Some reviews from the first four months of the year … part eight!

Away we go!

Dark Knights of Steel: The Deluxe Edition (April) by Tom Taylor (writer), Jay Kristoff (writer), C.S. Pacat (writer), Yasmine Putri (artist), Bengal (artist), Nathan Gooden (artist), Caspar Wijngaard (artist), Sean Izaakse (artist), Michele Bandini (artist), Arif Prianto (colorist), Romulo Fajardo Jr. (colorist), Antonio Fabela (artist), Wes Abbott (letterer), Reza Lokman (collection editor). $49.99, 312 pgs, DC.

For the most part, this is an entertaining Elseworlds story, as we get our favorite DC heroes (except for, you know, Looker and Fire, the two best DC heroes) in a quasi-medieval world getting caught in a war that none of them seem to want to fight. You know the drill – they’re sort-of familiar, but the writer puts just enough of a twist on things to keep things fresh. In this world, Jor-El and Lara escape Krypton when Lara is pregnant, so at the beginning of the story, they’re king and queen while Kal-El is the crown prince. Bruce Wayne is Kal’s best bud, but it turns out there’s much more to him than anyone realizes (which is, of course, true of most of the characters – they’re all hiding something!). Bruce is on a campaign to imprison all magic users in the kingdom, and we think it’s because he knows that the Els are vulnerable to magic (everyone knows they’re aliens) but also has some darker meaning, too, as we find out later. Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Storms, King Jefferson and his advisor, Constantine, are trying to figure out to stop the Els, because the king, after all, commands lightning and so is classified as a magic user. Constantine and the archer in the forest near the Els’ castle come up with a plan, but it involves killing Jor-El, which pisses Bruce and everyone else in the kingdom off. Meanwhile, Amazonia stands between the two – its princess, Diana, is in love with Zala, the Els’ daughter, but the Amazons tend to be allied with the Kingdom of Storms. Oh dear, it’s a pickle for all involved!

As I noted, it’s certainly entertaining. I have many nits to pick, but that’s all they are. I was a bit disappointed that Taylor doesn’t even try to make it “real” “medieval” – this is basically if Superman crash-landed in a Renaissance Faire – but such is life, I suppose (although it’s unclear why Taylor set this in a faux-medieval setting if he’s not even going to try to make it more realistic, but whatever). Early on, we’re introduced to Alexander Luthor, who’s an amalgam of Lex, the Joker, and Green Lantern, which is actually not bad. As the sides get going with war preparations and they get angrier and angrier, nobody thinks to wonder if perhaps Luthor is behind it all, even though they know he’s evil and is still out there. As it turns out, he’s not the big bad, but the various sides – who don’t seem to want to go to war that much – don’t even consider they’re being manipulated. Then, when we find out what’s really going on, it seems like one key character could have figured it out, but didn’t for … reasons? That seem selfish? I mean, the explanation wouldn’t really have made anyone blanch, given what they already accept about their world, but it never comes and bunches of people die. Come on, [redacted]! What the heck, person?!?!? (Later, this person does something wildly stupid, so I guess they’re not as great as we’re supposed to think.) So there’s some logic gaps in here. There’s a betrayal, too, which isn’t handled poorly by Taylor, but which is one of those things that only comes about because a ruler is far too trusting. Said ruler shouldn’t be as naïve as they are, but … they are, and it’s always because the writer thinks DC (and Marvel) heroes are just so swell they can’t conceive of anyone betraying them even though they have lots of evidence to the contrary. It’s just annoying. However … despite all this, Taylor does tell an entertaining and grand story, and the final battle scenes are handled very well. It’s a fun comic, it’s just … frustrating.

Putri does nice work with the art, too. She draws most of it, and while her line work, combined with Prianto’s soft-ish colors, makes the art look a bit slight, it’s not a terrible look. It’s a nice-looking comic, even if I don’t absolutely love the art.

