What I Bought 7/22/2015 - Part 2

Two more comics, each starring heroes who can’t quite seem to get things right.

Ant-Man Annual #1, by Nick Spencer (writer), Brent Schoonover (artist, flashback), Ramon Rosanas (artist, present day), Jordan Boyd (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) – Is Scott planning to stop a runaway trolley with the power of ants? That would be pretty impressive. Hopefully he’s not going to make them throw themselves under the wheels, in the hopes they jam them up. O’Grady tried that with a jet engine once, and I don’t recall it working terribly well. Plus, it’s kind of mean to makes the bugs kill themselves like that.

I was leaning towards giving this a pass and just waiting for Astonishing Ant-Man to start in October, but it got some good reviews, and I decided to skip All-Star Section Eight #2. Scott tries bonding with his employees at a Dolphins’ sports bar, to little success. Wait, there’s no such thing as Dolphins’ fans, said the supposedly non-existent Arizona Cardinals’ fan. Credit to Machinesmith for helping Grizz out. Also credit to Grizzly for sticking with a theme, even though the Bears are kind of a mess right now. Haha, enjoy rooting for Jay Cutler, says the guy who had to watch Ryan Lindley play quarterback like a drunk infant for his team last year. Lindley is a terrible QB. Roger Goodell could do something useful for once and force some team Arizona plays this year to start Lindley, just so their defense can pad their stats against him.

Where was I? Right, a broadcast announces Hank Pym died fighting Ultron in some book I didn’t read. Except I think everyone is just pretending he’s dead? This makes Scott think back to the last time he saw Hank, when Pym visited to track down something he hid in a lab inside the helmet Scott’s using. It’s a killswitch for some fake Avengers he built to make himself feel better, but they’ve been stolen by Egghead, who is back from the dead. I honestly assumed he’d been brought back years ago, just because that’s how it seems to go, but then I keep forgetting the Wasp is back, too, until she showed up at the end of this issue. Scott gets many laughs at Hank’s expense, which seems fair considering Hank keeps basically calling him an idiot, and outright says he let Scott keep the Ant-Man costume because he knew Scott wouldn’t make him look bad in comparison.

This is the thing I struggle with when it comes to Spencer’s writing. In a vacuum, this is all pretty funny. I chuckled more than once. But part of the reason it works is because I have certain familiarity with these characters based on past experience with these characters, and in that sense, it jars. It was an issue in Superior Foes too, where I couldn’t jibe Spencer’s Boomerang with the guy I’d seen previously, even accounting for Fred being the narrator and thus probably lying through his teeth to make himself look better. It’s like, “Ha, sick burn, but wait, would Pym actually think that? Well, OK, Hank can be kind of unaware of others’ feelings sometimes. Would Jan confirm Pym felt Scott was an idiot to Scott’s face?”

I know it’s all part of the theme Spencer’s going for, Scott being on the outs with other heroes, regarded as unreliable, a second-rate legacy version of a third-tier hero. To the point Stark can actually get other Avengers to ignore Scott when he calls for help, even though you figure at least a few of them would help just as a “screw you” to Tony. I think it’s all sort of satirical, taking something, then exaggerating it for comic effect. Pym struggles with confidence issues, so he builds robot versions of his teammates to say nice things about him, and talk shit about themselves. Lang has a tendency not to stick with any team for very long, and he’s not usually presented as a Reed Richards like super-genius, so he becomes someone who can’t see things through, and is not very bright, and people think so little of him they all tell him so. I think my issue is Spencer takes it a step further than I can stretch my disbelief, and it snaps me out of the story periodically.

Schoonover does a pretty good job of working close to Rosanas’ art style, though I’m guessing Boyd’s color work also has something to do with it. Schoonover gives Scott a bit bigger nose and more pronounced chin than Rosanas (not that you can tell when Scott has the helmet on, and I would laugh if it turned out the helmet was designed like that to deemphasize Scott’s chin and nose.) He also goes with much broader facial expressions and body language. Rosanas tends to keep things restrained, so even when someone is supposed to be freaking out, there isn’t a lot of weight behind it. Schoonover tends to go the other direction, people reacting more with their whole bodies. It’s not a bad approach. There is one glitch. When the flashback starts, Scott punches the Porcupine with his left hand, but he shakes quills out of his right in the next panel. I suppose he could have punched him less carefully with the right earlier in the fight and we didn’t see it. Also, I couldn’t tell if the A.I.-Vengers were supposed to be moving inside those tubes, or if he just wasn’t keeping their poses consistent. And whatever one might say about Hank Pym, he’s right about Wonder Man being a terrible actor.

Hawkeye #22, by David Aja and Matt Fraction (storytellers), Matt Hollingsworth (color art), Chris Eliopoulos (lettering) – Well, the Apocalypse will no doubt commence now that the final issue of this series has shipped. I have it on good authority God was waiting for this to wrap up before killing us all. Eh, it’s been a good run. We invented movable type and porkpie hats, not too shabby.

The redhead remembered the combination to red safe, but here’s Boss Bro and the Sad Clown. Clint shows up, then Lucky, then Kate. The other tenants take care of the rest of the goons, Kate deals with the tracksuit imbecile – finally! – and Clint, after some difficulty, puts down the Sad Clown. I think that’s the first fight Clint’s won in like 15 issues, so good for him. But Barney stole all his money back, and thinks Clint can’t find him again. Barney, Clint is friends with like 20 super-scientists, not to mention the Black Widow, I’m pretty sure he can track your fat butt down before you finish your drink if he wants to. Which I would, on principle alone. Barney appeared to throw in with Clint, then bailed. That’s betrayal, and I believe I’ve made my opinions clear on that a few times. But the whole universe is ending and Clint’s going to become real old for some reason or another, so I guess Barney gets away with it.

All the crime bosses have decided to continue trying to kill Clint and Kate, because they’re morons, I guess. You’d think Fisk at least would know better than to waste time with something like that. Is this an end result Fraction and Aja always had planned, or is it something Lemire was hoping to run with in his book, and this team was like sure, we’ll set that up for you? It doesn’t matter, really, other than I find it curious these characters, ostensibly concerned with making money and doing business, really think trying to kill super-heroes isn’t a waste of time and money. It’s something I was thinking about, given Marvel went ahead and started All-New Hawkeye before this had finished. I wonder if there were changes made to this, to accommodate that book.

It’s a pretty book as always. I’m curious about the use of the mauve/lavender color, whatever it is, Hollingsworth uses for backgrounds a few times. Almost always in conjunction with Aja doing a black shadow for whatever is in the panel, be it Lucky, an arrow, Penny’s hand and the gun she was holding. I don’t know if it just makes a good backdrop for the black, or if it’s meant to have a particular emotional resonance. He switches to a yellow when Clint and Kate finish off the clown guy. I really like the headbutt panel. Something about the way the shadows are drawn on Clint’s face, the way they almost evoke speed lines in his hair, makes me think of Joe Kubert’s art, the way he drew people getting hit, and how it could distort them. That’s never a bad comparison to elicit in my brain, for the record.

I might do a post-mortem in the future, though I could basically sum up my feelings in one double-page splash I’ve had saved on my computer for like 8 months now, but we’ll see. If I look at it strictly by itself, it was good. This is what I was hoping for from this book when it was originally announced. Lots of action, well-illustrated, some snappy dialogue. Clint getting to do some cool stuff and save the day, even if it doesn’t always go smoothly, and there are other problems to contend with down the line. It’s not the greatest final issue I’ve ever read, but it’s a long way from the worst.