at the moment he's the only one aware of it.

But getting back to E. The wrap up is....odd. I got to the end of this series and I had a bit of a hard time telling if Burnham and Villalobos were offering an homage to Morrisonian storytelling, or taking the piss with it. Not that I'm suggesting that the two are necessarily mutually-exclusive, but things got so esoteric there at the end that I'm not sure where on that continuum the series sits. I think I'll consider it homage, with a knowing wink, and leave it at that.

It was really, really great to get a small glimpse back into that world, albeit slightly changed. A very cool era of the X-Men, and a very cool suggestion as to how it might have all turned out.

Not sure where we're going to go tomorrow. But it'll be somewhere. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 249: E is for Extinction #3, October 2015

Happy Halloween everyone!

I've only been following a couple of the "Secret Wars" tie-ins, notably the afore-blogged Weirdworld and Squadron Sinister, though I was really hoping for slightly more of the Shadows in that title. What these titles have in common, as do the series I sort of delved into (Inferno, Secret Wars: Battleworld, Battleworld Journal), is that they're very explicitly invested in the narrative universe within which they exist - they utilize the setting as a plot point, referencing the fact that there are different realms in Battleworld, having communication and conflict between those realms. Up until this point, E has only tangentially referred to this situation, with the occasional replacement of the word "God" for "Doom." In this issue, however, the Battleworld situation is made an intrinsic plot piece, as versions of Hank "Beast" McCoy from all over the planet converge on the realm of Mutopia (setting for this series) under the influence of an enhanced virus called "Sublime."

Now, it's been quite a while since I read New X-Men, and I do remember the character of Sublime in that series, a particularly grim portrayal of a human being in the Marvel U, but I don't recall him being a virus. Perhaps after I've finished my look at Waid's Flash (hey! Stop snickering. I'll get there!), I should do a read of Morrison's X-Men. I was thinking about doing his Superman, using Action, All-Star, and JLA....y'know, there's sometimes just too much to write.

This issue has been my least favourite so far, in that it seems to have been a tangent in order that the series be more fully inserted into the crossover, rather than anything fundamental to the plot of Magneto and the Phoenix Egg. Who stumbles out of that egg, or rather emerges majestically, will be fodder for tomorrow's post, but it's going to be interesting.

From a collecting standpoint, I've filed these comics in my Grant Morrison Collection. I'm impressed enough with the quality of the series that I think it deserves to be kept with its source material, a What If?, or even What Should?, and one that adds some depth and nuance to the original run. I'll admit that one thing I am excited for is to read New X-Men up to the point where the two diverge, and then see where things go in either direction. But I'm a literature geek that way.

See you tomorrow for the conclusion of E is for Extinction. I'll probably go out today and grab the last issue of Weirdworld, too, so that we can make a clean break from the "Secret Wars" crossovers. And then back to Alpha Flight, I think. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 248: E is for Extinction #2, September 2015

See, I would absolutely keep reading this take on the X-Men, for as long as Burnham and Villalobos wanted to do it. At the end of last issue, the elder X-Men rescue Xorn from a facility in which he is being used as a power source.

But....wait a minute (SPOILER AHEAD!!!!)
...
 ...
 ...
 ...
Isn't Xorn Magneto?

I know that at some point after Morrison left the title, a character called Xorn was introduced into the X-continuity. I have the suspicion that this was because so many people loved the character of Xorn, and when he was revealed to actually be the X-Men's greatest rival, it probably irked a lot of people. I know it irked me, because Xorn was awesome, but it was also perhaps one of the greatest deceptions ever in superhero comics, on par with Busiek's deployment of the Thunderbolts right up until the end of that first issue (So. Great.). But if that's the case, then who is the sun-headed Xorn who is facing off against the master of magnetism in this issue? Methinks something weird is going on.

Well, when all those Beasts show up, I guess that's obvious.

What's striking me really about this series is that it's trying very hard, and largely succeeding, in being a kind of weird, off-kilter superhero book, something that, as is well known, Morrison excels at. We can read the strangeness of the book, the visual aesthetic, everything, really, as a love letter not only to New X-Men, but also to Morrisonian superhero writing in general. But here's the thing: if you look back at New X-Men, it is pretty much the most mainstream thing Morrison has put out in superheroes. Even his JLA run, which was pretty mainstream, had weird story lines like "Rock of Ages" and "Crisis Times Five," stuff worthy of an Animal Man or Doom Patrol arc (okay, maybe not Doom Patrol. That shit was out there). The closest New X-Men comes to a Morrison story, in my humble opinion of course, was the silent "Psychic Rescue" issue. Everything else was actually pretty normal (for the X-Men) stuff.

