Thursday, May 27, 2010

Avengers #1

After getting more and more sucked in to all the Avengers business going on over the last several years, I made a resolution to keep buying only one post-Siege Avengers book. I'd assumed the main title would be it, but after reading the first issue, it's just...not doing much for me. I love Bendis, and I love Romita - though someone made the very fair point that they might not play to each other's strengths ideally - but this doesn't seem like a tentpost Avengers story.

I think a lot of it is just that Kang is an incredibly fucking stupid character. I was only vaguely familiar with him before now, mostly through his connection to Young Avengers, but everything about his vibe in this issue screams "antique" - his design, his attitude, his motives. "Time terrorist" is a concept that might make for a really awesome Mark Millar Ultimates reimagining, but here in 616 they're shackled to a cheesy relic of the 60s (or 70s, or whenever) that I just can't take seriously.

Secret Avengers and Thunderbolts start this week, and I'm already leaning towards one of them being my main Avangers series, but I think Bendis has earned at least another issue or two.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Aftermath

Not trying to make any statements here, obviously - I was just thinking about how much of a cliché the whole "heroes rebuild the battle site" scene is, yet to the best of my knowledge, 9/11 was the only time it's been done at the site of an actual disaster.

It's easier for DC to ignore huge real-life events, because their Earth has so much of a fantastical element to it, but Marvel's whole thing is that it's supposed to be the real world - they certainly made a huge deal out of sticking Obama in ASM last year. Tthough I do recall Thor briefly exploring Katrina, Marvel seems more interested in its own mythology than it needs to be, when there's so much going on in the real world that they could pull their inspiration from. In doing so, they would set themselves even further apart from typical superhero comics.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

Today is regarded in various circles as Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. This is in response to a South Park-fueled controversy from a month or so back. More details, if you require them, can be found here.

Detractors of this notion have been saying that it will only encourage Islamophobia, and has no artistic or political merit. If the posts and images on the Facebook group that's unofficially spearheading the movement (which I am deliberately not linking to) are any indication, the former is disgustingly true. The latter, however, I respectfully disagree with.

First of all, the usual Free Speech argument applies - nobody wants to suppress what people say when it's resonable and popular. The First Amendment exists almost exclusively to protect assholes. If American citizens can make pissy and threatening statements about Trey Parker and Matt Stone and be protected, then to try to stop non-Muslims from offending the most archaic of Muslim sensibilities is absurd - it's like being opposed to Everybody Don't Behead Your Errant Wife Day.

What's more interesting to me, though, is the way things like this probe the semantics of what is fundamentally a silly and ill-thought-out rule. South Park did a great job of this - everybody talks about the bear suit, but when you actually watch the episode, you realize that at no point do they actually show Mohammed at all. He was never in the bear suit, and when he is present within the narrative, he's censored. So South Park managed to offend people and earn severe censoring not by breaking the no-depictions rule, but merely by addressing it. By poking it with a stick to see what would happen.

That's kind of what I was going for in my own version - if the object of the image is only potentially Mohammed, is it still sinful? Is it only sinful if the depiction looks like Mohammed, or can a mere stick figure cross the line? Is it worse because I put a turban on him? What if I drew a plain stick figure on a piece of paper, decided to myself, "that's Mohammed", then left it on a bus? Would a Muslim who came upon the paper later on know to be offended?

I'm not interested in offending Muslims - if some of them want to believe that this strip is sinful, I don't mind. I'm just curious about the fine print.

Back to comics next week, I promise.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Siege #4

You know, you never expect to have to draw something like a zombie Captain America attacking the President, but when you find yourself doing it, it just seems so right.

I love the way Siege ended, but isn't everybody being just a little cavalier about putting a guy in charge who's just shown up after being dead for a year? The other heroes trusting him is one thing - half of them have been there - but the government has no problem investing this much authority in a guy just because Bucky Barnes tells them he's the real Steve Rogers? And doing it within 24 hours, no less? The US government can't flush a toilet in 24 hours.

One thing that I am a little unclear on is Loki's sudden change of heart. Last I checked he'd wanted all this to happen, even as far along as the crashing of the city. What I'm assuming happened is that he wanted the fight to be serious enough that the Asgardians would leave Earth, but he never thought they might actually lose until the Void showed up - and that was a step too far. It's a likely scenario, I guess, but they could've made it a little clearer in lieu of all the "mischief" blather.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Astonishing Spider-Man/Wolverine #1

This is Interrupted-Narration Week, apparently.

While I would never suggest that Jason Aaron plus Adam Kubert doesn't equal "yes please", I almost didn't check this one out - Spidey/Wolverine team-ups work best on a once-in-a-blue-moon basis, and sticking them both in the New Avengers was bad enough. But a whole new ongoing, just for them? Oy. Luckily I was a little hard up for material this week, and I decided to check it out purely for the sake of strip mining. (rim shot) And sure enough, as much as this thing has "Doesn't Need to Exist" written all over it, everything else that's written all over it is really freakin' cool. Though it is funny to see another "heroes in the stone age" story just as The Return of Bruce Wayne is kicking off. Especially after the easy comparison between Batman's stuck-in-time story and Captain America's.

Which reminds me - my first DC reference! Only took 6 weeks!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

New Ultimates 2

So Jeph Loeb is kind of ruining the Ultimate universe for me.

That's a bit of an overstatement, of course, in that I'll still eagerly devour any Ultimate book with "Bendis" or "Millar" on the cover, but after sticking it out through the entirety of the line, I've finally come to the point where I can't come up with a justification for buying an Ultimate title - that goes for Ultimate X, too.

I started to suspect this in Ultimates 3, I was made certain by Ultimatum, and now, I'm convinced the problem is here to say - Loeb just does not understand how this universe works. It's like the Ultimate line is a joke that he wants desperately to be in on, but he just doesn't get it, so he just gets the best artists he can find and tries to fake the writing by making all the characters vulgar, horny assholes. But unlike the vulgar, horny assholes written by Bendis and Millar, they're hollow; all the style and no substance. New Ultimates is Poochie to Ultimates' Itchy & Scratchy.

Oh, and he's obsessed with narration.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

New Avengers #64

Bendis, I love ya, but...four pages of "Whitney!" "Bobbi!" "Whitney!" "Bobbi!"...a little much. Oh, and - intentional, or hilarious coincidence?

This strip marks HAC's entry into the double digits, and perhaps slightly more important-sounding, its one-month anniversary! Yay! Here's to many more...months! I guess.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Amazing Spider-Man #629

So this ASM story is the first time I've read Captain Universe, or the Enigma Force, or the Uni-Power, or what the fuck ever, first-hand. And while I like anything that deals with Juggernaut's good side, between him and the whiny Asian guy, it seems like the Enigma Force could stand to make some better decisions.

This issue also bugged me because, while it's awesome to see a call-back to that great Spidey/Juggernaut story from way back when, Juggs says it took him a month to dig out of the concrete, and by sheer coincidence I just read an old issue of X-Men about a week ago where he tells Xavier it was six months. That's the torture of being a continuity nut - you live for the moments when a new story happens to tie into an old favorite, but the more it happens, the easier it is to get something wrong.