Mighty Avengers #6

Well, some ignorant Teabagger arsonist is getting chased through the city by swarms of pigeons. Probably a lot better than he deserves. The White Tiger is wearing herself out patrolling almost all the time. Power Man has just learned that his powers are strongest after he’s studied history, of all things. Spectrum never should’ve had her hair straightened. Luke Cage and the Blue Marvel have a big argument. And glory be, ring the bells, this issue is illustrated by Valerio Schiti, not that hack Greg Land!

Verdict: Thumbs up. NO GREG LAND!

For the rest of the story — lots of great moments of character interaction, particularly between Adam Brashear and Jessica Jones, and between Adam and Luke. I also really, really dig the bit with Spectrum regretting her hair-care decisions — I get the impression that her new hairstyle was decided on strictly because Land was too lazy to change the hair he’d traced from his Halle Berry pix.

Lazarus #6

The Barret family are, in the jargon of the corporate-blessed future, Waste. They’re not the mega-wealthy Families who own the world, and they’re not the proles who are useful to the Families. They made a life in the wilds of Montana, but a flood has wiped out their home, and they have to choose between rebuilding and getting even further in debt to the Carlyles or hitting the road and risking starvation and bandits to try to enter the Carlyle’s service as serfs. Meanwhile, Forever Carlyle tracks a security breach, unaware that others may be plotting directly against her.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Characterization and artwork are still outstanding, and I love the weird plausibility of this future timeline — the one-percenters have everything, the 99%ers have nothing, and the world has legitimately gone to hell.

Today’s Cool Links:

• There are so many great superhero movies that could be getting made — if only Hollywood would get off its butt and start thinking seriously about stories and demographics. (Warner’s stubbornness on the Wonder Woman movie is looking more and more like a mental deficiency, and I can’t figure out why Marvel keeps sticking A-list actresses like Scarlett Johansson and Gwyneth Paltrow in supporting roles behind less impressive actors and less bankable stars.)
• This article on the recent evolution/creationism debate is entirely worth reading.
• George Zimmerman is one of the worst people in the country, and the fact that he keeps getting away with crimes, keeps getting paid real money, and keeps getting worshiped by the racist segment of the population should be embarrassing to the entire country.

I waited ’til pretty much the last minute to get this done, so let’s skip the usual overbearing intros and get right into… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from November 1989’s The Sensational She-Hulk #7 by John Byrne, Bob Wiacek, and Glynis Oliver. Shulkie and a bunch of new friends (spacefaring truckers, if you must know) have been captured by the diabolical Xemnu the Titan. Can the Glorious Green Giantess get the drop on the overgrown sack of hair?

That’ll do it for this week. Enjoy your weekend, guys and girls, and I’ll see you back here on Monday.

Ms. Marvel #1

Just doing one review today, but it’s for what I think is probably the most significant pro-diversity comic put out by either of the Big Two in at least five years. I mean, it’s a comic about a teenaged Muslim superheroine, by a big-name writer, and it got a lot of publicity and a very high-profile release. Marvel knew they had something special, and they pulled out the stops to make it happen.

Our lead character, if you haven’t heard already, is a girl named Kamala Khan, a Westernized Muslim high schooler living in Jersey City. She’s got a few friends, including one who’s a bit more strict about her beliefs, and a few non-friends, who mostly seem to think she’s to be pitied because she’s not white. Her parents are fairly strict — not about religion, but about the upbringing of their children — and her brother is trying to be the best, most religious person he can be.

Kamala is obsessed with superheroes and desperately wishes her parents would let her go to parties with other kids from school. They forbid her to go to parties where there are boys, so she sneaks out one night to go to a party on the waterfront. Most of the kids are just not very nice to her and try to get her to drink alcohol. She ends up bailing on the party to go back home — and blunders into a cloud of the Terrigen Mists, which had been released at the end of one of Marvel’s recent crossover events… I really can’t remember which one, because they all blend together these days.

Anyway, the Terrigen Mists are what give the Inhumans their powers. And for the last few thousand years, the Inhumans have been leaving their hidden city of Attilan to breed with normal humans. That means that a certain percentage of the population have an Inhuman heritage, and if they’re exposed to the Terrigen Mists, they can get powers, too. And it looks like Kamala has some Inhuman ancestry.

She has a near-religious vision of Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Iron Man, who inspire her to heroism after she confesses that she’s always wanted to be like Captain Marvel. And then she wakes up trapped inside a cocoon, trying to figure out how to escape — and what she discovers when she gets out is not exactly what she was expecting.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Loved it even more than I was expecting to. And I was expecting to like it a heck of a lot.

