Review: Suicide Squad #1

If you came for a train wreck, you’re not going to get one in Suicide Squad #1.  That’s about the most positive thing I can say about the book.  It could have been a whole lot worse.  But it still wasn’t very good.

Review: Secret Six #25

This issue is part 1 of a 4-part story titled “The Reptile Brain”.  If you’ve been reading Secret Six so far, you know what to expect from the set-up issue.  Lots of great character moments setting up the conflicts that will come to a head before the final chapter.  And like any issue of the Secret Six, you’re going to get some crazy action scenes, laugh-out-loud dialog and a healthy dose of moral ambiguity.

Review: Secret Six #17

Beginning only moments after last week’s Suicide Squad #67 ended, Secret Six #17 is the second part of a three-part “Blackest Night” tie-in that follows a three-way conflict between Amanda Waller’s Suicide Squad, the Secret Six and the homicidal Black Lantern Suicide Squad.  The fight began last issue, and it gets complicated in this one – as Waller and Multiplex burn down the house of Secrets, Belle Reve turns into a bloodbath.  The Six and the Squad are too busy fighting each other to notice that the dead rise until it’s too late.  Simone and Ostrander pack the issue with quick, clever character moments in between fast-paced action segments that vary in style from a brutal martial arts battle between Bronze Tiger and Catman and a futile confrontation between Bane and the superpowered team of Count Vertigo and Nightshade.

Kudos go to colorist Jason Wright, who, alongside artist J. Calafiore, have crafted the most memorable and realistic images seen yet in Blackest Night‘s emotion-o-vision.  Seeing Deadshot on the ground, veins of powerful emotions surging up through cracks in his near-sociopathic emotional armor is a clever image that also fits with everything we know about the character.  Secret Six #17 ups the tension dramatically from the previous issue, maintaining a breakneck pace as it dashes towards next month’s conclusion.  Exciting, well-characterized and fun, it’s just another issue that suggests that Secret Six is one of the best books on the shelves today.

Grade: A-

- Cal Cleary

Suicide Squad #67

Secret Six #16

Review: Suicide Squad #67

The month of January will see the latest, and most ingenious, of DC’s “Blackest Night” cash-grabs as they go after that ever-elusive audience that absolutely despises what Big Event Mentality has done to an industry that can’t even approach affording it (so, uh, me) by reviving a selection of critically-beloved fan-favorite titles that were cancelled (or ended) some time ago.  This begins this week with Weird Western Tales #71 (which I will not be covering unless someone at DC wants to send me a free copy… please?) and Suicide Squad #67.  Co-written by John Ostrander and Gail Simone, Suicide Squad #67 has precious little to do with Blackest Night, and is all the better for it.

Instead, Ostrander and Simone use it to kick off a new Secret Six arc, featuring a three-way battle between the Suicide Squad, the Secret Six and the ‘Homicide Squad’, the Black Lantern members of each team, out for blood.  Though it seems like this could get chaotic and cluttered, especially given the size of each team and the B/C-list nature of its characters, but Simone and Ostrander handle it well, keeping things light and extraordinarily exciting, with the usual dark touch of humor.

Calafiore does excellent work on art, capturing the eerie intensity of the Black Lanterns and the easy violence of… well, every character in the book.  The book’s many action sequences are quick and exciting, and Calafiore does an excellent job setting up the pace and keeping the action moving.  It may not be important to the events of the main mini, but it is nonetheless a thoroughly satisfying tie-in, keeping things quick and trusting the audience to catch up.

Grade: A-

- Cal Cleary

Read/RANT

Secret Six #16

Mini-Reviews

Immortal Weapons #4

Four issues in and Immortal Weapons continues to be woefully inconsistent.  Given the nature of the book’s shifting creative teams, that comes as no surprise, but I am beginning to see the flaws in the strategy as I begin to imagine a collected edition.  Is it worth buying the ill-conceived stories for the heartbreaking ones?  This issue is by no means as bad as “Bride of Nine Spiders” was – it is at the very least a coherent martial arts story featuring the titular character, Tiger’s Beautiful Daughter.  It is exciting and fun, and has a few big action sequences that are well-illustrated.

