#zacklist

Avengers #66 by Roy Thomas, Barry Smith & Sal Rosen

I haven’t read a ton of this era of Avengers comics. Barry Smith in his full-on Kirby/Buscema hybrid mode is kind of fun, it turns out. Everyone just sort of monologs during their dialog, Vision is a cold synthezoid, I had forgotten Hawkeye was apparently Goliath for a hot minute, and we get the single best Ultron design until JRJR gets ahold of him 20 years later:

The Green Lantern # 4 by Grant Morrison, Liam Sharpe & Steve Oliffe

Continuing to enjoy this 2000AD-ification of the DC space characters.

Kaijumax season four, #4 by Zander Cannon

G.I. Joe: Sierra Muerte #1 by Michel Fiffe

Stig’s Inferno #1 by Ty Templeton

It’s been such a long time since I read these. I forgot how much “chicken fat” there was in this comic. Sort of shocking to see such early ty templeton work in that it doesn’t really look like anything I would associate with him. If I remember correctly, it’s only an issue or so later before his drawing gets that solid/angular aspect that I like so much. The ones where he’s driving Satan’s yacht around, that stuff. Even more shocking is the fact that the indica lists the title and all contents copyright Vortex Comics, and not Ty Templeton. I mean I know Vortex/Bill Marks was supposed to be a sketchy company/dude but I was still surprised. The cover for this issue by Paul Rivoche is a classic.

Deathblow #1-4 by Jim Lee, Brandon Choi & Tim Sale

I guess Jim Lee got really excited about Sin City, because he’s doing a weird, overdrawn version of Miller’s chiaroscuro style from that book, maybe also a dash of the linework style from Elektra Lives Again. At least he is for the two issues he drew. Then Tim Sale takes over, and Lee moves to layouts. These comics are totally unreadable. It seems like maybe there will eventually be some cool vampire action but mostly it’s just buff dudes yelling at each other and standing around in shadows. There’s just nothing interesting here, really, especially once Lee isn’t drawing it. Even if it looked kinda weird and was 400% stupid, it was interesting to see someone who was so wildly popular reinventing their art style years into heir career. I mean, Tim Sale is fine, it just doesn’t have that frisson that seeing Lee go out on a limb brings to the work.

Cybernary #1-4 by Nick Manabat & Steve Gerber

Part of a flip book with Deathblow. Half the book is DB and half is Cybernary. This is also dumb as hell but at least it’s readable. It just doesn’t mean anything. The main attraction is Nick Manabat’s delightfully over the top art. It’s like if Bald Eagles did a Battle Angel Alita riff. I guess it’s supposed to take place in the 90s but it feels like a Cyberpunk story, so the mentions of characters that would later be in Warren Ellis Stormwatch comics is weird. Considering the props that Image was getting for its (technically impressive and mostly aesthetically disgusting) advances in digital coloring, etc etc, it’s weird how badly printed this comic is. All the blacks are printed too heavily and the shadowy forms keep filling in. A problem to say the least, when you have this and Deathblow sharing a title! Sadly, I think Nick Manabat had a lot of promise as a creator—I remember reading these at the time and feeling like there was something special in his work, I’m glad to come back 20 years later and see the spark is still there—but he died a couple years after this comic came out.

I feel a little bad that I haven’t posted in like a month but, well: hey I got laid off! It’s put a little strain on my reading for pleasure. I’m also more than happy if this blog is an excuse to get to read more @snubpollard writing. However, I wanted to get this up before the habit of blogging about random comics left my muscle memory. 

PS: Go look at my Patreon, I’m going to be posting comics there exclusively starting in May.

Comics Read Since the last time I posted over a month ago:

Valerian: The Complete Collection volume 2 by writer Pierre Christin & Jean-Claude Mézières

Go-Bots #4 by Tom Scioli

Marvel Two-In-One Epic Collection: Cry Monster (Marvel Two-In-One (1974-1983)) by Steve Gerber , Bill Mantlo , Len Wein , Mike Friedrich, Chris Claremont , Roger Slifer , Marv Wolfman , Scott Edelman , Tony Isabella , Sal Buscema, Ron Wilson , Jim Starlin , Gil Kane , George Tuska , Herb Trimpe , Bob Brown , Arvell Jones , John Romita

These.. I found these unreadable. I was there to get my Gerber on but it was just a mostly ugly mess. I gave up halfway through.

