Kdawg59
01-11-2007, 10:16 AM
We are missing our Captain this week... I think Sammy mentions what he is up to below, but I gotta say when you are as hi-powered as Joe... how could Captain America and Tony Stark not be after him for top secret missions like the one he's on... He is enough of a trooper though to fight snow, aiports, and business to get us a stellar trade review this week. Thanks Captain Joe, for letting the SAM and I misbehave this week while you're gone...
Sam Wilson’s Reviews
This week is a slow week, so I thought about buying “52” since I haven’t picked it up since, issue one, and then I remembered it sucked crap. I also thought about the New X-men Omnibus, but then I remembered that dick Grant Morrison killed Jean Grey, again (asshole). Oh yeah, my pick of the week is Thunderbolts #110 because Warren Ellis is everything Grant Morrison wishes he was, and that being said, on to the reviews…
Batman Confidential #2
DC Comics
Written by: Andy Diggle
Drawn by: Whilce Portacio
Other than hardcore Batman fans, does anyone really care about a new Batman series? Given the creative team of “Batman Confidential” I would say I definitely care. Andy Diggle has slowly been building his reputation as the new “it” writer from the UK, with “Silent Dragon” from Wildstorm, “Swamp Thing” and “Adam Strange” for DC, and “Lady Constantine” and my personal favorite unsung comic of all time, “The Losers” from DC/Vertigo Andy has slowly been building his reputation as a rock solid writer with exciting dialogue and a Redbull fuelled, Steve McQueen in “Bullitt” take on the genre. Whilce Portacio is of course an old reliable, cutting his teeth in the early ‘90’s on “Uncanny X-men” and “Punisher”, and later on his own creator owned Wildstorm series “Wetworks”. Family issues have kept him out of the limelight for awhile, but now he is back and tackling the Dark Knight for the first time, and I have to say, looking good so far…
Our story opens like so many Batman stories before it: Batman takes out a thug after chasing him across a couple of rooftops, but this time is different, this thugs is suddenly vaporized by a laser beam. To add to the strangeness Bats believes the laser was meant for him and not the thug. Fast forward to a business meeting where Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne are trying to outbid each other for a defense contract. This is the first meeting between the two of them, and Bruce impresses Lex with his business acumen. As they exit Bruce leaps into action and saves Luthor from a runaway dump-truck, which appears to have been flung by a Waynetech military robot, gone rogue. In issue two the Waynetech robot makes short work of Luthor’s bodyguards, and of Batman and then suddenly stops fighting and runs away. In the meantime Jim Gordon is investigating a death at Waynetech, one of the engineers who designed that robot had a heart attack under mysterious circumstances, and thus the mystery thickens…
As far as Bat-tales goes this one is pretty standard, yes this is an “early” tale with some background on Bruce and Lex, but it’s nothing special. Portacio’s art is tight, Andy Diggle paces the story very well, typical as it is it’s still pretty cool. I doubt any Bat-fans would find anything disappointing about “Batman Confidential”, I’ll be staying with this book for the near future at least.
Thunderbolts #110
Marvel Comics
Written by: Warren Ellis
Drawn by: Mike Deodato
Cover by: Marko Djurdjevic
A few years back most of the mainstream marvel superheroes disappeared and came back in really, really lame events called “Onslaught” and “Heroes” return. During this event, to take the place of the missing heroes a bunch of villains (formerly known as the Masters of Evil) banded together and formed a new superteam in hopes of, well, who knows. Led by the new Baron Zemo (the son of Baron Zemo) these reformed villains (including Moonstone and Songbird among others) in one-way shape or form managed to stay a team up until now. Presently, in the “Civil War” torn Marvel U the Thunderbolts came down on the registration side but always the villain, Baron Zemo tried to play both sides. It didn’t work out and he was betrayed by Songbird and sucked into some Vortex, possibly lost in time forever. At the end of “Civil War” #4 a new Thunderbolts appeared (consisting of Venom, Lady Deathstrike, Taskmaster, Bullseye, Jester and Jack-O-Lantern and Songbird), and this time they are just villains who are villains, no more pretending crap, and their mission is to keep unregistered super-beings in line. Granted a pardon by Tony Stark, the baddest of the bad in the Marvel U is out to get some much-wanted payback.