It is also remarkably slight and about as cheesecake-y as a book can be.  Artist Khari Evans does a fine job illustrating a culture of bikini’d warrior women with all the requisite bounce and heft – and also a strikingly consistent sense of tone and design, surprisingly – but the story is beyond slight, almost to the point of nonsense.  Fun nonsense, granted, but where Evans brings consistency, the best Swierczynski offers is chaos.

The back-up feature continues to move quickly forward as a quick bit of ‘intuitive deduction’ – read: plot crunch – reveals the true fate of Jada’s younger brother.  With Foreman off art, the back-up continues to suffer as Hatuey Diaz’s shaggy, cartoonish style doesn’t fit any of the tones Swierczynski seems to be going for.

Grade: B

Secret Six #15

John Ostrander comes onto Secret Six, the first writer other than Simone to deal with the book since its revival in Villains United.  Some readers may balk at the fact that he has largely shied away from Simone’s familiar offbeat humor without abandoning any of the book’s signature darkness, but Ostrander knows his strengths – and knows his character – and instead turns the book into an introspective character study of Deadshot, in many ways the team’s most heartless member.

With Calafiore doing a stellar job on art, Ostrander takes us deep into Deadshot’s damaged mind.  The pair work well together, especially in the one-panel shots of Deadshot-Vision we occasionally get, a cold reality in which we see the deaths of everyone in the room at his hands.  The issue has its flaws, including some seemingly trite pop psychology and a so-so origin story retelling, but its core is rock solid… and, to be quite frank, more than a little chilling.

Grade: B+

Stumptown #1

The recent, excellent resurgence of the crime comic comes largely at the hands of three writers: Brian Azzarello, Ed Brubaker, and, finally, Greg Rucka.  With Stumptown, Rucka returns to ONI Press, who published his stellar Whiteout and Queen and Country, for another crime comic with an earthy female protagonist in over her head.  While Rucka is in some ways becoming predictable, Stumptown #1 displays the benefits of such predictability: it’s polished and experienced, a rock solid introduction to a new title.

Matthew Southworth and Lee Loughridge, Rucka’s partners here, do a great job on art.  The panel layouts are simple but extremely effective, while the art is expressive without losing the darkness we expect of a crime comic.  Dex, the P.I. in charge of Stumptown Investigations, is a well-realized heroine with an already-growing supporting cast, all excellently illustrated.  An excellent, traditional entry into the ever-growing pile of great modern crime comics.

Grade: A-

Doctor Voodoo: Avenger of the Supernatural #2

After a remarkably solid opening issue, Remender and Palo drop the ball quickly with this second issue.  Picking up after his confrontation with Dr. Doom last issue, Voodoo is stranded in another dimension, one in which his powers are severely hampered… and in which resides a powerful foe for the new Sorcerer Supreme.  It’s a remarkable coincidence that leaves Voodoo stranded here, unless Doom was working for/with the issue’s surprise villain, but its one that’s never visited.  The action is brief but effective, but the book’s twist is ineffective at best, and the backround we get on Jericho this issue feels fairly out of place here.

Palo (joined by Gabriel Hardman on art) seems to have lost some of last month’s visceral energy, but he remains the book’s star player.  His illustrations of a nightmare New Orleans are memorable,  as are the monstrous designs of Nightmare’s horde, but the art feels more rushed here, despite a momentum-killing origin-story in the middle of the issue.  Hopefully, the team can regain some of the momentum of their opening issue soon.

Grade: C+

- Cal Cleary

Secret Six #13

Immortal Weapons #3

Doctor Voodoo: Avenger of the Supernatural #1

Review: Secret Six #14

Secret Six is the rare book that continually exceeds my expectations.  The Depths has been the best story arc yet.  And the final chapter delivers everything I was hoping for, but not the way I expected.

Of course the fragmented team comes together and find themselves fighting side by side instead of against one another.  Of course the vile slavers get what’s coming to them.  There are showdowns and cathartic breakthroughs.  Relationships are tested, torn apart and mended.  And the team itself is changed in a significant by very logical way.

You want to see Amazons rise up against their jailers?  It’s in there.  Ragman taking matters into his own hands with a monkey wrench?  You betcha.  Scandal Savage creating a Venom-fueled monster to fight Grendel?  Done.  Deadshot being just plain awesome?  Oh hell yeah!

