Monday 1 July 2013

The Comics Ramble featuring Pizza Dog

Seemed a good week to start doing comic reviews since last week all of my absolute favourite series had issues out.

Guardians of the Galaxy #4
This was a nice one-shot issue after the all action three-parter that opened the series (a thee-parter? From Bendis? With his reputation?). There is a plot but it all pales in comparison to Drax being boisterous and drunk and Gamorra being flirty and drunk.

Hawkeye #11
It took eleven issues but finally reading the recap page month after month paid off. The whole issue is told from the perspective of Lucky (aka Pizza Dog), Hawkeye's dog. The only legible dialogue in the issue are the words Lucky understands (“Good boy”, “up”, “stay out”) so David Aja's art, which is always fantastic, has to tell the story largely by itself. The best touch of the issue is how Luccky's sense of smell is portrayed as little spider-grams surrounding people, the scents picked out as images: Hawkeye smells of coffee and dogfood; Kate smells of pizza and martini; some cops smell of coffee.

It is a very cool issue, which almost makes up for the fact that it seems to write Kate out. I suppose I can hope the next issue might explain her departure, which seems a little separate from her issues in Young Avengers. Speaking of which...

Young Avengers #6
Last week was a bit of a filler week, all told, but high quality filler. I can't say I'm disappointed at all. I'm not disappointed that Jamie McKelvie isn't on art this issue, even though he's by far my favourite artist these days. I'm not disappointed that we've skipped from the new YA team to look in on Speed, who was never my favourite character in the original run.

Kate Brown's art drew me in from the first page just from the realism of how Prodigy slumps in his office chair. I'm not sure exactly what sort of mad company he's working for but people call him to ask how to defuse a Skrull bomb or how to deal with Elektra. Just seeing Prodigy again was fun (as I said, Speed doesn't really interest me) since I don't think he's had a decent starring moment since... oh, Secret Invasion: X-Men stands out in my mind as the last time he was really used as much as this issue plays on where he would have been in AVX.

We'll be seeing him again, I hope, since the end of the issues hints quite heavily that he'll be the new Patriot.

Wolverine and the X-Men #32
Of all the many, many X-Men team books this is by far the most fun. Just look at the opening scene: Iceman and Kitty have broken into Kade Kilgore's corporate headquarters so they can ferret out where the Hellfire Club have taken their students. It all sounds very dry and po-faced but its written to be so fun: they clearly consider this date, for a start, and Iceman holds off the Hellfire troops by creating a giant snowman that sings as it fights them.

A substitute teacher who's a dragon; Quentin Quire being a smartarse even as he's tortured by a sorcerer with daemons for hands; a band of over-privileged, genocidal rich kids for villains; the Bamfs. I'm seriously considering cutting some X-titles from my pull list but this one stay come rain or shine.

No comments: