The Tease of Things I Don't Need

A little bit of comics

My comics arrive twice a month via FedEx, dispatched by The Westfield Company, and then my time off is so seldom my own that the comics tend to sit. The shift toward trade and hardcover editions has suffered some backsliding over the past year as more monthly titles have slid onto my list. Simultaneously, the above mentioned situation and my slovenly habits frequently find me getting a new box of comics, starting to pick something out, realizing I didn't get around to reading the previous issue (and in too many cases the one before that, and perhaps the one before that, etc.), which I know is in one of the stacks I've "cleaned" out of my computer desk work space.

Still, I do get to some, and I'm going to take a stab at some comments on a few of the ones that made it through the mesh. Between noticing the dearth of comics comments making their way not only onto this page but into my Legends zine, and seeing such an update over on another blog, I've decided I wanted do a tiny bit of catching up. Today I'll likely just be hitting a few and they'll be ones I liked, so it's going to be real superhero fanboy material, not anything cutting edge, esoteric or otherwise artsy fartsy.

Villains United #4 (of 6) While I've been enjoying all of the four tie-in limited series for DC's countdown to Infinite Crisis, the one I've been enjoying the most has been Villains United. Gail Simone's assembled a fun cast of characters, and while the Dale Eaglesham and Wade von Grawbadger artwork wavers in and out for me, but for the most part works well.

The base plotline running through this miniseries is that Lex Luthor has created a society of supervillains and hasn't taken rejections well. A small group of mostly b-list villains who turned them down and as a result found themselves severely slapped down, have been brought together to counter the plans of Luthor's new society. Each member has his or her own rationale for being there, and some of them have them in layers. The secret of the mysterious "Mockingbird", the intelligence source behind this small band of counter-villain villains, will be revealed in the final issue.

As it's a series I'm enjoying I haven't troubled myself to try to pick out clues (or, worse still, search the 'Net for leaks) at this stage. Even discounted, I'm paying enough for these comics; why should I want to ruin the payoff? Some obvious theories are in place, especially considering the Gotham connection several of the villains share, but I'm not picking at any of it much yet. So far it's a good time, with the character interactions being more fun than the action, and the action's been fun, too.

Seeing something good done with a character like Catman is wonderful, and this may be the first time I've seen Cheshire in action where I gave a damn. Take all that and put Deadshot in the mix and there's a Suicide Squad vibe running through the series which certainly helps this fan.

Another DC title I've been enjoying solidly enough to actually read each time it arrives is JSA. Issue #76 ties in to one of the other countdown to Infinite Crisis series: The OMAC Project. (Which I'm horribly behind on, as I read the first issue, mislaid the second, and so have #2-4 on hold.)

This issue sees one of the JSA's prodigal members - Atom Smasher - up on trial for crimes he committed when he joined Black Adam in invading Kahndaq and overthrowing the ruling regime there. (An obvious moral parallel to recent US foreign policy, which was collected in the worthwhile Black Reign trade.) There's plenty going on in this issue, some of which should work fine for the new reader but is really there for those who've been following the tale. The OMAC cross-over provides the issue's massive battle in the streets. The issue ends in a way that proves, once more, that series writer Geof Johns has a feel for the landscape of the DC universe that marks him as both a fan and a professional.

Over at Marvel, their landscape's undergoing a huge at least momentary upheaval as reality's being flipped as a result of their House of M event. So far I've only been catching it in the margins (I've yet to pull the five scattered issues I have into one stack and catch up on that lion's share of the 8-issue House of M miniseries), and one of those margins has been Thunderbolts #11.

This was one of the series I'd found myself accumulating and not getting to, though I finally jumped in and caught up through issue #10 in a sitting a couple weeks back, so I was waiting for this issue. The underlying, central theme of the series remains villains playing at a game of heroes, seeing which ones find an allure to the heroic life and which ones play both sides of the game to their best advantage.