This feels like Taylor has more stories to tell in this continuity (and there have been some spin-offs, but they don’t seem to continue the main story), as he introduces some elements that don’t get resolved in this series. We shall see, I guess. It’s not a bad world to visit, after all.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Minor Arcana #1-5 (September-January) by Jeff Lemire (writer/artist), Steve Wands (letterer), Maya Bollinger (assistant editor), Eric Harburn (editor), and Matt Gagnon (editor). $24.95, 121 pgs, Boom! Studios.

Lemire’s back in small-town Ontario for this series (I know, what are the odds?), as Theresa St. Pierre returns to her home from the big city to take care of her infirm mother, with whom she does not have the best relationship. Her mother is a “psychic” and wants Theresa to take over her shop, which Theresa does not want to do, but when one of her mother’s clients begs for a Tarot card reading, she gives her one and finds herself transported to another world, in which is a hotel where she can access peoples’ pasts. She doesn’t like that, of course, and she tries to resist it, but, of course, she can’t. It turns out her ability – whatever it is – has something to do with her grandfather, who, we learn in issue #5, was involved in a weird incident back in the 1970s that has something to do with what Theresa is going through. Of course, that’s the end of the arc, so we won’t find out more until arc #2 (which just began, because I’m so damned far behind on these reviews!), but it’s an intriguing place to leave it!

Lemire is so good at creating characters, so this works really well even though it’s not the most original story in the world. Theresa, despite being a recovering alcoholic and having a bad relationship with her mother (two traits we see far too often in fiction), is an interesting character, angry and sad and weirded out by what’s happening but willing to change because she realizes how horrible she can be to others. Her mom is kind of the same, someone who, it’s clear, has had a rough life and might have missed the opportunity to make things right with her daughter. Lemire does an excellent job showing both the goodness of country folk (which, as I’ve often said, is an annoying thing writers do) as well as the tragedy they have to deal with, stuck in lives they might not be happy with. Theresa’s grandfather, who also skirts cliché territory (he cheats on his wife – how daring!), is a troubled person who exemplifies the contradiction of small-town life wonderfully, and his issue is fairly gripping as he realizes there are more things in heaven and earth than he’s dreamt of. Lemire’s art, which continues to be an acquired taste, has grown so much over the years, especially as he’s learned to color things himself. He never makes things too bright, muting it so we get a good sense of the despair hanging around the town, but he also never lets it get too dark, as there’s still a lot of life in Limberlost (which is a loaded name for a town, if you ask me). I can certainly understand not liking Lemire’s art, but the dude definitely knows what he’s doing.

I don’t know how long Lemire plans to do this, but I do hope it lasts a while. Lemire is very good at these kinds of stories, and I very much like them, so it’s a perfect match!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Barfly: From the World of Minor Threats volume 1 (April) by Kyle Starks (plotter/writer), Patton Oswalt (plotter), Jordan Blum (plotter), Ryan Browne (artist/colorist), Kevin Knipstein (colorist), and Nate Piekos (letterer). $16.99, 88 pgs, Dark Horse.

I very much enjoyed the original Minor Threats, and I know they’ve done at least one other “spin-off” (haven’t they?), but I must have missed it or it’s not out in trade or something? Beats me, but this story, which is about an actual fly (albeit human-sized and sentient) is a pretty good time. Shiteater (of course) hangs out at Frankie’s bar and works in a burger joint, where he wants to join the punk band another worker is forming, and he convinces said dude to include a girl who works there, who Shiteater, of course, digs. That she can’t sing doesn’t matter – it’s a punk band!

Before he can rocket to stardom with Jules and Tempest, however, his old boss shows up. Shiteater is, of course, a villain, or at least a henchman. His boss, the Entomologist, broke out of prison and wants to pull a job, and he forces Shiteater to work with him. Shiteater, who just wants to please people, goes along with it, even though his heart isn’t in it. Starks does a good job with the superheroing of it all, as the Entomologist is kind of terrifying, as you might expect someone who can control insects to be (in a brief flashback played for laughs, his boss at a “top-secret experimental weapons division” is very dismissive of his tech, which seems fairly short-sighted) and his scheme, while a standard “big villain” move, is kind of scary, while the heroes, as we’ve established in this world, are all kind of douchebags, so the confrontations between the two sides are fairly funny even as they fulfill the necessity of being big superhero blow-ups. The Entomologist is an interesting asshole villain, because Shiteater is in an abusive relationship with him, and it’s not too hard to see a very serious side to the way the interact with each other. Shiteater does come up with a clever way to defeat him, but Starks does a good job showing that even if though you’re the hero, your life might not be all sunshine and roses. It’s a bittersweet ending, but Starks kind of nails it.

