Friday, March 09, 2007

RELEVANT CONTENT WEEK epilogue

Today we have a special Relevant Content Week epilogue. I thought I would round out my week/fortnight of commentary on new comics with a quick summary of the comics I got this week. That sounds positively gripping, doesn’t it?

CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 - OMG WTF CAPS DED!!! That ain’t right, man. That ain’t right. Actually, I thought this issue was pretty well put together – Ed Brubaker is a solid writer and the book struck an appropriately reverent/solemn tone. The story telegraphed the hell out of the actual shooting – they might as well have had a countdown caption on each page: “CAP GETS SHOT IN T MINUS 5 MINUTES”

I don’t know if I can really complain – the plot points of Civil War had backed the character into a corner and the logical storylines were either a) Cap in prison, b) Cap hitchhikes across America getting back in touch with Joe Sixpack and Jane Nascar, or c) Cap dies for 25 issues. Now it seems like there are three options for NewCap: a) Winter Soldier, b) Hawkeye, or c) The Punisher. I’m going with “a” on this one.

FANTASTIC FOUR: THE END #6 - Alan Davis’s futuristic FF fable end on an emotional high note, but the big galactic threat sub-plot was too handily resolved by divine intervention – Galactus ex machina, if you will. What is this, a Bendis book? In hindsight FF: The End suffers from some of the same overpopulation and diffusion of focus as Davis’s DC series Another Nail, but the excellent art and upbeat story overshadow the flaws. And at the risk of sounding too adolescent: The Invisible Woman and her Aryan pixie haircut are hot.

THE MIGHTY AVENGERS #1 - I’m going to leap to writer Brian Michael Bendis’s defense for his use of thought balloons in this comic. Bendis breaks a little from the traditional use of thought balloons and uses them in this issue not as expository tools, but rather as a means to enhance dialogue and reveal character traits. Frank Cho delivers the goods in the art department – despite the guy’s reputation as a cheesecake artist, he’s clearly a well-rounded and inventive comic book artist. This issue has giant monsters rampaging, Wonder Man’s safari jacket, a cameo by Godzilla, and a cute flapper hair style for The Wasp. How can I not like it?

DYNAMO 5 #1 – Jay “Noble Causes” Faerber’s new series gets off to a fun start and has the requisite SHOCKING ENDING that I’ve come to expect from the man. Dynamo 5 is the story of the teenage offspring of a big shot superhero with a Wilt Chamberlain-size libido and a Zeus-like proclivity for inseminating mortal women. Each bastard child of the (now deceased) hero inherits one of the hero’s many powers, i.e., super strength, eye beams, shape shifting, etc. and they band together to form a fledgling super-team. It’s a great idea and the story and art for this first issue was crisp and peppy – I’m giving Dynamo 5 a thumbs up.

There you go! Now we’re up to date and we can properly put Relevant Content Week to bed. I ran out of stock photos of exultant, rhapsodic business people, so you’ll have to settle for a picture I call, “Chuffed Grandparents.”

21 comments:

Thats a great idea guy said...

viva relevant content week.

Oh well, until next year.

Vaklam said...

I'll check out Dynamo 5. It sounds like my kinda book.

Also, that dude has no face. NO FACE!

Anonymous said...

Wait... Captain America is dead? When did that happen? You would think something that important would get a little publicity, wouldn't you?

Anonymous said...

Replacement for Cap? Howza 'bout a cybernetically enhanced/repaired/enhanced pissed off Jack Flagg? Eh? Eh?

Anonymous said...

I hate to admit it, but The Initative and Mighty Avengers were a nice respite from the usual Bendis 616 sludge. I agree with what you said about the captions.

LurkerWithout said...

Man, Punisher would never take another hero's id. 1) He's too busy taking the Scourge of the Underworld's id and 2) he's probably still all annoyed from right after "Suicide Run" when all those guys started running around claiming to be the new Punisher. And one of them was a GIRL! Frank would never want to be part of something like that for his Main Bud, Cap...

Anonymous said...

"Chuffed"? Maybe it's all those gleaming white teeth, but they look rabid to me.

Anonymous said...

Lurkerwithout: the solicits hint that Castle will be forced to don the Cap costume against his will.

Evan Waters said...

People are criticizing how thought balloons are used in a book? Shouldn't we just be glad that they're being used at all?

Mike Podgor said...

In years they will talk about a WORLD WITHOUT A CAPTAIN AMERICA, followed briefly by four new Captain Americas! A cyborg, a young man, a black one, and an excessively violent one!

Cyborg: Winter Soldier (isn't he a cyborg?)
Young: Patriot of the Young Avengers
Black: Falcon
Excessively Violent: Punisher

Then the old Captain America came back and everything went back to normal.

Tim Easy said...

Colonel Dave Campbell, astronaut and test pilot, is badly injured when he crashes while testing an experimental aircraft. A covert government agency (OSI) is willing to pay for special prosthetics to replace the eye, arm and both legs he lost in the crash. Highly advanced technology (Bionics) built into them will make him faster, stronger and better than normal. In return they want him to become a covert agent for the OSI. It will cost $6,000,000 to rebuild Dave Campbell.

Intruder_W said...

Hey James, I loved that issue of Savage Dragon!

Anonymous said...

So, if I regard "Mighty Avengers" as Fascist Avengers, what does that mean, because honestly if the Hulk comes back and slaughters every last one of them, I'm not sure I wouldn't be rooting when Big Green lays a beatdown using the prone shell of Iron Man as a club.

Yeah, I'm a bit bitter about the way CW ended not being viewed by the Marvel bullpen as a dsytopian future, but rather as a positive ending (realistic as it may be, I mean a recovering alcholic war profiteer in charge of an orginization with increasingly far reaching powers which mirror those of a police state-- c'mon :) )

-Socraticsilence

Christopher Bird said...

Now it seems like there are three options for NewCap: a) Winter Soldier, b) Hawkeye, or c) The Punisher.

Man, you had three tries to spell "the Falcon" correctly and you failed miserably every single time! Back to school, Campbell!

ryan_cf said...

My wife has been (and therefore, I've been) watching Scrubs in reruns lately. Sadly, while I was reading Bendis' Mighty Avengers, all I could think of were Zack Braff's non-spoken asides. I'm sort of a sucker for less is more and subtext.

I appreciate the thought-bubble experiment, and it makes more sense than say, Enemy Ace talking out loud to himself and describing the action as he shoots down another Frenchman... But I'm surprised Mr. Brian "my characters can't finish a sentence" Bendis has taken such a 180 to filling in each and every narrative crevice and leaving no doubt as to what a character might be thinking. It's like Bizarro Bendis.

So much for show, don't tell.

joncormier said...

Thank God relevant week is over and we can return to our regularly scheduled history of comics with Professor Dave. Not that I'm complaining about this, it was a nice departure and probably needed to recharge the batteries for diving into the long box, but I need a source that explores all the comics I don't have, and I'll be damned if I'm about to go buy them myself (plus, you know I'm not actually all that funny with the reviews and whatnot).

Doctor Polaris said...

The advertisement suggests that I purchase "original John Byrne artwork."

How the mighty have fallen.

Bully said...

I don't care when or where Steve Rogers comes back, as long as he's got a mullet when he does.

S Bates said...

The advertisement suggests that I purchase "original John Byrne artwork."

And yet sadly, when one clicks on the link, this isn't the work of the John Byrne we all know and love (well - know anyway). This is the "original" who doesn't seem to have anything to do with comics.

Anyway, WHAT...?!? Cap's dead!? Is that like deader than last time?

Perhaps Tony Stark will be the next Captain (of Industrial) America? He certainly knows all about MySpace and that seems to be the relevant qualification for the job nowadays.

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