End of Days

Camelot Falls outs itself as Busiek's finest work in years but is taking a hiatus.

Civil War outs itself as the glorified setup it really is and leaves the comics world sans Millar for a few months - - - always a good sign but where the fuck is Ultimates 13?


Dr. Strange : The Oath outs itself as not bad but not much.


Eternals outs itself as Gaiman's finest work in a long while - - -and still no Gaimanhead outside of the three of us here seem to like it, let alone read it, let alone heard of it. Not grafiction enough? O hindi lang siya talaga uso ? Pweh!

X Men is starting to bore me a bit (so what else is new?). . . but Bachalo's coming back so I'm still on it, half-heartedly.

This end to cash-in miniserieses and (shortcircuiting of attention span) bodes well for my economy. Only Grant's All Star Superman , Cornell's Wisdom , Illuminati and Phonogram await finishing and little looms over the horizon that has me by the claws- - -except Lethem and Dalrymple's Omega, after a fashion(Lethem can be terribly literary and unfun, though) , and then there's Ellis's debut novel Crooked Little Vein.

My pull list is now down to six - - - Darwyn Cooke's fiendishly entertaining The Spirit revamp is my favorite - - - and until Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie release a new book, I think it'll stay that way.

THE FLARE WAS HERE

DAVID B. SCHWARTZ, WRITER OF MELTDOWN, LEFT A NOTE ON THE MELTDOWN REVIEW!

WE ARE HUMBLED AND FUMBLING WITH WORDS.

THANKS, DAVID!

Pulled

Added my pull list to this blog (and you can add yours, too!) just to keep track of things, and, pakshet, sweating now. Have to cross out a couple of titles, really.

For the sake of my future.

Some of the limited series(es?) will be wrapping up soon so that's a couple. Still on the fence with COUNTDOWN. But the latest issue of FLASH: The Fastest Man Alive is actually okay so that's a plus one.

Or. I can just not eat.

Incorrigible much.

Live Forever

Gods. We pray to them, read about them, and worship them. We bridge the gap of improbability willingly. Blindly, to a fault. But that is for another entry (one that I would never write because it hurts my head). This is about the gods that if possible we could will into being. Gods that save not our souls but people in trouble.

Gods that we also call superheroes.

Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr. take on the daunting task of resurrecting one of Jack Kirby’s shiny gods, The Eternals. Issue #7 came out yesterday and just like any proper geek porn collector, I took all the issues out from the box and started reading from the first issue all over again.

As a serial, Eternals was underwhelming mostly due to the months in between issues. And if you pick-up quite a number of titles, the slow awakening of each Eternal was too leisurely paced to be memorable compared to, let’s say, the appearance of Thor on the last panel of Civil War #3.

The entire seven issues in one sitting make all the difference. A fourth world of difference. Cinematic, thanks mostly to Romita Jr’s strong, square-jawed, supersized art. And epic. Which is the tricky part. The story is quite familiar; American Gods meets Paul Jenkins’ The Sentinel. Gaiman takes his time to introduce the men and women who would be gods. Quirky has always been his game; Sersi as a flighty party planner is just precious and Makkari the struggling stubbled intern is, ahem, sexy. As the events turn from dangerous to fucked up, all their inner gods awaken and they do save the world just in the nick of time.

Is it as good as The Sandman thingy?

Hell yeah.

Maybe even better. Seasons of Mist is the only book that I’ve read more than once. And that serial killer convention arc. Blame it on age but I just can’t get back into the ominous saccharine of the Endless anymore. But I still dig the toys.

Eternals is Gaiman at his most relaxed. Technicolor compelling. This is Gaiman writing superheroes. Mythical, yeah, but still superheroes. And he delivers. The funnies. (Digging Yellow Jacket here.) The action. The larger than life. Gaiman is back to being “my man, Gaiman.”

Stripped of gothic men in drag, his storytelling is blade sharp, slicing and dicing the reader’s defenses with characters that pulsate with pain, anger, deliverance.

