Thursday, 26 January 2017

X-Men Origins: Beast (2008) # 1, Colossus (2008) # 1, Jean Grey (2008) # 1, Gambit (2009) # 1, Sabretooth (2009) # 1, Wolverine (2009) # 1, Cyclops (2010) # 1, Deadpool (2010) # 1, Emma Frost (2010) # 1, Iceman (2010) # 1, Nightcrawler (2010) # 1


(I originally read these comics in early January 2017)

You should cherish this post if you're an X-Men fan, because I won't be making many of them. The X-Men and their sundry spin-offs are the Marvel franchise for which I have the least affection. However, that's not to say I don't enjoy some X-Men comics. Given that their convoluted continuity is my main barrier to enjoying them, self-contained, short stories like those in the 'Origins' one-shots should be much more palatable. At least, that's the theory.


  
  
  

Released between 2008 and 2010, each of the comics purports to tell the origin story of a long-standing X-character. In reality, they're really just recaps. Even as a casual (at best) X-fan, there wasn't much here I didn't already know or hadn't read elsewhere. Mike Carey's script for the Beast comic is hampered by having to retell what was already a crappy story with a silly villain. However, the frankly weird art style that looks like painted-over photographs really skewers it. His Gambit book is marginally better (an' I say dis as an avowed Gambit-'ater) and showcases an interesting art style by the combined talents of David Yardin and Ibraim Roberson. The Colossus book is better and has the benefit of moody art by Trevor Hairsine, but content is slim. It's Mike Mayhew's art in the Jean Grey comic that's the standout amongst the first half dozen titles. While I'm no great fan of painted comics, Mayhew's work is simply beautiful, presumably heavy on photo reference but without the stiffness that often results. Jean's journey from traumatised tween to powerful teen telepath is sensitively handled.

 There's not much room for sensitivity in the Wolverine or Sabretooth comics, but then that's not what their fans are after. Kieron Gillen's Sabretooth 'origin' doesn't offer much beyond violence, but Dan Panosian's art is great. With more history to recap than most, Chris Yost's Wolverine one-shot is superficial and you'd expect him to have remembered who out of Logan and Colossus he'd had join the X-Men first, instead of having both his efforts blatantly contradict each other.
  
 


Of the latter five titles, the ones featuring Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Iceman are the best, though that's not saying much. Jesse Delperdang shines on the art for the Cyclops one-shot, which recaps Scott Summers' background from parents' deaths to assumption of the role of X-Men leader, taking in their first clash with Magneto in the process. The Nightcrawler one at least has a Universal horror film vibe that I appreciated, but the rest are hit or miss. 

Deadpool still sucks. 

One thing that becomes apparent in these stories, to the point of it being a running joke, is just how willing these kids were to ditch their families, maybe forever, to follow a creepy, bald dude. Whether engaging in an endless battle to "protect a world that hates and fears them" or ending up faces frozen in time and staring out from the sides of of milk cartons is the worse fate, I'll leave up to you to decide.


X-Men Origins: Beast (2008) # 1, X-Men Origins: Colossus (2008) # 1, X-Men Origins: Gambit (2009) # 1, X-Men Origins: Jean Grey (2008) # 1, X-Men Origins: Sabretooth (2009) # 1 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) # 1 are collected in:

Hardcover:

Softcover:

X-Men Origins: Colossus (2008) # 1 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) # 1 are collected in:

Hardcover:

X-Men Origins: Colossus (2008) # 1 is collected in:

Softcover:

X-Men Origins: Cyclops (2010) # 1, X-Men Origins: Deadpool (2010) # 1, X-Men Origins: Emma Frost (2010) # 1, X-Men Origins: Iceman (2010) # 1 and X-Men Origins: Nightcrawler (2010) # 1 are collected in:

Hardcover:

Softcover:

X-Men Origins: Deadpool (2010) # 1 is collected in:

Hardcover:




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Sunday, 22 January 2017

Jingle Belle (1999) # 1/2, Jingle Belle: Naughty and Nice (2000), Jingle Belle's All-Star Holiday Hullabaloo (2000), Jingle Belle: The Mighty Elves (2001), Jingle Belle: Jubilee (2001), Jingle Belle: Winter Wingding (2002), Jingle Belle's Cool Yule (2002), Jingle Belle in Oni Double Feature (1998) # 13 and Oni Press Summer Vacation Supercolor Fun Special (2000)