So E is for Extinction is actually a newer, stranger take on a fairly mainstream comic written by Grant Morrison? I think we must be in for some high weirdness over the next couple of days. Join me, won't you?

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 247: E is for Extinction #1, August 2015

I know it's probably just me, but I think way too many of the "Secret Wars" mini-series were focussed on various iterations of the X-Men. I mean, how many more series does this team merit?

I admit, I bought this particular title because it picks up some of the threads of my absolute favourite run on the mutants, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely(ish)'s New X-Men. The extinction of the human race, a major plot point at the beginning of that early 2000s run, was seemingly dropped for more mainstream superhero concerns, and then the whole aesthetic was replaced with Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. So a chance to return to this era? Sign me up.

What I think distinguishes E is for Extinction from the other X-titles in the crossover is that it actually takes that ephemeral now of the Marvel U and projects into the future - it ostensibly takes place "X" years in the future, which we can read as 10, or as a variable amount, but enough that Emma Frost has wrinkles, and Cyclops is a bit overweight. How on Earth Magneto is still alive, I'm not sure, but he's taken on an Xavier-esque role, which, if "Age of Apocalypse" has taught us anything, can only seem to happen after the death of Professor X. What's that all about?

The Burnham/Villalobos team does a nice job of capturing the aesthetic of this X-period, both in the character designs and in the look of the book in general. I've been trying to figure out exactly where in the original run this series diverges from (if anyone can tell me, drop a line - I wish I had the time to go back and re-read New X-Men right now). Regardless, the What If...? structure of many of these crossovers gives us a glimpse of what might have been had the Marvel U continued from particular points in its history, a swan song of sorts, I'm assuming, before we see a more cohesive, and more linked to the MCU, Marvel Universe emerge after Secret Wars. Though there have been hints that these are all parts of parallel universes, Marvel has traditionally avoided that trope more strenuously than their Distinguished Competition - these are more glimpses of the past, What If worlds, rather than Elseworlds, I suppose.

I'm interested to see where this all goes. Every now and then someone reinvents the X-Men, and pushes at the boundaries of what they're capable of, and of their potential to be truly innovative and versatile story telling tools. But then they'll often go right back to being Claremont/Byrne era shells, lacking in substance and vision, and telling the same old stories all over again. It's nice to see a what might have been.

More X-shenanigans tomorrow! I've missed the mutants since we wrapped up the AoA. It'll be nice to hang out with them for a few more days.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 246: Hank Johnson, Agent of Hydra #1, October 2015

When I saw solicitations for this comic, and for Howard the Human, I knew that they were two of the "Secret Wars" titles I was going to have to get. Thank goodness they were both one-shots. I find myself inclining toward the more humorous aspects of the Marvel U these days (and the DCU, with the Bizarro series), and I think this is because we seem to be entering into an unreasonably gritty, early-90s-Image-esque moment in mainstream superhero comics. Titles like this, and like Squirrel Girl, offer a nice respite from such nonsense.

I love that Hank's life includes hanging out at Little League games between a Hydra-sponsored team and a S.H.I.E.L.D.-sponsored team, and that these characters treat their jobs like jobs, rather than as the religions we've often seen henchpersons treat their organizations as. Though the comic is obviously offered as a satire, it's not unreasonable to imagine that this is exactly how one might treat such a job in the Marvel U. Granted, Hank is lucky in that he avoids being shot to death by Nick Fury twice, a peril that not many of us suburbanites can claim of our work, but life in the Marvel U is a bit stranger than life in the "real" U, so he takes it all in stride.

I am not familiar with either writer or artist on this book, but I'd be happy to follow them along through a series (heck, a mini would be cool) of Hank's life - it's like the humorous flip-side to Grant Morrison's "Best Man Fall" from The Invisibles v.1. The only troubling aspect of an extended look at Hank's world is that, inevitably, as a Hydra soldier, he's not likely to come out of the series alive. Maybe it's best to just have this little slice, and keep him alive and kicking.

Yet more "Secret Wars" tie-ins tomorrow, revisiting my personal favourite moment of the X-Men. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 245: Weirdworld #4, November 2015

Had I known that the fifth issue of this series was the last one, I definitely would have bought it when I picked up issues 2 - 4.

I'm going to admit, right here, that Mike Del Mundo is rapidly becoming one of those few artists that I privilege over writers when it comes to buying comics. For a long time, it was all about the writers, and to a certain extent, still is. But then you come across someone like Del Mundo (or Cassaday, or Quitely) who demonstrates just how much the artist on a series can actually bring to the finished piece. Here's an interior splash page from this issue - I'll apologize for it not being quite the whole picture; my scanner does not have a large enough bed to accommodate two full comics pages.

Just FYI, that's sorceress Jennifer Kale, Queen of the Man-Things, surrounded by her mucky subjects. I was extremely excited to read this issue, as I'm a huge fan of the Man-Thing.

(And yes, we can read that euphemistically, if we want to. I'm still a huge fan.)

But just look at that page. It could have been sooooo much worse in the hands of a more traditional comics artist. Instead this picture not only oozes like the swamp creatures it depicts, but it is steamy and full of bugs and is a swamp in a very real, affective sense. It's all about the atmosphere, and Del Mundo manages to deliver it in vast and wonderful quantities.

Not that I want to take too much away from Jason Aaron's scripting. This is, as I've noted, my favourite of the Secret Wars spin-offs, and one I would gladly continue to follow. In November there's a Black Knight series coming out that's set in Weirdworld, so even if this story doesn't continue, the setting is still around. I'll give it a go.

Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait a bit for the conclusion of Arkon's story. Tomorrow we'll have a look at another of the Secret Wars spin-offs, but one with a decidedly different tone. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 244: Weirdworld #3, October 2015

This comic just keeps on delivering. Arkon and Warbow escape Le Fay's tower, and Arkon is presented with another map of Weirdworld to replace the lost one, though this map depicts features of the landscape that Arkon has never seen before. Does the world perhaps somehow conform to the subconscious of the individual? Perhaps we'll find out if we see another map.

Speaking of these maps, their make up is odd, to say the least. Here's Arkon's original map from issue #1:

And here is Warbow's map from issue #3:

Perhaps I am underestimating the difficulty in mapping a land like Weirdworld, but these maps really look like they were drawn by a child. Actually, they look like they were drawn by the same child - I'm confident enough in Del Mundo's artistic prowess (I mean, just look at this book) to be pretty sure that the similarity of the maps is purposeful. If that's the case, then there's something going on in this book (which I've alluded to before) that we're just not seeing yet. I am excited to find out what it is.

Arkon meets (and battles) another old school Marvel fantasy hero, Skull the Slayer, in this issue, and their short-lived duel outside the "Swingin Saloon," a bar suspended by ropes over a chasm, ends with something that, for me, is extremely exciting: Arkon finds himself dangling from vines in the "Forest of the Man-Things." Though that does sound like the name of a really terrible gay porn, for those of us who love a muck monster or two, the promise of the next issue is a great one. It's sitting right here, next to my desk, begging me to read it.

But it'll have to wait 'til tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 243: Weirdworld #2, September 2015

Of late, my preference in Marvel comics has skewed toward the outre. Now, I, of course, am still reading Jonathan Hickman's masterful deconstruction of the MU, but it's titles like Howard the Duck/Human, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Moon Knight, and, unsurprisingly perhaps, Weirdworld that are really floating my boat these days. They're not your typical superhero comics. In fact, in a lot of ways, each one, though set inside a superhero universe, completely troubles how we might think through the superhero. And with Weirdworld, we're perhaps even getting an incursion into the superhero universe of a full-on fantasy setting, in many ways similar to the realm of The Warlord in DC comics.

Add to this the fact that this issue stars characters from freaking Crystar, the Crystal Warrior, an obscure 80s toy line that Marvel concocted and published a very short-lived series of. I was blown away when Arkon is rescued from underwater ape imprisonment (yes he is) by Warbow, best friend of Prince Crystar. Weirdworld is a comic that, unlike many, lives up to the promise of it's name (when was the last time the Avengers avenged anything?).