Browne does his typical excellent/childish work on the art, as his style is really strong, his character designs are excellent, his details and his action scenes are phenomenal, and his sense of humor is in the toilet. I don’t love toilet humor (never have, really, even when I was a teenage boy and you’d think I would), and Browne indulges in it a bit too much, but occasionally he hits the mark, so I guess for him, it’s quantity begetting a tiny bit of quality? I don’t know if I’ll ever completely love his art because he’s not quite as funny as he thinks he is, but there’s no doubt he’s a very talented illustrator.

I like that Oswalt and Blum are doing some other things with this universe, because, as we know, superhero universes are full of potential. So that’s nifty!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

The Moon Is Following Us volume 1 (April) by Daniel Warren Johnson (writer/artist), Riley Rossmo (artist), Mike Spicer (colorist), and Shawn Lee (letterer). $14.99, 107 pgs, Image.

I think I knew this was only a 10-issue series, so I’m not sure why I got this when I imagine we’ll get a nice hardcover that might be in the $30-35 range, which would still be a bargain. Oh well.

There’s a lot to like in this series, in which a young girl can’t wake up because an infection has attacked her dreams and her parents need to go inside her head, basically, to rescue her. They find that the world is a bizarre quasi-fantasy world, full of sentient versions of Penny’s toys and other odd things, and Sam and Duncan have to ally themselves with the forces fighting the infection, which they call the Cascade and which is led by a couple of creepy monarch-type beings who unfold out of a giant snake’s mouth. There’s action, there’s betrayal, there’s brutality, there’s a big reveal, and it ends with Duncan and Sam seemingly defeated but finding new, weirder allies. So far, so good!

Johnson provides the art for the “real world” sections, while Rossmo handles the dream world, and their two styles are similar enough that there’s not a huge shift, but different enough to show. Johnson’s line is a bit heavier than Rossmo’s, so his world feels a bit more grounded, while Rossmo’s lighter hand makes the dream world a bit more ethereal. No matter who’s drawing, the book is full of marvelous characters, from the very creepy Cascade soldiers and Big Bad to the weird bat-creature who can sell Sam and Duncan anything they like for the right price. Rossmo makes the dream world … dreamy, I guess – it’s solid enough, and there are cities and castles, but it has an odd interior logic because it’s a dream, and he makes it work, plus his action scenes are very nifty. It’s a very cool-looking comic.

So why don’t I love it more? Well, I still think it’s worth a look, and the objections I have to it aren’t deal-breakers, but I do have some issues with it. The parents, Duncan and Sam, are … well, they’re kind of jerks. We’re supposed to admire them because they’ll do anything for their daughter, and that’s fine, but it’s hard because they’re just lousy characters. Sam is an archetype of heroic fiction – she’s all action and no thought, and in the real world, this kind of attitude would get her killed or at least shunned from society (not that she would care, it seems) but in heroic fiction makes her a hero. She leaps into the fray without thought of consequences, and while that’s not the worst attitude to have, she is kind of a jerk about it, plus it doesn’t translate well to situations where it’s not called for. When the doctor they take Penny to doesn’t know what’s going on, Sam is an asshole to him even before Johnson realizes he probably needs to make the doctor more of an asshole so that Sam doesn’t seem as asshole-ish (in my world, this is known as “Madelyne Pryor Syndrome”). It’s not the doctor’s fault he’s trying to apply real-world solutions to a made-up fantasy problem – he’s just stuck in the wrong story! Sam is also kind of a jerk to her husband, Duncan, but that’s also kind of Duncan’s fault. He’s trying to be the measured one in the relationship, but because he’s placed in contrast to this “heroic” (read: stubborn and reckless) personality, he comes off as a bit gormless, and it’s hard to be on his side, either. At one point early on, Duncan can’t kill a Cascade soldier even though he needs to keep him quiet, so Sam steps in a decapitates the guy, shouting profanities at Duncan as she does. It’s definitely supposed to show Duncan’s fecklessness, because the Cascade soldiers aren’t actually human even though they vaguely resemble people, but it’s also a thing – decapitating things that look human – that might not come naturally to everyone. Sam and Duncan don’t seem like a terribly good couple (they might be good parents, certainly, but that’s a different thing) because Sam browbeats Duncan and Duncan takes it, even though he occasionally attempts to stand up to her. I get that Johnson wants to have two distinct characters dealing with this, and Sam and Duncan are certainly individuals and not just reflections of each other, but because this is such an adventure, we don’t slow down very much, so we don’t know enough about these characters to know why they’re acting the way they are. Sam could realize she’s being stupid a lot and Duncan could realize he needs to be more heroic, but we haven’t gotten that yet. Maybe we will!