Eternals ends with quiet tragedy and a new quest, and quite ready to be picked up by a new writer. Just in time for J. Straczynski’s relaunch of Thor. And the return of the New Gods over at DC.

Gods do live forever.

Life and Death

Wyrms
WRITER: ORSON SCOTT CARD and JAKE BLACK

PENCILS: ADRIANO BATISTA

I read Orson Scott Card’s Wyrms when I was in college and I was pretty surprised when I saw Wyrms #1 in the weekly list last month. Card’s science fiction novels were always anchored in anthropological, socio-political, and cultural milieu of the worlds that he created. His stories are often about human colonies in other planets and their interaction with local sentient life form.

So I was really worried about how Wyrms would be translated to comics when the plot was very dependent on discourses on politics, religion, and the will to survive predestined evolution. Jake Black’s adaptation was fast paced and Batista’s drawing were great! I couldn’t help but fill in the blanks in the conversations and the storyline. The limited series will be of six issues and I hope that team will be able to do justice to the book as the plot becomes more complicated and more characters will be introduced.

Death Jr
by Gary Whitta and Ted Naifeh

Ang cuuuuuute ni DJ!!! Whitta’s Death reminded me of Terry Pratchett’s Death though – somebody who wants to experience normal human life – Terry’s Death also had a daughter – adopted though. Whitta took it further since his Death has a wife and a biological son. How the mom (a human) got pregnant though….. This TPB’s is fast paced, funny, and ang cuuuuuute ni DJ and his gang!

R.I.P. The Question

You finally got your moment.
And we loved every paradox, every cryptic admonition.
The wasting away though, that hurt.
The conspiracy of a lifetime.
But you were always ahead of the game.
You always knew the answer.

SILENT WAR 1-2

Writer David Hine; Art Frazer Irving
(Marvel)

Woohoo!

Yes. Wild cheering. Fucking Frazer Irving. I'd buy any of his books. Good thing they're all great books. Klarion was whimsical art. With a capital A. But Silent War. Silent War is mythical. The carnage on the first issue, brilliant. Edvard Munch giggling. Acidic swirls. Whirlpool for screams. Hine steps back while the splatters do all the telling.

David Hine. He is now my man. Paul Jenkins rewrote the Inhumans but Hine (my man) he injected the speed. The gasp. Son of M feels like a prelude to Silent War. Hine pushes Blackbolt. The great Blackbolt. Waring Blackbolt. Blackbolt vs. Sentinel. Fuck. Quivering in my pants. Sweaty palms. Fuckin smoking at my desk. I never do that.

Issue 2. Last panel. Fucking crazy! Forget Civil War. Flogging a dead horse if you ask me. This is THE war. With fuck all at stake. *****

And I thought I was having a bad day

MELTDOWN 1-2
Writer David B. Schwartz; Art Sean Wang; Covers Chris Bacalo and Greg Horn
(Image)

A comicbook can be just as poignant as a pop song. Accidental, as most poignant moments occur, a collision between pavement and memory. And a bad fucking day. Last quarter 2006, a disaster. Tick-tock temper. I kept thinking: any day now. Any day now.

Kaboom.

And so the story begins of superhero Flare. Up in the air. About to lose it. To his arch-nemesis. About to lose it.

Kaboom.

Like the art. Scorched. Fuming. In between flesh dripping off bone, childhood memories rudely interrupt. Wide-eyed pastels of solitary Cal (Caliente aka Flare) in a boiling swimming pool. The soft countours of falling in love for the first time. Crashing into the present. The meltdown.

Schwartz's writing jumps from innocence to rage just as Wang's pencils shift from sweet to dour. And it works. Compact, with only two issues, the push-pull pacing didn't have enough time to grow old.

We pretty much know what happens in the end. Salvation, blah-blah. But I didn't really mind that tear threatening to roll down. I got Flare. And I got the need to wrap it up with a smile. I wanted the happy ending.

Or that's just good writing. ****

Dodo's Comic Year

2006 started feeling like the 90s all over again. Stash traffic hitting ballistic as I tunneled back in time to the rookie geek in me , buying everything in sight ,owning a lot of crap , culling them severely. Good news, though: 2006 ended like 2005. I’m back to collecting four non-sporadic monthly ongoing titles, my more-then-ten-year average- - - New Avengers (until Leinel Yu leaves), X Men(until Carey leaves or I get bored with them mutants,as I always do), Superman (until Busiek or Pacheco leaves) and Iron Fist (until either Matt Fraction or David Aja leaves) . The rest are either finite series or are so sporadic- - - Love and Rockets, Pop Gun War - - - they might as well be . And the ones closest to my heart - - -mostly stuff from Image - - - are the object of tradewaiting. My wallet, to put it mildly, is beside itself with glee.

My year in comics, then.



Limited Series of the Year / Book(s) of the Year: Long story short. Here are my favorite comics of last year. Finite. Ongoing. Unfinished. Whatever. The reads with headbutt. Unmissable and alphabetical.





A.L.I.E.E.N. (Lewis Trondheim, First Second) : McConey’s a minor gem. Moreso, Trondheim. More out than McConey , this is a bit of avant candy, like Happy Tree Friends without the store-bought brattiness.








DC Solo 12 (Brendan McCarthy, DC) : McCarthy’s underworked and that's the crime. So all manner of his narcotic strangeness foreclosing DC’s most audacious experiment smacks of making up. His Flash screams for an All Star treatment.

Elmer (Gerry Alanguilan,Komikero):Speaks to me in ways Maus wanted to but couldn’t. At turns funny, sad, profound, daring. And it’s only halfway done.

I Was Lost In Salasco (Josel Nicholas, Monkey Vs.Squirrel):The story behind the domestic indie breakout story of ’06 is that there’s no story. Josel still had stacks of this when the Komikon closed - - -shows you how rock and roll the scene really is. Underlooked lo-fi scratchy-punk social comment that does what every indie comic should : spits in your eye, kicks against the pricks. Aiming for literacy is a game for wussies.






Nextwave Agents of H.A.T.E. (Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen, Marvel) : Gutful of party-down irreverence weaponized into a silver bullet that’s a headful of manga tripout. Funnest superhero comic of ’06. So, of course, it gets cancelled.







The Night Trippers (Mark Ricketts & Micah Farritor,Image) : Everything a good comic needs - - - vampires, rock and roll, psychedelics and art that will lick your eyes.







Phonogram (Kieron Gillen & Jaime Mckelvie,Image) : “A rabid jackal of a comic, prckly and drooling” No better way of calling it. Phonomancy is the new black. Must.







Seven Soldiers (Grant Morrison,JH Williams III and Various,DC) : Chinese puzzle with interlocking ,independent pieces. Masterpiece of synergy. Instruction codes for crossovers with story surplus. Opiates.

Trese: Our Secret Constellation (Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, Alamat) : In which Trese goes from a quasi-X Files bubble bath to something you shoot up and alters your chemistry a bit. Dangerous , brilliant, possibly sublime - - - the Darna inversion to catch up with. I start roadwork tomorrow. Damn you, Budjette.

Wisdom (Pete Cornell & Trevor Hairsine, Marvel MAX) : Turns out the Ellis-channeling's just smoke, residue. Cornell has his mojo down - - -it's very British, it's very weird and it's very bloody good.


Honorable Mentions:Arnold Arre's Andong Agimat - - -Tagalog could use a bit of spit and polish but this is still Arre's shining hour by way much. Matt Fraction & Gabriel Ba's Casanova - - -the faint undercurrent of Diabolik sucked me in and I am a Fraction-fanboy-in-progress. And Gaiman and Romita's Eternals - - -why few Gaimanheads have picked up on this is a mystery for the ages, could be the superhero walk-ons, could be that it's a Civil War crossover of sorts, could be that it's harder to dress up in public as Kirby characters, could be that Gaimanheads are just faddists.

