Stuff I Read This Week 5/28/14

My comic review picks for Black Nerd Problems this week are up and available for your enjoyment (or dismay). Here's a few notes on the books I took a look at.

Ms. Marvel #4: It's really hard not to love this book. Marvel seems to be doing really well with their more "quiet-as-kept" titles like this and Daredevil and this seem to be taking it quite seriously. The only thing I'm really wondering about is whether or not Kamala Khan will (or should) be immersed fully into the Marvel superhero community. Sure, it's canon, but there are a handful of titles that have historically worked better secluded from large crossovers and team ups (Matt Fraction's Hawkeye, various Punisher titles, Daredevil). I'm curious as to what's going to happen if G. Willow Wilson decides to veer off into team-up territory.

Batman #30: Without repeating myself too much, it's really hard not to love Scott Snyder's take on Batman. I mean, this is easily one of the best books in comics. Snyder has such an engaging take on Batman, but another really commendable act is in the fact that he really gives plentiful amounts of glory to Jim Gordon. He's always eyeing his options, rarely gives up and takes as many death defying risks as Batman himself. If there were a cop as tough, determined and incorruptible as him in real life, he would hailed by the media as a borderline rockstar.

Batman Eternal #8: I really have spent the past eight issues or so eating my words about how most weekly books just don't work out as well as they could for DC. Batman Eternal, even in spite of some strange hiccups in artwork here and there, is a exercise in damn good superheroing. This particular issue stands out for me as the best looking of the series so far. I'm almost inclined to say that my review didn't stress nearly enough that Guillem March's pencils here are SICK. His "night in the life of" depiction of Batman in the first few pages was absolutely EPIC. I am, however, wondering how long Snyder long game is going to take in getting us to the fast forward we saw in the teaser issue of Batman a few months back.

Stuff I Read This Week 3/19 (Ladies First Edition)

X-Men #12: So, this title has spent a year benefiting from Brian Wood's "girl power" themed take on Marvel's mutants. They've done everything from alien possessed cyborgs and surrogate mothers to revamping Generation X characters (I did not think that shit was possible). And this current arc, in which the X-Gals take on Lady Deathstrike's newly formed "Sisterhood" has been shaping up quite nicely.

Too bad it didn't end on a very exciting note. Issue #12 features our heroines looking for a taste of retribution for Arkea's Sisterhood kicking their teeth in. I would have almost felt better if it had ended in a standard mutant slugfest, but (spoiler alert...I honestly don't even feel bad about this one, by the way) even that concluded with certain Sisterhood members just looking at each other and saying "Oh, fuck this. I'm out." If the villains were going to crumble, it would have been nice to at least see a failed attempt at teamwork or something. Alas, we got three underwhelming rounds of "Bad Guys unite....Kick the Good Guys' X-asses....Good Guys come back to kick Bad Guys' asses....The End."

The upside was mainly Kris Anka's divinely kinetic artwork. This book seems to play Musical Chairs dealing out its art duties, but Anka has certainly dealt some of the most awesome action panels of Wood's run thus far. Watching Monet pull a Sentry and cannonball through a building to take the Enchantress to the woodshed was a thing of beauty, worthy of and old school church shout.

Bottom Line: Much like Idris Elba in Ghost Rider....even top notch art can't save paint-by-numbers conclusion. 6 out of 10


Ms. Marvel #2: G. Willow Wilson is a godsend to comics for the work she's done thus far on this book. Introducing a brand new face to a well known superhero moniker is always a risky prospect. However, in adding a new layer to the legacy of Ms. Marvel, Wilson has brought a much needed dimension to the Marvel Universe.

This second issue manages to set two very special tones for the book going forward. The lion's share is dedicated to Kamala Khan exploring her newfound shapeshifting abilities with mixed success. What makes this origin slightly different is that it doesn't come across as polished as what we're used to. More often than not, when a hero discovers they have superpowers, it's usually not the toughest ordeal to learn how to use them because....well, we want to see them getting to the asskickery, right? Here we see our hero, via internal narrative, going through the inner workings of shapeshifting and testing herself in a fix-on-fail basis. (By the way, I want her "Embiggen" battle cry on a shirt.) However, depicting the discovery of Kamala's powers, Wilson also delves into the character's psyche. When she goes into "hero" mode, she almost becomes an avatar of what she envisions her heroic self as much like Neo's "digital self" being without plugs all over his body in The Matrix. But her hair turns blonde, her skin turns light. In other words, she becomes a white woman. But being "someone cool", as she perceives such things, turns out not to be an escapist fantasy. It's fucking scary.

Adrian Alphona's lighter color scheme works well for this book, making seem almost as if the whole thing is happening in Kamala's head when she uses her powers. Scenes where her transformations are incomplete and uncontrollable fit perfectly into the tone Wilson is conveying. The expressive faces and, at times, awkward stances are appropriate for what is, on many levels, less of a hero origin and more of a coming of age tale.

Bottom Line: This book is shaping up to be a master class in dealing with race and identity and everyone....every actual person who reads comics....should be reading this. 9.5 out of 10