Punisher #39 by Mike Baron, “Jack Slamn” & Jim Sherman

I’m on a Jim Sherman kick. He’s great, I’ll probably do a whole thing about him. This Punisher comic is part two of 3 or 4, not sure because Sherman only draws this episode and that’s why I bought it. It’s also got pencils credited to an obvious pen name that never appears in comics again, so it has me curious about the story behind the scenes. Anyway there’s some uncomfortable racial shorthand but generally this is a fun comic with Jigsaw being weird and pathetic, Frank’s got his face all cut up, and (spoilers!) a cult leader that seems to have actual healing powers. Whoever pitched in to pencil it, Sherman still brings the art home and it looks mostly pretty great.

Fase 1 Fazers # 1 by Vic Bridges

Dude loves John Byrne. Sort of a Teen Titans/X-men/Legion of Super Heroes kind of riff. I liked Bridges’ work on the Savage Dragon spin off Freak Force.

APOSIMZ vol 1 & 2 by Tsutomu Nihei

I’ve been really excited about these two books. Right off the bat, aesthetically it’s Nihei’s prettiest drawing. It looks like Miyazaki and CF had a baby. He’s a really interesting artist in part because he basically tills the same field in every series—he’s got tropes. But while he plays the same song every time, he also jumps genres from series to series. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all sci-fi dystopias set in a series of wastelands and tunnels filled with tubes, There’s usually some sort of zobie virus, the bad guys are essentially Cenobites, and the heroes are still Keanu-dopey badasses—but if Knights of Sidonia was his Gundam/Macross riff, Aposimz is his Kamen Rider.  Needless to say, I’m here for this shit.

Oblivion Song #13 by Robert Kirkman & Lorenzo De Felici

The art’s as good as ever, maybe better, & the narrative jump helps out with some of the problems I was having with the plot.

Little Bird #1 by Darcy Van Pogeest, Ian Bertram, & Matt Hollingsworth

This is easily one of the strongest first issues I’ve read in a long while. It feels like a post-SCOUT kind of comic, which is honestly super refreshing in 2019. Amazing art and nice restraint from worldbuilding-salad (a pet peeve of mine) on the part of the writer.

Outer Darkness #5 by John Layman & Afu Chan

Superman #9 by Brian Bendis, Ivan Reis & Brandon Peterson

Action Comics #1008 by Bendis & Steve Epting

Head Lopper & the Knights of Venora #3 (of 4) by Andrew Maclean

Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt #2 by Kieron Gillen & Caspar Wijngard

Martian Manhunter #3 by Steve Orlando & Riley Rossmo

RUNE #6 by Chris Ulm & Barry Windsor-Smith

This was variously a dopey, fun, and occasionally problematic comic. Not one for the ages, but Barry Smith is still pretty on fire here even though/because(?) everything feels really goopy in a vaguely John Watkiss-y way.

Brave & The Bold #154 by Bob Haney & Jim Aparo

Metamorpho always gets my money, as does Jim Aparo.

House Ad Logging

From Comics Interview #11, Superpatriot #2, Sword Of The Atom #2, Avengers #66, & Power Comics #3.

The Uncanny X-Men 3D #1 by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee & Scott Williams. 3D production by Anomaly Productions. 

Flash back to the year 1990. A 14 year old Zack loved the X-Men (even though I was already starting to nitpick the stories to death), I loved Marc Silvestri, and I loved brand new X-Men artist Jim Lee. Uncanny X-Men #268 came out and (before they had terminally over-explained Wolverine’s past) we get some of our earliest Logan fan service, teaming him up with Black Widow in the modern day and Captain America in the 1940s. I thought this issue was so cool. 

Anyway, seeing this 3D version on the stands in 2019 made me so immensely nostalgic that I didn’t even think to notice the $8(!) price tag on this bad boy. Which I guess was probably the point. Oh well, it’s fine. Even the polybag, similar to the ones I got my Marvel subscription comics in as a kid (after they stopped mailing them in brown paper sleeves with no tops or bottoms!), reminded me of times past. I was excited to dig in!

Needless to say, I mostly skimmed a lot of this. Reading a comic with this many word balloons and captions is fucking hard, now—And I’m a proponent of captions and thought bubbles! It was ok though, because I read this comic a zillion times already. It’s like DNA, it’s like wallpaper. Claremont was beginning his final arc on X-Men, though he didn’t know it. There’s lots of fun character stuff in here I’d (almost) forgotten, like Jubilee’s distrust of Psylocke.

I spent a lot of time studying the work of Ray Zone a few years ago while working on Study Group Magazine #3d, and while I’m glad Marvel and Anomaly Productions are taking this sort of left field reprint based approach to keeping 3D comics alive.. well, I was honestly a bit unimpressed with the 3D. I hate to say it, but it doesn’t quite work.  There’s a lot of vibrating lines and blurry layers you don’t see in, say: Superman Beyond 3D (which if I’m not mistaken was the last Ray Zone comic before he died). The main problem is the frontmost layer of image. Often the depth illusions are working best on the middle and background elements, while someone’s face in the foreground is super blurry. 

DC Comics Classics Library: Justice League of America by George Perez, by Gerry Conway, George Perez, Frank McLaughlin, & John Beatty

This book collects JLA  #184-186, & #192-194. I have fond memories of this era of the “Satellite Era” of JLA because of the random issues I had previous to that (there was a Dr. Destiny story that was pretty cool, I seem to remember) but as a kid, I started picking up JLA more regularly a few years later, with issue 220 or so.  it’s kind of funny to realize that my first real attachment to the comic (before I became a mega-fan with the Giffen/Dematteis/Maguire run) is the “Detroit Years” that get made fun of so much.

The comics in this book are really weird to read as someone who imprinted on Perez as the Teen Titans/Crisis On Infinite Earths artist. The work here is practically amateurish compared to what he was doing on the Teen Titans, apparently drawn at the same time. He’d already been drawing comics professionally for like 6 years by this point, so it might just come down to inkers here (first Frank McLaughlin & then John Beatty, to better results). He’s already really into drawing hella rubble. Regardless, I didn’t find a whole lot in these comics that I loved. The New Gods crossover is bad, and Tornado Tyrant… No thanks.

The Steel Claw #1-2, by H. Ken Bulmer, Jesus Belasco, & Garry Leach

The Steel Claw is about an unscrupulous guy who gets zapped in a science experiment so that if he’s electrocuted (?!) he turns invisible. Well, his body and clothes turn invisible, but his STEEL CLAW does not. He is just a normal guy that has a robotic hand at the opening of the book, it’s totally unexplained. Just: “Hey I’m a jerk with a STEEL CLAW. And now I’m invisible, but my STEEL CLAW is floating through the air, isn’t that an uncanny sight!”

He (of course!) immediately goes on a crime spree, murdering people and robbing banks and threatening New York with a nuclear bomb (that he must have gotten off-panel, that’s also not explained). But his invisibility keeps wearing off, so he has to keep electrocuting himself over and over, to lesser results each time. Garry Leach only provides these odd framing pages and covers, which makes me very curious to see if he ever drew any proper adventures of the STEEL CLAW.

As a side note, whoever bagged and boarded these used that super sticky scotch tape and it got caught on the cover of issue 2 when I was putting it back in—and it ripped off part of the image, right on the logo! I’m pissed! Don’t do that shit. That was a nice cover, and it’s not like I’m going to stumble across another copy of STEEL CLAW #2 any time soon.

The Comet #1 by Bill Dubay, Carmine Infantino, Alex Nino, & Rudy Nebres (1983)

This is pretty wild, The Comet just goes around melting bad guys like the real Golden Age hero that he is, but it’s also got some early 80s affectations—mainly a burgeoning desire to reframe all these wacky old ideas in a modern context. There’s a framing device where a shirtless (and visorless, which is unexplained) Comet is having a sleepover at a shirtless SHIELD’s apartment and he tells him the story of his origin—and also all about the murders he loves to commit. It’s weird.