This isn’t, as I noted, something that makes me dislike the book. It’s a pretty good adventure and at least the characters have personalities, as wonky as they seem to be. I know I occasionally overthink things, and maybe this is one of those times, but stories in which parents are trying to save their children resonate with me, as you might expect, and it’s frustrating when it feels off. A few things happen in this book that make me feel like Johnson is going in a promising direction, so that’s nice, and I guess I will see what’s what in volume 2!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Vengeance of the Moon Knight volume 2: It’s Alive (January) by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Devmalka Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer), and Daniel Kirchhoffer (collection editor). $15.99, 100 pgs, Marvel.

MacKay has become the longest-tenured writer on a Moon Knight comic, I believe, which is hard to believe considering how many good writers have worked on the character, and he continues to do a good job. I don’t love his obsession with vampires, but such is life, and he’s done a pretty good job making them more interesting than your garden-variety kind. He has to navigate that “Blood Hunt” thing in this collection, but luckily, he’s had vampires in the book since the beginning, so it’s not too bizarre. I’m also not a fan of killing characters and resurrecting them, but as MacKay points out in the afterword, that’s kind of what Moon Knight does, and it was always clear our hero was coming back, so MacKay explored what would happen to his little group around him and also how they would bring him back, because they knew they had a way. So he’s back, and he has to take care of the Fake Moon Knight who’s been running around, and MacKay does a nice job with that, too, shifting his status quo with regard to his relationship with Khonshu just a bit, which is always nice. MacKay comes up with a fairly clever way for Moon Knight to fulfill the condition Khonshu gives him for bringing him back to life, and it’s always good to see writers figure things out a bit differently. Pramanik’s art is a bit more solid than Cappuccio’s, which actually is a bit of a detriment in this book, but he does a good enough job, and his Khonshu in the final issues is pretty keen. As you know, I’m a big fan of Moon Knight, so I’m down with this, but there’s not too much else to say about it. MacKay wanted to kill his title character, so he did. Then he moved on to more Moonie adventures!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Neptune (March) by Michael W. Conrad (writer), Nathan Ooten (artist), Kyle Arends (letterer), and Zane Burrow (editor). $22.99, 123 pgs, Dark Horse.

In many ways, this is a fairly standard heist/revenge comic, which is not a bad thing, because I love a good heist story. In other ways, Conrad does some interesting things that at least make it a compelling heist story if not completely a great one. Our main character, Corey, took the fall for his brother and some friends when they robbed a convenience store back when they were teens/young men and the clerk got killed (Corey didn’t do it). He gets out of jail after almost two decades, and his brother is dead, and Corey wants to know what happened, so he tries to get a job at the farm (called Neptune Farms, hence the name of the book) where his brother worked, but it turns out the people running the farm are involved in some sinister things that may have had something to do with his brother’s death. Plus, Corey is haunted by an old friend, Shaw, who was killed in the robbery. So that’s not good.

