Obligatory New 52 post: Office Management Amidst Chaos!!!

So DC comics did this line wide re-launch, 52 new issue number ones...if you are even a casual comics fan you know about this, and I don't really feel I need to go into THAT whole thing in this space. Now, I don't have the kind of money to actually buy 52 new comics so I have not read them all, but amongst my favorite titles are the new Batman, Animal Man (which seems to be everyone's fave), Batwoman (which I don't think should really count as a NEW #1) and The Flash. I like a few others, like Action comics (which I wish I liked it a little more) Batwing, Frankenstein and Aquaman, but head and shoulders above all of these, the title I cannot help but enjoy the most happens to be...

O.M.A.C! Created by Jack Kirby, with story and art by Dan Didio and Keith Giffen, inks by Scott Koblish, colors by Hi-Fi, letters by Travis Lanham and edited by Harvey Richards. As I understand it, O.M.A.C was Jack Kirby's update of Captain America for the future, where a scrawny loser named Buddy Blank (the new Steve Rogers) with a strong will gets transformed into an unstoppable super soldier. The original Omac stood for One Man Army Corps, he took orders from a giant eye shaped satellite in the sky known as Brother Eye. This new Omac (which now stands for One Machine Attack Construct) is Kevin Kho, who is transformed into Omac through his smart phone by the omniscient Brother Eye. What Kevin's ties to Brother Eye are at this point still remain mysterious, other than the fact that he works in an office building above a secret base Brother Eye needs to infiltrate. The plotlines of issue number one the new O.M.A.C and the old are relatively similar, Omac busts into an office, and Omac destroys it. I must segue, for a moment, to the original Omac for some inspired Jack Kirby predictions of office work in the future, however...

Buddy Blank is being picked on by people in his office, and his Supervisor (note the SUPER-V name tag, which is amazing) blames Buddy for having a persecution complex after his coworker literally PUNCHES HIM IN THE FACE. I mean look at him! Buddy is sent to the psychology section of the office to lose his frustration. The psychology section is a room with a few different doors, labeled 'silent room' and 'destruct room' and 'crying room'. Buddy picks the 'Destruct Room', where he sees this:


If modern day offices had rooms like this, I think everyone would be a lot less wound up. I like that one office worker is STABBING some UNSEEN dummy or piece of office technology. I also love the word bubble

"AAAAARRRR! DESTROYING THIS BOOK IS JUST WHAT I NEED!"

...another example of Jack Kirby's prophetic storytelling, just look at all of the recent bookstore closings. How could Kirby have foreseen this in 1974? The 'psuedo people' are my favorite feature about Kirby's vision of the future rat race. They are lifelike dummies that are bent over ass backwards so you can kick them down a rail into a granite wall. Absolutely spectacular. The thing about the original Omac series is that in every issue Jack Kirby included at least half a dozen awesome ideas that literally had me saying "wow!" or grinning ear to ear. The new Omac isn't as inventive, and that might be a little unfair because I am comparing the new creators to The King of comics himself. The toned down insanity also could be attributed to this O.M.A.C being a part of the shared DC universe, co-existing with characters like Animal Man and Batman. Nevertheless it is still a really fun read, and has scenes like this:

I really like that the new Omac's Mohawk is like an electric eel fin, that sparkles with raw energy. I think the book looks spectacular, and really appreciate all of the silliness. I think all of the issues are going to be titled with some variation on O.M.A.C (like issue number one's Office Management Amidst Chaos or issue number two's Odd Meals Assure Confrontation). I like how Brother Eye always replaces 'I' with 'eye' (for example 'Eye brought you here for a reason') and one of my favorite pieces of writing in the issue...

OMACTIVATE!

... is priceless. They inject a lot of Kirby and DC universe nods in here, and I love every second of it. This book doesn't take itself too seriously, it isn't grim n gritty, it doesn't offend any of my sensibilities. So far it is just good clean comics fun, and that is in startlingly low supply in superhero comics these days. I have no idea if anyone is reading this book, but I hope you are, dear reader, and that it continues for a good long run.

-Eamon

Captain America and Bucky is the best looking superhero comic on the shelf.

Dc New 52 blah blah blahs aside, the one comic I think EVERYONE should be talking about (and it is a Marvel book) is Captain America and Bucky, with Ed Brubaker and Marc Andreyko on writing, Chris Samnee on art, Bettie Breitweiser on colors and Joe Caramagna on letters. Most of the buzz I have been reading on a Marvel book has been for Daredevil, by Mark Waid, Marcos Martin and Paolo Rivera, and don't get me wrong, that praise is extremely well deserved. The new Daredevil is one of the best comics out there now, and certainly a cut above most superhero books being released.


...But hot DAMN Chris Samnee is on fire, as is colorist Bettie Breitweiser. I'm not sure whose work on this book I like more, Samnee's or Breitweiser's. Samnee's art is the PERFECT combination of superhero style comics illustration, mixed with pure cartooning and a splash of Norman Rockwell. His inks are milky pools of black, they are like dessert, so satisfying and thick.
It's obvious he uses a lot of reference, but he draws every last bit of it, he doesn't just scan a photo and use posteredges to make it look like a drawing. Almost every panel has a background, and if it doesn't, there is a visual reason or excellent coloring choices that make it ok. Everything looks right, nothing is confusing, and it all looks damn good. If there are characters in the background, they are all individuals, and they are interesting to look at. Every panel tells a story. Some specific examples of what I'm talking about below...look at those clowns! Look at that train!


The action is exciting, and it's pure WWII pulp style storytelling, played a little less over the top than the Simon and Kirby Cap stuff, but the art is just spot on. I enjoy the story so far, which mainly focuses on the exploits of Cap and Bucky from Bucky's perspective, but the artwork is just so astounding that it is all I want to talk about. To be honest, the two mesh together perfectly, I can't really separate one from the other, which is PERFECT AND WHAT ALL COMICS SHOULD DO. Sometimes you might read a comic, and go "Hey, that was a great story, but the art just wasn't doing it for me" or vice-versa (I think a perfect example of the vice versa would be Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Catwoman: When in Rome story, fan-freaking-tastic visuals, but definitely one of the worst written comics I own).


It is interesting to see the transformation of Bucky from a troubled but well meaning kid into a killer. It is also a little bizarre that the younger Bucky seems almost more bloodthirsty than the older Captain America, but he is still a kid, the three panels below show ways that the artists convey those sides of Bucky... the cold blooded killer and the young soldier looking to impress, still unsure of himself.


The colors are digital, but they don't advertise it. The textures almost make the colors look painted, and they don't just serve the inked artwork, they enhance them, they make them look even better. I'm convinced that if this book was colored by someone else it would not look nearly as good. This book is a feast of comics storytelling, I feel like I get my $2.99 value with each and every issue. My only real qualm with this book is why Samnee isn't doing the covers. This is a perfect example of "don't judge a book by it's cover" because I think as cover images these issues have pretty unremarkable ones.

I would expect this book to be all over the web, pages and panels being tumbled, 5 star reviews on comics websites...maybe I'm just not looking in the right spots, but if you see this book BUY IT NOW. Let's not have another Thor The Mighty Avenger here people.

-Eamon

The World's Greatest Detectives

I recently picked up a comic that featured The Batman and Sherlock Holmes, arguably the two most famous fictional detectives of all time. The story is an extra long Anniversary issue (Detective's fiftieth!) which was written by Mike W. Barr, with Art by Alan Davis, Terry Beatty and Dick Giordano, Carmine Infantino and Al Vey, E.D.Cruz (and a Pinup by Dick Sprang!). Colors by Adrienne Roy and Carl Gafford, and letters by John Workman, Romeo Francisco and Todd Klein. It was a team up that was too good to pass up, and this cover is definitely what prompted me to buy it, without looking at the interiors.

Aside from Holmes and The Dynamic Duo, we also get other DC detectives Slam Bradly and the ductile detective himself The Elongated man.


The story opens Philip Marlowe style, (or more appropriately Sam Spade style?) with Slam Bradley mourning his recently deceased partner in his lonely office, whereupon two sets of visitors, one a dapper Londoner looking for his missing fiancee, the other a set of gun wielding crooks, find their way into Slam's office. Slam and his new client escape into the alleyway, and are cornered, but are rescued by the dynamic duo Batman and Robin!


Batman does something here that immediately made me freeze in my tracks, however. A crook fires an automatic weapon at The Dark Knight, who quickly shields himself with the body of a thug he was walloping in the face. That crook HAS to be dead and as we all know, The Batman does not kill! (The panel of Batman just cold-cocking the thug over and over is amazing though.)


The other thing I noticed, not surprisingly, is what an amazing artist Alan Davis is. I am particularly taken with the way he draws the boy wonder himself, Robin! His expressions fit the character, and his grace and fluid movement in disabling crooks is amazingly depicted by Davis. Look at the joy as he effortlessly takes down all those thugs. These drawings of Robin might be my favorite iteration of the character in how he is depicted visually, at the very least it is one of my favorite aspects of this comic.


The comic is book-ended by the Alan Davis drawn sections with Batman and Robin, in the middle we get stories featuring Slam Bradley, The Elongated Man, and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Slam Bradley section opens with another direct reference to The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (the first being Slam's dead partner in the beginning).