At the end of issue #10 the world changed suddenly, reality shifting to an alternate timeline where mutants are in charge, some humans (and even some mutants) are part of an open resistance movement, others are secretly so while playing parts in the new order, and the alien Kree are now in the mix.

This isn't a friendly first experience for a reader new to Thunderbolts or even the Marvel universe in general, so I can't recommend it at that level. As it's a single issue event - this lens into the alternate universe an emotionally unstable and tremendously powerful Scarlet Witch has brought into being - it's easily cast off and could be viewed as nothing more than an interruption of the storyline. The focal point in the story is Genis Vell, the son of the late hero Captain Marvel, whose "cosmic awareness" - a family legacy - makes him a focal point between realities.

Finally (I have to get some other things done around here today, including getting number one son to help me clear out the van and remove the middle and rear seats so I can pick up a china cabinet tomorrow during a long overdue visit to Crypt Leak and Abbygal's base), we have issue no.8 of The New Avengers.

I make no apologies on the issue: as a fan of Marvel's mainstream characters going back to the 1960's I've been enjoying this series. Some fans have heaped abuse and ridicule on Brian Bendis for his work on The Avengers, starting with the 2004/2005 event "Disassembled" in which he took a significant loose end or two and tugged... and the Avengers came apart. Going in I was expecting it to simply be an exploitation event - something to boost sales via chaos and death - which is something most of the shallower fans regard it to be to this day.

Oh, I have no illusions on that score: Getting the readers excited, agitated even, and getting the sales up was definitely a central part of the mission. Still, Bendis did it well and demonstrated for the most part that he'd done his homework. I was hopeful, because I'd seen that he'd taken Daredevil, a character I'd thought Kevin Smith had wrecked irretrievably, and brought him back as a character I recognized. He may have been doing a lot of writing for titles in Marvel's Ultimates line, but I don't blame Bendis for taking a job. The Ultimates line is something I blame Joe Quesada for. Joe's not losing any sleep over it, of course, and neither am I.

That Wanda, the Scarlet Witch, was at the center of the tumult worked well for this old fan, even if as a fan I didn't want to see some of what happened. Bendis picked up on how as Byrne wiped out Wanda and the Vision's children, and much later, when Busiek and Perez had Wanda "discover" that she was the wielder of "chaos magic" -- no one thought to consult the one person uniquely qualified to consult on all this. Someone who'd been a part of matters back when the character-focused Steve Englehart was on the job. Someone who'd attended at the birth of Wanda and Vision's children. Earth's Sorceror Supreme: Dr. Strange.

After a dead Jack of Hearts returned to Avengers mansion and briefly apologized before exploding and killing Scott Lang, the then-current Ant Man. After She-Hulk started to briefly act like her cousin, the Hulk, on a bad day, injuring the Wasp in the mix. After Tony Stark, now holding a cabinet level position in the US government, addressed the United Nations in an inexplicably intoxicated state despite not having had a drop to drink. After an invasion of Kree battleships popped out of nowhere - not showing up even on SHIELD's most sophisticated scanners, and Hawkeye lost his life during the attack, all of which happened on the same, awful day, Dr. Strange returned from an other-dimensional mission to banish the spell behind the "Kree" invasion and asked the Avengers to tell him what happened. He was understandably aghast that no one had consulted him on anything from the nullification of Wanda and the Vision's children to the hooey about "Chaos magic", either of which very well could have kept the day's horrors from happening.

Poor Wanda was tapping into the same magic Strange was, but she'd had a short-cut to it via her mutant abilities. This had enabled her to tap into forces anyone else would have had to become accustomed to gradually, in a course of intensive study that even the most adept (such as Strange himself) would have needed years of cloistered study to tap into. A short time hanging out with Agatha Harkness years ago did little more than give her some focus. When her reality started to come apart (children being un-made, husband disassembled and stripped of his humanity) her teammates, none of them qualified in such matters, provided very human support for her losses and thought she'd gotten over it. So had Wanda. But one never really gets over such things, especially someone who on some level knows that reality is an art project in her mind's eye.

