Dan Brown

The Pull List: Avengers, Death of Love, Detective Comics, The Flash, Paradiso, Sideways, & more!

February 16, 2018 by krisis

I’ve managed to one-up last week’s edition of The Pull List! This week, the list is a whopping 27 issues deep – one more than last week. However, its also a tick worse, with an aggregate rating of 3.055 compared to 3.17.

What did I pull this week? I caught up with Birds of Prey, Flash, and Titans to add to my DC pull list, sampled four new number ones, and dropped a pair of weak books. Here’s what I reviewed in brief:

DC Comics
- Batgirl and The Birds of Prey (2016) #19
- Detective Comics (2016) #974
- The Flash (2016) #40
- Sideways (2017) #1
- Titans (2016) #20
- Wonder Woman (2016) #40
Image Comics
- Dark Fang (2017) #4
- Death of Love (2018) #1
- Paradiso (2017) #3
- Port of Earth (2017) #4
- Sleepless (2018) #3
- Slots (2017) #5
- Twisted Romance (2018) #2
Marvel Comics
- Avengers (2017) #680
- Cable (2017) #154
- Captain America (2017) #698
- Marvel Two-in-One (2018) #3
- Old Man Logan (2016) #35
- Weapon X (2017) #14
- X-Men: Blue (2017) #21
Smaller Publishers: Aftershock, Boom! Studios, Dark Horse, Dynamite, & Zenescope
- Babyteeth (2017) #8, Aftershock Comics
- Barbarella (2017) #3, Dynamite Entertainment
- Black Sable (2017) #4, Zenescope Entertainment
- Cold War (2018) #1, Aftershock Comics
- Giants (2018) #3, Dark Horse
- Judas (2017) #3, Boom! Studios
- Xena (2018) #1, Dynamite Entertainment

Pick of the Pull

Big Two (Marvel/DC) Issue of the Week: The Flash (2016) #40, DC Comics

I have never before been so viscerally scared of Grodd. He is utterly terrifying here, and I was really concerned that we could be seeing the end of Flash at multiple points – and, in a way, we did.

Joshua Williamson is proving that he is one of the best writers in the business with this constantly thrumming plot that has been building non-stop rising action for 40 straight issues. While you could easily jump right one with every arc, each of them builds off of everything that came before. That means this run has notched itself as the third or fourth best extended Flash run of all time in under two years, and it shows no immediate signs of stopping.

Carmine Di Giandomenico continues to stun on artwork with vivid coloring from
Ivan Plascencia. This issue includes some of the most inventive action paneling I can think of reading in recent memory. The paneling of Avery catching the lighting rod is breathtaking.

An A+ book through and through, with a thrilling final moment.

Best Small-Pub Issue of the Week: Giants (2018) #3, Dark Horse Comics

There’s no denying the craft, power, and charm of Giants. For a third issue in a row The Valderrama Brothers. turn in a beautiful, action-packed comic full of heart.

We begin our story with Zedo, the boy left for dead who is now making a cavalier power-play to control the gangs of the underworld. Only a child could see things as so black and white, yet both in the last issue and here he is making vicious choices that he can’t take back.

In stark contrast, Gogi has found a group of other children who are necessarily tough but still enduringly kind. Their acceptance and willingness to give without asking anything in return is alien to Gogi. At first he resists it, then he resents it, but finally he understand that’s it’s easier to live openly then be on guard and full of distrust.

Gogi’s journey from underground child to hero in the wider wider stands in stark contrast to Zedo’s dark turn at the end of this issue. Neither boy can entirely blame fate, nor can he say that the choices were all his own. That makes Giants a powerful allegory for the role of environment on our lot in life.

We might not all be fighting giant monsters, but we’re frequently either the child who ran away or the child that was left behind. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Avengers, Death of Love, Detective Comics, The Flash, Paradiso, Sideways, & more!

Comic Book Review: Black Panther & The Crew #1 by Coates, Guice, Hanna, Brown, & Sabino – A masterful, densely-layered first chapter!

April 14, 2017 by krisis

Some people say “the art spoke to me,” but how often do they say, “the art made me speak”?

