Buffy Season 9 Number 20 (Chambliss/ Moline): The role of the Slayer changed significantly throughout the acclaimed TV series. When it went off the air and transitioned to comics, it changed even more, and changed most of the world with it. Where the Buffyverse is now is worlds away from where the show left it, but the quirky interaction’s as constant as ever.
Magic thrived for a while, granting the world hundreds of slayers and monsters and wonders, and then it got shut down hard. Anyone that drew their life from magic started dying, like Buffy’s magical mystery sister, Dawn. Xander’s been living with her for a while, trying to discover the normal life everyone they know has been fighting to protect for so long. Those with power left to them want to save the ones that’re being drained, but they’re not having much luck. Xander isn’t willing to wait for luck.
I like what is going on here, but I’d like it better if it was being approached differently. Two things are happening in this issue: Xander’s so riled up that he has to do something, and he’s being offered a spot on a new team. He’s been frustrated with being the normal human coasting on a sea of supers. So frustrated that he left the group once while they were all in high school. And he saved the city - no one knew about it, but he did it, and his only reward was knowing that he could do something important if he had too. Here he is again, no allies and a whole lot of stuff that needs doing, and it looks as though he’s throwing in with a new group. Xander needs to show that he can succeed in the field, that vanilla mortals are capable of defending themselves and solving their own problems, but this instance feels like a step backward.
It’s possible he’s going for a triple cross, but this blog is about the here and now in comics, and right here, right now, things are looking a bit bleak.
Secret Service 6 (Millar/ Gibbons): We got past Secret Service being set in the UK instead of the USA. We got past the language barrier of the gangland cockney accent. And now, we can get past the delays. Secret Service closes up with this last installment, and instead of confronting the real issues like budget cuts and political backstabbing, they decided to go with an epic siege on a mountain fortress. Bold choice.
Gary grew up in the slums of England on welfare and knowing he’d never get out. His uncle Jack London slapped him over the head and gave him a chance to be something more: a secret agent. Last issue, Gary watched his uncle get shot through the face for doing his job. With the classic stiff-upper-lip mentality, Gary arranges a proportional response in the same way that the 501st is proportional to a backyard game of toy soldiers.
This series ends very well. There’s victory, though it’s not the one anyone really wanted, but most can easily live with. Gary completes his character arc neatly. I find Millar writes more for plot than character, the former having pristine form and the latter coming off rough and forced, and while that’s essentially true here, it succeeds in places that some of his other stories haven’t. Dave Gibbons, known for making simplicity and directness a higher art form, gets to play around with this issue, and it shows that he’s having fun with his work.
This is good spy-thriller melodrama. Anyone following the series owes it to themselves to pick it up after all the waiting.
Sex 2 (Casey/ Kowalski):I find it incredibly refreshing that comics are making progress in getting away from certain negative stereotypes, and this series takes some needed steps in a couple of directions. For one, comic reader CAN have Sex. They can now add to their Sex issues in a positive way. More to the point, while certain body parts jiggling is a component, sex is about more than that to most people, and it probably should be.
Simon Cooke has been through a lot in the past few months. It’s made him look back on what he’s missed, and he realizes he hasn’t taken good care of himself mentally. Those close to him, be they enemy or friend, are throwing him into situations hoping that a quick lay will make everything better, and it’s not working. It’s very frustrating for everyone around him to watch him not get better, and while most are comfortable just saying so, at least one party threatens to get violent about it.
Comics have been known to treat sex as a tool for shock value and humor. Transmetropolitan had (among other things) Nazi sex midgets, Pro had a celestially empowering peeping tom, and the list goes on. They’re throwaway gags like so many used tissues. They relieve tension, then move on. The whole thing is disarming. The jokes stop here, but Sex recognizes that it got here by means of those same jokes.
The skeleton of the characters and setting is derived from Batman. The sheer amount of innuendo and dark humor around Bruce Wayne/ Batman is one thing, in fact it’s so many things that I can’t even safely put references up, but this series puts up a hand, calls for silence, and has the reader give serious thought to what those jokes are doing. For instance, take all the psychological baggage of a super-rich child who saw his parents murdered, but swap the gender of his primary caregiver, and throw the innuendo out the window. The reader is left absorbing the story of a man who repressed every mature desire he had to fight for a cause and impress the closest thing he has to a mother, only to have her pull a 180 and tell him to have the fun he’s been denying for decades. It’s heavy stuff, perhaps too much.
There’s copious amounts of copulation in these pages, sure, but it doesn’t read like most other action-almost-porn titles on the shelves. This is a book that’s recommended for mature audiences only, not just older ones.
Mylo Xyloto 3 (Haggerty/ Fuentes): I know what you’re thinking: why make a comic about an instrument most people haven’t thought about since grade school? (CC Note: No, Ryan, that’s a xylophone.) And why are LSD pixies dancing on one on the cover of the latest issue? (CC Note: That’s a staircase!) And why are they trying to bring back Michael Jackson’s trademark fashion sense? Let’s actually read the book and find out, shall we?
In this tale taken from the album by Coldplay, Mycroft Xerxes (CC Note: Mylo Xyloto!) is a cop for a police state using fear of an extraterrestrial threat and mass media to keep the population in line. The main threat to that state is an underground network of graffiti artists whose main arsenal consist of a bright color palette. During one investigation, Marko (CC Note: That’s the guy from Saga, Issue 12 on sale this week!) finds he can use the same light show they do, and it makes him rethink his position in the suppressive regime. Mxyzptlk (CC Note: That’s... oh, forget it!) might be able to give the revolution what they need to restore self-rule, but his old friends have some pretty aggressive counter-arguments.
This reads like a standard conformity versus individuality storyline, made less standard for the basicness of every component. Those in power wear drab shells and follow an immortal despot who likes to wring his hands constantly. The revolution is literally an underground movement. Stark black and white versus multichromacticness. (It’s a word.) (CC Note: It absolutely is not.) It’s not deep, but it’s pretty.
This is the halfway point for the series. If it’s going to do something unique, it should start soon, because it hasn’t yet.
Wolverine #2 (Cornell/ Davis): In this series, Logan was getting coffee when someone whipped out a blaster out of Buck Rogers, shot hostages, and so he stabbed him in front of his son. Then things got weird. In this issue, the post office gets involved somehow and whatever’s actually using the blaster is working toward wider prospects. Now, here’s my question:
WHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!?????
Seriously. Why? Every other book Marvel puts on the shelves features Wolverine prominently. This makes the fifth active book where he’s the title character. Jamie Madrox’s power lets him be in several places at once, yet he doesn’t get around as much as this guy. Yet here’s a series that is two issues in and I cannot tell what this title does that none of the other dozen Wolverine-centric books do. Wolverine & the X-Men has “I kill people but not young people” covered. Avengers vs X-Men should have filled the “I have complicated issues with psychics” quota for longer than this. Every single book in Marvel and a few from DC note that he’s incredibly difficult to kill, and that he likes beer. Is there anything else? From what’s in this book, nothing important.
I’ve been taking a fresh look at Alan Davis’s work recently. For a long time, I wasn’t a fan. His facial compositions didn’t work for me, and he lacked the pizzaz I got from other artists. Lately I’ve had to reassess these opinions. He’s got a great sense of composing bodies in motion, he uses backgrounds well, and while I’m not sold on his faces yet, when one works, it works.
I don’t remember Wolverine calling anyone “Bub” in this issue. I... I don’t know.
Well, now that I’m completely confounded by the world at large, I think I should lie down. Yes, that sounds healthy.
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