Sam Wilson’s Review
Punishermax #6
Marvel MAX
Written by: Jason Aaron
Drawn by: Steve Dillon
Cover by: Dave Johnson
Back in his heyday the Punisher was the man. My personal favorite era was the Jim Lee/Carl Potts Punisher War Journal era (though the While Portacio/Mike Baron series was good too). The Punisher back then was in the Marvel Universe, but not. He did his own thing, interacted with a few “street” Marvel Heroes and killed a crapload of bad guys. It was good. For a minute the Punisher got completely played out and way to popular (let’s not talk about “black” Punisher), and then Garth Ennis showed up and saved him. First in Marvel Knights, and then with Punisher MAX, which was set in its own universe and was a mature readers title. Personally, that was the Punisher the way he was meant to be, unchained and for adults only. Every time they put the Punisher in the regular Marvel U, it’s doomed for failure (like the new series set in Dark Reign, seriously, retarded. I mean Frankencastle? Are you f-in kidding me?). With Ennis gone, we got a new skipper for Punisher MAX by the name of Jason Aaron, currently responsible for the baddest motherf-er in comics right now, Dashiel Bad-horse, the lead protagonist in DC/Vertigo’s “Scalped”. Along for the ride is Ennis mainstay artist Steve Dillon, back on the Punisher and criminally underrated as far as talent goes. So how do my boys handle their new book? Pretty freakin’ well…
Our first arc introduced us to Jason Aaron’s Frank Castle and Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin. Castle is the same psychotic killer, maybe a little more cold blooded and a extremely violent in a calculated not necessarily brutal way like the Ennis Punisher. The Kingpin is pretty much an evil sociopathic bastard. He let his own son die rather than give up his master plan to be the boss of bosses. So life is sort of great at the top, the only problem is the Punisher is still around. So in our new arc Fisk has enlisted Bullseye. This is not the Bullseye we know and love with the andamantium spine. This Bullseye craps out guns and shoots people with them (seriously). He’s a hitman whose never failed a contract and is also fairly psychotic with a touch of sociopathic behavior in there for good measure. And now he works for the kingpin and his only job is to take out Frank Castle. Oh yes, it is on…
Seriously. Jason Aaron took the bad ass from Scalped and set it loose on the most mentally disturbed unforgiving killers in the Marvel U, and then Joe Q slapped the MAX label on it. Only the truly balless would not think this book is fu**ing awesome…
Wktf’s Reviews
Siege: Loki One-Shot #1
Marvel Comics
Written by: Kieron Gillen
Drawn by: Jamie McKelvie
Cover by: Marko Djurdjevic
As one-shot satellite event tie-in stories go, this one’s more passable than most. I must admit, I had my hopes up for this one considering Gillen, who’s been doing such a great job on Thor, was at the reigns and I expected that the Blackest Night tie in stories had raised the bar for these normally sub-part marketing tactics to sell more comic books. Befitting the title, Gillen weaves a story that focuses on Loki, the single most important character in Siege who as yet has been nowhere to be found in the main event title. But, for those of us wondering what Loki’s grand design in the masterful manipulation of Norman Osborn has been, sadly we get little illumination with this story.
Up until now we’ve heard Loki tell Osborn that he desires not only to rule Asgard but to return the legendary city to the heavens. As we trace Loki’s movements through previously familiar territory, including his parting from Dr. Doom and a little insight into a moment Norman had with his Goblin mask prior to Siege’s execution, we begin to learn that Loki’s motivation is far baser and self-serving (not a surprise) than he led Osborn to believe. For those of us who followed JMS’ Thor run we’re not at all surprised to see Loki take a physically active hand in his manipulations but his level of swordplay and battle skills here seems a bit over the top for one who more frequently moves pawns to battle for him. Still, his manipulations to seek his own selfish end goal through bargains he strikes not only with Hela but also Mephisto seemingly take us away from the events of Siege and into what feels like a different and disjointed story. Until, that is, the very end when we learn his other end goal exceeds the title for which he’s been named these past several millennia.
