Time is a crazy thing. It feels like only yesterday that I last updated the blog with pearls of comic criticism, and now here we are again, ready for more!
East of West 2 (Hickman/ Dragotta): Our first book this week is right on time, which is a bit ironic considering that it’s about how certain parties of doomsday are off schedule.
East to West is set in a pre-apocalyptic society. There are towers that climb higher than mountains where the seats of power are kept, fertile lands that support all kinds of life, and their founders were so wise they could predict the future. Generations later, their successors are more or less ready to throw the switches and get the Rapture rolling... only one of the Horsemen is missing.
In this issue, a few more pieces of the puzzle are revealed, as well as how replaceable certain figures are. Democracy gets delivered by a hearse, readers get a geography and history lesson, and some mythological figures live off the land. That’s most of the social sciences covered in a single issue, something that over years of public education I grew to loathe. Here, though, it’s intriguing.
Jonathan Hickman has found his writing style, and he’s sticking with it here. He starts off with some amazing set pieces and a tiny bit of context, so early on there’s no way to be completely sure what’s going on. Slowly, these bits add up and come together to form a picture, but it takes many issues before the reader gets a sense of what that picture looks like. It’s the kind of writing style that doesn’t just rely on the execution, it’s on life support waiting for the execution to provide some needed organs. The artwork counts for more than the dialog in cases like these, and Dragotta steps up. Characters are elegant, towers are majestic, and desolate wastelands surround them all.
As fascinating as this is, I can’t bring myself to recommend any of Hickman’s work in anything other than trades, only because it’s so hard to wait for the next issue to get that desperate fix of story. That trade is gonna be fantastic.
X-Termination Conclusion (Lapham/ Lopez, Mogorron, Valdes, & Lolli): Everyone that reads Marvel is focused on the Age of Ultron crossover event right now, which has distracted most from another crossover event: X-Termination. This focuses on the Age of Apocalypse-verse and the “refugees” that’ve found the 616-verse, specifically Nightcrawler.
AoA Nightcrawler was pulled out of his universe soon after his wife died. He wanted to go back, and he couldn’t be bothered by details like safety or collateral damage. This threatened to collapse the barriers between universes and bring every kind of creation to ruin. Including the one you and your stuff are in. In this issue, contrary to melodrama, it’s decided that there’s no way to save everyone. A bit of multiverse triage (CC Note: stop making up terms like this, we can’t afford the headache medicine) gives them some hope for the rest of the multiverse. It ‘s not a clean end, but it’s definitely an end.
The status quo is that mythical place all big publishers are afraid to leave. It’s what the market already knows and understands and is willing to spend their money on. This crossover “event” comes off as little more than a pledge to audiences everywhere that the precious status quo is going to be okay (or the parts that matter to this event, anyway). If characters were alive to begin with, they stay alive. If you thought they were dead, don’t worry about those complicated forms to legalize resurrection. Didn’t know someone before X-Termination started? You still don’t.
Marvel took zero risk with this little project. The reward matches.
Jupiter’s Legacy 1 (Millar/ Quietly): Building a legacy is a huge effort. Living up to that legacy is at least as huge. Game of Thrones on HBO loves playing with that concept. Jupiter’s Legacy looks at the question through superheroes, with some modern conveniences thrown in to keep things lively.
Sheldon Sampson had a vision. The stock market of 1929 had just crashed, he’d gone from highrises to street trash, and instead of wallowing in his own misery, he wanted to find a way to help everyone. He gathered a group of people that shared this vision and a Gilligan’s Island episode later, they got superpowers. Eighty years later, they are still fighting for glorious causes and the people behind them, but their kids are more interested in questions like “who has a lighter I can use?” and “did she think I was going to bring protection?” And when one does express interest in something that would benefit the planet, their ways don’t mesh with their parents’ ways. It’s a bit like Dynasty, only JR could never have been shot, dream or no.
There’s a lot of superficial controversy in this series already. There’s cheap sex, questionable endorsement deals, superpowered brutality, and a LOT of drugs. Mountains of drugs. Beneath all that is some interesting exploration of the superhero genre, like what their main role and/ or value to society as a whole is, whether hypocrisy for a good cause is still hypocrisy, and a few other ideas besides. It’s things like this that remind me that, in spite of the rewritten deaths and template crossovers, the superhero genre is definitely NOT played out. And never while Frank Quietly is banging out work like this.
This is everything a first issue is supposed to be. The characters and setting are laid out well, the tone is clear, and the potential of places to go from here is great.
Amala’s Blade 1 (Horton/ Dialynas): Work can be hard to find these days, and it makes people takes jobs they wouldn’t normally take. And if, by chance, a job can be found that plays to one’s strengths, they sometimes have bosses just aching for a chance to unload them to bring in a hungrier, more desperate worker (CC Note: Oh good, you’re paying attention...). The young woman in this title knows that pain all too well, and the friends she has to gripe to aren’t big on providing comfort.
The Purifiers wield magic with a surgeon’s skill and a berserker’s ferocity. The Modifiers think of the Singularity as ancient history. The Purifiers and Modifiers hate each other. The Vizier is happy to amuse himself watching the two beat each other into the dust, so long as the odds are interesting. To keep them interesting, he doesn’t have an army, he has assassins. Amala, the deadliest around, is getting too good to escape notice, and being noticed is something the Vizier has no interest in.
The template of the spunky tomboy endures as much as that of the assassin too young to be stable. When those two templates try to collide, the results don’t often work. The reader has a difficult time believing a well-adjusted, social, and rather upbeat person of either gender would choose to make a living killing people and causing property damage. It’s the social thing that really conflicts, and they’re asking us to pretend it doesn’t conflict here. So not only does Amala kill without hesitation, see ghosts and develop plans and skills with their aid, she also has no problem interacting with the living and creating healthy relationships? Oh hi, Disbelief! Is your suspension over already?
This isn’t a bad series, but it hasn’t quite figured out what it wants to be yet. If it can decide on that and run with it, Amala’s Blade could prove to be a fun book.
Okay, readers, that’s all for this week. Rest up and build your strength, because next week is going to be fierce. Iron Man 3 drops in theaters and next Saturday is Free Comic Book Day!
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