Deadly Genesis #3: Where the Banshee dies, though not so well

X-MEN DEADLY GENESIS #3

As far as comic book history goes, rare is a “major event” in which no longstanding characters are killed. X-men Deadly Genesis is no exception. As anyone who has read issue 2 can be sure, the unlucky character that gains this distinction is none other than established mutant Banshee.

I guess he’s sort of had it coming, futility-wise. I mean, I don’t even think Sean’s appeared in a single comic in the past five years (okay, obviously that’s untrue, though no notable appearances come to mind). His main power comes from his Banshee-like shriek, and come to think of it, didn’t he have his vocal chords cut a few years back? Ah well.

However, just because he won’t be missed doesn’t mean that his killing wasn’t incredibly random. In one of my old Wizard magazines, author Brubaker stated that in this issue a longstanding character would die. He went on to mention how he didn’t want to kill this character, yet the more he wrote, the more he realized that his death was unavoidable.

Um, wait, what? His death was unavoidable? Do you know how he got killed? He was flying around and got hit by a fucking plane, one of the most random forms of death in fiction (plane, cars, or any vehicles are all up there). That’s like having someone get crushed by a falling piano and saying that “there was no way to write around it.” Lose the fucking piano. Problem solved.

But then again, after reading this issue, I think what Brubaker meant was “I had to kill him, otherwise no one would buy this otherwise rather shitty comic.” Honestly, there’s like no point to this. Well, I guess there is one, but it’s being revealed at a snail’s pace. Plot-wise, I don’t think that a single advancement has been made. Which would be understandable had this issue been used to deal with the tragedy of Banshee’s demise. However, the fact that he got killed isn’t even really dwelt on, not on an emotional level, at least. Instead, there’s a throwaway line along the lines of “we’ll mourn him later” and it’s business as usual.

The added back-story, like the past two, is pretty neat- Brubaker creates another interesting character with an original superpower (well, actually, I invented one just like her in grade 12, but let’s not into THAT). However, I sure hope that the next 2-3 issues don’t just follow the same formula: introduce a character, show their powers, and show how they got recruited into Moira MacTaggart’s mysterious program. Let’s find out more about what happens to these characters.

I have a feeling that there’s a point to this story, and a potentially awesome one at that. Unfortunately, it’s drawn out a lot longer than I’m comfortable waiting.

Also, the art doesn’t impress me much, neither. Beast looks like Gurgee (or however you spell it) from The Black Cauldron. And that was a pretty shitty movie.

5 out of 10

Not cool, Aaron

Though no one actually reads this site, I still feel obligated to tell you all that due to a relatively rough week, and a subsequent making up work-wise for said week, I have not written any new reviews for said said week. That was a long sentence.

But fear not, non-existant readers! Hopefully I'll be back this weekend, guaranteed to review your socks off!

I know this isn't great, but here's like a mini review from last week:

X-statix presents Dead Girl #1: I like.

Infinite Crisis #4: Very awesome, but there's no real explanation to what happens. Hopefully it'll be found next issue. Otherwise, holy moley.

Sorry, but that's all I can do. Back to homework!

Ghost Rider #5: You Will Believe a Man can Flay

Okay, so it’s been just about almost a month since I started this new endeavour, and how successful have I been? Experts Say: One hundred percent successful. I rule.

Well, I suppose that it’s hard to be anything less when you don’t really outline any specific goals for yourself, thus making failure impossible, but that’s more of a finer detail. I guess I could say I’m successful so far, in that I haven’t given up writing these reviews.

Admittedly, there have been some problems, such as frequent losses of posts. But hey, I figure this is a learning process for me, so as long as I’ve been learning from these mistakes (and I have been) it’s all good. Because yeah, I’m still figuring out how to best approach this. As you may have noticed, for example, instead of the originally proposed 5 comics a week, I’ve now decided to write longer reviews for one or two comics a week, published some time in between Wednesdays, the holy days. I may also decide to invite others to contribute their own reviews to this site as members, and have approached a few people who seem interested.

This week, it looks like I’ll only be writing one review, due to it being a slow week as well as Border City comics being sold out of one of the titles I was going to purchase. Damn them, I say. Well, not really. They’re nice people.

GHOST RIDER #5 (of 6)

As I mentioned before, Ghost Rider has been one of the lamest Super-Heroes to be found in the pages of Marvel, at least among the heroes mainstream enough to merit their own film. My friend keeps on telling me that, according to the original continuity, Ghost Rider got his origins from a magic gas-cap. While I find this hard to believe, if so, it would mean he had the lamest origin in comic-book history (okay, that’s a lie. Ragman got his powers from being electrocuted while holding the hands of four geriatrics in a chain. He absorbed their power, and now has the strength of four old people). That in mind, I seriously doubt this series would have had much of a following had it been under the helm of a different creative team. As it stands, I’d imagine the breakdown of people who bought this book to be as follows:

33%- People who are fans of Garth Ennis

33%- People who are fans of Clayton Crain

33%- Disappointed fans who expected this series to be about a group of children who solve crimes with the help of a spirit who communicates to them by spelling out messages in texts

1%- That dude who thinks Ghost Rider is cool

I seem to recall that apparently one of the reasons this project was undertaken in the first place was to prove that Ghost Rider is, in fact, a marketable character. The idea is to draw people in with the appealing creative team/misleading title, then hook them with the awesomeness that is Ghost Rider (it took several attempts for me to just type that last clause, the idea is so alien to me).

And overall, people have responded well to this series (at least according to the editorial page). However, last issue I noted that Ennis has taken to including as little of Ghost Rider in his own series as humanly possible. For the first four issues, the strength of the series lies in the supporting characters, as well as the balls-to-the-wall (that’s right, I said it) action. None of this proves to me that Ghost Rider himself is a marketable character. In this series, a howler monkey could have replaced him and that wouldn’t have affected the story one bit. Actually, it may have been marginally cooler, but that’s only because I said howler monkeys, which are untapped resources of awesomeness.

In this issue, however, five issues in, Ennis finally brings Ghost Rider to the forefront of the story. We finally see, in this new and unique Ghost Rider series, a new and unique Ghost Rider. Just what does this entail, you ask?

Well, he’s a huge goofball, is what. He’s just a dude who has no idea what’s going on, and can barely keep up with the villains, if at all. So far in this series, he’s been crushed by a Greyhound, lost his bike, and even called one of the villains a “cracker.” He’s a powerful guy, sure, but he’s just not very good. Hardly an awesome badass.

But you know what? That’s awesome. One of Ghost Rider’s flaws in the past is he was taken way too seriously. No, that’s not the right approach. Ennis here has hit the right chord, with cheek fully encompassing the tongue. Ghost Rider should be a goofball, out of his element. It’s refreshing, and it contrasts nicely with the overall concept of the character, which could have too easily (and has in the past) become a generic lame-oid.

Storyline-wise, not a lot going on. As I predicted last month, it’s really just the action part of the story, part one of the climax. Still, the action is pretty crazy, and keeps with the tongue-in-cheek direction, involving, for one thing, two characters beating each other to death with other people. You need to see it, really.

Art continues to grow on me.

8 howler monkeys out of 10. Okay, now the resource has been tapped.

Day of Vengeance Come and Me Want to go Home

This review may be the toughest yet to write, not because of the comic itself, but because I'm now writing while at the same time experiencing the crippling misery that can only come from moving back to Windsor. Seriously, with every sentence I write I have this urge to just crawl into my bed and die instead.

If my comic-review site teaches you nothing else, here is a very valuable tip to anyone interested in going to the University of Windsor: Shoot yourself in the head. You’ll be one of the lucky ones.

Well, actually, I guess it’s not always so bad. I’m just going through the initial shock of going from Toronto, a town that doesn’t suck too much, to Windsor, a town that sucks very much. For example, it takes some time to get used to the migraine-inducing pollution. My head is currently killing me, though I am quite confident that in a few days the nerves in my brain will die and I will no longer mind the air.

For now, though… fuck where’s the aspirin?

DAY OF VENGEANCE: INFINITE CRISIS SPECIAL

Day of Vengeance was one of the four Countdown mini-series to act as a lead-in to Infinite Crisis. In many ways, it was my favourite series overall (maybe second favourite… Villains United was pretty cool) because it was the only series that, for the most part, didn’t take itself too seriously. I mean, any series starring Detective Chimp has got to be a fun read, right?

Still, the series sort of lost me by issue six, as there really wasn’t an ending. I suppose the idea was that it was supposed to lead into Infinite Crisis, but there wasn’t even a conclusion to the arc or anything, and what’s more, Day of Vengeance is barely even mentioned in Infinite Crisis.

Well, that’s where this issue comes in handy. While it’s been marketed as the continuation of the adventures of the Shadowpact (the protagonists of the DoV miniseries), it really is the conclusion that the miniseries never had.

They really should call this Day of Vengeance #7, as neither this issue nor the 6-issue precursor function much on their own. People who only read the original series will be largely unsatisfied with the conclusion, and people who only read this issue will have no idea what’s going on. So yeah, make sure you’ve read all the preceding issues of DoV.

What this issue offers is pure superhero fun, mixed with a little bit of mysticism. The use of mysticism in comics rarely intrigues me in general (Dr Strange is a Lame-oid!), but it’s the fun part that hooked me. Fun superhero action is really a rare commodity these days, especially in major titles tied to major events, like this one. Heck, even when you think about the context, you’d expect this series to be grim and gritty. I mean, the premise is essentially that the Spectre has started massacring cities and killing millions of people. On top of that, mystical superheroes have to react to an accident in Gotham city that resulted in thousands more deaths. This series could have been approached the same way as all those post-911-why-must-there-be-death-we-will-still-persevere comics that I really don’t like that much. But no! Instead, we have an oddly (yet welcome) light romp as the heroes merrily try to deal with the catastrophes. What fun!

Okay, maybe it wasn’t all tee-hees and giggles (at least one character bites it, and there’s blood), but Willingham certainly did not get lost in the melodrama, a problem too many of the Crisis tie-ins are facing. There are even some pretty funny moments. Getting to see Detective Chimp take on Rex the Wonder Dog was a rare treat, as well as the totally unnecessary yet totally awesome splash page, complete with index, on pages 10-11. These types of pinuppy splash pages, where dozens of characters happen to be posing at the same time, don’t make a lot of sense, yet they still are neat to look at. What helps is the fact that artist Justiniano is one talented cookie. His art reminds me of a cross between Rags Morales (Identity Crisis) and Mike Mignola (Hellboy), two artists whom I enjoy immensely, though for completely different aspects.

Apparently DC is fond enough of the Shadowpact to give them their own spin-off series, according to the editors at the end of the issue. Either that, or DC thinks that Shadowpact has sufficient marketability. Mmm, I dunno. None of these characters have done much outside of the DoV series, at least not recently. I have a feeling the series will be pretty good, and maybe even start off with high sales, but will be cancelled before issue 20. I’m pretty sure I’ll buy it, though. I mean, Detective Chimp!

8 out of 10

Ah crap. I'm still in Windsor.

Hunter Killer #5: Suprisingly imbreast -er, impressed

Yay! Another review! And hey, for the first time, it's not for a comic published by Marvel or DC. This shows that my taste in comics is ECLECTIC. Though I suppose Image comics is like the third biggest comics publisher, at least in North America. So whatever.

Anywho...

HUNTER KILLER #5

Now, at first glance, Hunter Killer (as well as most of the Top Cow line) seems like the worst piece of shit to somehow survive the nineties. Lots of violence, generic-looking beefy guys, scantily clad females with large boobies, and really big guns. I mean, just look at the name itself: HUNTER KILLER. What the hell? Is that meant to inspire awesomeness just because it has the word Kill AND Hunt in it? It reminds me again of the nineties, where we had characters named Deathstroke, Killstrike, Deadpool, Deathtrap, Deadshot, Deathlocke, Killblood, Killhunt, Deathhunt, Blood-Death, Overdeath, Killdeath, Deathblood, Bloodhuntkilldeath, etc. etc. (while I made many of these names up, odds are that they did in fact exist as characters at some point in the nineties).

So yeah, I probably would have stayed far away from this series had it not been for three factors:

1) The release of the 25-cent issue zero- a price not even the stingiest Jew could resist (I'm jewish so I can say that but you can't).

2) The fact that Kingdom Come scribe Mark Waid is writing this, indicating that it couldn't be ALL bad.

3) The comic came out during the summer, when I was working at a comic book store and getting paid in comics like a fucking idiot.

Anyways, I know I shouldn’t have picked up this comic, but I’m borderline glad I did.

Hunter-Killer isn’t shit. It’s pretty clever, actually. I dunno. Maybe it’s because of how moronic the comic seems at first glance that it comes off as so intelligent when you actually start reading it.

Okay, maybe “intelligent” is a bit of a stretch. After all, any comic with the line “I’m gonna snap like a training bra on Lindsay Lohan” can hardly be considered intellectual. Still, just about every issue so far has had either a huge twist or at the very least a small, clever one.

This may prove to be a liability, however, as I can easily imagine that the Hunter Killer team will have a difficult time keeping up with their twist-and-turn quota for more than maybe ten issues. For example, we’ve seen a whole bunch of interesting characters in the first five issues. These people usually act as secondary characters, and so far have been killed off on a very quick basis (their average lifespan being oh, maybe one and a half issues). The speed at which Waid burns through these characters could result in there being no characters left. Well, besides the main three. Unfortunately, they’re the dullest/most clichéd of the lot, with the possible exception of Ellis, who’s pretty much a mystery right now.