Del Mundo's art continues to be amazing. Jason Aaron's writing is very good. I've probably read something he's done before, but I think this is the first time I've noticed that it was him I'm reading. He gives Arkon a very interesting voice, and I'm hoping that it's intentional, rather than a result of poor writing. Arkon sound like Conan the Barbarian if he'd grown up playing Nintendo. It's a weird mix, but every now and again he uses a colloquialism that I just can't really reconcile with someone who's the Barbarian King of Polemachus. Add to this the "Mother Board Mountain" that I mentioned yesterday, and I begin to wonder if this particular part of Battleworld doesn't exist inside a video game somehow. Whether it does or doesn't, however, it's hands down one of the best, and most innovative, titles Marvel's got going at the moment.

I've hit this point, as I do on a bi-yearly basis, where I'm reading far too many comics on a monthly basis, and I have to start whittling down the list. Weirdworld continues to stay near the top, along with the aforementioned Marvel titles. I've seen the post-Secret Wars previews, and I'm not really that excited about any of them (except perhaps New Avengers, since Squirrel Girl is on the team), but I know that these four, at least, will be around. Sometimes it's nice to have that ground level look at the MU, rather than the view from above that Avengers or Fantastic Four might afford. More Weirdworld tomorrow. What other strangeness will be revealed?

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 242: Weirdworld #1, August 2015

Okay. If my inability to focus on a single comic is a sign of anything, it's a sign that I need to switch things up a bit. So, for the next week and a bit, I'll be reading through some current comics that I'm reading, all mini-series and one-shots connected to Secret Wars. I'm going to start with Weirdworld, move on to Hank Johnson, Agent of Hydra for a little break, and then get into the four issues of E is For Extinction. After that, we'll see how the progression through the A section of the storage collection goes.

Onward.

I was quite excited for Weirdworld as one of the Battleworld books in the "Secret Wars" event. The four-page preview that was released just before it came out was beautiful and strange, very much unlike any of the other crossovers. There were no superheroes, that I could discern, and I'd never heard of Arkon, our focal character, before. The only other Weirdworld title I knew of was the "Warriors of the Shadowrealm" storyline from the Marvel Super Special magazine, and this particular Weirdworld seemed (and seems) to have little to do with that one. A few pages in, Arkon stares at the map of the land he's made, and right in the middle is something called the "Mother Board Mountain," and all of a sudden one is completely unsure of what's going on in this particular part of Battleworld.

This unsurety is a nice juxtaposition to basically every other one of the crossover titles that hearken back to some storied era of the Marvel Universe, be it one of the numerous X-crossovers, the original evil Squadron Supreme, even the Howard the Human one-shot. Weirdworld is completely different, completely its own beast aesthetically. What's really lovely about it is that I am almost assured that there will be no caped fisticuffs in this title, yet I have no idea what to expect. A comic that's a surprise is a rare thing to come across for one as jaded as myself. I'm glad to hear that the title will be continuing at least for a little while after the conclusion of Secret Wars. Obviously there's something interesting going on here, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to find out what it is.

Issue two on the morrow. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 145: Power Pack #18, January 1986 (Two Weeks From The Dollar Bin - Day 9)

I never really did get Power Pack. Much as, at the time this was being published, I was not that much older than some of the characters in the comic, I was much more taken with the older teens of The New Mutants. Power Pack seemed like a superhero comic for kids. Which might be exactly what it was, and that's not a bad thing. 15 year old me didn't think so.

This comic was actually on the ridiculous list I keep with me at all time, as it's a part of the crossovers for Secret Wars II. I've set myself the goal of getting all of the issues involved in that crossover, even though I know the whole thing has been published in a collected edition. Anyone who's tried to read one of those gigantic omnibuses, however, will know just how unwieldy such a thing can be when trying to read in bed.

That said, a lot of the crossover issues for the series (and, honestly, the series itself) were not that good, and I'm afraid this issue of Power Pack falls into that category. It could be because I have no external context for the story aside from its inclusion as a crossover, but very little actually seems to go on in this story aside from a fight with Kurse. Which, in and of itself, is not so bad, but I think I need a little more than 4 pre-teens beating up a Thor villain to satisfy my craving for superheroics.

Ah well. I guess they can't all be winners.

Live Post - Sunday Afternoon Comics - E is for Extinction #1

I just went out and spent $80 on comics. The pile I came back with doesn't really look like $80 worth of comics, but complaining about high prices and exchange rates will get me nowhere.

I've been looking forward to E is for Extinction since I found out it was coming out. Morrison's New X-Men was really the last time I enjoyed the merry mutants, so to see a series that extrapolates what might have been is such a treat. There's a nice lynch pin moment at the very beginning that sets up the whole series, and how it diverges from the Morrison saga. Wonder if we'll see Fantomex?

Stay tuned. Some more neat things coming up this afternoon.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 111: Klarion #2, January 2015

Did I say it last time? I think I did. Klarion is too weird to exist. This, sadly, should have been apparent to any who read it right from the beginning. It reads like an early-days Vertigo title, which I think is just a bit too experimental for New 52-era DC. Sigh.

What can I say about McCarthy's art. How about I show you instead?

And pretty much every page looks like this. At the end of the issue, while Klarion and Zell are climbing ropes, the panel borders twist and turn like the ropes themselves. This kind of page construction, in the hands of a lesser artist, could become very confusing very fast, but McCarthy's got a great sense of the flow of the story. I know I've just compared the series to early Vertigo, but that's in tone, not look. This is far prettier than any of the early Vertigo stuff. Perhaps this is the reason for the brevity of the series, though. The art is innovative, but still holds to the general aesthetic of the current DCU, while the story hearkens back to a publishing enterprise that the very existence of the New 52, in that it folded Vertigo versions of superheroes into the DCU, seems to discourage.

Klarion is weird. And not just content-wise, but context-wise. Like Dial H before it, it's just too strange to live in this new conservative DCU.

As a closing note today, I am still concerned that Klarion is falling into the same trap that the main characters from The Adventurers are: he's just not likeable. At least in Klarion's case he's a teenager, meaning at least some of his affectations are just that, affectations, designed to put off the "old people" who try to tell him what to do. But having read his wiki-history (I'm coining that term, BTW), he's been portrayed more as villain than as hero over the course of his quite long history. Not that, in a series of only 6 issues, we'll get to delve much into that, but it's worth keeping in mind. It's difficult to write a story about a villainous character, I would imagine. I'm struggling with this notion right now. How do you develop sympathy for the unsympathetic? I was going to bring up Dr. Doom from the Secret Wars series, but Doom's always had that sympathetic undercurrent, his accident, his loss of his mother, his love for Sue Storm. There's always been something about him, even though over-shadowed by his megalomania, that allowed a reader to put themselves in his place. I don't know that I can do that, yet, with Klarion. Give it a couple more days, I guess.

See you tomorrow.

Walking the Shadowline Epilogue: Secret War

(This post was supposed to go live 4 days ago. At that point, I had no idea where or when the Shadows were supposed to show up in Secret Wars. But a lovely response from a reader pointed me to the upcoming Squadron Sinister series. I've found a few preview images and an interview with Marc Guggenheim, who is writing the series. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Shadows in this series.)

Multiple knights of the order? Perhaps Devlin has effected some change.

Things do not look good for Doctor Zero. Hopefully this first appearance in almost 30 years won't be his last.

(Note: Things certainly weren't good for the Doctor. Hopefully what looks like a killing blow from Hyperion will merely be a very painful injury from which he has to recover. Nice to see the Shadows, though, if only for a moment.)

Walking the Shadowline part 3: Critical Mass

This post will not be opening with a Marvel Age comic!

It's interesting that, though the main series' were cancelled due to low sales, the Shadowline was granted a prestige-format 7-issue series to finish out the first big storyline that had been building through the first 8 issues. I don't know much about the production side of comics, but I would guess that this single large-format issue on a monthly basis was less expensive than bi-monthly single issues. However, given that each issue is basically 2 issues of the previous series', meaning the same amount of scripting and art, it could only have been on actual physical production costs that any money was saved. Regardless, I'm glad they managed to give us at least one epic (pun intended) storyline before the characters (well, most of them) descended into limbo.

What's more interesting, though, is that in this format, the Shadowline Saga really finds its footing. The story is far more coherent, in that shared universe manner, than the previous issues, and we're treated to short interludes between chapters that highlight some of the minor characters to whom we've been introduced over the past year and a half of stories. These interludes come to be fundamental to the overall cohesion of the shared universe. With something like the Marvel U, or the DCU, there are enough titles that one can get both the superheroic and the mundane in large portions, enough to sketch, or sculpt, a believable fictional world. With only three titles, the Shadowline often had the feeling of taking place only around the main protagonists. The interludes in Critical Mass remind us that not only do the actions of the main characters have ramifications, but also that the minor characters have relatively vibrant lives of their own. Something like this could certainly have been incorporated into the main titles, but to have them right there, sandwiched between the larger chapters, makes those events far more immediate and important, rather than simply seeming to be a back-up feature.

