Domenika Marzione (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
domarzione) wrote2014-02-22 01:43 pm
domarzione) wrote2014-02-22 01:43 pm
Entry tags:
catching up on comics: She-Hulk, Black Widow, Ms. Marvel, All-New Invaders, Winter Soldier
A few thoughts on a few books I've read lately:
She-Hulk #1: This was delightful. Javier Pulido's style matches up perfectly with Charles Soule's take on Jennifer Walters: brimming with confidence, sassy, intelligent, capable, and as awesome as she knows she is. Reminds me a bit of the start of Waid's Daredevil run, the 'brighter' version before it all goes to hell, as it invariably does for Matt, and not just because it's a NY lawyer who also fights crime.
[Side note: why in tarnation is Waid moving Matt to San Francisco? I know firsthand that Hell's Kitchen isn't in need of its own vigilante anymore, but... how do you move Matt Murdock out of NY and still have him be Matt Murdock?]
Anyway, I really, really liked this as both a single comics issue and as the opening of a new volume of a series. If you're looking for a fun book, a female-led book, or both, you could do a lot worse.
Black Widow #1-3. Kind of like this, sadly. I really, really, really wanted to love this. It's Natasha! It's drawn by Phil Noto! It's about Natasha not framed in the context of all of the men in her life! It's Natasha as super-competent badass legendary antihero!
It's also utterly and completely joyless.
Natasha provides narration -- endless narration -- for her trudging grimly through her list of wrongs she has to right. It's... she isn't enjoying what she's doing. She isn't soothed by it. She is not feeling anything except the occasional self-recrimination for not being omniscient and perfect. Except she kind of is because she does everything she sets out to do. There are people -- and cat -- she clearly has relationships with, but for whom she can't express any emotion toward. It's like watching a robot (or a clinically depressed person) go through the motions at an extraordinarily high level of competency. It's not fun.
I know this book is going to suffer in comparison to something like Fraction's Hawkeye, the other 'Avenger on their off-duty time' title, but... I want better for Natasha here. Or maybe some meds to thin the fog around her to make this book more enjoyable to read. Because right now, doing so is as much a drudgery as her task list is.
Ms. Marvel #1... it was okay? I don't think I am anywhere near the target audience for this book, so I'll say that it's a good start for a title aimed at the younger female audience but doesn't need to try quite so hard. I'm 100% behind a book where the lead has to find a middle passage between cultural/religious beliefs and fitting in in both the superhero and civilian worlds with their skewed norms and conflicting expectations. It can be a lot more than a Message Title, though, so let's hope it becomes that.
The All-New Invaders #1-2 and Winter Soldier: the Bitter March #1: If you'd asked me at any point before I'd read these books which take on Bucky (and company) I'd be happier with, James Robinson or Rick Remender, I'd have laughed at you. A lot. I hate Remender's Captain America and stopped reading it before Dimension Z ended, hate his attitude toward his readers, hate his bald-faced misogyny, hate his unrepentant pogrom of destroying everything Ed Brubaker did with Steve. And Robinson wrote Starman.
But Remender's is the better book, sadly.
The All-New Invaders is very retro is not-good ways. It's also info-dumpy in bizarre ways. Actual dialogue: "Still, ultimately it was James here -- Bucky as he was known then -- who saved the day." This was said by Jim Hammond to Captain America, who of all people really doesn't need to be told who James Barnes was back in the day. Nor do the readers, who have been told about half a dozen times that James Barnes = Bucky = Winter Soldier.
Bucky, for the record, sounds chirpy and happy and young, like he was moved forward in time from before he fell and none of that Winter Soldier stuff ever happened. I don't need Brubaker-esque manpain, but... it's weird. And he sounds fifteen.
On the whole, the title reads like... you remember Avengers/Invaders where everyone was kind of gawping a little at the Invaders for their old-timeyness and how the Avengers were entirely cock-eyed going back in time? Except that's the reader reaction because these are current-day Steve, Bucky, Jim, and Namor and yet don't seem like it at all.
The Bitter March, on the other hand, is retro in a much less cartoony fashion. It's still campy, don't get me wrong, but it's Sean Connery-era James Bond kind of campy and it works. The choice of a narrator neither Nick Fury nor Winter Soldier also works, since it's someone who can be awed by both of them. And yes, the Winter Soldier doesn't appear until the last third of the book and that, too, is fine. It all works.