So, in all, the story is interesting and even intriguing. Gillen’s proven to be as potent a writer as JMS when crafting Loki as his most devious. Where this issue really falls down is on the art. I’m not at all familiar with McKelvie, but his simplistic and detail-free style, reminiscent of Steve Dillon’s work, just simply doesn’t work here. His Loki and Mephisto look like teenagers and Hela is particularly poorly rendered. So, a strong story that doesn’t seem to tie into the Siege tale in any meaningful way that also is poorly illustrated. I think you can do the math on this one.
Siege: Captain America One-Shot #1
Marvel Comics
Written by: Christos N. Gage
Drawn by: Federico Dallocchio
Cover by: Marko Djurdjevic
We know from “Who Will Wield the Shield” that Steve Rogers gives up his shield to Buck, the new Captain America. Except that, for the Siege battle, Bucky temporarily returned the shield to Steve to lead the charge to win back America from Osborn’s Dark Reign. Now that Asgard’s come tumbling down to Earth in Siege #3 both heroes and villains are pulling themselves out of the rubble and wreckage. As it turns out some civilian onlookers, hoping to score some big bucks on photos of the action, have gotten a little too close as well. And the two Caps have found themselves facing a hostage situation up against…Razor-Fist. Yes, you read right. That most heinous of all villains, Razor-Fist, the guy with a giant razor on each hand. Should this clown be trouble for one of the Captain America’s, much less both of them? According to Bucky, Razor-Fist is an ultra-talented fighter and assassin, but this match up just doesn’t seem like all that big a deal.
Despite this, both the Caps seem to have trouble taking Razor-Fist down. Sure, the villain’s got hostages but when has that ever stopped Steve Rogers from taking the bad guy down. With these strikes against this issue, I’m afraid Dallocchio’s art is the final punch to finish it off. Sloppy and awkward, our heroes and the villain all look frumpy and misshapen and the action seemed wooden and hardly fluid. Not only does this story not add anything to the primary Siege storyline, it’s just not that much fun to read. Easy pass.
Batman #698
DC Comics
Written by: Tony Daniel
Drawn by: Guillem March
Cover by: Tony Daniel
One piece of good news coming out of DC, in addition to the fact that some great characters like Aquaman and Martian Manhunterr had returned from the dead, was that Tony Daniel was staying on as Batman scribe following his stellar writer/artist run on this title’s last arc. Daniel has a great grip on the Batman universe and I’ll take his clean plotting and writing over the convoluted mess Grant Morrison produces any day of the week.
Without Damien in tow this time, Dick Grayson is still struggling with the mind altering toxins infused into his system by Hugo Strange. And some pretty bizarre and potentially Freudian dreams invade his sleep as a result. But, soon he’s called by Gordon to investigate a series of killings that appear to be copycat murders from Batman’s rogues gallery, starting with Zsasz (currently appearing in another Bat title), but then The Penguin, Mr. Freeze and, finally, The Joker. And through all Batman’s investigations, The Riddler has been along with every step. Nigma’s psyche took a strangely bizarre and seemingly psychotic turn from the benign private investigator Paul Dini turned him into in the pages of the pre-Final Crisis Detective Comics. In this issue, Batman and Gordon seem both annoyed and confused by his repeated presence.
Guillem March’s style is a bit more cartoony than the art Daniel had been giving us, but his dark and moody settings and terrific use of shadows when portraying Batman are all really effective. He even gives us a Frank Miller/Dark Knight Returns cover tribute moment that seems to fit right in with the story’s action. With this new arc and a new artist, this consistently terrific Batman book hasn’t missed a beat as it moves toward its landmark issue #700 in just a couple of months. Recommended.
Wktf’s Trade Reviews
Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day (see
http://history1900s.about.com/cs/ho.../yomhashoah.htm for further information), was on April 12th this year, just this past Monday. And, so, it seemed appropriate to return to some of the brilliant works about The Holocaust in this medium we all love.
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
Written and Drawn by: Art Spiegelman
Pantheon Books
How many original graphic novels, trades, or any other publication in this medium that you’ve read have won the Pulitzer Prize? Fear not, this is just a rhetorical question. As far as I know, there are only two possible answers to this question. The first is “none.” The second, if you’ve read Maus, is “one.”
My family does not claim any Holocaust survivors but we have had victims. My grandmother on my mother’s side fled Poland, already rife with anti-Semitism and with Hitler’s invasion only scarce months away, with her two daughters (these would become my two aunts as my mother had not yet been born) leaving her husband, who refused to abandon his successful architecture business, behind. He quickly followed her to the United States. Shortly thereafter the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and soon all of my grandparents’ relatives would be murdered in Poland’s various concentration and death camps. Maus may well include those murdered family members’ stories as well.
Maus explores realms of horror and human depravity to which other graphic novels who can claim the same, such as DC/Vertigo’s Preacher series, simply cannot compare. Art Spiegelman, underground comics legend, co-founder and editor of Raw magazine and a contributing editor and artist for The New Yorker, gives us not only a story of actual Holocaust events but of real people and their experiences during one of humankind’s most ghastly and grisly periods. This is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, Art’s father, as told directly to Art and recorded for the purposes of this work. The tale within this tale is the author’s unsparing recounting of his own tortured relationship with his aging and ill father amidst a series of tense and unhappy visits. Their painful relationship is a brutal backdrop to Vladek’s story. The brilliant conceit of this work is that Spiegelman transforms the Polish Jews into mice, the Germans become cats, the non-Jewish Poles are pigs, the Swedes are elk (or deer), the French are frogs, and the Americans are dogs (with the relationship of dogs to cats and cats to mice, this anthropomorphic technique makes frightening sense…depicting the anti-Semitic non-Jewish poles as pigs requires almost no explanation). Thus he, at first, takes Vladek’s tale and makes it more accessible to readers. But any comfort the reader may feel quickly disappears as the tale continues, as Spiegelman mixes photos of his murdered brother and his father in prison stripes with his cartoons, and the cast of characters move through experiences, also unsparingly detailed by Spiegelman, that defy a sane man’s imaginings to their inevitable conclusions.
A comic’s primary objective is to entertain its readers. Every so often we are given a work that also enlightens and instructs us. With this work we are given a riveting story that makes us want to turn away but compels us to read on, that’s drawn sparsely but with frightening simplicity, that pulls no punches in drawing us into the lives of these complex characters and educating us about their lives and experiences, and that should be required reading in high school and colleges as well as for comics lovers.
For Maus, Spiegelman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, a Guggenheim fellowship, and nominations for the National Book critics Circle Award. Comics Shop News issue #933 listed it as #9 among their Top 10 Non-Superhero Graphic Novels. Jerry Weist, who gave us the 100 Greatest Comic Books coffee table book, listed Maus as #69/100. He concludes his write-up of Maus thusly: “Much has been written about the visual genius of choosing mice for Jews and cats for Germans, and much more has been written about the intellectual implications of Maus, but of all the 100 greatest comic books within this volume, if you only go out and seek one to read, it should be Maus.”
Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy
DC Comics
Written by: Joe Kubert
Drawn by: Joe Kubert
Sgt. Rock first appeared in G.I Combat #68 in 1959 and, though he’s always lived outside the mainstream DC Universe, he’s also always been one of comics’ greatest characters, probably because he’s always felt like the truest of the comic book war heroes, for more so than Marvel’s more popular Sgt. Fury and The Howling Commandoes. The Howlers gave us some of Marvel’s best Silver Age stories, some of my favorites, but reading Sgt. Rock really forced the reader to feel the pain and anguish of war. Rock and his unit, Easy Company were the creations of writer/editor Robert Kanigher, but it was Joe Kubert who gave Rock his persona, his personality and his pathos. And who made the horrors of war real to the reader. No small wonder that it’s the incredibly talented Kubert who, even today in his 80s, is most closely associated with the iconic war character,
In 2006, Kubert brought Rock back to readers with his mini-series, “Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy.” Parachuting into Nazi occupied Lithuania, Rock and Easy Company find themselves on a mission at the onset of the brutal winter that helped Russia defeat the Nazis. Their mission? Retrieve an individual, a young rabbi named David, whom his sect actually believes is the messiah. Supposedly, David has a prophecy to share with the free world that will help unite the world’s nations and end the war. Prophetic or not, David’s real power is his ability to share the horrors and atrocities of the Holocaust with a world he hopes will be so horrified as to take action against Germany. Trapped between the warring Nazis and the Russians Rock's unit confronts German troops, marauding Russian soldiers and anti-Semitic Estonian villagers. The combat is brutally realistic and, shockingly, not all of Easy Company survive it. But even more shocking is Easy’s discovery of the concentration camps, and the camps’ victims, all or which is depicted in explicit and horrendous detail.