Conrad doesn’t do too much different from a regular heist/revenge story, but the presence of the ghost is a nice touch, plus things aren’t always as they seem, which we expect but which Conrad does a decent job with. He does a bit more with Corey’s ostracization from society, which is going to happen when you are cut off from it for twenty years, and he gets Corey’s disorientation about the world and the situation he’s in pretty well. Corey’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he does have principles, and Conrad does a nice job showing us how that has affected his life and his present. It’s a decent comic about what happens when a person tries to figure out what has happened to life while he’s been away and finds out he might not like the answers. That’s not a bad theme to explore. Ooten, meanwhile channels Martin Simmonds a bit in the art – he uses nice, harsh lines, some Zip-A-Tone effects, and brown-ish coloring for the flashbacks to the robbery, while in the present, he uses softer lines and a wider, brighter, and more nauseating (in a good way) color palette. His angular lines fit well with the harsh subject matter, and he also has a weird whimsical side that works due to the occasional odd quirks in Conrad’s script. I’ve never seen Ooten’s art before, but he does a good job here.

This is an action story with some interesting things on its mind, which is always nice to see. There’s nothing wrong with trying to add some nuance to your revenge tale!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Pantomime (January) by Christopher Sebela (writer), David Stoll (artist), Dearbhla Kelly (colorist), Justin Birch (letterer), and Chris Sanchez (editor). $14.99, 132 pgs, Mad Cave Studios.

Sebela knows a thing or two about writing interesting heist comics himself, and his latest is just that: a group of teens start robbing places, and the hook is that they’re all deaf. The plot works quite well – they steal from a guy who happens to be a criminal himself, who then forces them to work for him. They figure out a way to put him in jail, but a few years later, when they’re in college, he gets out and comes back to get them, and they need to figure out a different solution to their problem. Sebela does good work with the intricacies of the plot – it’s fun seeing how they plan things, what goes wrong, and how they deal with things going wrong. At the center of the story is Haley and her brother, Max, whose mother dies at the beginning of the book, which is why they’re sent to the school for disabled kids in the first place. Haley and Max have a strong relationship, which is tested at the book goes along and the grow up, because they grow apart, as happens with siblings. Haley has to help her friends, but she also feels like she and Max have to watch out for each other, but if Max has decided to do different things, what is her responsibility toward him? Sebela sneaks some coming-of-age stuff into the book (the book is under Mad Cave’s YA imprint, Maverick), but it works because it’s not too much and it flows naturally with the course of the action, so it feels more subtle than you might think. I don’t love Stoll’s art, mainly because the bodies of the kids look a bit disproportionate and it kinds of weirds me out – their heads don’t look quite like they fit with their bodies – but one thing he does do which is nice is make them look like kids, in that they’re ungainly and awkward at times and not pretty all the time, and the interactions they have with each other feel like ones teens would have, kind of tentative but hopeful that they’ve found a friend. As I’ve noted before, a lot of times artists draw kids as small adults, and it’s weird. Even though Stoll doesn’t, to me, get the ratio between heads and bodies perfect, the characters still look like kids, which makes their struggle against bigger and tougher adults work better.

The one thing that bugged me about the book, though, is … I don’t know why the kids are deaf. Sebela and Stoll go through great lengths to have them sign, and I imagine they got it right (the comic has an “authenticity reader,” presumably to make sure the signing is correct), but it doesn’t seem to add to the overall plot too much. There’s nothing that occurs where deafness and signing might be an advantage, such as a loud place, and it doesn’t seem to hinder or help them in any way. So what’s the reason for it? If it’s just inclusivity – look, everyone, deaf kids can be criminals, too! – then, fine, but I suspect it’s also a way for Sebela to get a bunch of kids with no adult supervision together, as boarding schools aren’t that much of a thing anymore, but places for special needs kids to go are. There’s nothing wrong with it, you understand, just a bit odd that Sebela would really go out of his way to make his protagonists deaf but not really do more with it. But maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, Sebela writes pretty good heist stories, and this is one of them. It’s pretty keen.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Look at that, we got some more reviews under our belt! Will they ever end? Will I ever stop? Of course not!!!! Have a nice day, everyone!