I think this series was supposed to be 6 issues long (according to the blurb on #2’s cover) but the internet is leading me to believe that it only lasted 2 issues. A shame, since most of the art here is by Carmine Infantino & Alex Nino. Nino’s inks on Infantino’s pencils are cool as shit. Look at that cover!

Outer Darkness #4 by John Layman & Afu Chan

Again, this book is good. I hope people are picking it up.

Wonder Twins #1 by Mark Russell & Stephen Byrne

There was a weird joke about the wonder twins getting super horny in a lightning storm, and apparently Bruce Wayne likes the Bee Gees. I liked it but I probably won’t be picking up future issues?

Superman # 8 by Brian Bendis,  Ivan Reis, & Brandon Peterson

Murder Falcon #5 by Daniel Warren Johnson & Mike Spicer

This is a pretty self-consciously “FUN!” comic but it still works. Daniel Warren Johnson is a very talented artist and storyteller working in a mode similar to James Harren. The heavy metal stuff and the monsters stuff all work a lot better than the relationship stuff. Those scenes tend to grind the book to a halt and Johnson oversells the body language and dialog trying to hit those obvious Emo buttons. It’s a small complaint though, since overall it’s a good read.

Oblivion Song #12 by Robert Kirkman & Lorenzo De Felici

Action Comics #1007 by Brian Bendis & Steve Epting

I keep reading these.

Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt #1 by Kieron Gillen & Caspar Wijngard

This is unapologetically right up my alley, and yet I still feel like apologizing for liking it. It’s very much "in a dialog" with Watchmen/Pax Americana/Zenith/Authority/etc post-post yadda yadda superheroes. There’s some poppy snappy dialog that also works as not super blatant world building work, fun character bits that hint at a shared history, and nice art with appealing character designs. It’s basically a good Grant Morrison superhero comic from the early 2000s. I do wish I hadn't seen a preview for it a few months ago, because the first issue is a padded version of what I’d already read. Still, looking forward to the rest.

Mazeworld by Alan Grant & Arthur Ranson

Oh this was great. Really happy to finally have it all in one big hefty softcover after only seeing snippets for years. The story (a hanged man that killed his brother in a drunken brawl doesn’t die in the gallows and is sent to a weird fantasy world ruled by inconsistent logic and mazes where he can’t take off his death shroud. Shades of DEN, he’s of course welcomed as a messianic figure come to save the people from tyranny, etc etc. but he’s a self-absorbed coward so that takes a bit. All the while, his comatose body is taken advantage of, experimented on, and put into danger) is fittingly weird and twisty and occasionally dreamlike, but Arthur Ranson’s art is the star here. He’s just great (even though it’s super photo referenced, which I’m not usually a fan of). The whole thing feels simultaneously unique and tropey, which is a fine line to walk. Recommended!

The Uncanny X-Men 3D #1 by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee & Scott Williams. (Logged)

Biomega 1 by Tsutomu Nihei

Well-There’s not much there, but it’s sure full of atmosphere, and it moves fast. Nihei’s more concerned with atmosphere, monumental spaces, action, and texture than almost anything else. The other books of his I’ve read (Snikt! & Knights Of Sidonia) are sort of like this.

There’s a sort of zombie thing going on, an Akira/Tron bike, a talking bear, Castlevania towers, tubes, and lots of storybabble about these different organizations and viruses, etc. Tropes abound. So far it’s a got a Black Power Ranger Vs The Cenobites kind of vibe.

I like Nihei’s pacing, I like the way he breaks up a page. It doesn’t really look like it, but one of the inspirations for my pacing of Maps Of The Unknown World came from reading a bunch of Sidonia and a couple other manga and just really getting into the way the layouts push the eye around the page in a much simpler way than I was used to (as Secret Voice pages routinely have 6-10 panels per, being closer to BD format than manga)

The art here is more in the early aughts Hot Topic zone than than Knights of Sidonia is. Anyway, this probably sounds like I didn’t like it, but I did. It’s super readable, you can breeze through it in about 30 minutes. I don’t think I’d buy this series but as a library rental, it’s perfect.

Zack/@ghostattack