This book is not for the faint hearted. “The Prophecy” seems to be a particularly personal tale for Kubert, and he appears to be working hard to make a statement here. The hanging corpses and the stacks of emaciated, skeletal bodies immediately reminded me of when I was a kid and watching the BBC series The World at War with my parents. One episode, covering the Holocaust, showed film footage of hundreds of impossibly thin Jewish bodies tumbling over each other as they were being plowed by a Nazi steam shovel into a great mass burial pit. Remembering my disbelief at what I was seeing on the screen, I could relate to Easy’s first exposure to these horrors and their disbelief at what they were seeing. And it’s not an exaggeration to say my eyes were burning a bit as the men of Easy were coming to grips with what their minds simply refused to believe. Rock’s mission is to navigate David through warring terrain and get him to safety. Does he accomplish his mission? In terms of the experience of reading this book, I’d say that the story itself of “Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy” is not nearly as important as the telling of it, and Kubert’s always expressive line work make for an extremely powerful telling. Admittedly, “The Prophecy” is a different kind of trade paperback and, probably, not for everyone. But it is one that should stay with you long after you finish it.
X-Men Magneto: Testament HC
Marvel Comics
Written by: Greg Pak
Drawn by: Carmine Di Giandomenico
Original covers by: Marko Djurdjevic
This HC, collecting the story originally released as a Marvel Knights mini-series, presents the definitive origin of Magneto. Of course, Magneto was born with his powers, so this isn’t the origin of how he developed his abilities as opposed to the creation of his character. What event can so mark a young man and set him on an inexorable path in pursuit of a destiny that would change his life forever? For Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel and Max Eisenhardt that event was The Holocaust, which turned them into a famed Nazi hunter, a Nobel Peace Prize winning author, and one of Marvel’s most iconic and dangerous villains, respectively. And, if you think I’m confusing fantasy with reality by referring to a fictional comic book villain in the same sentence as two real life crusaders of justice, well, there’s a reason for that.
Greg Pak spent three years painstakingly researching both Magneto’s history and the history of The Holocaust to present a tale that is as accurate as possible to the often conflicting accounts of Magneto’s youth but, most importantly, in his own words, “in an age where Holocaust deniers still spread their lies, we’ve done our best to ensure that the real-world history we explore in the series is entirely accurate and that we deal with this unfathomably harrowing material in a way that’s honest, unflinching, human, and humane.” And so, the nine year old boy who would become Magneto along with his family are brutally integrated into the lives of German Jews as the Nuremburg Laws become enacted, Kristallnact signals the coming wave of hate and death and, finally, the crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau make that wave a real and crushing blow to Europe’s Jews.
This tale, named Best Mini-Series of 2008 by IGN, shows the origin of hate. We see how a young school boy is thrust into such unimaginable horror as to totally reshape his psyche, where the person who was that boy died and someone or something else rose in his place. With only the subtlest hints of his powers to come, Pak and Di Giandomenico barely show us anything of the elemental mutant villain but instead choose to focus on the terrible human experience of this poor boy. Text, dialogue and art have rarely come together as well as they do here. Matt Hollingsworth’s colors, with his washes of black and grays and hints of colors set the moods of pain, despair and rage so important to this story. Collecting all five issues of the Marvel Knights mini-series, along with in-depth endnotes, a comprehensive teacher’s guide (yes, this book could serve as a school text book), reference sources and related websites, this beautifully crafted, stunning and shocking hardcover is well worth the $24.99 cover price.
