What I Bought 9/21/2012 - Part 4

If there's a theme for today's books, it's that they're ensemble books. I'd say "team books" but two characters don't really constitute a team.

Angel & Faith #13, by Christos Gage (script), Rebekah Isaacs (art), Dan Jackson (colors), Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt (letters) - It took me reading through the book three times to notice the flower designs intertwined with "Family Reunion" on the cover. Reminds me of one of those needlepoint prints one might see in an elderly lady's kitchen.

Faith, Angel, Conner, and Willow rescue those who worship Conner. Faith worries that the dimension is getting to her because she's thinking about killing Angel and hauling ass back to the portal instead. That just sounds like good common sense to me. Conner also starts to understand his father's guilt and why he does the stupid shit he does. Which is good, I suppose. Worshippers rescued, the team must now contend with the Old One the dimension takes its name from. Which pretty much leaves it up to Willow. Oh goody, let's encourage the occasionally homicidal witch to draw deeply on dark magic of a hell dimension. What could possibly go wrong? Also, Whistler makes off with those artifacts of Rupert's, leaving a note for Angel to meet him somewhere.

I think I said last time that Isaacs' vision of Quor'toth, the dimension, didn't really match what I saw in my head. It still doesn't, but it's growing on me. The constant fire in the air, the noxious fumes everywhere (tip of the cap to Dan Jackson for the fine choice of green there). I am completely on board with her depiction of Quor'toth, the monster, however. That thing is hideous. Which is good.

I can't tell if it's how Gage writes him, or if it's just me, but Angel still sets my teeth grinding. When Faith apologizes, it feels genuine, but when Angel apologizes for things he said about her relationship with her parents, the wording, the body language, something makes it feel perfunctory. Like Angel's doing so because it's expected of him.

It's probably just me.

Defenders #10, by Matt Fraction (writer), Jamie McKelvie w/Mike Norton (artists), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Sabino and Cowles (letterers) - I like the faces everyone is making in the little roster box in the corner. Even if I am surprised an ant would bother most of them.

The team is shrunk down, and though they don't entirely know it, are back in their NYC, albeit one largely destroyed by a Celestial. They get captured by Ant-Man's ants, which means Scott Lang appearance, whoo! I'm glad he's back, even if the writers seem to have felt it necessary to kill off his daughter Cassie as some sort of karmic balance. Why can't Marvel have some parent/child crime-fighting teams? Still waiting for a Namora/Namorita team-up here, Marvel.

Anyway, the team gets Scott to enlarge them so as to not be eaten by crows, and before they can decide what to do about the Celestial, John Aman shows up, probably planning to defeat it himself. Yeah, good luck with that Johnny. And the Surfer wound up in some entirely white space with a bunch of smiling guys in dumb outfits and bad hair.

Those guys the Surfer met, I'm getting a bad vibe off them. Not in the sense they're evil, it's more likely they're the kind of characters to consider themselves beyond such simplistic descriptions. The bad vibe is more that I figure they're connected to all this, and it's going to be explained in some manner similar to the end of Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series, and you know, I HATED the end of that series. It made all the pages I'd read over the previous 3+ books feel like a waste. Then again, I might have that feeling about this series already, so perhaps it doesn't matter.

Secret Avengers #30, by Rick Remender (writer), Matteo Scalera (artist), Matthew Wilson (color art), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - Is that Slyde at the bar? Next to Arcade, in front of Bi-Beast? I can't figure who else it would be. It's not a big deal, other than I kind of like Slyde. He's never a "take over the world/revenge on the hero" villain. More a "get some cash" villain, and we know how I like those guys, right?

Venom tries to fight Taskmaster, and gets his ass beat. Ha, ha. Then Ant-Man (Eric O'Grady this time), slips in with the assist, which convinces Tasky to take the crown and run to Max. So Hawkeye and Valkyrie set off in pursuit, Hawkeye and Taskmaster trash talking each other the whole way. Then Vengeance gets involved, making sure Taskmaster escapes, so the Avengers can take the crown from Max. Except Max can't use it, because he's just an LMD. Ha, ha, he said again. Unfortunately, Taskmaster is not an LMD, and he can use the crown, though it doesn't work on Venom or O'Grady. I hope Remender is going to bother explaining this at some point. I still don't know why it didn't work on Venom the first time around, and now I have to figure out why it worked on Hawkeye, Val, all the villains, but not O'Grady.

It occurs to me this is the second story since Remender came on the book where the team goes into some city filled with nothing but hostile people. You think there'd be someone who was friendly, but no.

Matteo Scalera is still the artist, and things are still mostly good. A few of the facial expressions seem off. Val's reaction to Hawkeye saying they can't be seen to be helping is overdone. Max' smile as he double-crosses Tasky is just creepy. It reminds me of something, but mostly it's just too large a smile, and seems radically different from all the other times he smiles in the issue. Past that though, the action bits are well done. Scalera knows how to show enough of a fight from panel to panel that it all makes sense, the reader can understand what's happening, the seeds of moves to come are hinted at in advance. This may sound like basic stuff, and I'd agree, but there seem to be a lot of artists who can't hack it. See the "Did Xavier just die? It was really unclear." moment of AvX.