Mini Reviews 2 [Endless Quarantine edition]

Here’s all the stuff I’ve been reading during these last couple of weeks. What a stressful, draining and crazy time. Hope you are all taking care and staying safe.

All books read digitally on Marvel Unlimited and ComiXology.

Thor: God of Thunder, Volume 1: The God Butcher
Jason Aaron & Esad Ribic
Collects Thor: God of Thunder #1-5

Jason Aaron’s Thor run deserves the hype it’s received for many years, and I regret just getting to it now. Thor’s mission to stop Gorr the God Butcher from slaughtering the universe’s gods is epic, cosmic storytelling at its best. For MCU fans who haven’t read much Thor (like myself) but know and like the Chris Hemsworth version (who doesn’t?), it’s easy to jump in. Esad Ribic’s gorgeous artwork is also very accessible, and his atmospheric painted style does a splendid job with facial expressions, Thor over three time periods, the creepy villain and grotesque violence, and different worlds and aliens/gods.

We get a brief cameo from another Avenger, but otherwise this is all Thor all the time – if you were looking forward to seeing Siff, Loki, or the Warriors Three, you’ll be disappointed. Which I was, just a little bit – Thor(s) still carries the story but it would be a little bit more interesting with more of a supporting cast.

The first five issues is clearly not a standalone and is more of a pause before heading into more story. The ending wasn’t necessarily disappointing, but didn’t really have a firm conclusion, and gives the reader a moment to pause and decide whether or not they want to continue. I’m still not sold on the time travel aspect and I think the next volume will prove how effective that device will be – clearly Aaron has a bigger story to tell.

Fables vol 1: Legends in Exile
Bill Willingham, Lan Medina & Mark Buckingham
collects Fables #1-5

This is my third (at least!) time rereading the first Fables volume. Just like the previous reads, I really enjoy this adult retelling of children’s fables and fairytale characters, as they all must negotiate living in a tight-knit, secret community among the “mundies” aka human world, after their exile from their homelands.

We get to know the main players through a murder mystery, which was a smart way to frame the story, and there are several surprises as readers piece together how fable characters have been updated or turned on their heads. Even though there’s some awkward exposition at the beginning, I think it was necessary to start world building, and several couple elements, like glamours and the farm, become important later (from what I remember). Buckingham’s art is wonderful and I like the expressive characters as well as the gold frames around the flashback panels.

This reread, I really appreciated how Willingham reinvents Snow White as the protagonist. From what I understand, there isn’t much character in the original fable and the Grimm retelling. But here, she’s no nonsense and high powered, essentially running Fabletown on her own. She has no patience for her philandering ex, Prince Charming (I love how he’s the same prince across fairy tales), and shows some emotion when her estranged sister is presumably murdered. (Also: Snow and Bigsby are big Leia/Han energy.) That being said, I wanted to see more from the other female characters – though I won’t fault Willingham for the inevitably sexist source material. Still, there’s a lot of lower-lip pulling from many of them and I hope Beauty and Cinderella get the same treatment as Rose Red (though we don’t see much of her this volume) and Snow White. (I believe they do, but I don’t remember the 1-2 later volumes I’ve read.)

(also, Willingham and Buckingham. LOL.)

New X-Men, volume 1: E is for Extinction
Grant Morrison & Frank Quietly
collects New X-Men #114-117

This is at least my second reread and the more I think about E is for Extinction, and read others’ reviews, the more meh I am about it. The pacing is way off. Cassandra Nova is set up as a villain in the first issue and commits genocide in the second. Fast, high stakes pacing isn’t bad on its own- but then almost immediately, Genosha becomes a footnote as we race through even more plot that balloons exponentially. Genosha is mentioned, characters *say* they’ve barely had time to grieve, but any actual trauma isn’t there. Also, Beast keeps mentioning everyone has the flu, and they all seem fine? Kudos to Morrison for shaking things up, but it feels very hollow when life changing events aren’t anchored in any real character development. Instead, Morrison – true to other stuff of his I’ve read – seems to think “as many complicated things happening at once” equals “good storytelling.” It does not.

Frank Quietly….man, I don’t really know how I feel about his art either. I appreciate how stylized it is but sometimes characters just looked weird. Why is Scott’s chin half of his face? Why does Jean look Asian? Can we have one non-white person on the team? Nope? Fine. I do like Beast’s new look though.

To be honest, I’m only reading this because I want to go through the big modern Marvel events, and what happens in Morrison’s X-Men will be referenced for the next two decades. I just hope reading more is worth it. (Spoiler alert: it is not.)

New X-Men, volume 2: Imperial (DNF)
Grant Morrison, Frank Quietly, Ethan Van Sciver and Igor Kordey
collects New X-Men #118-126 – read through  #124

I’m not finishing this, because comics should be FUN, dammit. Instead, this is an exhausting, overly complicated (and often downright confusing) slog with absolutely awful art by Ethan Van Sciver and Igor Kordey – truly some of the worst I’ve seen. These two are all over the place to the point that characters (Wolverine especially) are sloppy and distorted. Morrison continues inflating the plot with no emotional anchor, just more and more things that happen. I love my X-Men but I don’t have time for this, even if it is important to X-Men canon; if I don’t understand a footnote in future X-Men stories, so be it. I’m off to watch some X-Men Animated Series to make my eyes stop burning.

Spider-Man: Blue
by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
collects Spider-Man: Blue #1-6

What a disappointment – if I wasn’t reading this for book club I wouldn’t have finished. Peter uses Uncle Ben’s old tape recorder to tell his forgotten love story with Gwen Stacy… but Gwen is barely in this. We learn nothing about her, and what does Peter know about her, exactly? She’s a blonde who “likes it fast” (motorcycles, folks…motorcycles), and takes an interest in him? That she dances at parties and can read Huck Finn? Yeesh. They only become a couple in the closing pages – we don’t even see their relationship at all. Of course Gwen’s death is tragic, but she’s not really a person in this book – like the fate of many women, she only exists as a device for Peter’s growth, not as her own person. (Remember Women in Refrigerators? Yep. Guess who’s on that list?)

Instead, the closing pages make the story far more about MJ and Peter’s relationship. MJ is more insufferable than Gwen (she tells Peter she “won the jackpot,” and asks if he “likes what he sees”), but she also has the meaningful experience with Peter, tagging along as Peter “takes photos” of Rhino. But other than that scene, MJ and Gwen mostly just try to seduce Peter with sultry eyes and an impossible amount of mascara, thanks to Tim Sale. And that’s paired by Peter’s excuse of stringing them both along – you know how boys get with those hormones! Even if they’re superheroes who can save the city multiple times over, they’re a slave to those hormones.

The rest of the book, which is most of it, is just the early days of Spider-Man – Green Goblin, Rhino, and Peter’s grief of losing out on his personal life. There’s nothing new, and it’s a huge missed opportunity to actually dig into Gwen Stacy as a person, so the reader can also mourn her loss like Peter does.

And I’m also not a fan of Sale’s work here, aside from the action scenes. Faces look wooden and awkward, there are some weird proportion issues (especially when Peter visits Harry and Norman in the hospital), and by god Sale doesn’t know how to draw women. He seems hellbent on making sure MJ and Gwen look as catty as possible – or, frail and decrepit like Aunt May. Harry also looks like he’s approaching his midlife crisis rather than his senior year of high school.

This has been your angry feminist rant about Spider-Man: Blue!

Clean Room: Immaculate Conception

Creators – Gail Simone, Jon Davis-Hunt, Todd Klein
Publisher – Vertigo (DC Comics)
Published – October 2015

I am, unabashedly, a huge fan of Gail Simone. I’ve loved her Secret Six and Birds of Prey runs, especially, along with some of her non superhero work such as Crosswind. What makes her such a fantastic writer is her tight plots with little to none BS – she knows we are intelligent readers looking for more than just boom-pow-spandex fodder – her terribly witty writing, and her ability to write emotionally charged characters who can be sympathetic and demented all at once. Secret Six, in particular, made space for the weird, strange and the just plain creepy (Ragdoll’s sister freaks me out to this day).