I was a little in doubt about Adrian Alphona’s artwork, which looked a little odd in some of the previews, but the full comic definitely won me over. His artwork is quirky and a little cartoonish, but he’s really good with facial expressions and body language, and I think he’s gonna help make this comic a lot of fun.

G. Willow Wilson is the writer, a Muslim convert, best known for writing the World Fantasy Award-winning novel “Alif the Unseen,” as well as the graphic novel “Cairo” and the series “Air.” She brings a ton of personality to all the characters here — not just Kamala, but her family and friends, and even the party-hardy knuckleheads out at the waterfront. There’s not a stereotype in the bunch — not bacon-desiring, fanfic-obsessed Kamala, not her wannabe-holy man brother, not her strict, blustering, hidebound, but still patient and canny parents, not her wants-to-be-more-traditional friend Nakia, not her wants-to-be-her-boyfriend Anglo pal Bruno. They’re all interesting and non-stereotypical, and I’m really looking forward to reading a lot more about all of them.

Not that you wouldn’t expect it from a Muslim writer who’s written books starring Muslim characters, but the grandest thing about this book is probably the lack of stereotypes. Every Muslim character is a little bit different — Kamala doesn’t wear a headscarf or any other traditional Muslim clothing, and she madly desires bacon, which she describes as “delicious, delicious infidel meat.” Nakia wears a scarf, but her parents think she’s just going through a phase. Kamala’s parents are fairly Westernized, but still conservative, and her brother Aamir spends his whole day praying, partly out of devotion, partly because he doesn’t want to get a job. They’re all real people, as different from each other as any group of Christians would be from each other. It’s a wonderful contrast when most forms of entertainment still portray Muslims as fairly cookie-cutter characters.

Lemme go ahead and sum this up — I loved the comic, and I think it’s something you should read, too. Go pick up the first issue and get on board from the beginning.

I don’t have a lot of time to write a review, so we’re going with something that we’ll be able to talk about pretty quickly.

Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe by Tim Leong

Infographics are great for folks who have trouble grasping complex data analysis — which really means they’re great for almost everyone. It’s really hard to look at a column of statistics and be able to make hide nor hair of them. A good infographic makes data more clear to the layman, and if designed well, they can actually make data fun.

Tim Leong is a very good designer, a very good number cruncher, and he really likes comic books. And so we get “Super Graphic,” a book full of infographics about comic books.

It’s really difficult to show you how good most of these infographics are, because the book is really stiff, and it’s hard to get it set down on the scanner. Still, I found this one online, so here ’tis:

(Click to embiggen)

Among the other infographics in the book are graphs analyzing manga, the heights and weights of various superheroes, the histories (and mergings) of many comic book publishers, the ingredients of pizzas preferred by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a comparison of superhero-themed roller coasters, the political leanings of comic book characters, the stats on Charlie Brown’s baseball team, the influence of comic books on hip hop, a flow chart on how the Punisher determines who he kills, and much, much, much more.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s an incredibly clever book, beautifully designed, and grand fun to read.

My primary quibble with this book is that I kinda wanted all of the graphics to include useful data, and some of them are just there for the sake of silliness or showing off Leong’s design chops. For example, “A Personal History of Saying ‘Good Grief’ ” is just a black zigzag on a yellow background — in other words, the pattern on Charlie Brown’s shirt. It’s cute, but that’s about all it is.

But again, that’s a quibble. I had a blast reading the book, pored over all the stats, gloried in the graphic design, and found plenty of things to laugh about and learn from. If you love comics — not just superheroes, but all kinds of comics — and you love the statistics and data and minutiae of hardcore comics continuity study, go pick it up.

Oh, hey, it’s Friday and that means we’re gonna get right into FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle definitely goes big time — from February 2011’s Avengers Academy #7 by Christos Gage, Mike McKone, Dave Meikis, and Scott Hanna, here’s Giant-Man vs. the Absorbing Man!

Man, look at Hank Pym — cleaning Crusher Creel’s clock and bonking him in the face with his own wrecking ball? Those Pym particles are somethin’ else!

Wow, I picked up a grand total of one comic book this week. On one hand, this is good, because I didn’t spend much money, and a single comic won’t do too much damage to my way-too-overstuffed comic boxes. On the other hand, it’s gonna be way hard to fill the blog next week. Nevertheless, let’s get things rolling.