(I originally read these comics in late December 2016) 

Paul Dini's 'Jingle Belle' is that rare thing: a humour comic that's actually funny. It also gets better as the stories go on, which thus far in my reading is up to 2002. Not that it starts off entirely fully-formed. Stephen DeStefano's cartooning on the early episodes is an acquired taste at best, and writer Paul Dini has Jingle utter frequent profanities (becoming less frequent as it goes on). They're of the milder variety, sure, but they sit somewhat ill at ease in stories about Santa Claus' delinquent daughter that are surely aimed at readers of 'tween' age and up. It's as if Dini is unsure who he's writing for as the stories, while entertaining, aren't exactly deep. 


   


'Jing' is a teenage elf who lives in the North Pole with her Dad, Santa Claus, and her Mum, the Queen of the Northern Elves, whom she refers to as 'Moms'. She's selfish, given to jealousy and a bit of a tearaway who consistently tops her father's 'Naughty List' for bullying her cousin Rusty and sneaking out to get off with the local Eskimo boys, etc. By the conclusion of the first series, which introduces Santa's archenemy the Blizzard Wizard and Jing's flying steed Thrasher, a farting musk ox, everything is in place for an consistently entertaining succession of occasional limited series and one-shots. Jing shows remorse over a previous, long-ago transgression and tries to right it in the Holiday Hullabaloo issue, in which she also enlists the shrouded, spooky Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as Santa's stand-in for a store appearance. This issue sees Bill Morrison, J. Bone, Jeff Smith and others on art duties, all of whom have more appealing styles than DeStefano, to my eye. Bone is a frequent contributor from this point, and is arguably Jing's signature artist, drawing all of 'The Mighty Elves' comic and a portion of 'Jubilee', which features a crossover appearance from another of Dini's creations in Sheriff Ida Red. She, Polly Green (a teenage witch) and Tashi Ounce (a snow leopard-girl) would appear to become regular guest stars from this point on.


   

 


I can heartily recommend 'The Whole Package' to fans of Dini's Harley Quinn who don't mind reading something outside of the super-hero milieu. However, be aware that the collection is erroneously titled as it misses short, online strips from the previous collections and comics and the 'Dash Away All' original graphic novel.

NB. The Oni Double Feature # 12 issue doesn't feature Jingle Belle but does feature a Dini-written strip that is concluded in the succeeding issue and which fans might want to track down.


The Jingle Belle strips from Oni Double Feature (1998) # 13 and Oni Press Summer Vacation Supercolor Fun Special (2000) and Jingle Belle (1999) # 1/2, Jingle Belle's All-Star Holiday Hullabaloo (2000), Jingle Belle: The Mighty Elves (2001), Jingle Belle: Jubilee (2001) and Jingle Belle: Winter Wingding (2002) are collected in:

Softcover:

The Jingle Belle strips from Oni Double Feature (1998) # 13 and Oni Press Summer Vacation Supercolor Fun Special (2000) and Jingle Belle (1999) # 1/2 are collected in:

Softcover:

Jingle Belle's All-Star Holiday Hullabaloo (2000), Jingle Belle: The Mighty Elves (2001) and Jingle Belle: Jubilee (2001) are collected in: 

Softcover:



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Monday, 16 January 2017

Marvel Holiday Special 1991/1992/1993/1994/1996, The Howard the Duck! Holiday Special (1997) # 1


(I originally read these comics in late December 2016)

I'm surprised it took so long for Marvel to start putting out an annual 'holiday' special. Up till then, their Christmas stories had been but sporadic offerings in their regular mags, with three 'Holiday Grab-Bag' Treasury Editions in the '70s, though those were mostly reprint. There are informative text pieces detailing the history of these offerings in the first two specials.




The 1991 special features Yuletide tales with the X-Men, Fantastic Four, the Punisher, Thor, Captain America, Ghost Rider, Captain Ultra (?) and Spider-Man. Walt Simonson's Fantastic Four tale is the best, with Franklin Richards encountering a certain chain-rattling, Dickensian spectre, and it has the benefit of Art Adams art... adams.

