While I’ve made the leap to digital pretty heavily with the DC Comics relaunch, I actually had been going digital for quite awhile beforehand with just some catalog titles and the couple of slightly behind releases. But prior to that, in my attempts to get back into comics, I had a wish list a mile long of various trade paperbacks. And I ended up taking advantage of a bargain basement deal at one point that netted me a couple dozen of them on the cheap. Though I have lots and lots of digital books to read and can pick and choose, there’s a lot of fun in going back to these books that are a few years out of date and see the connections to the books being released now. So, without further ado, let’s look at a few graphic novels that we’ve read in the last week.
The Losers: Volume One & Two
I had actually picked up this release prior to the movie and ended up seeing the movie when it came out on home video. The movie had its moments but didn’t leave an impression and after reading the comic, I can see why. This release brings the first two trades together so you get a good deal of material to get a feel for it as it works through two missions while introducing the larger storyline as well that’s unresolved here. With no connection to the original characters, the series is able to play in the relative present of the early 2000’s with all its terrorism angles, general fear and phobias about anyone and everything. The use of a group of military specialists that got screwed, supposedly killed in action and then used as a cover for something else, they want to get their names cleared. The idea is certainly… familiar to say the least, but it plays it a bit bigger with ties to the CIA, PMC’s and more. It has a good shadowy threat to deal with and a good use of the nature of the world at this time with the skepticism and general admission of how the system was abused.
The problem that I had with the book came down to two main issues with it. The first is the structure of the storytelling where it throws you into things and it really takes the first arc for it to start to feel like it’s found its voice. The second arc works better, but part of the reason for that is that the characters weren’t able to be cleanly detailed in the first arc. Through the first arc it was just difficult to really connect with any of them and it made the story resonate less. With it throwing us into the middle of it all at the same time, it was just too chaotic. And that was made worse by the other problem, though it’s the draw for most, in the artwork by Jock. I just had a hard time really getting into it because of the heavy shadow use and the color tone of it, as well as the general look of it all. It has some great scenes in places to be sure but as a whole I just found it rather off-putting.
Grade: C
John Byrne’s Next Men Compleat Collection 1
I absolutely love this book and I almost hate it as well. I had ordered this with great anticipation, having enjoyed the issues when they first came out, as I wanted to be able to power-read it. What disheartened me quickly was that I didn’t realize upon ordering that it was black and white. Yet as much as I missed the color, I have to admit that it works in black and white as well rather well because of Byrne’s style. This release contains the awesome 2112 graphic novel as well as the first dozen issues. The 2112 story kicked off an intriguing future world that tells a story, somewhat in the middle, but lays out where things were with the main villain of Sathanas. It’s a really engaging story but it leaves you with a bit of an open aspect to it about the two sides fighting each other as Sathanas looks to dominate the world with his big leap in human evolution.
When the Next Men series kicks off, it goes back to the then-present day of the early 90’s, but it’s also heavily mired in stories from decades past about an immense and long term Next Men project to build supermen for the future. It’s all orchestrated by Sathanas through a really neat method, but the focus for the majority of this is on the political and intrigue side with those that Sathanas had guiled into helping him as well as the current creations of the project, dubbed the Next Men when they end up escaping in the midst of the project being discovered by another agency. It’s not exactly convoluted, but the book introduces so many plots and a few double agents along the way that you can’t be sure how to trust. And in the middle of it you have this group of young men and women who have woken from their virtual world known as the Greenery to discover the real world and nobody they feel they can really trust. It covers so much ground, works with such interesting and complex characters and massages the action, intrigue and sexuality perfectly. I’ve long been a fan of John Byrne by this is still what I consider his definitive work because it’s such a fully realized world with so many fascianting threads to follow that I really can’t get enough of it.
Grade: A+
Jack of Fables Vol. #5 – Turning Pages
With the fifth installment of Jack of Fables, it breaks it down to two separate stories though there are some connections between the two. The first storyline is a bit of a difficult read in some ways as it’s a flashback story to when Bigby was hunting down Jack in 1883 as Jack was tearing up the Old West. It’s a great story as the two sides play their adventures out but what makes it difficult is the amount of “This day in history” material that is used throughout it. It does have its uses and there is interesting reads in it, but I don’t know that I would have missed most of it being eliminated. The second half of the book starts off the next storyline which goes into the next volume as well by dealing with the imminent arrival of the Bookburner at Golden Bough. That storyline is really just starting as the main focus is about the three Page sister of whom Jack intends to bed again, and together. We get some good back story for each of them with some very amusing narration about it. Similar to the previous installments of the series, there’s really just a whole lot going on here and plenty of little in-jokes and so forth here throughout. The sexuality side of the book is one that I continue to like a lot because it is a big part of Jack’s life since he’s all about the pleasure. With the threat of danger mixed in, Jack’s laid back attitude about it all the whole 1880’s storyline that has a whole lot of shooting and tracking going on made for a great read and has me eager for the next installment.
Grade: B+
Green Lantern: Revenge of the Green Lanterns
While I had enjoyed the start of the series overall with the previous volume, it did feel a bit angsty in a way that just left me a little cool to it. I’m a long time fan of Hal Jordan over the other human Lantern characters and it was definitely tough to be a fan through a lot of the things he had to go through prior to his being reborn and back to what made him what he is. Unfortunately, the previous volume spent a lot of time with the whole mission over foreign soil, political issues regarding the treaty about superpowers and his place as the cop of the sector, which in his mind does give him free reign but is also more complicated than that, which is not something he excels at. In a lot of ways, he felt closer to Guy during these issues with a bit more reasoning and emotion involved as they dealt with being tortured and so forth before the rescue. His guilt over not wearing his ring that could have saved them all early on has been a big part of it.
This volume continues to deal with the fallout from it, but it also has one of my favorite pieces as Mongul has arrived on Earth to deal a blow to those that ended his father’s life, and he has his very special flowers to do it with. What makes it really fun is that it pairs Hal with Green Arrow for the storyline that dominates the first half of the book as the two fight it out with him but also get trapped in the fantasy world for awhile which lets them work through some of their issues. This also brings in for a separate story a good single issue piece that has Hal working with Batman again for a bit so the two can scope each other out before coming to a better understanding of where each of them are at this stage of their careers. It’s a subdued Batman story, but one that definitely feels very appropriate considering what had happened between the two of them over the years.
The other side to this book that is somewhat problematic is that it’s part of the One Year Later gimmick that DC Comics ran a few years back that advance the world by a year so that they could put some changes into the mix without having to explain them right away, if at all. It killed some books for me, but here it feels like it’s somewhat fuzzy for when it happens and the focus initially goes back on the whole flight mission problem from the first set. Thankfully, it’s brief before it shoves Hal back up to Oa where he’s dealing with the frosty reception he’s getting there after his time as Parallax and the numerous deaths that he caused. But it also leads into a very, very fun story involving him and Guy heading off to sector 3601 to deal with what may be some missing Lanterns that were thought to be dead. The book is a by the seat of its pants kind of operation in getting there so easily and dealing with the massive scale of the Manhunters that reside in there, but it sets up a lot of other plot points coming down the road that you have to appreciate the overall scale of what’s set into motion here.
Grade: B