With regard to the style of the stories, not much changes from the independent series to this anthologized one. The world is a grim place, and it only grows grimmer as Henry Clerk returns from the lobotomization to which Dr. Zero subjected him, and decides to destroy the United States. But for, y'know, the purpose of forcing Darwinian survival traits on the population. What I am quite curious about is whether or not the way this series plays out is how things would have played out if a) the comics had remained discrete entities, and b) if the Shadowline had somehow been able to continue, whether through large-scale events like this one or through smaller monthly comics. The status quo at the series end is slightly, but only slightly, different. Zero is still Zero, though we see a more human side of him (a statement he'd almost certainly take as a great insult), Michael Devlin is far more comfortable with his role as the Knight, and Lenore and Victor are more comfortable with their public Powerline personas. Where would they all go from here? We'll never know, I guess.

One last thing really struck me about the final parts of this story. There is a scene on board a cargo plane where the main characters are all gathered for the first time. Lenore has some vague recollections of having met Zero in the Black Forest in Germany, and she stumbles upon him changing into his costume just before the climactic confrontation. They flirt, and that's that. Now, each story, since their beginnings, has been narrated in the caption boxes in the first person, so we get not only the interactions, but the internalities, of each character. This same scene is told three times, each time from a different focal point. And, surprisingly since Chichester and Clark scripted all of them, the dialogue is different depending on which focal character we're witnessing the scene through. And the art is different too. Not just in that it's different stylistically, but also in the composition of the scene. In one version a character is present, in another that same character is not. Think about this for a second. Does this mean that not only the captioned dialogue, but also the visual-linguistic elements of the panels is parsed through a particular focal character? Are we not only getting their point of view in their words, but also in what is represented visually? Like we're seeing a memory that is not quite perfect? I love this idea, which also kind of hints that the whole story is being told from some future point by each of the narrative voices in each of the series. It gives me, at the very least, another perspective from which to read the stories next time I go back.

That's about it for the Shadowline. A comment from reader Brad in part 2 of this series alerted me to the fact that the Shadows will be showing up in the Squadron Sinister series spinning out of Secret Wars this summer, so I'm pretty excited for that. The hope, of course, is that all kinds of people will want to know who those characters are, and what their stories are, and we'll see a reprint of all of the issues, and maybe a continuation of the Shadowline Saga. Until then, if you have friends who want to know who they are, and what they do, send them over.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 90: Moon Knight #15, July 2015

I know I said that every 30 days I'd do a special comic, but two things occur to me: first, I'm super-busy right now and completely lost track of what day I was on. Second, I don't have that many special comics to write about, so perhaps I'll save the next one for a big anniversary, like my 100th comic (in just 10 short days' time!). So instead today I present Moon Knight #15.

I was going to stop reading Moon Knight after Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey left the title (I'm getting a strange feeling of deja vu as I write this), but then I gave their successors a try. And it was soooo worth it. Brian Wood and Greg Smallwood continued the Ellis/Shalvey aesthetic perfectly, added some flourishes of their own, and left after 6 issues. Along comes Cullen Bunn (with both Ron Ackins and German Peralta), and the transition was once again smooth, and there's new and interesting developments in the series. For a while there I thought it was going to be a "monster of the week" sort of set up, with MK fighting something and then moving on to the next thing, but Bunn has added an interesting undercurrent that, if I'm honest, has been building since this beginning of this relaunch. Moon Knight might be the fist of Khonshu, but he doesn't always have to agree with Khonshu. And vice versa, for that matter.

My enjoyment of the title aside, I'm not quite sure how it's fitting into the "Secret Wars" event, unless this is Moon Knight in the amalgamated Manhattan that exists on Battleworld. Or it could be that the series will just ignore the crossover and get on with telling some great stories about a completely underused, and misunderstood, I think, character.

Long story short, the Moon Knight relaunch, along with The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, is one of two real surprises I've had from Marvel over the last year. Not big splashes like the introduction of the female Thor, just solid and thoroughly entertaining comics.

See you tomorrow.