Revival #17

Officer Dana Cypress has had a narrow run-in with a masked, disfigured man who set fire to the office of Professor Aaron Weimar — a man who Dana suspects of murdering her sister Em (prior to Em rising from the dead as one of the Revivers). So Dana knows that someone may be after Weimar — and she can’t let anything happen to him, because otherwise she may never unravel the mystery of Em’s death.

And Weimar knows someone is after him, too, and he’s terrified that the mysterious someone is going to kill his wife Nithiya. He leaves her a note, then takes off, unaware that his wife had placed a tracker on his car because she was afraid he was unfaithful. So when Dana makes it to their home, she’s able to track his car.

So while Weimar’s wife reads his note confessing his life’s ambitions, failures, and shames, Dana tries to reach him in time to save his life. Can she locate him and salvage her investigation into her sister’s death and resurrection?

Meanwhile, Em is tracking down reporter May Tao, who may know that Em has killed a few people. And she learns more about what kind of people the Check brothers were. Did they really deserve to die? Will May need to die to preserve Em’s secrets?

Verdict: Thumbs up. We get the great art and great writing we’ve come to expect from this series.

But the real winner in this issue is the close focus on Weimar, a character who’s mostly been in the background, despite how close he’s been to the mystery of Em’s death. It’s nice to learn more about who he is, what he’s come to fear, and how he regrets what he’s made of his life. And May Tao’s monologue on just how absolutely rotten the Check brothers were is also very interesting.

We also get more mysteries. Who is the masked arsonist, and what are his motives? Just how ominous is the prison full of slowly deranging Revivers? How can Dana continue her investigation? And what’s with all the teeth?

Atomic Robo and the Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur #5

It’s the grand conclusion of Atomic Robo’s latest storyarc! Dr. Dinosaur has built a gigantic time bomb — a bomb designed to wipe out time itself and roll history back to the age of the dinosaurs! But that’s not possible, is it? Everything Dr. Dinosaur does is stupid, right? But what if his mad science and crystals can finally do what seems impossible? Meanwhile, Tesladyne is being attacked by Majestic-12’s mercenaries — can Jenkins and Action Science save the day?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Oh, as if I would ever give this series anything but a thumbs up! But it’s a great story, great art, lots of funny lines and great action. And it ends with a thoroughly glorious cliffhanger, so now we have to wait even more desperately for the next series…

Hawkeye #16

You may not have noticed, but Marvel just completely skipped Issue #15 of this series. I have no idea why, but they apparently plan to return to that issue soon. Maybe an art issue? Like I said, no idea.

Anyway, this issue focuses on Kate Bishop, living the down-and-out superhero lifestyle out in Los Angeles. Kate runs across a deeply depressed and imbalanced former musician named Will Bryson (clearly based on the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson). Bryson is upset that his long-unfinished masterwork, “Wish,” is being released without his permission on the Internet, and Kate resolves to help him stop his brother from ruining his greatest album. So she goes with her usual M.O. — breaking and entering — which ends the way it usually seems to — caught by the bad guys. Is there a way for Kate to solve the case, or is she just gonna stomped on by goons again?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a fun comic, action-packed, funny, clever, gorgeous art — and it’s also a pretty dark story. The Brysons have a pretty horrible relationship, mostly geared around driving each other more insane, and Kate has to deal with much more ruthless enemies than normal and sustains more serious injuries. And the whole story still ends up becoming a pretty positive thing, even with the ominous mini-cliffhanger at the end. Go read it, guys, this is a great series.

Black Widow #2

Natasha Romanov gets overconfident, gets in over her head, and has to somehow recover from a simple mission that’s gone entirely wrong, all thanks to a cunning schemer called the Iron Scorpion. Will the Black Widow survive — and who’s now plotting against Natasha’s attorney?

Verdict: Ehh, really, I dunno. The problem is that, while the story is decently exciting, the Black Widow is just a femme fatale superspy — she just doesn’t have a unique personality. You get a much better femme fatale superspy in Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s “Velvet” comic.

Near as I can figure, Sunday was the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons.

The articles I’ve seen about the anniversary focus either on the game’s history or the plans for the upcoming new edition of D&D, usually with a side order of “OMG, look at the nerds!” But this is what we’ve come to expect from the mainstream media when it comes to coverage of anything out of the mainstream, right?

I’m not in the best position to talk much about D&D. I haven’t played a D&D game since junior high, and I haven’t played any sort of roleplaying game since college. I know a few folks at work who play Pathfinder, which was based on D&D 3.5 — but I’ve never been very tempted to join in, because it’s been a long, long time since I had any serious interest in playing a fantasy RPG. Modern day games, horror, superhero, lots of other genres are appealing, but I can’t get very interested in playing a wizard or fighter or cleric.

