The Unbelievable Gwenpool #11 by Christopher Hastings (writer), Myisha Haynes (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - I would never have pegged that as David Lopez' art on the cover. The skeleton cat's a nice touch.Gwen has apparently lost all her friends and cronies and is back to solo merc work. Taking a job to protect a small town from a single vampire, she learns the vampire is actually Blade, who is there because a necromancer has been resurrecting all his old friends as they passed away. Blade is convinced to let them be because they aren't harming anyone. Then Gwen finds out the necromancer is stealing the life energy of his friends' children to power his magic. Isn't that just like those fucking Baby Boomers. They'll probably justify by claiming their kids don't buy enough dish soap or something.
Bit of strange place to come into the book. Gwen being alone and a little depressed, and maybe the luster of running around the Marvel Universe is starting to wear off. And her awareness that trying to fight Blade is a bad idea, because he's an important enough character she probably can't kill him like she could some faceless, irrelevant vampire. That seems to be one of the major conceits of the series, how Gwen's understanding of how comics work dictates a lot of her actions, and it's a good hook. But speaking as someone who argues with his internal monologue, her description of that as 'crazy' is hurtful to me. I like the idea of the necromancer just being lonely and missing his friends, but still, he's a frickin' necromancer.
It took me too long to figure out why Gwen was wearing that thing around her neck. First I thought it was a neck brace, maybe because she hurt herself holding that snotty kid when she jumped out of the airplane. Then I figured maybe it was a scarf, because upstate New York is cold. Which you'd think would prompt her to get some pants, too, but comic book logic. Then it dawned on me she's wearing it to protect her neck from bites. Duh. The sheepish skeleton who admits he might be the reason Blade heard about them was adorable. He just wanted to be friendly while he gardened! Haynes' art is properly expressive for the comedy bits. There wasn't really enough fighting for me to tell how she does with action sequences, but that's OK.
The book has made a good first impression on me, and next month, Christopher Hastings gets to write Arcade in the book, which I am really stoked for. Oh, the deathtraps that combination should conceive of.
Nova #3, by Jeff Loveness (writer), Ramon Perez (writer/artist), Ian Herring (color artist), Albert Deschesne (letterer) - It loos like Rich is practicing yoga. Don't force the stretch, Rich.The assassins are here for Nova helmets, and have put a bomb in the brain of the Celestial head that is Knowhere as a failsafe. Rich buys Sam time to try and reach the bomb, but when Sam can't contain the blast, Rich eats the energy by releasing his inner Many-Angled One. Which Sam missed because he was busy being unconscious. So Rich is definitely fully aware of how he's back from the dead - I'm assuming deal made with what was left of the Many-Angled Ones - and is hiding it. Which will totally not come back to bite anyone in the ass. Speaking of biting asses, he's going to encounter Gamora next issue, which is not the old flame I would like to see him interact with, but if he's potentially evil, better to keep him away from Namorita, anyway. It's sweet that Gamora at least smiled in the second photo, though I don't remember her wearing the fishnet outfit when she and Rich were together. Although it's an improvement on the thing she did wear.
The sequence where Rich clocks the tiger with his helmet before donning it, and Sam zooms off, the arc of his flight taking him from the panel it starts in, back towards the panel before (where Rich puts his helmet on, so that we see those things are happening simultaneously, that these two are on the same page), and then Sam's movement draws our eye to the far right side of the page where Death's Head is losing an arm to Rich, and that gets us into the brief fight. That was pretty well laid out. It feels like it could have been confusing, but Perez and Herring made it work. Herring's color work is still nicely vivid and attention-getting. Lots of bright blues and deep reds, that ashy purplish color Rich's skin turns as he starts to change. There are a lot of panels with not much in the way of backgrounds, but the colors mostly compensate.
I still don't love the book, but it's like I said Monday, it's got potential.
No comments:
Post a Comment