With Thunderbolt’s #110 the team has changed once again (the Punisher offed Jester and Jack-O-Lantern in “Civil War #5), with the roster now being Songbird, Venom, Bullseye, Green Goblin, Penance, Radioactive Man, Swordsman and Moonstone, with super-surprise guest leader/puppet master Norman Osborne. Yes, Norman Osborne has been granted amnesty by Tony Stark to put together a team of psychopaths that are introduced to us in wicked-cool “Usual Suspects” manner by Warren Ellis. Bullseye is a psycho, Moonstone rivals Emma Frost for ***** of the year and poor Jack Staff (see old issues of Captain America for more on him), even though he is not a member of the New Thunderbolts he’s about to get a hurtin’ put on him by them. Oy vey…
I was never a big fan of the previous incarnations of the T-bolts, but Warren Ellis has just shot a kitten and grabbed my attention. Bullseye is scary, Norman, well, he’s Norman. Desperation, fear, intimidation, the new T-bolts are pretty bad assed and Mike Deodato’s art is not to shabby either (waay better than his recent outing in the “New Avengers”). This book is definitely worth checking out.
Squadron Supreme: Hyperion Vs. Nighthawk #1 (of 4)
Marvel Comics
Written by: Marc Guggenheim
Drawn by: Paul Gulacy
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, J. Michael Stracynski (JMS) has updated the classic Mark Gruewald 1985 series “Squadron Supreme” for the new millennium, titling his version “Supreme Power”. The characters are all there, just different, and nastier for the most part. Zarda is a crazy Amazon who’s penchant for killing is only outweighed by her obviously vast libido. Blur is still really fast but is young and black rather than the 30 something family man Gruewald’s Blur was. Hyperion is still “Superman”, more or less, but a Superman manipulated into service by our government and is now pissed beyond belief over his treatment. Nighthawk is “Batman”, but Batman if he was black and had a nastier temper and less regard for life and fairplay. So yes, the “yin” and “yan” of Batman and Superman taken to an extreme, obviously they would have to duke it out at some point, thus we are presented with “Hyperion Vs. Nighthawk”.
Our story opens with Hyperion beating the crap out of Nighthawk, Nighthawk broke into the Squad’s HQ for an unknown reason and thus suffers the consequences. Time passes and there is a rumor of an American mercenary in Dafur laying waste to both sides of a conflict that has resulted in nothing more than genocide and misery for the populace. Apparently innocent civilians have been killed, and the merc has sent a message back to the US, a piece of metal belonging to the ship Hyperion rode in on when he crash landed on Earth. This causes the US to send Hyperion to Dafur to investigate which leads to another conflict with Nighthawk, with unexpected results…
After reading this comic, the only words I had to describe it were, “kick ass”. I’ve always been a fan of Gulacy, and his style works with this book perfectly. Guggenheim’s story builds on JMS’s main story to give us a political tale set perfectly within the Squadron Supreme universe. Fans of Guggenheim and Squadron loyalists will not be disappointed by this new mini series, do not pass it up.
Ask a British Dude…
As a follow up to the Thunderbolts review, and to support our reoccurring theme of Warren Ellis love I felt it important to ask one of Ellis’s own countrymen to share with us his personal feelings on Ellis and give us some “across the pond” wit and wisdom as only my pal Jess Harrold can. So without further ado, let’s ask a British dude, “What will Warren Ellis bring to the Thunderbolts?”