In the wake of that day, and the confrontation with Wanda -- a teammate they realized they'd failed both as a teammate and a friend -- the mansion in ruins, Tony Stark's financial standing in dire straits, and a bitter sense of failure surrounding everything, the Avengers split up.

Not everyone was happy with that decision, though the capper appeared to be that there were no funds with which to rebuild. Still, Captain America believed that the team was necessary, and after a short time realized he was on watch for something. On watch for a sign that would reveal the rebirth of the Avengers.

A breakout at a maximum security prison housing some of the worst and most powerful supervillains in captivity in the US proved to be the event, at least as far as Captain America was concerned. Cap had become focused on how the Avengers had first been formed inadvertently by Loki, who in trying to menace his half-brother Thor using the Hulk as a catspaw, ended up bringing together the heroes who would become the Avengers. Cap saw the Avengers as a necessity, and as an odd assortment of heroes found themselves on the scene of this breakout he took it as Fate's hand bringing a new team into play.

Flashing ahead, Cap has been able to not only convince most of the strange crew - Luke Cage, Spider-man, Jessica Drew (Spider-woman) and even Iron Man himself (whose genius and reputation has proven him more financially resilient than he thought on that dark day), Cap's still working on Daredevil (one of the heroes present during the breakout) and in this issue Tony Stark (Iron Man) finds himself in the position of trying to talk Wolverine - someone whose path they crossed shortly after reforming as a team - into joining. Tony's found himself inspired on some level by Cap, and is following his lead. Still plagued by guilt over not being aware that a teammate of so many years was in such emotional torment, he obviously is looking for a different mix of people for this new team of Avengers.

Wolverine's been around the block many times, seen days as dark as what they've gone through, and is in more ways than one acutely sensitive to his surroundings. He's also someone who can take care of himself. Also, he's someone Tony's judged to have been misjudged by much of the world (a situation that was made worse, recently, by his being brainwashed by one Hydra faction into becoming an assassin during their power grab) and so could seriously use the public redemption of being a high profile hero as a member of the Avengers. Others who've started as criminals in one fashion or another have been redeemed as members of this team, and it's part of the legacy that the Avengers have been proud of.

Cap's spirit and vision has set the scene and lit the path, and Tony's been drawn into using his still considerable wealth to help bring the dream back to life. So, over the course of a couple pages Tony attempts to convince and ultimately to even use a bribe to nudge Wolverine into being at least on-call as part of the team. We don't know what specific deal's been struck, but whatever it was we see that a week later (the issue snaps back and forth in time) he's out with the team, taking down The Wrecker.

Honestly, there are only two elements of the series I've been lamenting. One has been the unfortunate tendency of some of the members (including Cap) to refer to the team as "The New Avengers" -- though that mercifully appears to have been dropped as of this issue. The other is whatever drive or mandate sees Bendis attempting to redeem Sentry and integrate him as part of the Marvel universe and this new team. Bendis isn't responsible for creating the character (Who was it? Morrison? I forget.), and as best I can tell he's trying to come up with a better way of making him fit in than the original cenception of him (as I understand it) as a hero so supremely powerful that he was bigger than Superman, yet was taken out of circulation and erased from everyone's memory. Bendis appears to be turning this on its head by making the character real, but all of what he believed to be an erased reality that only he remembers is actually all a delusion. I'm not expecting anything truly novel in the resolution, but I'm hopeful that in the end we'll have a character I can live with. Obviously something's going to have to be done about the seeming reality-bending, and I'm hoping he won't be left as someone as unreasonably powerful as, say, Superman -- a character I still find so powerful that most writers are forced to be inconsistant with regard to his powers in order to tell a story that lasts more than a few pages unless he's up against something of Godlike proportions. Honestly, I'd prefer to leave that sort of thing over in the DC universe. Not a big Superman fan here.

Okay... time for me to get to fixing up the van.