Chronic: Week in Reviews

Coffee, tea......or me? Well, that's me. With tea. Twinnings Irish breakfast tea, actually. Thanks to Cian for putting me onto that little delight, and thank you Ireland for being populated entirely by hilarious and angry people.

I was going to sit down and start hammering out another lengthy, dull review for nobody to read. I've decided that I would very much like to spend my evening watching episodes of Fringe while drinking more of this tea, so instead prepare yourself for a slew of items touched upon quite briefly.

The first thing I need to get to is Fantastic Four # 578, which was extraordinary as per usual. My love affair with this book is now well documented, so I should probably just shut up about it. Nah.

Eaglesham paints a scene in this issue when Johnny brings a bimbo home that is so deliciously disturbing.....you just have to see it. And by the way, that little bimbo was part of yet another layer that Hickman is layering onto this cake, which is already about 70 layers deep. This is the must read book in Marvel comics right now.

And remember those "home page" epilogues at the end of the last several issues, that read almost like a historian's recap of connected events? Turns out that our little Valeria has been creating those notes. It's also implied that she's worked out the "four cities" on her own, and I'm not convinced that her father has pieced that together yet. Clever girl, clever girl. I repeat: this is the must read book in Marvel comics right now.

Not far behind is Matty Fraction's Invincible Iron Man # 25. Or as I like to call it these days - Iron Man: Undouched! Tony Stark's recently uploaded mind doesn't contain any of the completely absurd crap that Mark Millar made him do, and voila! It's a brand new day, only without the Mephisto fisting.

Incidentally, Fraction is self-effacing enough to admit inside the book how silly it would be for Tony Stark to leave himself with an incomplete memory when he could have very easily had it refresh itself daily. I like that, actually.

That issue also contains a new foil in the form of Detroit Steel, some Machiavellian hijinx from the Hammer girls, and a cannot miss conversation between Tony Stark and Thor. This is mainstream superhero comics done correctly. Why this won't be offered at movie theaters across the nation on May 7 is beyond me.

Siege: Secret Warriors is kinda fun. This is about as good as you can hope for with these obligatory event tie-ins. There is a scene in here with Cap and Nick Fury that is so over the top...you either love it or you hate it. Maybe it's just my man crush on Jonathan Hickman, but I choose to love it.

This was my first exposure to Phobos, being that I don't read Secret Warriors regularly. I just picked this up for friend of the show Nick, and the tax he paid for me buying this was me reading it. At any rate, the Phobos stuff was directly related to the events of Siege # 3, and an interesting avenue to take, and executed with some care. I particularly liked the letter to the President at the end. Hall of fame? No. But these things are so often a crime against God and Man, so anything better than blind rage is probably a huge win.

I finally did score a copy of X-Factor # 204 at the Source. Bleeding Cool is feeling some market heat on this one with the unadvertised first appearance of the New New Avengers. I guess I can see that, although I'm not convinced that's why I had such a damnable time finding one of these. I honestly can't explain it.

Incidentally, X-Factor continues to kick seven shades of ass. The cliffhanger ending in this one can't possibly be true, and that's fine. The hook is finding out how Mr. David button-hooked us next month. This isn't pathetic false emotional gravitas a la X-Factor # 26. This is a showman at the top of his game having fun.

I like Peter David a lot. I just bought the Soulsearchers and Co. trades - that's how much I like Peter David.

I've recently decided that I need less money and have started collecting comic shop promotional posters! My first purchase was this Miracleman ad from 1985. It's got a DNAgents advert on the other half of it. I'm going to display mine with just Miracleman showing.



Why would I do this to myself? I don't know. I guess because I don't have the funds to collect original art, and something feels special about certain items. I look at this thing and say to myself "This could have been on the walls at Shinders 25 years ago, and nobody would have known how much trouble this little no-name UK character would cause for everyone." I would imagine Miracle Keith would be super jealous that I have this, except for the fact that he probably has three of them. Signed by Alan Moore. In the blood of Glycon.

I'm sure there's nobody in this boat, but for those of you whose first exposure to Hack/Slash was issue # 32....it's not always like this. Wow. I'm not mad or anything, because Seeley is on his way out of DDP and needed to get these things on the rack so he could move on to Image.

This comic doesn't really contain any pencils, we're pretty much left with the breakdowns. Seeley's cover looks like it was created by his 13 year-old self in about 15 minutes. It's kinda sad in that way. The silver lining is that everybody got paid, and this little gem can shine again at Image very soon. Good news!

I forgot to give Mike my copy of DV8: Gods & Monsters # 1 so he could read it. This is Brian Wood rebooting the concept, which was basically Gen 13 kids only really, really naughty. The concept is actually quite good. The team is dropped onto God knows what planet and left to their own devices in what looks like some kind of a "Trading Places" dollar bet about what would happen to the poor natives.

The concept is indeed good, the execution to this point has been lackluster. It's a set up issue, so I'll give benefit of the doubt on that. I'd really rather wait for the trade on this...but we'll see. I think part of the problem is that I have no prior love for any of these characters, so there's no juice for me in seeing how they've grown/twisted since I last saw them.

We just recorded the first real edition of "Nerds of the Round Table", and idea born from Mike and Mike mostly in which a rotating cast of podcast stalwarts tackle varying subjects as time and interest permit. We decided to tackle Iron Man 2, which is coming out in about a week, and the show went pretty well.

For some reason the blog won't create a clickable link for the podcast, so here's the gobbledygook:

http://nerdsoftheroundtable.mypodcast.com/

For the record, I'm predicting disappointment for the film. I have great faith in the director and the cast. I have zero confidence in Justin Theroux, and the reports I'm hearing about the rushed, shifted on the fly, clusterfucked nature of this production leave me more than a little concerned. They went in with essentially no script, and their non-script got wholesale re-worked right up to about.....five minutes ago.

It's one thing to allow yourself the flexibility to let better ideas creep in and the talent to shine in unexpected ways. It's another thing to go in without much a plan and make crap up as you go along. That's a good way to run an episode of Chronic Insomnia. It's a really dicey way to produce Iron Man 2. Don't get me wrong...I'm anticipating this film more than anything else in 2010, and I'm going to go see it in the theater. I'm scared, though.

Good night y'all! I'm off to watch the adventures of Olivia Dunham and Walter Bishop....

-Ryan

Chronic Review: Invincible Iron Man # 24

Invincible Iron Man # 24
Marvel Comics
Script: Matt Fraction
Pencils: Salvador Larocca
26 pages for $2.99


So this is it - the big finale of "Stark: Disassembled!" Before I get into whether or not the arc paid off or not, I thought I'd spew a few words about modern storytelling.

Back in the day, it would have taken anywhere from two panels to four pages to disassemble Mr. Stark. In the Golden Age, it was not uncommon and in quite good taste frankly to make major character moments happen before the reader had to turn the page. On one panel, Capt. Meritorious would see his lab partner incinerated by Russian robots and on the next panel decree something completely improbable like "I will now use my technological powers to forever battle evil wherever it may appear!"

That's how crap got done in the 1950s. One panel you had a wussy little scientist, the next panel you had a justice seeking hero with a raised fist standing next to the smoking remains of his pal Bob. And you know what? It got shit DONE. You could tell a whole story inside of an issue, and it felt like something happened.

And in 2010, it takes five full issues for Tony Stark to walk through his own mindscape and find a way to continue into a new age with new resolve. And I'm not saying it's a horrible thing, but you stop and consider that this process is going to take half a year out of our lives to sift through, and in Stark time...a few scant moments, really.

Just to quickly recap, at the beginning of Dark Reign, Remington (shit) I mean Norman Osborne justly decided Tony Stark was a threat to him and tried to have him wiped out for not giving up his fairly comprehensive data on all superheroes. Tony steered Osborne into creating a PR nightmare for himself, but at what deadly cost??? The epic battle left him in a quasi-coma with no mind left to recover.

Disassembled is the gambit in which Stark has a few of his friends band together and use his directions to "re-upload" his brain that he had backed up on floppy, of course. But it never quite works out like you hope, and while Tony struggles inwardly to find a reason to live, Donald Blake calls in Doctor Strange to try and help matters. And it's a good thing they called in the cavalry, because Pepper's hurt, Maria Hill has no powers, and this Ghost assassin guy just showed up to ice Tony!

So...what to make of all this? To be honest, the internal soul searching felt a little played and a little drawn out. It's a valid trope, and it makes sense in the story, so I don't want to take too much of a giant dump on it. But those scenes don't really feel compelling to me. The mommy and daddy issues, the friends he let down, the regrets...they feel stock.

There are so many pieces in play here that DO pop for me, though. Part of the high magic for Invincible Iron Man is how things simply make sense. Iron Man pretty much had to be involved in Dark Reign, and will be involved in the next "Age of Heroes" nonsense.

The story that Fraction concocted was logically consistent, though. It makes perfect sense that Tony would have more data than anyone on The Initiative given the events of Civil War, and it makes sense that Osborne would want that data at all costs. It makes sense (granted in a comic booky kinda way) that Tony would have a "back up brain" given what happened with the Extremis arc. It makes sense that Doctor Strange would get involved to help out a fellow member of the Illuminatus given what Bendis has done with that group.

Are you starting to feel me? In a comic book landscape where everything feels forced, shoe-horned, contrived, and sterile, Matt Fraction has found a way to take those existing pieces and make them WORK.

And I don't honestly know where the comic book relationship with Pepper and Tony was before the film came out, but Fraction appears to have taken the best elements of that and amalgamated it in as well.

While I wasn't overwhelmed with everything that was happening inside of Tony, most everything that was happening outside was entertaining and just felt right. It's a little hokey that Ghost seemed to take forever to "seal the deal" as it were, but hey, this is a comic book. The story was better served by his friends pulling together while getting their assess royally kicked out of love for the man. That played very well, thank you.

I don't want to ruin the best plot elements of the story, it reads better if you can maintain a little surprise at the end. I can tell you, though, that the arc would have been better named "Stark: Un-Douched."

And once again, Fraction writes this story so that he can usher the character into the "Age of Heroes" sensibly. It's like Brand New Day, only without the blind rage that makes a reader want to kick kittens and punch Joe Quesada in the balls.

There's a reason why this book won the Eisner for Best New Series. This is the way adventure, big-ticket superhero comics should be written.

- Ryan