Graphic Novel: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 3, Ryan North & Erica Henderson

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 3
collecting issues 1-6 of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and a crossover issue of Howard the Duck #6 (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is re-numbered after Marvel "event" of 2016, following the previous set of 1-8 & specials reviewed here.)
Writer: Ryan North
Howard the Duck Writer: Chip Zdarsky
Artist: Erica Henderson
Color Art: Rico Renzi
Trading Card Art: Joe Morris, Matt Digges, David Robins, Chip Zdarsky, & Doc Shaner
Van Art (I swear this is a thing that actually exists in this collection, and the van is awesome): Joe Quinones
Letters: VC's Clayton Cowles & Travis Lanham
ISBN: 9780785196266
Read August/September 2016

The continuing adventures of Squirrel Girl continue!  Everything I loved about it before, I still love, and the sweet and fun tone is delightful and refreshing in a lot of grimdark surroundings.  Excellent stories, even more excellent characters (although I thought that Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boy (Boi?) were sadly neglected this time through) and just so much joyous fun from time-traveling start to "the great hunt" of the finish.  Even beyond the stories themselves, the collection includes the little aside notes on the bottoms of the pages, the in-jokes between authors and artists, and the lovely letters from fans (real or imagined, but I think mostly real - judging by the cosplay pictures).  All of that just adds a lovely layer of fun metafrosting to the nutty cake.

Comic Book Collection: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 1 & 2 (issues 1-8) Ryan North & Erica Henderson

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 1
ISBN: 9780785197027
Collecting The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl issues 1-4, & Marvel Super-Heroes #8 from 1990
writer: Ryan North
artist: Erica Henderson
lettters: VC's Clayton Cowles
trading card art: Maris Wicks, Kyle Starks, Chris Giarrusso

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 2
ISBN: 9780785197034
Collecting The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl issues 5-8, & material from GLX-Mas Special #1, Thing #8 (from 2006) & Age of Heroes #3.
writer: Ryan North
artist: Erica Henderson
letters: VC's Clayton Cowles
trading card art: Eloise Narrington
colors: Rico Renzi

Bouncy, lighthearted, feisty, and openhearted.  I love Squirrel Girl so much, and this is only the beginning - she was one of the survivors of the Secret Wars mixup, so there's a second set of Squirrel Girl issues starting later in 2015.

This set of issues is a complete arc, and gives a great introduction to the character, who has shed the odd costume from the 90s, but has kept the indomitable spirit and spunky nature that made her such a niche favorite despite long absences from official line-ups.

Book Club, Graphic Novel Collection: Marvel Civil War, Mark Millar & Steve McNiven

Marvel Civil War Event (collecting Marvel Civil War, issues #1-7)
writer, Mark Millar
pencils, Steve McNiven
colors, Morry Hollowell
letters, VC's Chris Eliopoulos
ISBN: 9780785121794
Read May 1, 2016

Graphic Novel Book Club read for May.

I really hope that I like the movie more than I like the comic event.  This collection of seven issues has the core of the Civil War storyline, but as much of the character development and specific moments were parceled out into the individual characters' comic runs, the characters here are flat and dispirited and prone to making decisions that appear to be out of thin air, or changing their minds for what seems to be no reason.  The artwork has lovely framing and is well-laid-out, but the combo of McNiven and Hollowell makes for characters who look like they are plastic dolls or an early cheap attempt at computer-generated artwork.  Not my favorite look.

If you've been under a rock for a while, Marvel decided they needed a giant universe-roiling "event" and wouldn't it be cool if two of the major players in the universe were on opposite sides and got to fight each other!  Yeah!  Or something.  So in the story world, some punk kid supers did something stupid, and then Tony Stark and Steve Rogers both reacted stupidly, and a whole bunch of forced decisions and rampant stupidity later, there was a big smackdown superhero fight  (and some smaller ones) until things were sufficiently shaken up to make the Marvel head honchos happy.

Punisher gets some good moments (I especially liked Spiderman's poignant suggestion that Rogers and Castle are essentially the same soldier, but from very different wars and very different social responses).  Spiderman gets shafted (when is that ever a surprise) and Doctor Strange gets the boot.  Unsurprisingly, he, along with all the mutants, and Wakanda (at least at first), basically says "not my circus" when asked to choose sides.  Steve doesn't really have a character, Tony's a giant bag of snarky comments and bad decisions, and SHIELD and the general public exist as a metaphoric stick to justify and consolidate shaky plotting.

