This week I also read…

Posted on by martingray1
Covers by Alex Ross, Erich Owen and Mike Perkins

… not much, Steve and I are on a seven-night voyage sailing from Southampton, UK, to Boston, US. Well, that was the plan, but predicted bad weather in the Atlantic turned it into a ten-day cruise from Southampton, UK, to New York, US. Bang went our planned dinner with Dr Anj of Supergirl Comic Box Commentary fame, and a trip to Salem to see floating dead children and teenage witches. First world problems, I suppose. Stoopid weather.

I blame Thor, because instead of using his storm god powers to calm the seas he’s trapped in an ouroboros of a tale, or maybe it’s a puzzle box, or a choose-your-own-adventure. I dunno, The Immortal Thor #22 is tricksy stuff in which the current All-Father and fellow Asgardians Skurge the Executioner and Hermod the Speedster are trapped in a weird city, beset by feelings of deja vu.

I couldn’t make head not tail of it on first reading, but it turns out heads and tails is the key. The story is being told by Utgard-Loki – an ancient trickster type – and he sets up the gimmick of the issue. Most pages lead to the following page, as well as the previous page. We can read in both directions due to some clever work by writer Al Ewing. Utgard-Loki wants us to flick a coin to decide how we read the comic. I suppose Ewing is commenting on how narratives can be rearranged, how they can go on and on… but while I appreciate the craft in making this work, it’s not terribly interesting. By the time I’d got through the set-up, delivered in a nigh interminable, mostly meaningless speech by Utgard-Loki, I was done. Life is far too short to toss a pound coin again and again with the only reward being encouragement to reread pages.

As for the art by Jan Bazalova, it’s OK – the action scenes work, and there are loads of backgrounds. The players can be a tad squat, though, and Thor’s face is seemingly being flattened by his helmet.

There’s more storytelling-centred comic bookery in Teen Titans Go! #2, as Robin interrogates Beast Boy, Raven and Starfire as to the whereabouts of the missing Cyborg. Each has a different version of events as to what happened to their friend after they gathered for Raven’s ‘very hard-to-understand’ movie night pick.

You guessed it, the film is Rashomon. I suppose that’s a gag for older readers rather than the kids who should be reading this comic which, while amusing and delightful to look at, is nowhere near as funny as the debut issue. Nevertheless, the story by Matthew Cody and art by Erich Owen still rates above Thor in terms of tickling my entertainment tonsils.

By writer Matthew Cody, artist Erich Owen and letterer Saida Temofonte

It also gives a good kicking to Justice League: The Atom Project #4, in which our silver-skinned hero is attacked by old foe Major Force. The latter plays dirty but Captain Atom is currently a receptacle for all kinds of stray super-powers so he’s not got much of a chance.

The chapter isn’t awful but this mini-series continues to be hobbled by the insistence of writers Ryan Parrott and John Ridley on telling their story in two time periods, the present day and the slightly less present day. It’s almost as confusing as it is annoying – and it is hugely annoying. There’s no storytelling gain, it’s just two TV writers’ idea of a good time. See also the decision to have story title and credits on the final page, which means that’s where the series set-up blurb winds up… pointless. Editors Paul Kaminski and Matthew Levine shouldn’t let this kind of thing get past them.

As for the art, it’s not Mike Perkins’ best work, but it’s the best we’ve seen from him yet on this book.

By writers Ryan Parrott and John Ridley, artist Mike Perkins, colourist Adriano Lucas and letterer Wes Abbott

What have you been reading?

19 thoughts on “This week I also read…”

  1. The standouts for me this week are the latest Psylocke and X-men, the adjectiveless one, which were both a fun read. I don’t get the gushing about Stegman’s art but it doesn’t detract. Art doesn’t usually get me to not get a book unless it’s Liefeld. The big surprise was that I actually liked The Atom Project this month. The costumes still suck for the Atoms and why cameo the better Doctor Light if you never have her appear again?

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    1. It’s so weird, created for a big event 40 years ago, Dr Light still hasn’t had her place in the sun… unless I’m forgetting something.

      I’ve never tried the Psylocke book, I can’t cope with all the Betsy/Kwannon business!

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      1. She gets a non-Hand supporting character, the relationship with the Marauder I never remember the name of is deepened, and more of her past is teased. The Psylocke persona also is a better fit for Kwannon than it ever was for a upper-class wealthy British White woman.

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      2. Original Betsy was great, a purple-haired psychic supermodel spy – she never needed to start hanging out with super-folks. And she would never have worn that original armoured outfit, it’s so unstylish.

        As for Kwannon, I get sooooo bored with ninjas and martial artists.

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  3. I actually didn’t read anything new this week! I’d been contemplating getting that Immortal Thor as I saw a lot online about it and how “clever” it was but your write up has made me reconsider. I agree that there doesn’t seem to be a real hook in Immortal Thor, and I dropped it in the early teens and then saw some of the more recent issues for cheap and well, there’s nothing actively wrong with it, it just doesn’t seem to have any oomph. By this point in the Immortal Hulk we already knew what the central conflict was, as well as a lot of interesting cast relationships to explore, but I don’t see that here and Thor doesn’t seem to have to do much to resolve the plots he gets involved in. If the idea is Thor is going to die again, which I don’t think it is, that’s not interesting because he dies every five years at the moment. I don’t think the “gods are stories” tack he’s picked up from Gillen’s Loki run is that interesting unless he’s prepared to go metaphysical like Moore did in Promethea, and why would anyone want to be compared to Moore? Also as you note, the artist seems unsuited to the story he’s trying to tell. The first artist on the book was perfect but then got poached for other titles as far as I can tell, and this one seems to be chosen for drawing a bit like Olivier Coipel, and again is fine, but isn’t polished enough to make the story feel as grand as it should.

    Which is a shame as Ewing is a very capable and interesting writer a lot of the time. I do have a copy of Absolute Green Lantern coming in my monthly parcel which I’m hoping might be more to my tastes.

    Still new issue of Green Lantern Corps this week!

    Stu

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    1. I don’t even know Thor was dead, Stu, I stopped reading around the time Thor was gathering other weather heroes, I think Beta Ray Bill was in there, he’s always bored me.

      I did manage Immortal Hulk until halfway through the interminable #25, which gave me Seventies concept album flashbacks.

      The only Absolute book I was interested to buy on Day One was Martian Manhunter, which was pretty but dull.

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  4. Oh, drat, I didn’t realize you guys were in NYC! We could have gotten together for dinner!

    I just picked up that Thor issue, which I’d heard good things about — I’ll let you know what I think. As for the Teen Titans Go story, I think every kid for generations has encountered Rashomon for the first time through a pop culture adaptation, rather than the movie itself. My first encounter was an episode in one of the later seasons of Happy Days. Hopefully it’ll have some people seeking out the classic somewhere down the line.

    A couple off-the-beaten-path books I’ve been enjoying have been Godzilla Heist (a team of criminals plans to use a Godzilla attack as a distraction while they steal a Godzilla-related macguffin) and Out of Alcatraz, a story looking at what might have happened to the convicts who escaped from Alcatraz on a raft back in the mid 20th century. It’s really solid crime comics — totally my jam.

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    1. Getting together would’ve been great, but we had to fly back the same day – the two days we’d have been in Boston became sea days… New York was a couple of hours of coach tour on the way to the airport.

      I think the first time I heard about Rashoman was when I was doing my Film and English Studies degrees. I’ve still never seen it. Sansho Dayu was great, though (it could have used a few more laughs, mind).

      I’ve heard about the Godzilla and Alcatraz books on iFanboy, I’d be more likely to enjoy the latter, as I’m not a big fan of heist stories.

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      1. Oh, jeez. There’s nothing like hustling through NYC to the airport, especially unexpectedly. Gives me nightmares of the Bill Murray movie Quick Change. Which starts out as a heist, but I still think you’d like it.

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      3. This is earlier, funnier Bill Murray. With Geena Davis, and, IIRC, Dabney Coleman.

        Crooks pull off a successful bank job… the only thing that’s keeping them from getting away clean is making it to the airport to catch their flight.

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  5. I checked out that issue of Thor! And…. I’m glad I got the Chris Giarusso variant cover, because that was by far the most enjoyable thing about it.

    The coin flip sounded like a really enticing gimmick to me. And Ewing *does* structure the book so that the first line on any page can be read to follow the last line on the page before, or the page after. And Jan Bazalova’s art is nice, but not particularly striking. But ultimately… there’s nothing here that would make me want to read the next issue of Thor. Aside from the gimmick, the story was flavorless…absent of any drama whatsoever. It was all clever story construction, with no actual story. The only suspense was: When will I get tired of flipping coins and just read forward so I can put this book down?

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Published by martingray1

Journalist, comic reviewer, theatre critic, film lover, biscuit fan, cat indulger