Wolverine: Revolver Review

I make my stunning video debut by reviewing the ugliest comic known to man? Will I manage to flip through it without succumbing to the pain that is this atrocity?

Young Allies Ongoing Starting This June! (or: OH MY GOD MORE RIKKI BARNES)

*inhale* YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

You know what's starting in June 2010 as a Heroic Age title? You know what's gonna be an ONGOING TITLE? And has RIKKI BARNES IN IT?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I'M IN SUCH A GOOD MOOD!

That's right, it's Young Allies. Well done you for reading the title of the post.

Now, some of you might well be wondering why I care so much, and indeed why this gets a post on a site that has by and large dropped posting anything other than rambling alphabet related tripe. And I'll tell you why. I, Max Barnard, LOVE Rikki Barnes. So much so that in the build-up to the Nomad: Girl Without A World I made no less than a WHOLE BUNCH of posts about ANYTHING that cropped up to do with the series, a series that did in fact turn out to be the BEST mini of 2009, HANDS DOWN. So when I say that you should be stoked for Young Allies and should in fact be adding it to your shopping lists for June (I mean you all make shopping lists that far ahead right? right.), you can bloody well believe I'm right on the money.

Anyway, what should you expect from this apparent 'best series to keep an eye out for this year because a dude called Max says so'? Well for one thing a helluva line-up. Young Allies promises to have Nomad (Rikki Barnes), fresh from her own mini-series and Captain America back-up tales ready to kick arse and take names alongside Arana, who has been appearing alongside her in said back-ups and proving to be a wonderful team-mate to Rikki. Alongside that pairing we have Gravity, Mckeever's own AWESOME creation from a few years back that's gone through the wringer a little, having kinda died in BEYOND! and also having resurfaced in Fantastic Four a while afterwards, Toro (a new guy who has powers relating more to a bull than a flaming WWII veteran) and the 'kinda a bit too old for a team with 'young' in the title by now surely' character Firestar, fresh from... Surviving cancer. It's a team so off-kilter compared to the usual dreck we're getting nowadays that it's pretty much guaranteed awesome.

Alongside the great non-team (as Mckeever assures us is the case. which is unusual but hey) we have an interestingly named group of villains known only as the 'Bastards of Evil'. Which as far as unusual names go is right up there with... something.

Of course the final step to sell you on this ONGOING (remember when great ideas would get ongoings and make it past issue 5? make that happen. go on.) is to tell you of the creative team.

Surely you all know of Sean Mckeever, whether for some brilliant Teen Titans material (which some people are down on for some weird reason but screw those guys, right?), his Gravity mini-series, his Nomad mini-series, his 12 issue Inhumans series, his Sentinel mini-series and Spider-Man loves Mary Jane. All of which are great. Or at the least good. Mckeever rarely disappoints, especially when writing young characters.

David Baldeon is also an excellent person to have on the creative side of things, as his recent art duties on Nomad were performed more than admirably, creating an emotive and beautiful work that really just emphasises how much more work the man needs with Marvel. Thankfully that itch is gonna be scratched here, and it's a pretty safe guess that he'll continue to bring his A game throughout. (note: he'll also be doing the Gravity story in Age of Heroes, so look for some pretty are THERE too)

And if you REALLY want a bonus to make you jump on board, the first cover appears to be a Wraparound effort from none other than David Lafuente, another artist I can do nothing other than LOVE nowadays. Of course if it ISN'T a wraparound cover then hey, at least you can see this awesome piece of Lafuente art promoting what is 99% likely to be THE series to read this year.

Ya know, unless you think that one of those Avengers titles will be better (hint: they won't).


related links:

Marvel.com article
Comic Book Resources article
Newsarama Interview

Flippin' Rantin' Revoltin' Reviews: Pixie Strikes Back (+ bit about the Justice League)

It isn't often that I feel the need to break self-imposed restrictions on myself and in fact I've stuck pretty well to my guns on the whole 'no more weekly reviews' stuff, but I'm breaking that this week. "But why?", I hear the voices in my head say. And I'll tell them: Because this week two fucking PUTRID comics came out this week. Two comics so bloody awful that I haven't been quite able to vent my rage through the usual means of not shutting up to anyone I know about how much I hate them.

I am in fact talking bout X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #1 (of 4) and Justice League of America #42.

Now, just to be clear before I go blasting my head off, JLA 42 could be a perfectly average comic to any other person and I DO feel like the apparent line-up of JLA members Robinson is putting together is promising (save the fact that he threw in Mon-El, who I DO love, but am aware will be dead soon enough). BUT, and it is a big but, this issue has one of my biggest grievances with any comic in recent months. It has a horrible rendition of the Metal Men and Magnus that looks awful and feels wrong. And it's barely a cameo at that.