It’s a big day to be a Warren Ellis fan, if, unlike him, you’re American. If, like him, you’re British, tomorrow will be a big day. Or make that yesterday and today if these reviews get posted on Thursday. And schedule that big day for some time in August if, like me, you get your comics mail order. But whatever day it happens, it’s big. After a year handling a ragtag bunch of alsorans to humorous effect (exploding m!”£$%^&*(ing boats on NextWave), a guest stint in the Ultimate Universe showing that a limited series there (or trilogy thereof) actually can be good, and a couple of issues making the New Universe, er, new again in NewUniversal, the House of Ideas has finally let him get his hands on some high-profile Marvel Universe characters for the first time in a few years. (I know he wrote a few issues of Iron-Man, all of which might actually have reached comic shops by now, but I’m desperately trying to forget them. Indulge me if you could…) Excuse me while I clear my voice for movie trailer guy impression. >ahem< Green Goblin. Venom. Bullseye. Songbird. Wait, scratch that last one… Yes it’s Newest Thunderbolts, technically the fourth incarnation for what has to be the most successful new team book introduced in the last 20 years. But what are longtime T-Bolts readers going to get from the new direction? In a word, ideas. Not that Fabian Nicieza was bereft of ideas. He had plenty, and over the last few years, he seemed to throw all of them at Thunderbolts in the hope that one or two of them would stick. What was probably well intended to be a nostalgic glimpse of a good old fashioned Marvel Universe turned, sadly, into a real mess, that would be a nightmare for new readers to pick up. Heck, by the end (some nonsense with Grandmaster and Zemo in which a whole bunch of people changed sides and kept secrets, just like they had been doing for the last 50 issues) it was nigh-impossible for this lifetime Marvel reader to follow despite owning every issue. Not only that, but you were left the real feeling that nothing ever written in T-Bolts would have the slightest impression on the wider Marvel Universe. But in fact, that isn’t the case. Some of Nicieza’s ideas, or at least his characters, have stuck. The aforementioned Songbird (who could do with a makeover, and maybe a return to ‘Screaming Mimi’), Radioactive Man (not the Homer Simpson lookalike), Moonstone (who has only just returned to the land of the conscious), and the latest Swordsman (I could explain who he is. Really, I could. With diagrams and everything. But you’d only kill me.) have all made the cut. And readers can expect Ellis to get straight inside their heads, and give them something new, something fresh to do. Even in NextWave, largely a humour book, and only borderline in continuity, Ellis develops strong personalities grounded in their Marvel Universe history, but takes them someplace… else. Mining the Silver Age, he even made Not Brand Echh in-continuity (ish…) with Charlie America, the Inedible Bulk and a searing insight into the mind of none other than Forbush Man. In NewUniversal, he is looking to perform the same trick, making sense of an entire failed universe. Even in Extremis (Damn! Remembered it!) he had plenty of ideas, albeit with Tony Stark he threw too much of the billionaire out with the bathwater in his reckless disregard for what came before. In Thunderbolts, he will doubtless be more constrained. With these characters, the mystery character Penance (not such a mystery if you’ve been paying attention to the MU in the last year, or read the spoilers on Newsarama) and the high-profile ‘movie star’ members he is adding to the mix, he has bucketloads of continuity to deal with. But with Ellis’s self-confessed distaste for superheroes, expect him to use his characters’ Marvel Universe ties to wreak havoc for the great and the good with his team of maniacs. It could be brilliant. It could all go horribly wrong. But one thing readers won’t get with Ellis is something they feel like they have read before. And after issue after issue of De Ja Vu Thunderbolts, that will be a welcome relief. Whenever I get to read it.
Sam Wilson’s Reviews
This week is a slow week, so I thought about buying “52” since I haven’t picked it up since, issue one, and then I remembered it sucked crap. I also thought about the New X-men Omnibus, but then I remembered that dick Grant Morrison killed Jean Grey, again (asshole). Oh yeah, my pick of the week is Thunderbolts #110 because Warren Ellis is everything Grant Morrison wishes he was, and that being said, on to the reviews…
Batman Confidential #2
DC Comics
Written by: Andy Diggle
Drawn by: Whilce Portacio
Other than hardcore Batman fans, does anyone really care about a new Batman series? Given the creative team of “Batman Confidential” I would say I definitely care. Andy Diggle has slowly been building his reputation as the new “it” writer from the UK, with “Silent Dragon” from Wildstorm, “Swamp Thing” and “Adam Strange” for DC, and “Lady Constantine” and my personal favorite unsung comic of all time, “The Losers” from DC/Vertigo Andy has slowly been building his reputation as a rock solid writer with exciting dialogue and a Redbull fuelled, Steve McQueen in “Bullitt” take on the genre. Whilce Portacio is of course an old reliable, cutting his teeth in the early ‘90’s on “Uncanny X-men” and “Punisher”, and later on his own creator owned Wildstorm series “Wetworks”. Family issues have kept him out of the limelight for awhile, but now he is back and tackling the Dark Knight for the first time, and I have to say, looking good so far…
Our story opens like so many Batman stories before it: Batman takes out a thug after chasing him across a couple of rooftops, but this time is different, this thugs is suddenly vaporized by a laser beam. To add to the strangeness Bats believes the laser was meant for him and not the thug. Fast forward to a business meeting where Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne are trying to outbid each other for a defense contract. This is the first meeting between the two of them, and Bruce impresses Lex with his business acumen. As they exit Bruce leaps into action and saves Luthor from a runaway dump-truck, which appears to have been flung by a Waynetech military robot, gone rogue. In issue two the Waynetech robot makes short work of Luthor’s bodyguards, and of Batman and then suddenly stops fighting and runs away. In the meantime Jim Gordon is investigating a death at Waynetech, one of the engineers who designed that robot had a heart attack under mysterious circumstances, and thus the mystery thickens…
As far as Bat-tales goes this one is pretty standard, yes this is an “early” tale with some background on Bruce and Lex, but it’s nothing special. Portacio’s art is tight, Andy Diggle paces the story very well, typical as it is it’s still pretty cool. I doubt any Bat-fans would find anything disappointing about “Batman Confidential”, I’ll be staying with this book for the near future at least.
Thunderbolts #110
Marvel Comics
Written by: Warren Ellis
Drawn by: Mike Deodato
Cover by: Marko Djurdjevic
A few years back most of the mainstream marvel superheroes disappeared and came back in really, really lame events called “Onslaught” and “Heroes” return. During this event, to take the place of the missing heroes a bunch of villains (formerly known as the Masters of Evil) banded together and formed a new superteam in hopes of, well, who knows. Led by the new Baron Zemo (the son of Baron Zemo) these reformed villains (including Moonstone and Songbird among others) in one-way shape or form managed to stay a team up until now. Presently, in the “Civil War” torn Marvel U the Thunderbolts came down on the registration side but always the villain, Baron Zemo tried to play both sides. It didn’t work out and he was betrayed by Songbird and sucked into some Vortex, possibly lost in time forever. At the end of “Civil War” #4 a new Thunderbolts appeared (consisting of Venom, Lady Deathstrike, Taskmaster, Bullseye, Jester and Jack-O-Lantern and Songbird), and this time they are just villains who are villains, no more pretending crap, and their mission is to keep unregistered super-beings in line. Granted a pardon by Tony Stark, the baddest of the bad in the Marvel U is out to get some much-wanted payback.
With Thunderbolt’s #110 the team has changed once again (the Punisher offed Jester and Jack-O-Lantern in “Civil War #5), with the roster now being Songbird, Venom, Bullseye, Green Goblin, Penance, Radioactive Man, Swordsman and Moonstone, with super-surprise guest leader/puppet master Norman Osborne. Yes, Norman Osborne has been granted amnesty by Tony Stark to put together a team of psychopaths that are introduced to us in wicked-cool “Usual Suspects” manner by Warren Ellis. Bullseye is a psycho, Moonstone rivals Emma Frost for ***** of the year and poor Jack Staff (see old issues of Captain America for more on him), even though he is not a member of the New Thunderbolts he’s about to get a hurtin’ put on him by them. Oy vey…
I was never a big fan of the previous incarnations of the T-bolts, but Warren Ellis has just shot a kitten and grabbed my attention. Bullseye is scary, Norman, well, he’s Norman. Desperation, fear, intimidation, the new T-bolts are pretty bad assed and Mike Deodato’s art is not to shabby either (waay better than his recent outing in the “New Avengers”). This book is definitely worth checking out.
Squadron Supreme: Hyperion Vs. Nighthawk #1 (of 4)
Marvel Comics
Written by: Marc Guggenheim
Drawn by: Paul Gulacy
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, J. Michael Stracynski (JMS) has updated the classic Mark Gruewald 1985 series “Squadron Supreme” for the new millennium, titling his version “Supreme Power”. The characters are all there, just different, and nastier for the most part. Zarda is a crazy Amazon who’s penchant for killing is only outweighed by her obviously vast libido. Blur is still really fast but is young and black rather than the 30 something family man Gruewald’s Blur was. Hyperion is still “Superman”, more or less, but a Superman manipulated into service by our government and is now pissed beyond belief over his treatment. Nighthawk is “Batman”, but Batman if he was black and had a nastier temper and less regard for life and fairplay. So yes, the “yin” and “yan” of Batman and Superman taken to an extreme, obviously they would have to duke it out at some point, thus we are presented with “Hyperion Vs. Nighthawk”.
Our story opens with Hyperion beating the crap out of Nighthawk, Nighthawk broke into the Squad’s HQ for an unknown reason and thus suffers the consequences. Time passes and there is a rumor of an American mercenary in Dafur laying waste to both sides of a conflict that has resulted in nothing more than genocide and misery for the populace. Apparently innocent civilians have been killed, and the merc has sent a message back to the US, a piece of metal belonging to the ship Hyperion rode in on when he crash landed on Earth. This causes the US to send Hyperion to Dafur to investigate which leads to another conflict with Nighthawk, with unexpected results…
After reading this comic, the only words I had to describe it were, “kick ass”. I’ve always been a fan of Gulacy, and his style works with this book perfectly. Guggenheim’s story builds on JMS’s main story to give us a political tale set perfectly within the Squadron Supreme universe. Fans of Guggenheim and Squadron loyalists will not be disappointed by this new mini series, do not pass it up.
Ask a British Dude…
As a follow up to the Thunderbolts review, and to support our reoccurring theme of Warren Ellis love I felt it important to ask one of Ellis’s own countrymen to share with us his personal feelings on Ellis and give us some “across the pond” wit and wisdom as only my pal Jess Harrold can. So without further ado, let’s ask a British dude, “What will Warren Ellis bring to the Thunderbolts?”
It’s a big day to be a Warren Ellis fan, if, unlike him, you’re American. If, like him, you’re British, tomorrow will be a big day. Or make that yesterday and today if these reviews get posted on Thursday. And schedule that big day for some time in August if, like me, you get your comics mail order. But whatever day it happens, it’s big. After a year handling a ragtag bunch of alsorans to humorous effect (exploding m!”£$%^&*(ing boats on NextWave), a guest stint in the Ultimate Universe showing that a limited series there (or trilogy thereof) actually can be good, and a couple of issues making the New Universe, er, new again in NewUniversal, the House of Ideas has finally let him get his hands on some high-profile Marvel Universe characters for the first time in a few years. (I know he wrote a few issues of Iron-Man, all of which might actually have reached comic shops by now, but I’m desperately trying to forget them. Indulge me if you could…) Excuse me while I clear my voice for movie trailer guy impression. >ahem< Green Goblin. Venom. Bullseye. Songbird. Wait, scratch that last one… Yes it’s Newest Thunderbolts, technically the fourth incarnation for what has to be the most successful new team book introduced in the last 20 years. But what are longtime T-Bolts readers going to get from the new direction? In a word, ideas. Not that Fabian Nicieza was bereft of ideas. He had plenty, and over the last few years, he seemed to throw all of them at Thunderbolts in the hope that one or two of them would stick. What was probably well intended to be a nostalgic glimpse of a good old fashioned Marvel Universe turned, sadly, into a real mess, that would be a nightmare for new readers to pick up. Heck, by the end (some nonsense with Grandmaster and Zemo in which a whole bunch of people changed sides and kept secrets, just like they had been doing for the last 50 issues) it was nigh-impossible for this lifetime Marvel reader to follow despite owning every issue. Not only that, but you were left the real feeling that nothing ever written in T-Bolts would have the slightest impression on the wider Marvel Universe. But in fact, that isn’t the case. Some of Nicieza’s ideas, or at least his characters, have stuck. The aforementioned Songbird (who could do with a makeover, and maybe a return to ‘Screaming Mimi’), Radioactive Man (not the Homer Simpson lookalike), Moonstone (who has only just returned to the land of the conscious), and the latest Swordsman (I could explain who he is. Really, I could. With diagrams and everything. But you’d only kill me.) have all made the cut. And readers can expect Ellis to get straight inside their heads, and give them something new, something fresh to do. Even in NextWave, largely a humour book, and only borderline in continuity, Ellis develops strong personalities grounded in their Marvel Universe history, but takes them someplace… else. Mining the Silver Age, he even made Not Brand Echh in-continuity (ish…) with Charlie America, the Inedible Bulk and a searing insight into the mind of none other than Forbush Man. In NewUniversal, he is looking to perform the same trick, making sense of an entire failed universe. Even in Extremis (Damn! Remembered it!) he had plenty of ideas, albeit with Tony Stark he threw too much of the billionaire out with the bathwater in his reckless disregard for what came before. In Thunderbolts, he will doubtless be more constrained. With these characters, the mystery character Penance (not such a mystery if you’ve been paying attention to the MU in the last year, or read the spoilers on Newsarama) and the high-profile ‘movie star’ members he is adding to the mix, he has bucketloads of continuity to deal with. But with Ellis’s self-confessed distaste for superheroes, expect him to use his characters’ Marvel Universe ties to wreak havoc for the great and the good with his team of maniacs. It could be brilliant. It could all go horribly wrong. But one thing readers won’t get with Ellis is something they feel like they have read before. And after issue after issue of De Ja Vu Thunderbolts, that will be a welcome relief. Whenever I get to read it.