Not the best, but if the cinematic universe continues as well as it's begun, I don't begrudge the source material.

 

Graphic Novel: Collected Run; Black Widow, Nathan Edmondson, Phil Noto, et al.

Black Widow: The Finely Woven Thread (Vol 1) 
Collecting Black Widow #1-6, and selections from All-New Marvel Now! Point One #1
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
ISBN: 9780785188193

Black Widow: The Tightly Tangled Web (Vol 2)
Collecting Black Widow #7-12, and Punisher #9
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
Punisher Artist and Covers, Mitch Gerads
Punisher Letterer, VC's Cory Petit
ISBN: 9780785188209

Black Widow: Last Days (Vol 3) 
Collecting Black Widow #13-20
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
ISBN: 9780785192534

This is a hard one to review because I REAALLLLY WANTED TO LIKE IT SO MUCH!!! Black Widow deserves some good stories, and truly can be an engaging character, and OH MY GOD Phil Noto's artwork is freaking gorgeous with everyone's pale glassy eyes and slightly washed-out palette with sharp slices of black holding everything together. But the story just didn't hold up. I mean - it wasn't BAD, but it was just... eh?

Inspired by the riotous success of Fraction's "off-duty" Hawkeye run, Marvel tried to re-spark the lightning with Edmondson and Noto.  And they knocked it out of the park with the artwork, but Edmondson is not quite Fraction, and the story and dialogue and character development just weren't there. Again, nothing objectionable, but it's very slim pickings. Nat is working for SHIELD now, and whenever she's not spying and assassinating (and also doing commando work, or running gun battles, or taking down helicopters... ?) for SHIELD, she's doing it on her own under false names, making money as a merc taking down "bad guys" (by a very tenuous definition of bad guy) for guilt money to send to the families and friends of the people she killed during her Red Room years.  Why she doesn't feel the same about the people she ganks for SHIELD, or for herself while doing these "penance money" missions is frankly beyond me, because we never get to see enough of her character to wonder about it. Edmondson takes the "I'm alone and lonely and I WALK ALONE" vibe a bit too seriously, even to the point of including a feral cat slowly being adopted as a through-plot.  A bit tooooo on the nose for me.

The over-arching plotline is supposed to be about this dread organization Chaos, but it's incoherent and muddled and the capstone issue that's supposed to clear everything up didn't do anything of the sort.  A final set of codas - a flashback to an early hit in Cuba under the auspices of the Red Room, interspersed with scenes from a fill-in-the-blanks SHIELD  (?) rescue op, does even less to satisfy - if we'd seen more flashes of that sort of cold-blooded past throughout, perhaps things might have acquired some depth?

Ah well.  The art is bloody freaking gorgeous, and the story isn't painful so much as paint-by-numbers, so if you like Nat and like looking at beautiful scenes and people, definitely check it out.

Graphic Novel: Collected Run: Hawkeye, Fraction, Aja, et al.

This review covers the entire run of Matt Fraction's Hawkeye: Issues 1-22, plus Young Avengers Presents 6, and Annual 1.

Volume 1 (the hardcover) was also our Graphic Novel Book Club book for March 2016

Hawkeye, Volume 1
Collecting Hawkeye #1-11, and Young Avengers Presents #6
Matt Fraction, writer
David Aja, main artist
Matt Hollingsworth, main colorist
Chris Eliopoulos. letters
Javier Pulido, artist for #4 & 5
Steve Lieber & Jesse Hamm, artists for #7
Francesco Francavilla, art & color for #10
Annie Wu, "romance covers" for #8
ISBN: 9780785184874

(Hawkeye, Volume 1 is a hardcover containing the issues collected in the softback Vol. 1 and 2.)

Hawkeye, Volume 3: L.A. Woman
Collecting Hawkeye #14, #16, #18, #20, and Annual #1
Matt Fraction, writer
Anne Wu, main artist
Matt Hollingsworth, colorist
Javier Pulido, art and cover for Annual
ISBN: 9780785183907

Hawkeye, Volume 4: Rio Bravo
Collecting Hawkeye #12 & 13, #15, #17, #19, and #21 & 22
Matt Fraction, writer
David Aja, main artist
Matt Hollingsworth, colorist
Francesco Francavilla, artist, covers, colors for #12
Chris Eliopoulos, art for # 17
Jordie Bellaire, colors for #17
ISBN: 9780785185314

Short review: It's amazing. It's everything perfect about comic books. Go read it.

Longer review.  What we have here is a perfect look at heroes off-duty - this run gives us Hawkeye when he's not off "Avengering" with the other heroes.  He goes home to his apartment, has cookouts with his neighbors on the roof, deals with tracksuit mafia (Bro) and tries to do the right thing and help out his friends.

This being Hawkeye, he screws things up on the regular.  He also gets the everloving snot stomped out of him on the regular.  He starts the run in traction, and ends it temporarily deafened. I love that we see the consequences of his choices here - he's not Cap, he's not got armor, and it shows. Poor Clint.  

We also get to see the other Hawkeye: Kate Bishop of the Young Avengers.  She pops in and out of Hawkeye's life for the first dozen or so issues, but then there's a bit of a mess that sends her off to Los Angeles to try her hand at solo heroics. Which is really an excuse to get her into the clutches of Madame Masque and her creepy shenanignans over there, and also to get Clint on his own.

What I like about the collected issues is that they've decided to make Volume 3 into the Kate Hawkeye book, and Volume 4 into the Clint Hawkeye book - so Volumes 3 and 4 alternate comic issues and give you a full story of one Hawkeye or the other, whereas if you read them during the actual run, you'd be alternating between the coasts every month or so until the finale.

The run is pretty fantastic. It's internally cohesive, has stakes that range from the mundane to the global conspiracy, has roots in the real world (there's an issue about Hurricane Sandy) and ties back into the Marvel universe (shout-out to Moon Knight!) all while keeping the focus sharply on the Hawkeyes and their attempts to be heroic and good, and to beat the bad guys without lowering themselves to the level of the bad guys. Truly excellent writing.

Now for the art. I can't enjoy a comic unless the art appeals to me, and boy howdy does this appeal.  Aja (pronounced A-ha) is a genius, and Hollingsworth's colors are like an intensive study course on color theory and how to color block without making people's eyes bleed, or boring them to death.  Annie Wu's exuberant work shines through in the retro covers of My Doomed Love and in the wild excess of Hollywood with Kate (although I felt the chibi "internal voice" was a peculiar choice).  The scenes are fresh and powerful and flow beautifully - I rarely felt lost (I always feel lost in the thicket of panels) even when we're being led around by Pizza Dog, or in an issue where everything's narrated in sign language and lip-reading.  Massive appreciation for stellar work by everyone involved.

I have to say, I know all good things come to an end, and runs often don't make it quite to their full potential, but I really do feel like this one rose to the challenge, smote it to death, and strutted on into the sunset.  I'm truly sorry that it's over.

2015 Review Round-Up: Graphic Novel: Deadpool's Art of War, Peter David & Scott Koblish

Deadpool's Art of War
Peter David & Scott Koblish
ISBN: 9780785190974
Gleefully irreverent take on the Art of War, featuring the best 4th-wall-shattering disfigured merc.
Read July 2015


Deadpool is bored, and he's broke.  He wants to make some money, so he needs to write a book.  What better book could there be for this violent modern world than a guide to the best warfare manual ever written, the epic and detailed Art of War?  In the process of writing, of course he has to see if the tips actually WORK, so he's drafted Loki (old-school Loki, thank you very much) to be the guinea pig who follows Deadpool's directions.  That goes about as well as any plan involving Deadpool and Loki, and the world is summarily engulfed in mayhem and violence, with Deadpool floundering along trying to take back the reins of his headstrong manuscript before it puts someone's eye out.

Graphic Novel: The Invincible Iron Man, Vol 1 The Five Nightmares, Matt Fraction, Salvador Larocca

The Invincible Iron Man, vol 1. The Five Nightmares (2009's issues 1-7)
Matt Fraction
Salvadore Larocca
ISBN: 9780785134121
Tony Stark's technologies and companies are threatened by Obadiah Stane's oldest son, Ezekiel, who is becoming an Extremis-fueled nightmare.
Comic Book Club read for July 2015.

Despite the fact that this won an Eisner, I have to say I was a lot less impressed with this than with Fraction's Hawkeye run.  For some reason, he just didn't seem to nail the biting commentary Stark is known for, and the threat from the younger Stane never felt personal - never felt real.  Stark was always in control, and even during this break from Civil War, I didn't get the feeling that Stane was actually occupying much of Stark's attention.

The artwork was also a little iffy for me.  Larocca's compositions and figures seemed oddly distorted much of the time, and the coloring was inconsistent and distracting.  I was constantly pulled out of the storyline by a strangely drawn figure or an oddly framed scene.

Lots of people enjoyed the arc, and the overall run, so I am probably just a strange picky minority, but it really didn't make a very good impression on me.

Graphic Novel: Ms Marvel Generation Why, G. Willow Wilson et al

Ms Marvel comics, Generation Why trade (collecting 2014's Ms Marvel, issues 6-11)
author G. Willow Wilson
artist Jacob Wyatt (#6-7)
artist Adrian Alphona (#8-11)
color artist Ian Herring
letters VC's Joe Caramagna
ISBN: 9780785190226
Ms Marvel has decided to fight crime, but she needs to figure out exactly HOW she'd do it.
Read June 2015.

Ms Marvel comes more fully into her powers in this arc, fights the evil Inventor with the help of a grumpy and not-currently-regenerating ally, and is discovered by the other Inhumans (leading to an extended set of scenes with the always lovely Lockjaw).

Excellent arc, and I love the balance between the mundane and the fantastic that is struck here.  The lack of earth-shattering consequences generally feels perfect for this debut superhero and her developing sense of morality.  I love that she has the opportunity to have mentors now, and people to bounce ideas off of and to have minor conflicts with.  I also love that she's an unapologetic fangirl and acts out like a pretty typical teenage girl, even in bizarro circumstances.

Still a pleasure to read, and I would LOVE to see this as a TV series.  Just saying.

Movie Novelizations: MCU Phase One, The Avengers, Alex Irvine

I found this in the bookstore and couldn't resist the lovely cover!

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One, The Avengers
Alex Irvine
ISBN: 9780316256377
MG novelization of the 2012 movie, The Avengers.

To state the obvious first, this is an actual novelization of the film, and therefore has all of the scenes and events of the film in order, all the way to completion.  This is not a "teaser" or a "movie storybook" with character bios or plot hints.

I was interested to see what sort of changes and omissions would be necessary to make The Avengers (overseas title: Avengers Assemble) into a MG-level book as far as content, and I have to say that I was impressed with the deft handling of the storyline, characters, and content.

I may possibly be a giant MCU fangirl, and so there were a couple of places where I have quibbles about the dialogue - please note that these aren't the places where certain not-so-PG comments are elided or rephrased, but other sections of dialogue that I felt were unclear or badly formatted.  Dialogue is seriously difficult, and transcribing actual human speech, even in an environment as structured as a script, is even more difficult.  It is impressive that Irvine got as much of Whedon's patter down in a manner I felt was satisfying, so the few bits I read as flubs sadly stood out quite a lot to me.

As far as the PG alterations, here's what I noticed:
1) Black Widow's introductory scene is handled beautifully by simply refusing to comment on her clothing.

2) In the scene with Barton, Loki, and Selvig, Loki's query as to what Barton needs garners a different response: "I need a distraction" he says, "and a biometric ID" instead of the slightly more disturbing comment in the film.

3) In related plot-developments, Loki doesn't gouge out any body parts in Stuttgart.

4) The Loki/Black Widow interrogation scene omits a certain nasty British imprecation.

5) Banner's despairing speech about Hulk's utter invincibility is left as an implication of suicide, with the actual description of his attempt left entirely out.

Now, oddly enough, despite all that, Cap still gets to call aliens "bastards" in the final battle, and I'm not sure if they just missed that one, or decided it was their single use and better make it a good one.  It isn't like I mind language (although that it's CAP's language is especially amusing, given Ultron's running joke) but when it's the only instance in the whole book, it does become rather more noticeable and a bit jarring.

This one was super cute, and now I'm planning to hunt up the other ones.




 

Graphic Novel Collection: Ms Marvel; No Normal, by G. Willow Wilson & Adrian Alphona

Another one for the Will Eisner week, and a comic that I have been meaning to get to for a while anyway.