And I LOVE the Metal Men. But that's the only problem I feel I should mention in a world that apparently is focused on calling Robinson an awful writer now (I love his Mon-El Superman so I try to be receptive). It's a pretty bad comic, but not one that deserves me ranting about things I probably don't understand.

(advance warning: this review essentially devolves me into a typical comic book fan, moaning endlessly about things that are unimportant in incredibly flawed arguments that make me a self-righteous prick.)

HIT THE JUMP TO FIND OUT WHY I FIND THESE COMICS REVOLTIN' DEVELOPMENTS!

X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #1 (of 4):
COVER BY: Stuart Immonen
WRITER: Kathryn Immonen
PENCILS: Sara Pichelli
COLOURS: Christina Strain

REVIEW: To say that this comic irks me is a pretty big understatement. It's AWFUL. And not only that, but it was promoted in a pretty horrifically bad way.

Kicking things off I feel the need to mention how much I hated, HATED, Immonen and Pichelli's run on Runaways. I mean here was a book that had just had a pretty bad start to it's third numbering, and I was ready to take ANYTHING over what had come to pass (though to be honest the series had been pretty mediocre in the Whedon arc too. Consider this BKV blue balls if you want). So as someone who'd liked what he'd seen of Immonen's work on Hellcat and Pichelli's work on NYX, it seemed a no-brainer to check out their work there. Bad idea. The character's all felt like they had the wrong voices and the art looked like drug addicts trying to reflect how they felt kids look nowadays (this may actually be due to the fucking rosy cheeks and tired eyes on everyone, but then I'm just picking apart something here), to say nothing of the plot developments themselves. It's probably up there with some of the worst comics I've read.
The hate I know for this page alone is so intense that I'm actually just a pathetic fanboy.

*sigh* Sorry, I'm just straight up attacking here, it may as well just be an actual attack on the creators here. But that isn't what I'm about, and all people involved are genuinely nice people from all I see of them on twitter and the like. I'm just trying to establish how low my expectations were for this comic before the preview even hit online.

(here's the preview, as hosted on CBR)

But OH MY GOD that preview. A preview, as we all well know, is supposed to highlight what the contents of the comic will be like, what to expect from the writing and the plot, and to see how the interior pencils look. Whilst the latter is achieved, showcasing some rough yet visually... interesting... art (helped by some decent colours from Christina Strain), it cocks up massively at everything else, not helped by how the opening of the comic is essentially a weird mindscape/brainwashed experience that ultimately involves the characters all being out of character.

Now, here's where the problem arises: the solicit says they're going to high school (though the hell hint might make some people realise it'll be fake somehow? I don't know). The PREVIEW shows them at high school, acting incredibly out of character, with other students beating each other up to the point of teeth flying out their skulls. Then we proceed to get them all chatting and being idiots in the girl's toilets. Which is SO classy. And all of this comes across as stupid, base and horrifically pandering to some sort of stupid teen crowd. If it weren't for Blindfold being there with eyes (something that wouldn't be noticable to anyone who forgot that her name is Ruth Aldine) you would think that Immonen was deliberately out to have the characters be like this in the full comic. Which they might not be. In fact, the comic could theoretically have good character renditions throughout the other 2 issues.

The point is that the preview was a complete FAILURE.

And the rest of the issue isn't exactly much better. You get Blindfold staring at a locker in the girls' bathroom in reality, with Sancho and Victor finding her and talking to her about where the others are. Which would be a nice scene, hinting at how wrong everything is that we've just seen, except we get SANCHO PLAYING WITH A TAMPON and suddenly realising it might well be the girls' bathroom. There's... just.... Christ... Okay. Let's continue whilst I try to maintain some semblance of integrity on this straight out rant.

We return to the high school with some stuff that doesn't entirely make sense because it's all not real or whatever, demons appear, Pixie wakes up, asks for her mother to be called and is drugged up by demon nurses. This is actually kinda intriguing, so I can't slam on it, and indeed is the steam I need to see if the second issue will improve. But THEN we get to another big hole of shit: Nightcrawler, Psylocke, and Pixie's mother. Which I can express as involving the statement 'Donald Duck Fart'. This is a comic that's ALMOST more juvenile than a Jeph Loeb comic.

.... Okay, okay that's kinda mean to both Immonen and Loeb. I'll try to moan less and just express my issues with this.

The scene is basically Pixie's mother turning up at the island, being irrational toward Nightcrawler and Psylocke, who are acting entirely stupid. We get some vague stuff about how Pixie's father isn't a coal miner and Pixie's mother goes away.

Then we get more demons, Pixie realises she has wings and my willpower to read flickers into existence. Though just before that we get THIS wonderfully drawn panel:

I'm sure some people are fans of this art (and this is evident in the abundance of fans of that Runaways run I hate so very much), but this... just looks awful. to say nothing of how the second panel seems to just be the typical yelling face that I feel I saw constantly from Molly in Runaways. Though to be fair, that third panel? Freakin' amazingly drawn!