Walking the Shadowline part 2: Into the Night

This installment begins with another issue of Marvel Age, though this time the larger-format annual version of the news magazine. The annuals of this publication are occasionally worth a look, as they'll often include exclusive comics content. Such is the case with MAA #4, in which we're presented with a recap story of sorts by Chichester, Clark, and Cowan. Whether or not the Shadowline series were suffering low sales, and thus deemed in need of a boost in a more public forum, or if it was just enthusiasm for the line that prompted this little comic is hard to say. And, to be honest, not much is added to the overall story by this little interjection. I can only imagine that it was intended to drum up interest in the three main titles.

I don't think it worked, unfortunately.

With issue #5, both Doctor Zero and Powerline underwent shifts in artist. DZ lost Denys Cowan, who was replaced variously with Brett Ewins, Dan Spiegle, and Gary Kwapisz, where as the Powerline team lost David Ross and gained Gray Morrow. The quality of art doesn't change, to be fair. But one of the troubles comics face, especially comics such as these that do not feature well-known characters, is the loss of readers through an inability to follow a story because of inconsistent art. 

 

Let me explain: though the costumes are quite iconic, in the pages of each issue, the main characters wear their costumes only seldom. Thus it's vital that there be consistency in their non-costumed appearances in order that one know who a given character is at a given time. Of course, context explains much, but not all, especially in a visual medium like comics. Add to this the characters that move from series to series who are also victim to this inconsistency, and the comics become a bit confusing. Even on this read through, easily my fourth or fifth since they were published, there were some characters that I couldn't immediately identify, though from the context it was clear that I was supposed to.

But, again, what of the actual stories. In this run (really a run-up to the solicited "Critical Mass" crossover), we see the various heroes taking on challenges inherent in the clash between humans and shadows. Michael Deviln takes his powered armour back to a village in Nicaragua in which he preached, and takes on guerillas while searching for his predecessor as Knight of St. George. The Powerline team takes on strange cases across the country, all the while trying to figure out how to take vengeance on the Ravenscore family for their brutal slaying of both Victor and Lenore's families. And Doctor Zero encounters a covert military group nicknamed "The Merchants," who manage to capture him and begin to analyze him before he escapes and makes known that The Merchants have joined Henry Clerk as enemies of "The Dragon." So the story is moving along, and has veered a bit from the thoroughly conjoined feel of the previous four issues. I think this was a wise move. With the bi-monthly publishing schedule, we'd basically been given 9 months of world-building with the first 4 issues of each series. Not to say that there weren't stories and plots interwoven through that world-building, but the establishment of the connectedness of the titles was obviously on the minds of the creators. The subsequent issues loosen that connection (but only a bit) and allow the characters, and by proxy the readers, to explore the world a little more, to build a sense of there being events taking place on this version of Earth (Earth 88194, according to the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe) that don't all revolve around the conflicts between the orders and families of Shadows to whom we've been introduced.

With issue #8 of each series, however, things change. The regular writers and artists disappear, and we have what can only be described as fill-in issues, but these are fill-ins with the words "Final Issue" plastered on the covers. The text within tells the tale: "Due to dropping sales, it has become necessary to cancel Epic's Shadowline titles."

The news, however, is not all bad. Instead of continuing as three separate series, the storylines within each series are to be picked up and published in a monthly single volume entitled Critical Mass. It is to this epic (see what I did there?) story we'll move in the next installment. I'll consider what works and what doesn't, and what the ramifications of this kind of concurrent publishing for a crossover story might be for the mainstream crossovers that flood the market nowadays. Critical Mass is not a crossover series in the way that something like Secret Invasion or the current Secret Wars, but is instead the individual series taking part in the crossover published under a single title. I'll get into it more next time.

Countdown on the Road to "Secret Wars"

 

I've dropped the ball on this one a bit, I admit, but the responsible part of me actually understood that getting my candidacy exams written had to take precedence over commentary on the road to the Marvel U event this summer.

We'll ignore that responsible part for a bit now.

The final part of my summary will be brief. What we have in the countdown section is a pretty well-laid out reading order, with one or two exceptions. Hickman and Marvel have been pretty good at making explicit the order one reads Avengers/New Avengers in, most obviously from publishing schedule, but there's always a glitch or two.

I'll give the brief list of the reading order I've followed, and then some of my thoughts about this part of the road.

