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Jordie Bellaire

The Pull List: Batman, Brave and The Bold, Damnation, Maestros, Mighty Thor, Punks Not Dead, and more!

February 25, 2018 by krisis

Doctor Strange: Damnation #1, art by Rod Reis

I know it seems impossible, but The Pull List has grown even bigger this week for the third week in a row! That’s because I finished catching up to present on a number of DC and Marvel books, plus I picked up five smaller press books.

  • DC Comics
    • Batman #41
    • Batman & the Signal #2
    • The Brave and The Bold #1
    • Damage #2
    • Deathbed #1 (Vertigo)
    • Justice League #39
    • Milk Wars – DC Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye / Swamp Thing Special
    • Super Sons #13
    • Superman #41
    • Trinity #18
  • Image Comics
    • The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson #2
    • Ice Cream Man #2
    • Maestros #5
    • Redlands #6
    • Twisted Romance #3
  • Marvel Comics
    • Astonishing X-Men #8
    • Avengers #681
    • Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #5
    • Doctor Strange – Damnation #1
    • Generation X #87
    • Infinity Countdown Prime
    • Mighty Thor #704
    • Tales of Suspense #102
    • The Incredible Hulk #713
    • Venom #162
    • X-Men Gold #22
  • Smaller Publishers: Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Vault Comics, Zenescope
    • Belle Beast Hunter #2, Zenescope
    • Heathen #6, Vault Comics
    • James Bond: The Body #1, Dynamite Comics
    • Mata Hari #1, Dark Horse / Berger Books
    • Musketeers #1, Zenescope
    • Punks Not Dead #1, IDW Publishing / Black Crown

Pick of the Pull

Big Two (Marvel/DC) Issue of the Week:
Mighty Thor (2016) #704

A bloody, thrilling, heart-rending comic. Aaron has somehow amped up the drama in each of the last three issues as we hasten towards a potential Ragnarok at the hands of the Mangog and Jane Foster’s death at her own hands if she takes up the mantle of Thor just one more time.

Yet, beyond those looming disasters there is still Makelith’s war on the Ten Realms. Mangog is just one facet of that. Even in the dimness and tragedy, Aaron finds shining moments – Jane with her friend in the cancer ward, a father and son joined in battle, and a mother casting aside a snake that has wounded her before.

All the while, Dauterman and Wilson are turning in a quality of artwork never seen before at Marvel comics – truly, one of the pinnacles of art at Marvel in over 75 years of publishing.

This story has officially become the best Thor story in my eyes, and it just might be Marvel’s best longform story of all time. I’d place it alongside Mark Gruenwald Captain America and Chris Claremont X-Men at this point.

Best Small-Pub Issue of the Week:
Punks Not Dead (2018) #1, IDW Publishing / Black Crown

An utterly madcap introduction to Punks Not Dead (and, for me, to Black Crown comics, which are edited by Shelly Bond distributed by IDW). This book is part Injection, part Sid and Nancy, and a little dash of the more lighthearted issues of Sandman.

It follows a teenage boy and his scam artist mom as the kid picks up some kind of supernatural echo of the deceased Sid Vicious in a dingy airport bathroom. Meanwhile, the beleaguered Department for Extra-Usual Affairs is busy putting minor demons out of the closet at 10 Downing Street with a staff of one.

This book is funny, unique, and looks freaking brilliant. Artist Martin Simmonds is simply incredible, drawing a real-seeming Britain with amped up color and clever use of cut-and-pasted patterns to ground it in real, textured reality. I am in love with this book, and will not only be keeping up with it, but also checking out other titles from Black Crown. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Batman, Brave and The Bold, Damnation, Maestros, Mighty Thor, Punks Not Dead, and more!

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Alex de Campi, Amadeus Cho, Amilcar Pinna, Astonishing X-Men, Avengers, Batman, Batman and The Signal, Belle Beast Hunter, Berger Books, Black Crown, Cave Carson, Charles Soule, Christina Straight, Christopher Priest, Cullen Bunn, Damage, Damnation, Dark Horse, DC Comics, Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan, Deathbed, Declan Shalvey, Doctor Strange, Donny Cates, Further Adventures of Nick Wilson, Generation X, Gerry Duggan, Greg Land, Greg Pak, Heathen, Ian Churchill, Ice Cream Man, IDW, Image Comics, Incredible Hulk, Infinity Countdown, James Bond, James Robinson, Jason Aaron, Jordie Bellaire, Justice League, Maestros, Marvel Comics, Mata Hari, Mighty Thor, Mike Deodato, Mike Henderson, Milk Wars, Musketeers, Nick Spencer, Punk Not Dead, Redlands, Steve Skroce, Super Sons, Superman, Swamp Thing, Tales of Suspense, The Brave and The Bold, The Pull List, The Signal, Tom King, Trinity, Twisted Romance, Vault Comics, Venom, Vertigo, Wonder Woman, X-Men Gold, Zenescope

The Pull List: Batman, Damage, Dark Fang, Ales Kot, & more!

January 20, 2018 by krisis

Welcome back the The Pull List, where I review every new comic I digitally picked up this week that wasn’t X-Men?

I’m still a few weeks away from being caught-up on non-X Marvel books, so my reads were restricted to some young DC titles, DC’s first “New Age of Heroes” launch, and Tom King’s Batman – which I mostly stay caught up upon for the hot takes.

This week’s Pull List includes:

  • Avengers (2017) #676
  • Batman (2016) #39
  • Damage (2018) #1
  • Dark Fang (2017) #3
  • Days of Hate (2018) #1
  • The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson (2018) #1
  • Ice Cream Man (2018) #1
  • James Bond: The Body (2018 #1.

[Read more…] about The Pull List: Batman, Damage, Dark Fang, Ales Kot, & more!

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Ales Kot, Avengers, Batman, Damage, Dark Fang, Days of Hate, DC Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, Ice Cream Man, Image Comics, James Bond, James Bond: The Body, Joelle Jones, Jordie Bellaire, The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson, The Pull List, Tomeu Morey, Tony Daniel

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!

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 45star Amazon Logo

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!

Magneto-2014-Vol03This 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 30star >> Magneto, Vol. 2 – Reversals 40star

What comes next: Magneto, Vol. 4 – Last Days >> Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 4 (begins in November!)

You might also like:

  • Hawkeye, Vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon (indie feel, flat-colored art)
  • Astonishing X-Men Volume 12: Unmasked (same artist, character-motivated)

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Collected Editions, Cullen Bunn, Dan Brown, Gabriel Walta, Javi Fernandez, Jordie Bellaire, Magneto, Marvel Comics, X-Men

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