Ms Marvel No Normal 
author: G. Willow Wilson
artist: Adrian Alphona
colors: Ian Herring
letters: VC's Joe Caramagna
This volume collects: Ms Marvel 1-5, and All New Marvel Now! Point 1

The first, and really only complaint I have (and I don't know why I let this bother me in comic books, because they do it on purpose) is that it ends on a cliffhanger, and the next volume isn't out until MARCH!  Grrrr.

Anway.  Kamala Khan lives in Jersey, and she's Muslim, and she's trying to navigate her life in America with her strict parents and her culture and faith.  Matters are not improved when a terrigen mist bomb explodes in her city, revealing her to be Inhuman, and sparking her transformation into a polyform superhero.  Her giant crush on Captain Marvel offers an instant alter-ego (another development that doesn't go as planned or desired) and she proceeds to get herself into all sorts of interesting trouble both at home and with a shadowy villain known only as The Inventor, and perhaps as The Birdman.

Tune in next time!...

The art is fun, her changes are amusing, and her musing on life and the unfairness of it all will surely resonate with lots of kids, regardless of their backgrounds.  She's gritty, determined, loyal, and determined to do the right thing - once she figures out exactly what it is, and probably after she's done a few wrong things along the way as she works it out to her satisfaction.  A potential love interest is benched in favor of derring-do and family drama, and I for one appreciate the choice to leave that particular development for later.

Graphic Novel (two Trade collections) Thor, God of Thunder: The God Butcher & Godbomb; Jason Aaron & Esad Ribic

I've been slowly dipping my toe back into reading serialized comics again (God help me), starting with the new Thor (she's lovely! - but only two issues so far) and the "off-duty" Hawkeye series.  I heard good things about this one, and thought I'd give it a whirl, as it's a fairly-stand-alone story.

Thor: God of Thunder; Vol.1: The God Butcher
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Esad Ribic
Color Artists: Dean White & Ive Svorcina
Letterer: VC's Joe Sabino
Graphic Novel: collecting Thor: God of Thunder, issues 1-5


Thor: God of Thunder; Vol. 2: Godbomb
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Esad Ribic
Pencils: Butch Guice
Inks: Tom Palmer
Color Artist: Ive Svorcina
Letterer: VC's Joe Sabino
Graphic Novel: collecting Thor: God of Thunder, issues 6-11


In this graphic collection, we get not one, not two, but THREE Thors!

We first encounter our God of Thunder many thousands of years in the past, before he has become worthy of wielding Mjolnir, and has to make do with flying goats and the great axe Jarnbjorn.  Poor guy.  He's on earth, enjoying the adoration and warmaking of the early Vikings, when he gets his first indication that something is very wrong with the universe, as an encounter quickly becomes deadly.

Next up is of course Thor of the Avengers in the present day (whenever that happens to be), familiar to most via the recent Marvel movies.  He's tooling around the universe, and stops to answer a child's prayer for rain - the gods of her world have stopped answering them.  Naturally brash and curious, Thor investigates, and to his shock, he's dragged into another deadly encounter with a foe he had long-ago forgotten, back on earth.

Finally, we get Ancient Thor, a dead ringer for Odin (and about as snarky) who weilds Mjolnir in an abandoned and ruined Asgard, pinned down and repeatedly tormented by inky liquid void creatures who won't ever kill him, but leave him there to rot in bitter solitude.


From these introductions, we gradually learn, as Thor does, the story of a disillusioned young person who becomes ever more bitter and vengeful, until he finds great power and uses it to revenge his slights.  As he travels his dark road, he becomes so much worse than the evils he set out to annihilate.

There is time-travel here, and it's handled decently well (I was grateful to the call-outs to the X-Men's greater familiarity with such things, and with the inevitable forgetting that occurs to prevent this being expected by the elder two Thors).

I will say the climactic sequence was a little confusing with multiple iterations of the same person flying about being Godlike, in what I think were several different locations.

Still, the gist of the story was always clear, the character(s) of Thor are actually amazingly differentiated, there are secondary characters who are interesting and seem to have lives outside of their appearances here.

There is also drama and humor, evil and benevolence, great power to overcome or co-opt, a villain that is always treated sympathetically by the text, even as he's being pummeled by Gods, and an underlying question of whether these "gods" even deserve to be named such and worshipped (said question is left unanswered, in a bravura moment of introspection by a normally less-than-thoughtful Thor).  

Not bad for a comic book, huh?