But at the same time, I’ve also maintained serious interest in D&D, even while not playing it. I’ve got sourcebooks from almost every edition of Dungeons & Dragons, including the much-maligned fourth edition, which I think is mostly pretty good. Why do I keep picking them up when I know I’m probably never going to play them? I suspect it’s nostalgia more than anything else. Rust monsters, displacer beasts, beholders, owlbears, and green slimes — you just never get tired of some things.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about D&D a lot over the past week or so. I’ve seen a lot of articles that mentioned the fiction that influenced Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson — Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Lovecraft, and many others — but I’ve seen fewer that talked about how Dungeons & Dragons has influenced the world.

Gaming is the most obvious segment of the world that’s been changed by D&D. There’s no way the modern hobby game market would exist without Dungeons & Dragons — Gygax and Arneson invented and popularized the concept of the roleplaying game, paving the way for everything from Earthdawn, Runequest, and Pathfinder to Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Champions, GURPS, and Vampire: The Masquerade. And you can extend that influence over almost all modern tabletop games — the popularity of D&D revitalized wargaming, inspired card games like Magic: The Gathering and Munchkin, and can claim at least partial influence over most geek-friendly board games out there.

And we’re not talking just tabletop games either. D&D’s game mechanics are used in one form or another in hundreds of video games. Pretty much every fantasy-themed video game, including World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Skyrim, has to claim D&D as a direct influence. And you just couldn’t have the cacodemon from DOOM without the beholder from D&D.

The game’s influence on general pop culture has been fairly strong, especially in recent years, as the nerd stigma has started to reduce — enough geeks have gone into show business that they can now talk openly about how much they loved the game, and even include it in TV shows, movies, songs, and books. And heck, look at that list of celebs who play D&D — it doesn’t even include Dame Judi Dench, who learned the game from Vin Diesel!

Influence on science, academics, journalism, politics, and most other “real world” topics? Probably incidental — but lots of smart kids learned math, storytelling, acting, and social skills by sitting around a table, rolling dice, and fighting imaginary wererats, mindflayers, and Acererak the Demi-Lich. Won’t be long before we have a president who started out as a paladin.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Friday night, and we are in dire need of some appropriately awesome comic book violence to get our weekend started off right. Would you please put your hands together for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from October 1977’s Marvel Team-Up #62 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and Dave Hunt. The Super-Skrull is up to no good, and only Carol Danvers is around to stop him!

Even with a shapeshifting neck, that’s gotta hurt.

FF #16

It’s the last issue of this gloriously quirky comic book. The Future Foundation has managed to shut down all of Dr. Doom’s defenses. His robots have been destroyed, his allies are wrecked, his hostages freed, his science, sorcery, and stolen power have all been neutralized. It’s all down to Dr. Doom vs. Ant-Man. Scott Lang doesn’t stand a chance, does he? Oh, you might be surprised…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not trying to tell a lot of the plot, to avoid spoilers, but it’s quite interestingly done, and if Marvel doesn’t end up forgetting all this, it’s going to make anyone using Pym particles a lot more powerful. But most importantly, this is a wonderful farewell to an awesome cast of characters, adults, kids, superheroes, supervillains, freaks, and weirdoes. It’s really too bad this one isn’t going to stick around — I’m going to miss Darla Deering, Bentley-23, and Tong.

Mighty Avengers #5

The Superior Spider-Man has decided he wants to take over the Mighty Avengers and run it like his own personal paramilitary force. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones aren’t having any of that, and they clean Otto’s clock — at least until his Spiderling minions shoot them with high-tech weapons. Can anyone save them from Otto’s wrath? Maybe a big green lawyer. Meanwhile, inside Attilan, time-controlling corporate supervillain Quickfire is after some mystic artifacts while Spectrum, Falcon, Ronin (actually Blade — still don’t understand the silly subterfuge), Power Man, and White Tiger try to stop her — and while a three-headed monster tries to eat all of them. Who will survive and what will be left of them?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m enjoying the writing, the characters, and the story even while I’m still despising Greg Land’s tracing.

Pretty Deadly #4

Looks like we’re gathering our cast of characters together, slowly but surely. Johnny Coyote rescues Sissy from drowning in the river. Ginny and the Mason battle each other, but eventually come to an understanding. Death restores Alice to her form so she can go out and kill more people. And we slowly find out what this is all about.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This story gets a lot more enjoyable when you can keep track of all the characters and what they’re up to. Honestly, I don’t think this ever should’ve been released as single-issue comics — it should’ve been a complete graphic novel from the very beginning.