After Art Adams' cover, Michael Golden's vividly-coloured art is the highlight of the 1992 special. That's allied to a wordless Larry Hama 'story' (and I use the word in its loosest sense) that would seem to want to say something about the equal vividness of children's imagination, but really says nothing. There's a comedic Doc Samson tale from Peter David in which he tries to tell the story of Hannukkah to a classroom of kids but has to think on his feet to retain their interest. The New Warriors, Punisher, Thanos, Iron Man and Spidey stories just fill up pages, but Ann Nocenti's Daredevil story at least tries something different as it's narrated by a toy lamb just purchased by Matt Murdock as a gift. I'd say it's better than it sounds, but it ain't.




The Christmas 1993 issue (labelled '1994') has Nocenti and Tom Grindberg reunite for a Ghost Rider tale which seems to suggest inducing a heart attack in your elderly mother is justifiable if she's an unremitting nag. (I might try it.) There are more lousy tales with Spidey and Captain Ultra (seriously, who the fuck is this guy?), but the Nick Fury and Hulk stories are worth reading. Ultimately, art overshadows story in Howard Chaykin's stylish effort, and the Hulk confronting a would-be suicide with some tough love is better read within the context of Peter David's contemporaneous run (here, for example).

The actual 1994 special leads with an X-Men story by Kurt Busiek and James Fry, a combination that might have worked on Elvira (see here) but which seems ill-suited this time. That said, it's marginally the best story of a weak selection featuring Captain America, the Thing, the Silver Surfer and the X-Men (again) in an illustrated take on 'The Night Before Christmas'. The Thing story just reads oddly now, a decade or more after Ben Grimm was established as a Jew, as he tries to educate a cynical, little Jewish girl as to the true meaning of Christmas.

After a year's hiatus, the 1996 special kicks off with a fairly amusing tale by Mark Waid and Pat Olliffe where Spider-Man and J. Jonah Jameson are forced to spend Christmas evening together. Back-ups include stories with the Silver Surfer, the Rawhide Kid and the X-Men, but it's the Kitty Pryde tale, mawkish though it is, that gets the runner-up prize.


  


The Howard the Duck Holiday Special by Larry Hama and Pasqual Ferry is pretty... fowl. In it, Howard, his human lady Beverly and an army of department store Santas are rounded up into a makeshift army to foil a hostile takeover of Santa's workshop by HYDRA. Ferry's "art" is typical, eye-searing '90s crap and Hama's script is supposed to be funny - I think. 




Stories from the Marvel Holiday Special 1992 are collected in:

Softcover:
The Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos (US, First Edition)
The Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos (UK, First Edition)
(No current Amazon links)

The Hulk story from the Marvel Holiday Special 1993 is collected in:

Softcover:



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Thursday, 12 January 2017

Eerie (2012) # 1-8


(I originally read these comics in mid/late December 2016)

This latter-day revival of Warren's long-running horror anthology is a real disappointment. The decision seems to have been made to make it a sci-fi/horror comic, in keeping with the second half of the original mag's run and to distinguish it from Dark Horse's concurrent 'Creepy' revival, but this isn't consistent.

The first issue is an inauspicious debut, with two reprints. I made the decision to skip the reprints in every issue, so as to not spoil them for when I get around to a proper 'Eerie' read-through. Of the two new strips, the lead one by David Lapham, about a paranoid man coming to believe his family are robots, is gruesome and memorable. You'd be hard-pressed to find many jewels in the rest of the run, though, despite the artistic talents of Mike Allred, Evan Shaner and Mike Royer, amongst others. However, the two strips drawn by Kelley Jones in issues 4 and 6 deserve a mention. The first, written by Al Ewing, has a psychotherapist separate a man from his 'shadow self', in order to ease his guilty conscience. The second, an M. R. James adaptation by Jones himself, tells of a condemned witch exacting vengeance through an ash tree. For much of the rest of it, there's an issue with stories requiring too much investment - even over just eight pages or so - for too little pay-off. Bernie Wrightson provides back cover art. 

I bought each issue of this incarnation of Eerie as they were farted out over a period of three and a half years, without reading any. Safe to say, if I'd read them as they came out, I'd have dropped the title from my pull list before it was halfway through. In a time when real life horrors are a staple ingredient of TV news and social media, you have to try much harder than this. I'm afraid 'Eerie' is best left in the past and viewed through the lens of nostalgia where you can at least imagine the world was safer and cosier and that these types of tales still had the power to frighten.