It is that weird and strange that Simone fully harnesses – with a large dollop of horror – in her debut volume of Clean Room. We are introduced to our heroine, Chloe Pierce, a journalist with nothing left to lose after her fiancee Philip kills himself. The only clue to his death is his recent obsession with Astrid Mueller’s Blue Utopia cult – he was holding her most recent book when she died. After a failed suicide attempt herself, Chloe goes in search of Astrid to uncover the secrets behind Philip’s death, but she gets far more than she bargained for.

That’s as much plot you should know going in, and already it’s probably too much. Clean Room is one of those books you just have to experience knowing as little as possible. It will surprise you, creep you out, and quite possibly disgust you.

Also you should know there is quite a bit of nudity and sexual content, so, you know, maybe don’t start reading it at an airport like I did.

There is not much tongue-in-cheek wittiness like Squad and Birds, but Chloe is a hero easy to root for as she seeks justice for Philip – her disgust, bewilderment and curiosity mirrors our own as she is pulled into Astrid’s cult and quickly learns that horrors live among her without ever realizing it. Is Astrid protecting us from them or is she simply making big bucks brainwashing her “disciples” with the truth? Time will tell.

The characters are complicated, and the main cast are very unapologetically strong and strong-willed women who have experienced significant trauma, which can be fresh and startlingly human after reading one too many superhero comics. Some of them might be a terrifying creature named Spark who shares Simone’s penchant for characters with strange speech patterns, and might be a new favorite character. Who I can’t quite look at straight.

Jon Davis-Hunt’s artwork is highlighted by wonderfully expressive characters and absolutely terrifying monsters (and parasites) in fantastic detail. There are often full pages of a surprising new reveal of a plot development or a new monster and Davis-Hunt’s art keeps the tension high.

He and Simone are clearly willing to cross lines and go all out for the sake of an intriguing, enigmatic, horror tinged thriller, and they make quite a team. I’m very interested in the second volume (the story spans only three volumes) but I think I’ll wait for my eyes to stop burning first.

In a GIF:

The Unwritten: Apocalypse #1

creators: Mike Carey & Peter Gross
released: January 2014
publisher: Vertigo

I am terribly sad The Unwritten is coming to an end. Unwritten might not be on the same literary level or pedestal as Sandman, but it comes very, very close–it’s an intertwined, devilishly complicated puzzle about words and stories and how we use them to literally navigate our lives. I can only imagine that this final arc will pull out all the stops and stretch our imaginations to the limit–giving it a finish it truly deserves–but I just hope we’re all ready for it.

That being said, the back letter described this issue as a perfect jumping off point for Unwritten, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It would be like giving someone the last arc from Sandman and saying, hey, you’ll understand everything, right? Nope, read straight through from the beginning and thank me later, otherwise this will just be a jumbled mess to you.

This issue gets really trippy and weird and I don’t completely understand all of it, but that’s Unwritten’s MO. So, pretty used to it by now. Our homebound hero Tommy moves from story to story, trying to find his way home–to his own narrative, which is essentially just another story. (Again, this will only really fit if you’ve been reading since the beginning and know Carey’s style). Tommy hops from “basic” fairy tales to those more famous and familiar (and thankfully our ‘favorite’ bunny rabbit was only mentioned, and not actually guest starred), though usually he gets there by the death of whichever character he is currently embodying. Brilliant, strange, but at the same time a bit slow; while Carey never comes out and says, “this is the story Tommy is now in,” much of the dialogue is Tommy trying to understand his situation, and talking through it with the story’s counterparts–to more or less success, depending on the story. As mentioned before, while it fills in the very basic details of Tommy’s journey, the Leviathan, and so on, it’s a very a slow buildup to the very last page, which is a slight disappointment, since we now have to wait for the actual meat of the story in the second issue (hopefully).

Admittedly, it might be more satisfying to read all at once as an entire trade, instead of broken into five separate issues. I imagine that many subtleties will fall through the cracks while waiting weeks for the next installment. I’m the impatient type, but whether you choose to stall a bit longer is entirely up to you.

I must note that Gross’ art continues to be a visual treat here–like the stories, the art also evolves, and hats off to Gross to visually building the art as Carey does so with words, from rough sketches to fully colored and polished art by the time we get to–oh, but I won’t spoil it for you. Their teamwork has been exceptional from the very beginning and it is in full force in this installment.

Cautiously anticipating the second issue.