That’s how I felt about this week’s Black Panther & The Crew #1. My original plan was to give this new Ta-Nehisi Coates and Butch Guice Black Panther spinoff a quick read and a one paragraph review as part of keeping up with new Marvel titles.

I had no concept of how incredibly strong and thought-provoking of a comic it would be. In that regard, it feels of a piece with the nuanced first half of Netflix’s Luke Cage. The issue was so layered and powerful that words started spilling out of me before I could even finish reading. I was desperate to unpack all the thematic content. I couldn’t stop talking about it on Twitter, Facebook, or in the house with E.

As a result, this is as much as review as an attempt to identify and parse the several layers of identity and privilege in this story.

I’m a white man writing about a comic by a black writer about black women and their community. I make no pretense that I’ve got the right, best, or even relevant take on the issue – but, this comic moved me, and I think it’s a mistake not to write about art when it makes you speak. Black Panther and The Crew #1

I’m probably going to get some things wrong. I offer my apology in advance for that, and I’ll offer it again in specific if you point out where I am mistaken.

(I also offer this: It’s no one’s job to tell me how or why I’m wrong. If you are a black woman and you have a counterpoint to offer, please say so in a comment. You don’t have to offer your take for free. If you don’t have your own platform to publish on, I’ll get in touch to offer you a small stipend in exchange for featuring your commentary as a response here on the CK main page.)

One of the best parts of this comic is yet to come. No, not the appearances of Black Panther and Luke Cage. The even-numbered issues of The Crew will be scripted by poet Yona Harvey – one of the few times Storm has ever been written by a woman, and the first in-continuity arc with her written by a black woman. Ever.

Black Panther & The Crew #1 (digital)

Written by Ta-Nehisi Coates with pencils by Butch Guice, inks by Scott Hanna, color art by Dan Brown, and letters by VC’s Joe Sabino. Cover by John Cassaday with Laura Martin.

Black Panther & The Crew #1 is dense with symbolism and thematic content, deliberately using its visual medium to create juxtapositions that would take many more pages to work through in a prose version of the story.

I haven’t yet read Black Panther by National Book Award winner and Atlantic correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates, but the first issue of Black Panther & The Crew tells me I need to go back and catch up immediately.

I don’t know why this comic’s unwieldy title can’t just be “Misty Knight,” but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Black Panther never appears. Coates uses Misty as a narrator to great effect, forcing the reader to pause to absorb the panel work as her narrated story frequently departs from the action we see in the art. Maybe the point-of-view character will rotate as the series progresses.

Misty’s story is really the story of Harlem, and of Ezra Keith. Keith is a former costumed crime fighter turned into a frequent anti-police protestor, though Misty has only put the connection together recently. Black Panther and The Crew #1 interior page 4

While Misty’s thoughts are on Keith’s case, Butch Guice’s artwork is elsewhere – first depicting a flashback of Keith leading his own Crew (called “The Crusade”) in 1957 and then showing Misty wading through a crowd of present day protestors as they clash with both local police and state-issued police-bots.

It’s not until Misty meets with Storm later in the issue that her thoughts and the images line up. It’s a powerful choice to snap the story fully into the present tense at that moment, even before Misty and Storm exchange their first words. It sets them up as peers, black women, community members, and heroes – but each with her own distinct stack of privilege acting as a filter.

Misty feels a connection to the community and their protests, but can’t help but keep them at a bionic arm’s length. When she sees something amiss in the death of an elderly citizen, her first instinct isn’t to protest or offer counsel.

Instead, she investigates.

The issue treads a careful line of whether that’s due to her skill as a detective or if it is her privilege as both police and superhero to enjoy a detachment from the immediacy of state-sanctioned violence against her community. The violence angers and disappoints her, but she can wade through a police line to visit the other side with impunity – at least, for now.

The comic is less equivocal on how that privilege is also double-edged sword. It’s hard for Misty to relate to her fellow officers, both as a member of the community and as a superhero. Misty has tried being a member of the community the police serve, a member of the police force, and someone stronger than them all, but no matter what role she takes on she endures a litany of micro-aggressions reminding her she’ll never really be just one of the cops again.