Avengers v.5 #35

New Avengers v.3 #24

Avengers v.5 #36

Avengers v.5 #37

New Avengers v.3 #25

Avengers v.5 #38

New Avengers v.3 #26

New Avengers v.3 #27

Avengers v.5 #39

New Avengers v.3 #28

Avengers v.5 #40 (ostensibly the first inkling we have of what the countdown is heading toward - the banner at the top now reads "In 4 months...Time Runs Out! Secret Wars."

New Avengers v.3 #29

Avengers v.5 #41

New Avengers v.3 #30

Avengers v.5 #42

New Avengers v.3 #31

New Avengers v.3 #32

Avengers v.5 #43

New Avengers v.3 #33

Avengers v.5 #44

( I just had one of those moments where I typed the word "Avengers" so much that it started to look completely wrong."

And that's it. I have to imagine that Hickman will not be continuing on with the Avengers after Secret Wars, and I'd honestly be surprised if he continued on at Marvel, at least for a little while after the event. He's literally torn the whole damned thing down and it telling what I'm pretty sure is one of the most searching and interesting stories about these characters that we've ever seen.

I know, 2.5 issues in, it's really hard to say that. But now coming to an understanding of what's constituting the "Secret Wars," the levels of the factions involved, the fact that it's Doom, because of course it's Doom (Secret Wars might make an interesting contrast to Waid and Kitson's Empire at this point. Fodder for a later date.)

But what about the countdown to the event itself? Much like the build to his climactic Fantastic Four story, things start off a bit slowly in this run of issues. It's 8 months later, so we have to play catch up a bit. But once the lay of the land has been established, once the players have been outlined, things kick into a particularly high gear. I'm sure one day I'll go back and re-read all these again, when I've a bit more time, but the overwhelming sense I took away from the countdown was of futility, of a group of characters who have never faced something that they couldn't stop facing something that they cannot stop. There's a particularly beautiful moment just at the end of the last run (the "Detours) in New Avengers where the Illuminati basically just walk away and decide that they can't stop the end of the world, so they should accept it. Then the Cabal happens, of course, and things get bad.

I will admit that the thing that saddens me is the rift between Captain American and Iron Man. I have loved their relationship in the Avengers comics for a long time. They represent, for me, the two poles around which the team vacillates, and when that vacillation is harmonious, we see the pantheonic inflection on the Avengers that reflects that same sort of mythic state as the JLA. But when acrimonious, things fall apart quickly. I'll be interested to see how these characters are taken up in Secret Wars.

So that's done. I highly recommend, if you haven't read them, reading all of Hickman's run on the Avengers titles. Actually, all of his Marvel output has been stellar thus far. Secret Wars is two and a half issues in (you did get the Free Comic Book Day prologue, right?), and it's really, really good so far.

I guess I'll see you further on up the road. I'm sure the Secret Wars will give us all a lot to talk about.

Crosspost from Facebook

A little more coherent wrap-up of the comics I live-blogged earlier.

"To celebrate handing in my exam, I went out and bought some comics. Here's some things I think are pretty good:

ODY-C - retelling of Homer's epic set in space with an all-female cast. One of the most beautifully coloured comics I've ever seen, and written in Homeric verse. Supposedly. I don't know what Homeric verse is.

Intersect - I just wrote on my blog that when I read this comic, I feel like I'm taking part in some weird performance art. I thought I had a sort of general idea of what was going on, and then things got very weird, very fast.

Kaijumax - I actually don't know if I'm going to keep reading this one. I found it uncomfortable. It's set in a super-max prison for all those monsters from Japanese B-movies, and the art style is fairly cartoony, but it is played FUCKING HARDCORE LIKE OZ. And that's a bit disturbing.

Secret Wars - So, yeah, forget that Infinty Whatever movie stuff that's coming up in 2018/19 - Jonathan Hickman is telling the ultimate story of Marvel superheroes right now. I know that's a pretty hyperbolic thing to say, but it's really, really, really good.

The Surface - I'm convinced that writer Ales Kot is either having a very intense conversation with Grant Morrison, or he is Grant Morrison. This comic's use of the format is blowing my mind. As is Intersect, actually. Some very cool formal experimentation going on.

That's it. As you were."

Live Post - Saturday Afternoon Comics - Secret Wars #2

I hate it when reviews ready really hyperbolically, but I'm going to go ahead and say the Jonathan Hickman is telling the ultimate Marvel U story, something Crisis-esque.

Yeah, okay, maybe too much. But y'know what? It's really, really, really good.