10-30-08

I still haven't quite made it through everything for this week, but I'm gonna start off with the #1s

Mirror's Edge

This was a book I saw listed in diamond list for this week and knew nothing about, but jotted it down, as the title did seem intriguing. One of a few new books from Wildstorm outside of their main universe, the story follows a young girl taken in by messengers in some type of totalitarian society. Which I found out about by reading Jim Lee's notes about it in the back. The story seems interesting, as does the concept, but there's no real lead up. This almost seems like the issue two, and somewhere down the line we missed the first issue or maybe the introductory page that told us where the hell we were.

Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns 

I'm generally of the opinion that the two Green Lantern books are among the best being published right now. And I'm extremely excited about this new story arc. While Shane Davis may not live up to the same standards as Carl Pacheco, Ivan Reis, or Ethan Van Sciver, he certainly does a fine job of introducing us to a whole new group of unique beings and demonstrating the difference in the manifestation of their power. Also, I was very excited that the reveal of the first Blue Lantern is now and not later. I'm very excited about this storyline, though I have to say this doesn't really have a visible tie-in to the Final Crisis story. 

Zen: Intergalactic Ninja #0

I've always had some interest in this character, and have only been able to acquire a trade from the post-Archie period that had terrible writing and worse art. This issue doesn't really give enough space to reveal much in terms of how it might proceed from here, but Joe Casey is ever dependable (good lord, how many books is he writing?) and the art is well done and suits the character.

Garth Ennis' Battlefields: The Night Witches

I've been rather excited upon hearing about this book, to the point I neglected to notice it was only 3 issues. Here's why I find that a problem. The first issue is great, the characters introduced, etc. etc. In fact, there's so much set up, I'm concerned as to how all of it will be handled in only 2 more issues. Trust in Ennis though, most of his Boys stories have been 4 parters, so this as a 3 will probably pan out just fine. 

Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes

While this issue may be filler to allow Simone Bianchi to catch up on the next issue of this storyline, it provides more depth to a story that has seemed to move a little slow. While sadly, Alan Davis' artwork seems to provide some confusion as to what is happening in the first part, the dialogue gives you an idea of what kind of person the X-Men were dealing with. And as we find out, the universe. The second part is a fantastic romp through steampunk X-Men land, with great artwork and colouring. Additionally, we see a few gadgets you may have caught if you read Ellis' Aetheric Mechanics that came out last week.

More later on notable books of the week, and a few that I wonder why I read.

Bruce Jones

Let me start this off by saying that Bruce Jones is made of fail.

Jones had two books out this week, Checkmate (the last issue of the series) and The War That Time Forgot. Neither were any good. Amazingly enough, though War That Forgot has fighter pilots and heroes from multiple wars and time periods, Checkmate was the more ridiculous of the two. First off, this story started off seeming slightly interesting, and quickly turned into a complete and utter disregard for anything involving the ACTUAL cast of Checkmate. Which is sad, considering how fantastic Checkmate had been under the skilled hand of Greg Rucka. The most thing in this issue was the giant dragon that appears and sends out winged goblins dealing out biblical plagues turns out to be! DUM DUM DUUUUUM! SATAN! Yep. 

War has been written terribly from the beginning. I mean, we're talking about what has always been a great concept (much like Marvel's Savage Land) but is written terribly by Jones. I mean, Tomahawk fighting a dinosaur? That should be pure gold. Instead, with Jones, it falls flat. Additionally, and this doesn't seem to be the fault of the artist, there seems to be storytelling left out between some of the transitions, leaving the read a bit confused, to say the least. 

I'm really not sure how Bruce Jones got these assignments. Checkmate would have done great under Eric Trautman, who co-wrote a couple of the storylines with Rucka. And there's far more creative and interesting writers to tackle The War That Time Forgot that had the free time and would have handled it much better. 

Manhunter cancellation

http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0810/16/index.htm

The story is all the way down in the "Briefly" section.  Essentially it just says "Manhunter cancelled with issue #38 (which is January's issue). Which is sad, yes, as the book will not have lasted a year since its return. I always get kind of aggravated that these stories only merit blips on the radar at times, and then I find myself picking up the last issue that contains a note at the end from the artist and writer "Thanks for the run guys!" and a big fat "THE END" at the bottom of the page. Or if we're lucky, a "Check out the adventures of [character] in [this other book where they'll be a minor character] monthly!"

It seems to me that there may be reasons as to why they are poor sales (besides the piss-poor marketing that DC does on their lower tier books). First of all, looking at the August sales (I'm not looking at all the sales charts, cause it's morning, and dammit, I just got up), Manhunter ranks 153 on the top 300. Below it are two other DC comics, Blue Beetle and The Spirit. Now, Manhunter took a significant sales drop by comparison to the two (over a thousand!), which is probably why Blue Beetle is still floating around, and The Spirit I imagine is hanging on due to the upcoming Frank Miller movie.

Why the sudden drop in interest? First of all, we had a huge gap between when we were told Manhunter was coming back and when it actually did. Roughly a year between the announcement it was coming back and when issue 31 actually did drop. Which is fair, Marc Andreyko had to come up with some new material and weave in where the subplots that were still running fit into that. Now, for most part the art has either been handled by Jesus Saiz or Javier Pina, both contributing fantastic art. But on this return of Manhunter, we are surprised with Michael Gaydos. Now, I like Gaydos' art, but after so many issues of him drawing Manhunter, I'm pretty sure the art doesn't fit so well into Kate Spencer's world. And no doubt some pickier readers may have gone as far as to pick the book up, looked at the art, put it back down, and walked away. These are probably the folks that pick up books cause Greg Land did the cover, but still.

Additionally, I can't say I was terribly impressed with Andreyko's writing this go-round. While the story was mostly fine, the dialogue seemed a bit lacking. It's possible this contributed as well. I have trouble even imagine how the book could suffer a thousand reader drop in sales so amazingly quick,  other than a late-in-the-month release date. At the very least folks, you'll be able to see Manhunter in Birds of Prey, as the quite capable Tony Bedard seems intent to include her.