Fans of Gail Simone have come to expect a frothy mix of high-octane action, deeply personal characterizations and laugh-out-loud funny dialogue.  Only a writer of Simone’s caliber could manage to deliver such a morally ambigous tale and make it so darn entertaining.  She takes a cast of characters who are mostly reprehensible and makes them relatable without fully redeeming them.

Few artists could be expected to capture both the action and the emotion of this series.  But Nicola Scott is up to the challenge.  Scott’s action jumps off the page.  But she really shines at character work.  Her faces are expressive.  Even the way Scott’s characters hold themselves tells you volumes about who they are and what they are thinking.

Secret Six is the book I always look forward to every month.  And it just keeps getting better.

Secret Six #13

read/RANT

Review: Secret Six #10

 

It’s no secret that I love this book.  Last issue was a bit lackluster compared to the 8 issues which preceded it.  And yet, it still topped my list for the best comics in May.  (It also ranked on Seventh Soldier’s list.)  We all agreed that while it wasn’t the best issue of the series, it was still a great read.

This issue is the first part of the “Depths” storyline.  And to my mind, it is a return to greatness after a minor stumble last issue.  I loved every page of this book.  Obviously, being the first issue in a multi-part story, this issue is mostly set-up.  But Simone seems to excel at set-up issues for Secret Six.  This may be the best issue since the first one.

As the story begins, we’re introduced to the villains.  They are slavers running some kind of underground mine.  When one of the slaves refuses to work, the leader of the slavers breaks her spirit with a calm brutality that is simply chilling.  In five pages, Simone establishes complete personalities for two of the villains and their victim.  (The third villain is mysteriously silent the entire time.  So, while we don’t learn a lot about her, we are definitely intrigued.)

Once we’ve met the villains of the story, we check in on Bane.  Appropriately, Bane is not doing so hot.  In the first 9 issues of this series, Bane has really been put through the paces.  Tortured to the brink of death.  And finally succumbing to Venom in an effort to save the life of Scandal Savage – of whom Bane is strangely protective.  It seems that Bane is still juicing after his Venom relapse.  And it is up to Scandal to help him kick the habit.

In the world of the Secret Six, we experience a lot of depravity.  (Most of it coming from Deadshot or the hysterical Ragdoll.)  But the scenes between Scandal and Bane are always touching and, dare I say it, beautiful.  Their relationship is unconventional to say the least.  It’s almost unspoken and completely undefined.  Scandal has no interest in a romantic relationship with a man and Bane is fully aware of this.  And yet, there is a tenderness between them that is undeniable.  If it weren’t for these glimpses of humanity, the book could easily turn into the kind of revolting exploitation other writers have been cashing in on.

(I’m looking at you Mark Millar!)

Before I move on, I am positively giddy at the thought of Bane busting up this slave ring.  Simone has really put Bane to good use in this book (something DC has stuggled with for the better part of a decade).  And as a former prisoner himself, you just know he’s going to rip through the joint with the same ferocity we saw last issue.  Personally, I can’t wait.

From Bane and Scandal, we move on to another odd couple, Deadshot and Jeanette.  Both are thoroughly dispicable characters that Simone manages to portray as deliciously wicked.  Jeanette has arranged a meeting with the team’s newest prospective client.  And the setting is a place of special significance to her.  When she explains to Deadshot that it is the location where she killed her first husband, it is nearly romantic.  At least in her mind it is.

The twisted courtship is interrupted by the arrival of the slavers from the first scene.  And once again, Simone does a great job with the characterizations.  These guys take pride in the tradition of their occupation.  They speak passionately about the history of great empires being built on the backs of slaves.  It’s reprehensible.  But you get a very clear image of who we are dealing with.  And so does Deadshot, who has no problem agreeing to take the job anyway.

The meeting ends with a tantalizing mystery that is sure to be explored for the rest of the story arc.  The slavers work for a mystery employer named… Mockingb ird.  Sound familiar?  In Simone’s first Secret Six mini-series, Lex Luthor formed the team under the same identity.  It’s doubtful we’re dealing with the same Mockingbird here.  But you can bet the connection won’t be a good thing for the Six.

Ofcourse when the mission begins all hell breaks loose.  That’s what happens in the Secret Six.  Deadshot makes a decision that perfectly captures his true nature.  And a guest star shows up who will be no surprise to readers of the solicitations for coming months.  All in all, the pieces are in place for what promises to be a rip-roaring adventure.  

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