Slam does some fairly action-movie/comic booky detective stuff, including throwing a gasoline can at some approaching armed crooks and shooting it from afar to make it explode, distracting the thugs so he can run up and punch them out (if he was that good of a shot couldn't he have just shot them all? He shoots someone at the start of the comic...). Slam also discovers that his client is a descendant of the evil Dr. Moriarty, and the kidnapped fiancee was actually a descendant of Dr. Watson! This leads to a story with The Elongated Man, who just happens to be in London. He is walking by 221b Baker street, when Sherlock Holmes' former lodgings are assaulted by Moriarty's other descendant, this one following the family tradition more closely, who is looking for a lost manuscript of one of Sherlock Holmes' unpublished cases that could ruin his CURRENT plan to blow up the Queen and launch some missiles. I wish I enjoyed the middle section as much as the Batman start and finish, and there are plenty of references to the classic Conan-Doyle Holmes stories to clue the reader in that Barr knows his Holmes, but for me the Holmes story in this just falls flat and makes me see how great Sir Arthur C0nan Doyle's original stories really are.

An insane SPOILER ALERT to a comic published in 1986, the final baddie is apprehended by none other than the ORIGINAL Sherlock Holmes with some Baritsu (this is a reference to the martial art Holmes used to defeat Moriarty when they were locked in mortal combat over Reichenbach Falls in the original stories). Holmes sustained his long life "thanks to a proper diet, a certain distillation of Royal Jelly developed, in my beekeeping days, and the rarefied atmosphere of Tibet,where I keep my primary residence". This is pretty nuts, but in a way, totally appropriate. as Batman has said "Batman and Robin will never die" the same can be said for Sherlock Holmes, a multi media phenomenon of a character who is still having movies and television series made depicting his adventures today. It reminded me of the ending to Paul Pope's Batman Year 100 (MORE SPOILERS), where it is heavily implied that the Batman featured in Pope's story is still Bruce Wayne, even though he would be unbelievably ancient or dead in the time period that tale takes place.

The sense of fun, the art work and bevvy of classic Sherlock Holmes references are all here, I just wish I liked the comic a little more, and that the mystery made a little more sense. Anytime I get to see Sherlock Holmes and Batman depicted by Alan Davis, however, is an opportunity I would never want to miss.

-Eamon

The Best Page in The Avengers Marvel Masterworks edition

I was flipping through my edition of the Avengers Marvel Masterworks edition recently and came across what may be my favorite page of avengers comics ever. Captain America is moping after working out with a bunch of big bruiser type wrasslers,

"all my training--all my skill--and STILL I was unable to save Bucky years ago!"

...and in walks the Avengers intern Rick Jones DRESSED LIKE CAP'S DEAD PARTNER. The expression on Cap's face is spectacular.


An aside...This page is just as fun and exciting as any action sequence, a testament to Mr. Jack Kirby... Seeing Rick Jones as Bucky makes Cap FLIP THE FUCK OUT, and screams at Rick to take off the costume, and snatches the domino mask off of Rick's face. I like to imagine, after that, Cap begins sobbing while pointing at Rick-Bucky to get out of his room, but he probably just has his head buried in his hands. Please read these three panels...they are amazing.


Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did folks! Or else...


-Eamon

The Deaths of Mys-Tech Wars

Back in my comics-buying youth, one could buy comics in more places than just your local comic shop. Department stores, drug stores and dollar stores used to have discounted packs of assorted comics, organized in no way I could discern, in packs of three, four, and sometimes even 5 or ten! On one such occasion I found issue number three of a limited series called Mys-Tech Wars ( written by Dan Abnett with art by Bryan Hitch, with Caroline Steeden on Letters and Helen Nally and Helen Stone on colors), a Marvel Comics 'UK' series in one of these assorted packs, and what I saw inside immediately appalled me, and appealed to me ALL AT ONCE! (Huzzah!)

The opening double page spread (Bryan Hitch is pretty damn great at drawing a double page orgy of death) features a grouping of X-Men, Avengers and other Marvel characters battling it out with an army of Psycho-Warriors, who were unleashed by the evil Mys-Tech board to destroy earth or something. The Psycho-Warriors look like a cross between the borg and the gimp from Pulp fiction, and have the power to kill a whole boatload of Marvel super-heroes. OH, also in this two page spread: Cyclops getting a giant hole blasted through his chest and dying. No one is safe in Mys-Tech wars. This was back in 1993, the X-men cartoon was still going strong on TV, and the younger me was just getting into super hero comics full steam. To see one of my favorite characters die right there on the page was...kinda effed up.


The other thing about Mys-Tech wars are the reactions to the character's deaths. They are fairly realistic, or at the least how I imagine a reaction to a loved one's death would be. Upon seeing Cyclops gunned down in front of her, Jean becomes irrational and becomes hysterical, begging Jubilee to help her drag Cyclops' laser-hole ridden corpse to safety, further risking her own life and that of a fellow X-Man. This is the first instance of my repulsion/attraction to this series. I do not think that Jean would react in that fashion to Cyclops being killed, she has plenty of training in battle, and was the wielder of the Phoenix force for goodness sake, one of the mightiest powers in the entire universe, capable of destroying suns and flying clear across the galaxy. Here, she is reduced to nothing, a blubbering inconsolable wreck, who ends up killing herself when the world, and her mentor and friend Professor X need her the most...it just does not ring true to the character for me, which basically encapsulates my general feeling on Mys-Tech Wars as a whole. At the same time however, it is kind of cool to see a book where no character is safe..but there aren't enough hero moments, the good guys can never seem to catch a break.


The whole thing begins with Nick Fury, who invades the secret lair of the Mys-Tech board, some group of evil old people including an enemy of Nick's during his Howling Commando days. Here's what happens to Nick :




Mys-Tech then unleashes a hoard of Monster Lizard things which swarm the earth, killing many notable heroes. Spider Man and super-team Excalibur die on the same page, followed by a whole bunch more...


As it turns out, the baddies are altering reality, and the heroes that are dying were never meant to die in this fashion, and one of the main characters in the series, I think an original Marvel 'UK' character, Dark Angel, leads the fight to set things right. I think it seems like an excuse to shock and kill off a bunch of popular super hero characters...but there isn't anything really wrong with it...although sometimes things get a little too dark for my tastes in this type of super hero book, for example:


Pretty brutal, right?

The series also features a bunch of Marvel UK characters, like Dark Angel and Death's Head II. Outside of Death's Head II, I have never seen any of these characters used anywhere else, and in additon, none of them die in this series, only the established Marvel characters bite the dust.

At the end of the day, a select few living heroes alter reality and erase the damage done, and sabotage Mys-Tech's operation. Captain America and Logan stop Nick Fury from infiltrating the enemy base to get a beer instead, which is my favorite moment of the whole comic.


All in all Mys-Tech Wars was an interesting journey, that filled me with conflicting nerd feelings about the nature of superhero comics as a young fan. I had to seek out the back issues at local Philly comic shop Fat Jacks, and all of the intense battle sequences by Bryan Hitch are impressive to behold. An intense oddity if nothing else.

-Eamon

Mys-Tech Wars

An insane cover by Bryan Hitch, to the Marvel UK (never heard of it!) 4 part miniseries Mys-Tech Wars. It's basically a story in which almost all of the marvel characters are killed by some weird Orc/Borg soldiers and lizard monsters, with some new and most-likely-never-seen again-after-this-series Marvel UK characters. There will be more on this later, but I had to share this cover.

-Eamon

The Punisher Holiday Special!

I was gifted the Punisher holiday special #1 by a friend at a recent gathering, and it is another grand example of the insanity that is 90's Punisher comics.



The tale begins in the ritzy dining room of 'Little' Tony Caruso, who is demanding his henchmen bring him the head of Frank Castle, The Punisher, because the Punisher killed his father 'Big' Tony Caruso, and Little Tony doesn't get what he wants for Christmas anymore.



Little Tony explains this while holding a Bust of the Punisher. Little Tony had a bust of the Punisher made (or perhaps he is a sculptor in his spare time?) and proceeds to destroy it while getting worked up about not getting presents at Christmas.



So Little Tony's people spread a rumor that they are going to hit a mall on Christmas Eve, bait that the Punisher is all but guaranteed to take...and their plan works! The Punisher is fed the rumor by a hippie drug dealer who is being thrown off a roof by some ne'er do-wells.


The Punisher goes to the mall and hides under a car until the mall closes, then realizes it was all a trap! He punctures the gas tank he is laying directly under for no reason (he later blows the car up) and proceeds to go up against the mall cops, who are also gangsters and have real guns?

As it turns out, Frank isn't alone in the mall. A young girl is hiding there, because of something her dad did...


but then she turns around and says her dad "bought it" in Vietnam, which pretty much means her dad died in Vietnam, unless my understanding of slang is grossly outdated or misinformed. I suppose her step dad is the threat to her returning home, but things like this ain't important or the reason anyone reads a Punisher comic. Also the Punisher lets her know that her current lifestyle would probably lead her to further crimes, and he would hate to have to have to kill her. Classic Frank.

The bad guys have The Punisher's weapons, so Frank uses the only items at his disposal, mall Christmas ornaments! He showers one enemy with Christmas balls, and impales another with a model of Santa and his sleigh (slay?) complete with spear-like reindeer antlers. He also pole vaults off of the top of a Christmas tree!



The Punisher ends up killing the bad guys and saving the girl, who ends up going home for Christmas, and for some reason that Dad she was worried about gets arrested ( I can only assume it was for child abuse, but it would have been nice if this story angle was a little more clear) and the Punisher lets us know that he is so focused on his mission that he forgot who jesus is...

There is a backup story in this volume as well, but I really wanted to just comment on the main story in this special.

-Eamon