   
   


The original stories from Eerie (2012) # 1-8 are collected in:

Softcover:



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Tuesday, 10 January 2017

The Munsters (1997) # 1-4, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988) # 1, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1993) # 1-8


(I originally read these comics in mid/late December 2016)

1997 seems late in the day to attempt a revival of the 1960s spooky sitcom family, but that's what TV Comics! attempted with this four-issue series. And against the odds, it works. All stories are by C.J. Henderson with a total roster of four different pencilers. George Broderick's broad yet accomplished cartooning in issue 1, which somewhat resembles that of Neil Vokes, is my favourite. However, the art style takes a downturn for the "more realistic" in issue 3, seemingly prompted by the reaction of one nobody on the letters page. 


   


The stories are much what you'd expect, but with more action. A would-be vampire slayer arrives from "the Old Country" in issue 1 to complete his long-held objective. (In this story, it's clearly implied Grandpa is the Dracula. Was this the case in the show?) In issue # 2, the Munsters take a trip to New York and their 'ugly' niece Marilyn (the joke being, of course, that she is actually gorgeous by normal, human standards, ho ho) gets a goth makeover. Issue 3 features a multi-chapter tale with Herman and Eddie attending the latter's school father/son day and Lily going to unusual lengths to prepare dinner for Herman's boss. The fourth and final issue has the Munsters bumbling into an FBI sting at a funfair where they're mistaken for the members of a criminal gang. All issues are padded out with cast photos and interviews and a prose story in issue 1, though I skipped that.

An oddity, worth seeking out for fans.




Still in the mood for spooky silliiness, I read this adaptation of 'Elvira, Mistress of the Dark', a comedy for which I've had a soft spot since renting it on VHS back in about 1989 (though, discovering Elvira's gown-busting norks at the age of thirteen, it was less a "soft spot," more a...). 

I guess the film was considered pretty risque at the time as Sid Jacobson removes the naughtier jokes and the remaining few, such as my fave, "Here's to my big opening!", seem entirely innocuous without Elvira/Cassandra Peterson's nod and wink. Ernie Colon and Romeo Tanghal provide the art but Tanghal seems to me to have overpowered Colon's pencils, which is a shame.

For those not familiar with the movie, TV horror host and frustrated Las Vegas showgirl Elvira, a beehived valley girl with attitude and a goth fashion sense, inherits a house, recipe book and pet poodle from her deceased Aunt Morgana. However, the 'recipe book' is actually her aunt's spell book and Elvira's uncle, an evil warlock, will stop at nothing to gain its power. Horrified at first by Elvira's looks and perceived 'loose ways', the puritanical citizens of sleepy Falwell, Massachusetts are eventually won over when Elvira saves the day, but only after trying to burn her at the stake. The film takes its cues from the then-ongoing battle between the US religious Right and heavy metal culture and provides much more sexy and irreverent fun than the comic.


   
   


Elvira's ongoing comic, starting in 1993, is a mixed bag eight issues in. Editor Richard Howell enlists the talents of Paul Dini, Kurt Busiek, Jo Duffy and others to write, with James Fry, Neil Vokes, Jim Mooney and Dave Cockrum among the contributing artists. However, it's Dan Spiegle illustrating Duffy's back-up story in issues 1-6 which is the real eye candy, both in terms of his lush black and white art and his rendition of our heroine, which is definitely the sexiest thus far. A recurring theme is the clashes between Elvira and her station manager at K-WHA, Rosalind Wyck, but there's room for other matters as Elvira helps a teenage werewolf with relationship troubles and attends a class reunion (an idea supposedly contributed by Cassandra Peterson, herself). Paul Dini's stories in issues 1 and 8 were the most amusing to me, but really nothing seems to reach the comedic standard the creators are striving for. Howell's own back-up tale in issue 8 provides a nice, obscure Easter egg for comics fans, though, in that it's an unofficial sequel to Stan Lee's and Steve Ditko's 'Goodbye to Linda Brown', from the pages of Strange Tales # 97, which foreshadows both Spider-Man and the X-Men.

I'll return to this title as I find humour comics are best read in small doses.


As extras, here are Joe Jusko's unadorned front cover art and back cover for Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988) # 1


 


Stories from Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1993) # 1-8 are collected in:

Softcover:



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