How much of that is down to the fact that she didn’t take her lumps when her arm was destroyed – instead accepting the aid of a superhero to reject becoming a disabled person? Not all other officers get that choice. [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: Black Panther & The Crew #1 by Coates, Guice, Hanna, Brown, & Sabino – A masterful, densely-layered first chapter!

Review: Magneto, Vol. 3: Shadow Games

August 29, 2015 by krisis

It took 20 years from Magneto to go from his first titled comic to his own ongoing series!

There are certain Marvel characters that you probably assume have had at least one ongoing series after four or five decades, but they can sometimes surprise you. As an example, Black Widow didn’t get her first ongoing series until 2010 despite being around since the 60s.

Magneto falls into that category for me. When his series was announced as “his first ongoing title” at the end of 2013, I did a double-take – fifty years and no ongoing? Yet, my comic collection tells me it’s true: the Master of Magnetism has had a handful of mini-series and one-shots, including his first – a beautiful, foil-covered affair that I have in mint condition somewhere in my attic.

Once that surprise wore off, cynicism wore in. Author Cullen Bunn has been hit and miss with me on his Marvel work, and his hits have been female-driven stories in The Fearless and Fearless Defenders. What could he bring to a Magneto whose motivation and powers were both feeling a little watered down from him playing second string to a resurgent, insurgent Cyclops for the past few years? Would this simply be a movie-fervor cash in with a hunky Fassbender style Magneto staring moodily off into the distance and pulling out people’s fillings?

Yesterday I caught up with the third volume of his edition…

Magneto, Vol. 3 – Shadow Games

Collecting Magneto (2014) #13-17. Written by Cullen Bunn with artists Javi Fernandez and Gabriel Hernandez Walta and color artists Jordie Bellaire and Dan Brown.

#140char review: .@cullenbunn’s Magneto v3 is must-read! A distinct un-@Marvel rhythm & deep story roots give Mags motivation. Herald of good to come on UXM.

CK Says: Buy it!

This is a chilling, down-tempo masterpiece of anti-heroic deconstruction. The only time I was tempted to put it down is to think about it before I turned another page! Cullen Bunn is making Magneto more fearsome and more human than ever, and it’s a compelling read.

The cleaner of Fernandez’s art in the first issue are a welcome site as the focus is on the mysterious Briar, wherein Bunn plays a Morrison-like game of building a sub-culture around villainy. If there were super-villains in your world, wouldn’t you be scouring flea markets for DVDs of their greatest destructions after the footage was pulled from YouTube as supporting terrorism? Would people be proud of their scars or angry? This is one of those perfect issues that implies those questions without every verbalizing them, and which deepens the suddenly quite-fascinating mystery of Magneto’s mysterious human benefactor.

Afterwards, Walta continues to lend a weariness to Magneto’s chapters with his sketchy lines portraying a certain rough-edged weariness, which Jordie Bellaire has long-since perfected a color pallet to accompany. Here we see Magneto turn on SHIELD after cooperating with them briefly in Uncanny X-Men. What follows is more interesting. Magneto is re-building some semblance of society on Genosha out of a lingering guilt that he’s let his species down. How to even choose the occasion of his deepest regret? Was it the slaughter just perpetrated by The Red Skull on the island? Or perhaps the genocide of millions of mutants in Morrison’s E is for Extinction. Or, were his failures manifest much earlier – during his first overt strike on US missiles during his original encounter with the X-Men and in his guilt for surviving the Holocaust? Some Nazi and Holocaust imagery here is truly nightmarish, but only once does it feel present purely for shock value.

What’s so fascinating is that all of our flawed protagonist’s decisions feel right – it’s what you might choose in the position of a beleaguered former super-villain, right down to the shocking final choice he makes to resolve the volume.

Bunn’s dissection of Magneto’s extended history feels inspired by James Robinson, who carefully disassembles all things Golden and Silver aged to construct his stories. Maybe Bunn was capable of this all along and never had a character with a rich enough tapestry of stories to draw from. Either way, against all odds Bunn has made Magneto both a nuanced character and a must-read series. If you’re not already excited for him to helm the next volume of Uncanny X-Men headlined by Magneto, then you absolutely must read this book!

What came before: Magneto, Vol. 1 – Infamous >> Magneto, Vol. 2 – Reversals