2017 Comics In Review - Part 1

And here we are! I like being able to do these early in January. Those two years where I couldn't get to this until February were pretty embarrassing. This is going to run all week. As usual, the first four days will be for going over each title I bought over the course of the previous year. Talk a bit about what went on in the book, who worked on it. For the books with more issues, the things I liked best and least. Day 5 is the day for best ongoing, top artist, that stuff.

I toyed with changing how I organized the titles this year, but ultimately stuck with alphabetical order by title. Works as well as any other.

Atomic Robo - The Spectre of Tomorrow #1, 2: Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, Anthony Clark, and Lee Powell are giving us a story about Robo not paying enough attention to his neighborhood association bylaws. Also, people are either randomly becoming robots and then exploding, or have been robots without realizing it. And Robo's employees are either losing their minds or on the verge of open revolt. Things are still ramping up, but I'm trying to figure out why Robo seems off.

Avengers - Four #3.1-5.1: Mark Waid and mostly Barry Kitson on art, along with Mark Bagley, Sean Izaakse and Ro Stein on the last issue, plus Mark Farmer and 5 other inkers, Jordan Boyd, Matt Yackey, and Wil Quintana as colorists, and Ferran Delgado as letterer. All that for the last 60% of a mini-series about the Kooky Quartet and their mysterious fifth member, who turns out to hate the Avengers and wants to destroy them for reasons I'm sure were detailed in a story I didn't read.

High Point: Everything to do with Hawkeye. Giving Cap a hard time, incurring the wrath of Jarvis, shooting an arrow at Wanda to get Pietro off his butt and back in the fight. Most of all, how personally he took it when Cressida dismissed him as not being Avengers-worthy. I've missed that character.

Low Point: That whole mess of people involved on the art side of things. I like several of those people's work, but when you get to the final issue, and there's four pencilers, six inkers, and three colorists, that's just ridiculous. The art swings wildly from one page to the next, the tones of the colors are all over the place. It disrupts the whole flow while you're trying to read it.

Ben Reilly - The Scarlet Spider #1-6: For the first five issues, Peter David, Mark Bagley, John Dell, Jason Keith, and Joe Caramagna were the creative team. Issue 6 marked the departure of Bagley and Dell, and the arrival of Wil Silney. Which was also the point when I decided to bail. This one spun out of Clone Conspiracy, about the 27th or 28th Ben Reilly clone trying to find a place to lay low, ending up in Las Vegas, working for a lady who hates his guts, with another clone of Peter Parker gunning for him. Then Death showed up. That lady gets around.

High Point: I always enjoy Bagley's artwork. The issue long fight between Reilly and Kaine in #5. That whole fight, Reilly's trying to be chummy and just have fun with it, hoping Kaine will come around, and Kaine just keeps trying to kill him. I've always been interested in him as a character, a guy who had all these memories and morality forced on him, and has spent a lot of time trying to twist away from it, get free, forge a life and identity truly his own, and never quite pulling it off.

Low Point: Sliney's artwork is not to my tastes. Stiff and kind of lifeless, characters feel posed and disconnected from their surroundings. On the writing side, I wasn't terribly interested in Cassandra Mercury and her sick kid.

Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye #4-12: Jon Rivera, Michael Avon Oeming, Nick Filardi, Gerard Way, and Clem Robins. Let's hear it for steady creative teams! Cave, Chloe, and Wild Dog reached the kingdom of Cave's deceased wife, only to find it in shambles and a terrible creature about to escape. They chased the creature across several dimensions, and eventually met another Cave Carson, who was responsible for the cybernetic eye.

High Point: Oeming did some great panel layouts in this series. There's one in issue 6, when Cave's eye leaps out of his head. Oeming makes a smiley face out of three panels. It's creepy as hell, and given what's going on at the moment in question, that's perfect. Filardi's color work was excellent, especially when they were still in the subterranean world. A lot of deep, solid blacks to contrast bright waters or lights. Wild Dog interrupting a villain with a missile was great, and the growing rapport between he and Chloe was a fun piece.

Low Point: The book dragged in the second half. A couple of issues during the dimensional jumping felt like stalling. Nothing much happening. They kept adding characters to Cave's team, Jeanette, Cave's old professor, but then not doing much with them. Not building any reason for us to really care. They were there just enough to suck focus away from some of the core characters.

Copperhead #11-17: Jay Faerber, Drew Moss, Ron Riley, Thomas Mauer doing the work for all 7 issues. Sheriff Bronson had to investigate the murder of the Mayor, which created more trouble when her deputy was appointed Interim Mayor, and it raised more trust issues between her and Budroxificus. Then the dangerous convict who fathered her son showed up, and that's still playing out, although there are already casualties.

High Point: The story of how Clara became a cop and Zeke's mother was interesting. Certainly not what I expected. I'm curious to see this scheme of Mr. Hickory's Faerber's building towards. The fight between the Sheriff and the assassin in issue 14 was some of Moss' better work. Just a solid, straightforward fight.

Low Point: Having Clara yell that she quits at the end of issue 12, only to have her still on the job at the start of issue 13 was a cheap attempt at a surprise last page. Moss struggles with proportions on characters. Lower bodies that are far too short, oddly tiny hands, things like that crop up randomly in there, and it's distracting.

Darkhawk #51: One of Marvel's Legacy stunts, bring back long-canceled series for one issue. Kev Walker, Chad Bowers, Chris Sims, Java Tartaglia, and Travis Lanham check back in on Chris Powell, who had become a cop since his amulet stopped working. But he gets a chance to go back to being Darkhawk after an attack by some irate aliens. Probably too much exposition for a one-shot issue, but if it was really laying the groundwork for an ongoing, I was intrigued. Plus, I love Kev Walker's art, even if I don't love the redesign on Darkhawk's armor.

Darkwing Duck #7, 8: The last two issues before the book was canceled were a two-parter where an army of zombie potatoes created from the remains of one of Bushroot's attempts to make himself a girlfriend were running rampant across St. Canard. James Silvani and Aaron Sparrow were on both issues as artist/writer, with Andrew Dalhouse, Paul Little, and Matt Herms as colorists on issue 7, and just Little on 8. It had some good jokes, and continued laying the groundwork for some big plan of Negaduck's we will presumably never see. Oh well.

Deadman - Dark Mansion of the Forbidden Love #3: This was the last issue of Sarah Vaughn, Lan Medina, and Jose Villarubia's gothic romance story starring Deadman and the ghost of a murdered woman in an old mansion. Not a genre I usually spend much time with, but the story tense and atmospheric. The third issue brought out the truth about Adelia's murder, how the author Nathan Delamere was connected to it, and Bernice and Sam's feelings for each other. Villarubia's colors are fantastic, especially on Adelia, the contrast between her spirit's normal form, and the dark energy that overtakes her at times.

That's it for Day One. Tomorrow there'll be a few ongoings I tried but ended up abandoning, a couple I stuck with, plus a couple of mini-series.