We’re back, with a renewed emphasis on drawing attention to what is and isn’t worth your hard earned dollars in these lean economic times. Comics have never been more expensive, with cover prices that have far outpaced inflation (despite an increasing number of full page ads). The $3.99 price point is in sight. 

No more B.S. We ‘re committed to a weekly comic book column highlighting some things we think are worth a look, and some that should be overlooked.

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #1 (Dark Horse Comics)
By Adam Prosser
 
The company that would become DC created Superman in the late 30s and triggered a huge superhero boom as imitators rushed to grab a piece of the pie. Most of these imitators are now forgotten, and the ones that aren’t have survived mostly because DC bought them (like Captain Marvel).
 
The company that would become Marvel created The Fantastic Four and a host of other superheroes in the early 60s, thereby triggering another, smaller superhero boom amongst would-be imitators. These imitators are likewise forgotten by all but collectors and archivists, or else the characters were bought by…DC again. Hmm.
 
Other than these two, comic companies have seemingly had no luck launching new, iconic superheroes that linger in the public memory. Image comics in the early 90s had momentary sales success, but it’s proven fleeting; few people care about Spawn or Youngblood these days.
 
So it’s interesting to watch the current cycle of non-Big Two superheroes that have been tentatively cropping up in the last few years. Even to a comics reader like myself, who’s never been heavily into Marvel and DC superheroes (certainly not their later, continuity-drenched iterations), it’s not hard to see why these guys have survived when the others fall by the wayside; they have a fundamental appeal and originality, and the imitators are just that, quick cash-ins that try to copy what the others are doing right. But - and perhaps this is drastically optimistic of me - the new cycle of superheroes seem different. They have an excitement and a sensibility that’s uniquely theirs, and they seem to be building an audience the old-fashioned way, with appealing stories and characters that slowly build a buzz, rather than riding the coattails of the others. Mignola’s Hellboy, Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker’s Invincible, Joe Casey and Tom Scioli’s Godland, and others like Adam Warren’s Empowered which I haven’t read but have their own cult followings.
 
To this you can add Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s The Umbrella Academy, which with only a single miniseries- Apocalypse Suite - has already rocketed to the top of the pile of promising non-Marvel/DC superheroes. Chocked with imagination and fun, the series occasionally veered a bit too close to the darkness and violence of the more mainstream superheroes, but this revealed itself as a way of commenting on where superheroes are at right now. A story about a team of adopted superhero kids who matured to screwed-up adulthood under the tutelage of their loveless adoptive father/taskmaster Reginald Hargreeves, the first Umbrella Academy series went through a charming, whimsical first issue to poignancy, violence, and then finally catharsis as the team managed to reach a bit of closure and put the past behind them.
 
Dallas opens, like the previous series, with a flashback to one of the teams’ childhood adventures, once again fighting a monument come to life; one of the kids even remarks, “Haven’t we done this before?” Flash forward to the present. In the wake of the destruction of the Academy, the team members are coping in different ways. Spaceboy has apparently decided to remain on Earth, watching TV in the bunker beneath the destroyed school with a team of (for some reason) Pacific islanders in track suits, his work done, his gorilla body grown fat on junk food. Séance is apparently enjoying his newfound celebrity; The Kraken is still out on his own, solving crimes; The Rumour has grown bitter with her voice, and thus her powers, destroyed by the White Violin; and the Violin herself, a bullet in her brain, has completely lost her memory. But Rumour hasn’t forgotten. Meanwhile, the time-travelling, not-all-that-mentally-stable, and still-trapped-in-a-child’s-body Number 00.05 is under siege by a mysterious organization called the Temps Aeternalis, whom he’s apparently run into before, and have big plans for him that would seem to tie into the assassination of President Kennedy.
 
Way and Ba are just doing a masterful job with this series, managing to create a mood of poignancy and darkness punctuated occasionally by bursts of shocking violence, but keeping a sense of twisted whimsy and humour about it all. Ba’s stylized and spectacular artwork is crucial to the latter when Way seems to be getting a bit too heavy, but Way can be hilarious too, as with the great half-page panel on page 24 (“Seriously.”)
 
What I’m really interested in is where Way takes the series from here. The first series was about evolution and change, with the characters as stand-ins for the superhero genre as a whole. Having fallen from childlike innocence to adult angst and tragedy, the story ended by wiping the slate clean, allowing for the possibility to transform into something new. It would be great if Way and Ba took that to heart, setting superheroes on a new path altogether, something that can ditch the baggage that the majors have saddled the genre with. But just as Rumour won’t allow the White Violin to lapse into merciful forgetfulness, the superhero genre’s past still casts a long shadow over the present. We’ll have to wait and see just how far the Umbrella Academy can get out from under it.


FOUR AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS



Thor: Man of War one-shot (Marvel)
By Jeb D.