But the other two? Man oh man, do they not interest me (I had originally typed that "man on man." Freudian slip? You decide). We’ve got Samantha, the big-boobied broad who I’m not sure but has probably said “Don’t call me toots” at some point in the last five issues. For the record, she’s the one with the large boobs on the cover.

Ugh, and then there’s the Wolverine knockoff. Well, I guess he’s more badass than Wolverine, because his name’s Wolf, and wolves are more badass than wolverines, right? Holy shit! He’s badass! For the record, he’s the one on the cover who looks like Wolverine, only more badass.

It’s a shame the main characters are so unoriginal, because if you look beyond that you will see a neat little story. Still, I think that this is because of the writer’s personal strengths, and that once he leaves the book, Hunter Killer will be all of the suck, and none of the rock. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

The art is sharp, by the way. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect from Marc Silvestri. Did I mention that he draws big boobies?

7 out of 10

Batman #648

Hey everybody. Happy New Year's! Unless you don't follow the Christian Calender, in which case, happy day like any other.

Hope you guys's break has been lotsa lotsa fun. Mine's been busy, I tell you what. Sitting around doing nothing, lying around doing nothing, and standing around doing nothing are three activities that take a lot more out of you than you'd think.

Actually, wait. No, I've definitely been busy this break to some extent. Though there has been a lot of DVD watching. Oh, and comic book reading. Which reminds me...

BATMAN #648

Of all the Batman series out there right now (last time I checked, it was Batman, Detective Comics, and Gotham Knights), this is the only one with any overall significance. Actually, I guess that's not entirely true. Gotham Knights was doing something lame where Alfred was killing people or something lame like that, but I think he's being mind controlled or something (I'm only sort of following that one along) so it's nothing really drastic. I don't think.

But here, in the pages of Batman, DC has gone and brought Jason Todd back from the dead. And he's evil. And it's the real thing.

Jason Todd, by the way, was the second Robin- the reckless one. Batman first encountered him a lowly street urchin trying to steal the hubcaps from the batmobile and decided he needed a new ward. Anyways, they fight some crime, but eventually Joker beats Jason to death with a crowbar then blows him up but good. The end?

When I was a kid, I had a copy of Jason Todd's death courtesy of my uncle, so this was a part of Batman canon that I was quite familiar with. Bringing him back is not only big, but it's something that I can appreciate.

Only I can't.

Why, you ask? Because DC ruined it. Anyone who's read the insanely successful Batman: Hush can recall that in the pen-penultimate issue, there was a fakeout as to the identity of the antagonist Hush: He pulls back his bandages to reveal that *holy shit* he's really Jason Todd, Batman's long lost partner! Only not really, because it's really Clayface in disguise. The real Hush is Bruce Wayne's childhood friend who came to visit him (imagine that) at the beginning of the storyline. Snore.

Anyways, all that was only about 2, maybe 3 years ago, and still very fresh in the minds of the audience. I'll bet that people were so furious with the fakeout in Hush, that it wasn't Jason Todd at all, that DC decided to appease the fans and bring him back actually. The problem is, though, that the shock is ruined. It's like if someone's throwing a surprise birthday party for you. If that person comes up to you and says "I'm throwing you a surprise birthday party.... Just joking," odds are that the surprise will be pretty much ruined.

The same applies to this comic. It's a shame, really, because it's otherwise being handled pretty well. Well, maybe with the exception of this issue...

This issue has basically two parts. 1) a boring Alfred inner monologue where he shares with the audience Master Wayne's love for collecting original books as a child and how he's... losing his carefreeness? and 2) a battle between Black Mask and The Red Hood (Jason's current alias).

Now, given what we know about Jason's fighting abilities (he's VERY good) and Black Mask's (not really so much), I sort of figured that the fight scene would be brief and look a little something... a-like this:



I'll let you figure out which one is the Black Mask and which one is the Red Hood. Written and illustrated by Aaron Feldman, by the way. Yeah, putting Black Mask against the Red Hood is like putting the Spot against the Green Goblin. There's no competition at all. The fight will be quick.

Only for some reason this fight takes place over ten pages with three additional pages of scowly lead-up. AND, to top it all off, Black Mask wins. Obviously, this means that the cliffhanger- Black Mask standing over Jason's dead-looking body- is something of a fakeout. Still, unless it's a damn good fakeout, I kinda feel cheated on story.

And the Alfred monologue? Ugh. We get it. Batman now is less jolly than Bruce Wayne as a kid. I don't see how this is a surprise.

On the one hand, the overall direction of bringing Jason Todd back has had an inherent flaw. On the other hand, writer Judd Winick has still done a good job, with compelling dialogue and interesting characters. On the other hand, this particular issue was still kind of lame.

6.5 out of 10