Hero of the Year/Best In Costume/Best In Ripped-Apart Costume/Best In Body: Iron Fist. Iron Fist. Iron Fist. Iron Fist. Respectively.

Writer of the Year:Grant Morrison still had most of the old school biting the dust and eating his but Brian Wood's stuff on Demo and the bits of Local and Supermarket I read last year were knocks out of the park. And then there's Kieron Gillen.

Artist(s) of the Year:



















Top Row: Brendan McCarthy for - - - you need any more reason? Yoshitaka Amano for Hero .
Second Row: Micah Farritor , mostly for The Night Trippers and for making Strange Girl the Image comic I'm tradewaiting for with bated breath.
Third Row:Frank Quitely for the handful of All Star Supermans that left pretty much everyone in the lurch. Leinel Yu for snagging the clock-in art grunt job on New Avengers.
Bottom Row: And Bong Leal for being Bong Leal.


Company of the Year: Hands down Image Comics.


Worst (Or Mostly Just OK But Really Blah except for The Creeper which sucked eggs) Books :Oh god . . . the Johns/Donner Action Comics (but not the Kubert art), Eddy Barrows' art for The All-New Atom(but not Gail's writing) , Civil War (but not the McNiven art) and pretty much all its tie-ins except Robinson's Frontline , the Steve Niles Creeper reboot, the sleeping pill Dini made out of Detective , Infinite Crisis, Meltzer's JLA revamp and most OYL titles, Brubaker's New X Men but then mutants were never my thang, not all but parts of Siglo:Passion and its oh-so-corny coinage, Teen Titans , Carey and Portacio's Wetworks and pretty much the rest of Worldstorm - - -except Authority and Tranquility. I love superheroes but a lot of them put up a stink in 2006.

Famous Last Words: Crossovers suck.

Faye says: 2006 guilty pleasures

Happy new year! Ambilis ng panahon! Before you know it another story arc has ended. Here are the highlights of 2006 for me:

Persistent bad habit – Wolverine - I don’t have to explain myself.

Guilty pleasure of the year – Nightwing – I hate that I found myself researching his lovelife and seriously looking for TPBs on when he slept with Huntress, when he and Starfire were an item, where he broke up with Barbara, and when he slept around. Damn. I thought I was over reading romance novels but no – I just shifted to superhero soaps.
IT’S A GIRL THING, OK?!
Runners up - Christian Walker (Powers) and Mitchell Hundred (Ex Machina)


Favorite series – Birds of Prey – Hey, I’m not saying it’s the best. Peborit ko lang. Why? I can relate kasi to the main characters… *ehem* Gail Simone put nicotine in this series – its addictive. I was genuinely angry after reading issue #99 when Black Canary told Oracle that she was leaving. Goddamn Brad Meltzer to hell for pirating the character for JLA! But with an all female creative team and new operatives such as Manhunter things are beginning to look exciting!

Best series – X-Factor – I think the reason why this was the “best” for me is that I did not expect to fall in love with the Jaime, Rictor, Syrin, Monet, Guido, Rahne, and Layla. The series has an Angel Investigation feel (and yes I miss Angel). The character driven stories of Jaime’s dupes, Rictor’s attempted suicide, Syrin’s abduction and her denial of her father’s death, Layla’s (possible) origins, Guido’s murder of a man under his protection will make you forget that you are reading an X-men title.

Best Mini-series – Secret Six – Who would have thought I would love villains? The S6 are all unpredictable and that was the hook. Gago silang lahat! They do try to do right to each other but then they fail miserably. And by the way, I would also line up to have Catman’s baby… (Hehe!)

Series I wanna see on HBO – Y: the Last Man – I heard that New Line Cinema bought the rights but I believe only HBO can do justice to this book.

Biggest disappointment – Wonder Woman – for the fact that only THREE issues were released!