Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow - Matt gets caught up

Hey, so having a kid is time-consuming! Who saw THAT coming? Not me, obviously. Fortunately, she's a dreadful conversationalist, so I can safely read comics while rocking her and the like. Here are my reviews on last Wednesday's books, followed by a couple of "preview" reviews for books that'll be out tomorrow.

۞ Secret lnvasion #3 is, perhaps predictably, a huge disappointment to me. Issue #1 of this was exciting! It was punchy! Stuff happened and things blew up and there was a big surprise ending and wooooooooo! Since then, it's been a long, wanky fight scene (issue #2), and now this: the Marvel F-list fights bravely in New York! They all talk Bendis-y! Something bad happens to The Vision version 8.3, and I try manfully to remember who he is and where he came from and if I should care! There's one good paranoia scene that's got to be a fakeout (or DOES it?!?!), and then a cliffhanger where a bunch of heroes charge in to save the world and it would be amazingly cool, except that it's, like, the G-list of unrecognizable Marvel dudes.

Actually, it's not even the G-list -- it's a bunch of Bendis's pet characters who we know are awesome because he spent a whole issue of Avengers telling us that Nick Fury (who all the famous characters think is awesome) thinks these no-marks are awesome. THAT, my friends, is character development at its finest.

And Lenil Yu is clearly being rushed, as the cleaner line he was using in issue #1 is back to being the Sienkiewicz-ian scrawl he's perfected since Superman: Birthright. This is starting to feel an awful lot like Bendis's last Might Marvel Miniseries, House of Filler.

۞ A while back, Commenter Sean mentioned that he's been known to develop crushes on writers, and I know exactly where he's coming from. I was totally into Matt Fraction for awhile (Five Fists of Science, Casanova, that Spider-Man annual, Iron Fist), but then we got together and it was totally not all I was hoping it would be (Punisher War Journal). So I avoided him for awhile and he acted all embarrassed around me and it was totally awkward until we got drunk together at this party and made out, and there were no strings attached and that was pretty good except for that one part when Namor showed up (The Order). So now things are kind of okay again and I think I like him but I don't know how he feels about me and I'm afraid to ask because what if it makes things all weird, you know?

Which is a long way to go to say that Invincible Iron Man #2 is just as good as issue #1 was, and that you should be buying it and loving it and treasuring every moment with it, because it's summer and you can never tell what's going to happen to a guy on his summer vacation.

۞ I don't really want to make out with Justice Society of America #16, but I sure am pleased to bump into it. This is apparently the story that Geoff Johns has been setting up with the nigh-incomprehensible last four issues, because this is a sharp little character piece masquerading as a 1980's DC Comic (in the best possible way). Some nice swerves on the typical Galactus story, and a good use of the ridiculously large cast. Maybe I'll reread from issue #9 or whatever and see how it hangs together.

۞ I'm the dissenting voice on Kick-Ass #3, it appears. As I mentioned in my thoughts on Marvel 1985 a week or two back, I find Mark Millar surprisingly good at writing teen drama, so I liked the in-school bits, but the super-hero stuff remains dull to me, no matter how much violence he injects it with. I think this will read better in collection, to be honest.

۞ Trinity #1 is ... okay. It features the Superman-Batman-and-Wonder-Woman-sit-around-a-table scene that is apparently required in all 21st Century DC Comics, but THIS TIME THEY'RE IN THEIR CIVILIAN IDENTIES!!!!! ZOMG!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!! That said, at least Kurt Busiek doesn't feel compelled to cover the page with 75 billion different colored captions (like Brad Meltzer), or to weight the proceedings down with trite pseudo-psychological melodrama (like, oh, say, Brad Meltzer). It's not the Busiek of Astro City, nor even the terrific early Thunderbolts issues, but it's a solid superhero comic and a promising start to a weekly series. (Except for the backup, which I found literally unreadable. That might be a problem down the line.)

۞ Ultimate Origins #1 was always going to be a problem for me. I found Bendis's thin reinventions of the Marvel Universe in Ultimate Team-Up and Ultimate Spider-Man to be much less interesting than Millar's ground-up rethinks in Ult. X-Men and Ultimates. (Ult. Spider-Man overcomes this with some excellent craft and lively character drama, but Team-Up was pretty much an unmitigated disaster.)

So Ultimate Origins, being Bendis's unifying theory of the Ultimate Universe, was bound to accent the side of the Ultimate line that I find less interesting, and as such to disappoint me.

Which it does. (And I thought this was Butch Guice's worst art in a while as well.) At least it met expectations.....

۞ I also read The Boys #19, which was just as good as the rest of the issues have been, and as such not worthy of special praise or scorn. The price you pay for consistent work, I suppose.

۞ Which brings us to this week's preview books. It was a pretty thin bunch, a lot of things that I don't find interesting to begin with (Moon Knight) or didn't find particularly interesting once I had read them (Hulk: Raging Thunder, the apocalyptically grim X-Force: Ain't No Dog). But I do want to call special attention to Skaar, Son of Hulk #1, which overcomes a catastrophically stupid title to be a surprisingly good book.

For everyone who was disappointed that World War Hulk failed to be an adequate follow-up to the themes and ideas of Planet Hulk ... this is your book. Something like a really good Conan comic blended together with Marvel's sci-fi stuff, there's a lot of promise here, and it's worth checking out.

(Also, it contains 100% less Jeph Loeb than Marvel's other Hulk book, which guarantees a quality uptick.)

And the new stuff

I only made it through three books for this week:

Trinity #1's lead story is, like, 10 pages of Superman, Batman, and Wonderwoman sitting in a coffee shop talking. And they are in their civilian identities. Now, this strikes me as odd because: why would a reporter from Metropolis, the world's wealthiest bachelor, and a DEO agent all be sitting at a coffee shop in Keystone City? And the paparazzi is there, though not allowed near. Why does no one think that's weird? Plus, the Flash shows up IN COSTUME and talks to them. And no one thinks its weird. But I do like Mark Bagley's effective storytelling and overall, it is good, if vague. Same with the back-up that confounds AND entertains. Still, I liked the whole thing and have high hopes for the series. Of course, I had high hopes for Countdown...

Secret Invasion #3 is a paradox. It's better than issue 2, but it also seems to ignore Bendis's own continuity for the event. REAL SPOILERS!!! BEWARE!!! If Echo is not a Skrull, why do that New Avengers issue that focused on her? Because that seemed to subtly indicate she was a Skrull. Plus, we know Iron Man isn't a skrull (even in the close-up there was no green in his eyes, so he's human) so why throw that red herring in there just to upset people if they've been doing the damage control for months already stressing how un-Skrully Iron Man is. Anyway, I liked it, but this issue seems to show that a lot of the buildup Bendis planned and worked on was merely to shock and sell books and not actually bolster the story itself.

Finally, Ultimate Origins #1 came out and it was underwhelming. Not, like Brian said, because the reveals made no sense, but because the reveals were so cliche. What is revealed in this issue has been done before. In the Marvel Universe. In Earth X (out of continuity), in New X-Men (in continuity?), in Truth (in continuity). But they built this up like it was revolutionary. Which begs the question: why should I care. Aside from that, though, the writing was very good (minimalist Bendis is all too rare these days) and Butch Guise's art is great. I just wish they were doing something better. Like Ultimates 3. Then, that'd be awesome. Or readable anyway.