... man, I hate admitting that.
She-Hulk #1: This was delightful. Javier Pulido's style matches up perfectly with Charles Soule's take on Jennifer Walters: brimming with confidence, sassy, intelligent, capable, and as awesome as she knows she is. Reminds me a bit of the start of Waid's Daredevil run, the 'brighter' version before it all goes to hell, as it invariably does for Matt, and not just because it's a NY lawyer who also fights crime.
[Side note: why in tarnation is Waid moving Matt to San Francisco? I know firsthand that Hell's Kitchen isn't in need of its own vigilante anymore, but... how do you move Matt Murdock out of NY and still have him be Matt Murdock?]
Anyway, I really, really liked this as both a single comics issue and as the opening of a new volume of a series. If you're looking for a fun book, a female-led book, or both, you could do a lot worse.
Black Widow #1-3. Kind of like this, sadly. I really, really, really wanted to love this. It's Natasha! It's drawn by Phil Noto! It's about Natasha not framed in the context of all of the men in her life! It's Natasha as super-competent badass legendary antihero!
It's also utterly and completely joyless.
Natasha provides narration -- endless narration -- for her trudging grimly through her list of wrongs she has to right. It's... she isn't enjoying what she's doing. She isn't soothed by it. She is not feeling anything except the occasional self-recrimination for not being omniscient and perfect. Except she kind of is because she does everything she sets out to do. There are people -- and cat -- she clearly has relationships with, but for whom she can't express any emotion toward. It's like watching a robot (or a clinically depressed person) go through the motions at an extraordinarily high level of competency. It's not fun.
I know this book is going to suffer in comparison to something like Fraction's Hawkeye, the other 'Avenger on their off-duty time' title, but... I want better for Natasha here. Or maybe some meds to thin the fog around her to make this book more enjoyable to read. Because right now, doing so is as much a drudgery as her task list is.
Ms. Marvel #1... it was okay? I don't think I am anywhere near the target audience for this book, so I'll say that it's a good start for a title aimed at the younger female audience but doesn't need to try quite so hard. I'm 100% behind a book where the lead has to find a middle passage between cultural/religious beliefs and fitting in in both the superhero and civilian worlds with their skewed norms and conflicting expectations. It can be a lot more than a Message Title, though, so let's hope it becomes that.
The All-New Invaders #1-2 and Winter Soldier: the Bitter March #1: If you'd asked me at any point before I'd read these books which take on Bucky (and company) I'd be happier with, James Robinson or Rick Remender, I'd have laughed at you. A lot. I hate Remender's Captain America and stopped reading it before Dimension Z ended, hate his attitude toward his readers, hate his bald-faced misogyny, hate his unrepentant pogrom of destroying everything Ed Brubaker did with Steve. And Robinson wrote Starman.
But Remender's is the better book, sadly.
The All-New Invaders is very retro is not-good ways. It's also info-dumpy in bizarre ways. Actual dialogue: "Still, ultimately it was James here -- Bucky as he was known then -- who saved the day." This was said by Jim Hammond to Captain America, who of all people really doesn't need to be told who James Barnes was back in the day. Nor do the readers, who have been told about half a dozen times that James Barnes = Bucky = Winter Soldier.
Bucky, for the record, sounds chirpy and happy and young, like he was moved forward in time from before he fell and none of that Winter Soldier stuff ever happened. I don't need Brubaker-esque manpain, but... it's weird. And he sounds fifteen.
On the whole, the title reads like... you remember Avengers/Invaders where everyone was kind of gawping a little at the Invaders for their old-timeyness and how the Avengers were entirely cock-eyed going back in time? Except that's the reader reaction because these are current-day Steve, Bucky, Jim, and Namor and yet don't seem like it at all.
The Bitter March, on the other hand, is retro in a much less cartoony fashion. It's still campy, don't get me wrong, but it's Sean Connery-era James Bond kind of campy and it works. The choice of a narrator neither Nick Fury nor Winter Soldier also works, since it's someone who can be awed by both of them. And yes, the Winter Soldier doesn't appear until the last third of the book and that, too, is fine. It all works.
... man, I hate admitting that.