*Ahem* Anyway, then a bigass demon appears that is said to be Pixie's father. Of course solicits for issue 4 say its Mastermind, but that's part of the plot and this cliffhanger actually works.

The biggest problem here is that this comic is outright BAD. There's little to redeem it and has some incredibly frustrating elements to it that remove and semblance of logic or relatable qualities. The characters all feel wrong and do some outright stupid things. Not just that but in a year that promises to highlight the qualities of women creators and characters this is actually detrimental.

But then I'm not a woman. And there ARE people who like this, I'm sure. So tell me I'm wrong. Please. Because I don't want to be full of this much hate. Especially as I make no sense.

Proposal: A Crisis On Infinite Blogs

It's not often that I have ideas I desperately want people to notice. In no small part is this because my usual ideas involve me doing something monumentally stupid to entertain myself or my peers. However, this isn't one of those times. This is the time to throw my hat into the comics blogging ring with an idea that's probably occurred to people more often than not (in fact I'm fairly sure that I've gotten this idea from others in the past bringing it up, but I can't entirely remember).

A collaborative blog formed of writers from other blogs, with the intention of creating epic group posts that achieve more than any writer alone could manage (in that it's varied viewpoints or pieces all combined into one uber-post).

A Justice League of Bloggerdom, if you will. For a Crisis On Infinite Blogs.

Now, there are in fact flaws to this. Some comics blogs obviously had multiple contributors anyway and could well achieve the same results as this with their own collective staff. I hope that this issue is subverted by the fact that the people involved could all diversify the Crisis On Infinite Blog posts by bringing their own unique angles and talents that have in fact made their own blogs different from the next.

I'm stumbling over the concept here (which is hopefully an indication of my own difference from other bloggers by being a rambling buffoon), so let's see if it makes more sense by involving a twitter topic that came up from Primewax and JLAvenger earlier today due to the big DC staff announcement:

(twitter account names are used for convenience)

The basic idea was that Primewax and JLAvenger had become the head co-publishers at Marvel, what changes they'd make and such. This grew to include Cyclopsfan1 and myself, who were put in charge of the X-titles and All-Ages titles respectively. We then all proceeded to lay out our plans for new titles and changes in staff and characters in our respective areas (with Primewax taking on the cosmic titles as well, I hasten to add) and indeed in conjunction with each other.

Now, if this were put into a post, with us all detailing our thoughts and plans, collaborating and utilising each other's ideas to further our own, we'd have one of the most comprehensive, interesting and even potentially humourous posts possible, with each section of the post having it's own defined voice brought about by the multitude of bloggers we'd have in on the article.

It'd require a heck of a lot of communication between the collaborators, but that's the sort of thing the internet is tailor-made for, as we all well know.

The content would of course be agreed upon and stay in the realm of epic posts that are enhanced by this sort of massive undertaking and people that would be involved, and people can drop in or out as the project continues.

It's a pretty solid idea that would help promote everyone involved in their personal endeavours and give us all something different to do compared to our usual work on our own blogs/journals/sites/etcetera.

So hopefully this idea has intrigued you (and why wouldn't it? I mean you've probably come up with this long before me and are wondering why I'm failing to make it sound amazing when you could probably do far better!) and you'll either show your interest here, on my twitter, or by my e-mail ( noodleslovesyou@hotmail.co.uk ) and we'll be able to get this conceptual ball rolling!

Thanks for reading and hopefully I'll hear from some of you fellow bloggers.

Robbie: Wise as Shit #2: Valentine's Day

On Valentine's day, give her flowers for a pleasant evening of amorous fun.

Just make sure you got Jonah his coffee first or he'll start banging on your window mid-coitus and won't. leave. me. alone.

You Know, He WAS Born Better

HELMUT FLIPPIN' ZEMO IS BACK IN CAPTAIN AMERICA #606!

And I just want you to know that I WILL fucking cut you all if he doesn't match up to the complex and amazingly developed character that I fell in love with back when Thunderbolts was an amazing title about redemption.

I mean we're talking about one of my favourite characters of all time.

... that is all.

EDIT: GOD DAMN IT ALL! Brubaker has since said in another interview that Zemo will be a straight up villain.

source: Comic Book Resources

Return of Robbie: Wise as Shit #1

You know what they say about pissing into the wind?

Completely wrong if your legs have been stung by a jellyfish.

Robbie, OUT!

(remember these? well... they're back. any time I think of peculiar, pointless and unfunny wisdowm, I'll have the wise as shit Joseph 'Robbie' Robertson say it, pretending that it's genius all the time. And you'll NEVER KNOW!)