The Best Comic I Read This Week
Another week, another batch of not-so-great comics. This week was so bad, Countdown almost made it to the top spot.
The comics I got were:
Countdown #34
Infinity Inc. #1
The Atom #15
Wraith #3
Modok's 11 #1-3
Countdown's pacing was better this week. You could tell that the writers came in and really tried to boil down each storyline to its core. Unfortunately, uneven art and characters I just don't care about are still dragging things down. The Jimmy Olsen storyline got a bit better, surprisingly, where I was suddenly thinking that Jimmy might make a good candidate for a membership with the Doom Patrol. Other storylines, like the "Search for Ray Palmer" team and the Mary Marvel storyline still dragged everything down.
One of the cool things about 52 was that each book showed what happened over the course of the week. With Countdown, its readily apparent that each storyline is taking place in its own timestream, so you get the feeling that nothing is really in sync. I think that is one of the big stumbling blocks for this book.
Countdown's malevolence reached out and ruined this week's Atom book, as well. The overall tone of the book is getting steadily darker, and the lightness I liked about the book is getting muddy.
The Wraith continues to be kinda "meh". It feels like all the characters are going through the motions. I think the Wraith would have been much better in a team book, where he could have taken up the "quiet, dark and troubled hero with the mysterious past and an agenda known only to him" slot. As the centerpiece, all that is interesting about him has already been revealed and now he's just reacting to everything.
I bought the Modok series because of all the great reviews it has been getting. The book isn't bad, and would probably take the top spot this week if I had been coming at it fresh, instead of laden down with a bunch of expectations. It's a solid book, though, and is worth reading. Lots of good comedy moments, a couple good plot twists, but I was expecting better, and that is really what is keeping this from being something I really liked.
So, that leaves "Infinity Inc. #1"!
Infinity Inc. is a "From the Pages of 52" book that may or may not be a miniseries. The art isn't very clean, but it fits the story of these people who once had super powers, but don't anymore, or do they? This first issue hatches the initial plot: these ex-metahumans are having a rough time living in the world. Each of them are mentally disturbed in some way, and the re-emergence of their powers (though it looks like they are getting new powers, and not getting the old ones back) is causing their mental illness to spike.
This book isn't exactly likeable. None of its heroes are pleasant to read about or can be held up as intrinsically entertaining. However, the deep exploration into each of their unique problems is interesting and immersive. It makes me curious to see where this all goes. Comic books about demented superheroes have been around for a long time, and I've seen them do well (Grant Morrison's "Doom Patrol") and not so well ("The Monarchy" for a start). These comics have to constantly resist the draw to make themselves darker and drearier and more depressing as they explore the depths (wow, lots of "d" words) of the mental illness in question.
We'll see how it goes.
The comics I got were:
Countdown #34
Infinity Inc. #1
The Atom #15
Wraith #3
Modok's 11 #1-3
Countdown's pacing was better this week. You could tell that the writers came in and really tried to boil down each storyline to its core. Unfortunately, uneven art and characters I just don't care about are still dragging things down. The Jimmy Olsen storyline got a bit better, surprisingly, where I was suddenly thinking that Jimmy might make a good candidate for a membership with the Doom Patrol. Other storylines, like the "Search for Ray Palmer" team and the Mary Marvel storyline still dragged everything down.
One of the cool things about 52 was that each book showed what happened over the course of the week. With Countdown, its readily apparent that each storyline is taking place in its own timestream, so you get the feeling that nothing is really in sync. I think that is one of the big stumbling blocks for this book.
Countdown's malevolence reached out and ruined this week's Atom book, as well. The overall tone of the book is getting steadily darker, and the lightness I liked about the book is getting muddy.
The Wraith continues to be kinda "meh". It feels like all the characters are going through the motions. I think the Wraith would have been much better in a team book, where he could have taken up the "quiet, dark and troubled hero with the mysterious past and an agenda known only to him" slot. As the centerpiece, all that is interesting about him has already been revealed and now he's just reacting to everything.
I bought the Modok series because of all the great reviews it has been getting. The book isn't bad, and would probably take the top spot this week if I had been coming at it fresh, instead of laden down with a bunch of expectations. It's a solid book, though, and is worth reading. Lots of good comedy moments, a couple good plot twists, but I was expecting better, and that is really what is keeping this from being something I really liked.
So, that leaves "Infinity Inc. #1"!
Infinity Inc. is a "From the Pages of 52" book that may or may not be a miniseries. The art isn't very clean, but it fits the story of these people who once had super powers, but don't anymore, or do they? This first issue hatches the initial plot: these ex-metahumans are having a rough time living in the world. Each of them are mentally disturbed in some way, and the re-emergence of their powers (though it looks like they are getting new powers, and not getting the old ones back) is causing their mental illness to spike.
This book isn't exactly likeable. None of its heroes are pleasant to read about or can be held up as intrinsically entertaining. However, the deep exploration into each of their unique problems is interesting and immersive. It makes me curious to see where this all goes. Comic books about demented superheroes have been around for a long time, and I've seen them do well (Grant Morrison's "Doom Patrol") and not so well ("The Monarchy" for a start). These comics have to constantly resist the draw to make themselves darker and drearier and more depressing as they explore the depths (wow, lots of "d" words) of the mental illness in question.
We'll see how it goes.
