Saturday, August 18, 2012

What I Bought 8/16/2012 - Part 1

Good news: I have returned to a portion of the boonies where I'll have regular Internet access! No more trying to type 3 days' worth of posts in a hour because someone else might need to use the library's computer!

Bad news: The arrival of comics becomes a once a month thing again, now that I'm far enough away driving there regularly is no longer appealing. Always a tradeoff.

With only two small weeks comes only 4 comics.

Captain Marvel #2 by Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), Dexter Soy (artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Not that I don't like McGuinness' art, but I'll be glad when he moves the covers past a posing stage. I mean, yes, it's a Rosie the Riveter homage, but maybe add some cool or inspirational slogan or catch phrase on there? Go for the wartime poster feel. Juan Doe did a good one for Nova during the book's post-Secret Invasion stint on Earth.

Carol sets out to reach 37,000 feet with Helen Cobb's T6, because if she can do it, that lends validity to the late Cobb's claim that she did it years ago, when she was delivering the plane to a rather ungracious Peruvian general. I guess he was steamed she used his brand-new plane to do it? Which is stupid. I'd be glad she not only flight-tested it for me, but ensured I'm getting a plane that set a record. I'm too reasonable to be a South American general, clearly.

Carol does reach 37,000 feet, but when she attempts to go higher, things go bad and she winds up in the Pacific in 1943, where she's rescued from some Japanese soldiers by a gung-ho group of lady soldiers. Who are then attacked by some giant, floaty metal thing Carol finds vaguely familiar. At which point she decides to stop worrying about changing history, and save lives instead. Might have been good to decide that before some got disintegrated, though.

I don't know whether to be amused or surprised Carol doesn't remember Avengers' time travel protocols. She strikes me as the sort who takes being an Avenger seriously enough she'd have it memorized (I think of Hawkeye that way, too). But it's sort of irrelevant since she's not going to stand by and let people die, a decision I wholeheartedly endorse.

Soy's art is still a mixed bag. It occurred to me it reminds me a bit of Clayton Crain's, probably just superficially, but Soy's figures don't look quite as plastic, which I think is down to Soy's coloring style. The colors are less shiny, and more smeared, so the art avoids that smooth plastic sheen Crain's work has. Maybe it's the use of night scenes, or all the khaki colored uniforms around her, but the Captain Marvel suit seems brighter this issue. Not as much as I'd like, but better. And the smile Soy gave Tracy in the last panel on page 1 really did look amazingly forced, which is what I think he was going for, so kudos.

Resurrection Man #12 by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (writers), Javier Pina (artist), Jeromy Cox (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer) - I like the visual there with Mitch blowing away piece by piece. I don't even really care about the big head with the glowy eyes in the background, just Mitch falling apart. But I always have liked "Dust in the Wind".

Mitch is being killed in virtual reality again and again. By Gotham City cops, Aquaman, Darkseid, whoever. All to study how the Tekites work in him. Daryl finally gets wise that he's made a mistake siding with the lab, and goes to free Kim Rebecki. Together they free Mitch, and thing were looking good until the boss showed up and Daryl says goodbye. And the boss is, well, I wasn't expecting that. I had figured Vandal Savage, actually. I'm very curious to see the explanation for all this. Don't know if it will be worth all the muddling about the book through most of this year, but hopefully it will.

Javier Pina takes over art chores entirely this month, which is fine. Maybe because he worked on the book with Jesus Saiz last month, the story is at least maintaining a visual consistency. The Body Doubles, Kim, the Lab, everybody still looks the same. That's a basic thing, but when the story's already using a virtual reality world as part of the plot, it's probably wise to avoid any more potential confusion. Not much else to say, really. I'm kind of sorry to see the Transhuman go (even if I wasn't as interested in him when it turned out he wasn't simply a guy who'd been a superhuman assassin for decades), but it's all going to boil down to the answers we get in the 0 issue.

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