It’s an exciting week for lovers of comics, with our favorite holiday happening tomorrow, Free Comic Book Day! In the run up, there are loads of new #1 issues on the shelves. Which ones will you shell out cash for, alongside your ample pile of freebies this weekend? Let’s take a look at what’s worth your money, and what isn’t.
The indie producers are hitting solid home-runs this week, with Dark Horse leading the pack. Their first is the best offering this week, Michael Avon Oeming’s The Victories #1, and if that sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve reviewed this once before! Or have I? After the previous success of the miniseries and the Victories’ appearances in Dark Horse Presents, Oeming (co-creator of Powers) is bringing his dark cast of super heroes to their own ongoing monthly series. Here, the darkness just gets darker, in a very literal sense: the lights have gone out across most of the world, as power shortages leave humanity in the darkest of new ages. The Victories have taken to the streets to protect the innocent, and old enemies are waiting for them. This new story is focused on a different member of The Victories than the original mini-series, which delved into the troubled past of the young hero known as Faustus. Here, we get a very personal insight into the young heroine D.D. Mau. Like Faustus, she is dealing with deep personal insecurities that affect her heroic exploits. D.D.’s super human abilities make her strong and incredibly fast, but if she rests – even to sleep- she undergoes enormous weight gain. Every morning, she must get back to super heroic activity as quickly as possible to restore herself to what she thinks she should look like. Oeming’s single portrayal of D.D. at her heaviest is shown only in a mirrored reflection, fully illustrating the sadness she feels over her physical condition. The visual brings home the term “body image” in a solemn way, but D.D. is in something of a state of denial. She’s content to run off her excess weight day after day, knowing that pushing her super abilities is likely to get her killed. D.D. just doesn’t have herself or the world figured out yet, a young woman who’s brash, foulmouthed, and even a touch homophobic. Her previously depicted sexual trysts with Faustus are as much an escape from herself and reality for her as we saw them to be for Faustus, in the previous series. Ultimately, she’s a flawed and very human super hero, and just the type of character we’d expect from Oeming’s gritty exploration of the genre.
DC Comics gives us the other great book this week featuring empowered women with The Movement #1. Set in its New 52 Universe, the Movement is a group of young super heroes determined to represent the least among us. They are more an underground super powered representation of ideas like Occupy than the Justice League, and they’ve taken control of their neighborhood, a downtrodden area of Coral City known as “the Tweens”. Led by a teenage telepath calling herself Virtue, these young people are expelling the police from their corrupt turf and taking matters into their own hands, passing out video masks to their followers to record the indiscretions of cops and criminals alike. The team members are primarily female and racially diverse, including winged avenging angel Katharsis and Tremor. Interestingly, the only member of the Movement who shows any skin is its only original male member, Mouse, who goes shirtless despite his superhuman control of rats. (Lots of rats.) The group’s first adventure has them bringing into their ranks a young man who seems to be possessed by an evil spirit. Virtue, however, realizes he’s more than a simple but frightening horror movie trope, and that’s not the only element turned on its ear in this refreshing new title. There are promises of familiar characters to come, and the series is set in the mainstream DC Universe, so it will be exciting to see how the Movement’s moral viewpoint affects DC’s biggest names.
Super heroic morality is also front and center in BOOM! Studios’ newest, Suicide Risk #1 by Mike Carey (Lucifer), with art by Elena Casagrande (Hack/Slash, and a member of Truckers). In a world where super powers are for sale in the back alleys of the city, the cops are outgunned and even the super heroes don’t stay heroes for long. Few manage to stay alive very long, and everyone is in over their heads. Beat cop Leo Winters has a lead on where super villains have been getting their powers, and he may become the most powerful superhuman of all. He’s a good cop, and a dedicated family man who doesn’t have to take the risks that he does, and he comes off as a bit of an ‘80s action movie star, skulking about in the wee hours of the night, instead of staying home with is family. This somewhat flat character makes the story seem like a pale imitation of the Image series Powers or DC’s Gotham Central: just another story about regular cops in a super powered world. Leo’s transformation near the end could move the story into a more original vein, however, and the gritty and realistic artwork helps set it apart, as does the central theme of why the majority of people with super human abilities seem to turn to evil. It will be interesting to see this more fully explored, but the book needs more character depth pretty quickly.
There’s depth of character and the death of the main character, over and over again, in the latest offering from Image, Ten Grand #1. Written by J. Michael Straczynski, this is the first in the re-launch of his Joe’s Comics imprint at Image, with fantastically smudgy, dark artwork by Ben Templesmith (Fell, 30 Days of Night). Indeed, the artwork here lends a unique, macabre tone to the story of Joe Fitzgerald, a former mob enforcer killed, along with his wife, when tasked with taking out a man possessed with demonic powers. Now, his wife Laura is in Heaven, but Joe isn’t allowed anywhere near the pearly gates. He’s made a deal instead, and not with the Devil, but with Heaven itself. Joe acts in the best interests of those who have nowhere else to turn, those with demonic problems that only Joe is willing to take on, vetting them by making sure they can come up with the titular Ten Grand in payment, in order to weed out the “kooks” and “game players”. Joe is condemned to fight and die for them over and over, cancelling out his previous sins one by one, and each time he dies, he gets just five minutes of heavenly face time with his beloved. His latest client just might be in trouble with the man who killed Joe’s wife, and the immortal stakes have just gotten higher. To say that this book is gritty is would be a catastrophic understatement; in one scene, Joe channels an angelic spirit in the person of a stripper via a holy sigil on a $5 bill. Still, Joe’s respect for women is evident in his love for Laura, even if it is somewhat dulled by the hardship of his life, and his dedication to fighting for people in need hints at a growing morality, besides being motivated by his personal needs.
Dynamite Entertainment revives an old classic this week with The Back Bat #1, by Brian Buccellato (The Flash) and Ronan Cliquet (The Green Hornet). This character was originally introduced in the 1930’s and was part of a copyright dispute with DC comics and Batman creator Bob Kane. The similarities are obvious in appearance, but the modern incarnation is more reminiscent of Daredevil than Batman. The Black Bat is a blind man given sight by genetically enhanced replacement eyes based on those of bats, allowing him to see in the dark with great clarity. Tony Quinn was a highly paid defense attorney before one of his nastier clients took revenge upon him by blinding him. Now he’s out for revenge of his own, but the very people who gave him his gifts and created The Black Bat are mysteriously manipulating him. It’s tough to tell what’s going on, as this origin story relies heavily on flashback scenes that aren’t illustrated well enough to differentiate them from the current timeline. Overall, the tale was so confusing I had to go back and reread the comic twice just to get the gist of it, which is never a good sign.
Dark Horse’s second offering suffered from similar story telling problems. Dean Motter’s iconic creation returns in Mr. X: Eviction #1, and the mysterious anti-hero and architect of Radiant City faces a rather confusing threat this time around. Someone high-up is destroying parts of the city with giant robots -who needs wrecking balls? – and recreating its “psychotecture” to drive the populace mad. At least, I think that’s what’s happening. There’s also a female reporter who’s having problems with drinking while her cameraman suffers from fear of the dark, and a female accomplice of Mister X (who’s seen in very few panels of his own book) who’s in trouble with the law. The plot here was nearly impossible to follow, and despite the fantastic and wonderfully noir style of Motter’s work, I had a hard time being interested in this latest mini-series.
There are some honorable mentions this week, and a couple not so honorable. Small indie publisher Aspen Comics celebrates 10 years in the business with a second volume of its series Charasmagic, but it’s a lackluster, confusing jumping on point. Apparently, magic has taken away every human on Earth, but the streets ate still teeming with people, so either we’re all magical or the problem got solved before the book ever started. Archaia Comics gives us an issue #000 (and you know I love that) of Cyborg 009, which is actually just a preview of the first chapter of an upcoming hard cover graphic novel adaptation of the popular manga of the same name. And lastly, Batwing #20 (which isn’t a #1 at all, but should be) sees the introduction of the newest member of the Bat family as Luke Fox – son of Lucius Fox, portrayed on film by Morgan Freeman – takes on the mantle of Batwing. The story takes an odd turn, as Batman claims Luke, a character heretofore unseen, was his first choice to be Batwing over the Congolese child soldier David Zavimbe, who was the first Black Batman in continuity. Luke is supposed to continue David’s work in Africa for Batman Incorporated, but the book has lost some if its international flavor, and there are far too many tongue in cheek references to being a “token” Batman.
Stay tuned, as I’ll be doing a special edition of the best of Free Comic Book Day’s offerings.