As Matt Fraction winds down his “mini-saga” (I guess it’s not a “mini-series” because each issue of Thor: Ages of Thunder was technically a “one-shot”) of Marvel’s revived Thunder God, he continues to get right to the heart of the father-son conflict that fuels so much of the world’s mythologies. As Thor rampages around, seeking his All-Father’s attention like a spoiled child, Odin decides to oblige him by sending the invincible Valkyries to teach him a lesson. Well, the pulchritudinous punishers show up only to find the big guy and his cronies engaged in a fight with a world-threatening monster (Norse mythology knows no other kind), and before you know it, all hands are to the pump, enmities forgotten, and it’s page after page of glorious Asgardian mayhem, rendered beautifully by Clay Mann, Victor Olazaba, and Paul Mounts. This being not at all what Odin had in mind, he takes matters into his own hands, and artist Patrick Zircher takes over, with able assist from June Chung, to depict the (All) Father of all showdowns between Thor and his father. We’ve seen these two go at it before (and Odin’s choice of battle dress is a tad too Liefeld/Lee for my taste), but Fraction brings it to a satisfying conclusion. Adding this three-part epic to Alan Davis’ brilliant Thor:Truth of History from last month, and the excellence of the ongoing series, and it’s pretty clear that you’d have to go back to the Walt Simonson era to find a time when things were this good for Thunder God fans.


FOUR OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS



Secret Invasion Miniseries: X-Men #4 of 4 and Inhumans #4 of 4 (Marvel)
By Jeb D.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the various Secret Invasion tie-ins has been seeing familiar Marvel characters in the hands of artists not normally associated with them. In the Secret Invasion X-Men book, Cary Nord uses the X-Men’s new San Francisco home as the playground for an epic confrontation with the Skrulls that harkens back to the great space-faring epics of the Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne days. The look is bright Saturday-morning-cartoon, and he makes great use of the varied colors that identify the different members of the group (his Beast sometimes looks like a moving Rorschach blot, and I’d love to think that’s as much subtext as artistic choice). Over with The Inhumans, Tom Raney gives the characters a more sculpted look, and his depiction of the showdown between Medusa and the other female Inhumans is not only deliciously lovely, but sparks with an intensity that’s very different from your typical nose-to-nose superpower conflict.

Where Nord’s X-Men and Skrulls are all about fluid action, Raney’s detailed facial expressions are practically action scenes in themselves. Both stories, of course, are somewhat circumscribed by their need not to upset the Secret Invasion applecart too soon, but work well within that limitation. Mike Carey’s X-Men book tells a neat story of the strengths of Cyclops’ leadership, while Heroes scribe Joe Pokaski brings The Inhumans (and Black Bolt in particular) through a terrible ordeal, that ends with a new direction for them (which will evidently lead into the upcoming Abnett/Lanning/Pelletier War of Kings one-shot). Those who want only to know what happens with Marvel’s Skrull Invasion can content themselves with the main Secret Invasion series. But these two miniseries (along with those featuring Thor and The Fantastic Four) not only deepen that experience, but are terrific reads on their own.


BOTH: THREE AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS



Trade Winds: Ultimate Human tpb (Marvel)
by Graig Kent

I quite enjoyed Warren Ellis’ Ultimate Galactus trilogy a few years back and was anticipating, for no tangible reason, Ultimate Human to be some sort of extension to that. Had I read the back cover copy, I would have known that, not that it would have stopped me from purchasing the book, since I find the bulk of Ellis’ Marvel work exceptionally entertaining. But if there’s anything exceptional about this book it’s that it’s an exception to Ellis’ oeuvre.

The basic plot of Ultimate Human - and I stress basic – is sadsac scientist Ultimate Bruce Banner approaches alcoholic scientist Ultimate Tony Stark to cure him of his little hulking out problem. On the other side of the ocean, Ultimate Pete Wisdom, aka the Ultimate Leader, schemes to steal both Stark and Banner’s blood to develop his own super soldier project. Collision.

Quite frankly, Ultimate Human is dull. Ellis’ storytelling here is beyond generic. Heroes meet. Heroes fight each other. Enter bad-guy. Heroes fight bad guy. Everything’s still the same at the end. The end. The Leader crops up for a few pages in the first and second issue, and the third issue primarily entails Pete Wisdom’s the origin story, which, frankly drags on while intending to be the meat of the series. The title or “ultimate human” derives from Wisdom’s desire to become such, so really, he should factor in a much larger role from the get-go. His origin should be interspersed throughout the story, or front-loaded. As a character he should be more prominently featured, alas, this is and Iron Man/Hulk book and a not very good one at that.

Ellis’ Ultimate Stark and Ultimate Banner are not necessarily unlikeable, but just generally uninteresting.  Stark is painted as a self-involved alcoholic, while Banner is displayed as a self-involved loser. There’s little heroic about either man. Wisdom, as a self-involved egomaniac is as stock a villain as they come, but at least he’s appropriate for a comic book bad guy.

The story is illustrated by Cary Nord, with atypically murky coloring from Dave Stewart. Nord’s work is decent but underwhelming. There’s a lot of Hulk smashing in this, but not a lot of dynamic presentation, no real power to the visuals. A lot of that falls back on the very limiting page layouts, which are, by an large, three equal-sized, stacked panels per page (in the flashback sequence the panels are divided in two for six equal, square panels per page). Even for a four-issue mini-series, this felt decompressed. With tighter visuals this story could have been told just as easily in three chapters. 

If this were a four issue storyline in an ongoing Ultimate Hulk book (or even an Ultimate Iron Man) story, I’d cut it more slack, with the character of Banner and/or Stark a little more fleshed out in other chapters, where it’s routine to toss in a villain’s origin story for the bulk of a chapter, but as a stand-alone mini-series, it doesn’t really work.


TWO OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS