The Stoppable Wasp

Here we go again, then. I was catching up on the last couple of issues from Wednesday's haul and for to The Unstoppable Wasp #8. It was a lovely end to (I thought) the first arc: it tied together Nadia's twin legacies as Hank Pym's daughter and newest incarnation of the Wasp; it concluded a fantastic character study for Janet; and, to top it all off, it contained perhaps the most nuanced treatment of the break-up of Hank and Janet's relationship ever written and believe me there'll be a whole post on that one some time next week.

Then I got to the end and there it was: Jeremy Whitley writing the traditional and all-too-common goodbye letter with a faint touch of the Dear John to it. He even points out that the cancellation has nothing to do with the dedication of the fans (“it's not you” and so on...).

Hyperbolic as it seems I genuinely think that Nadia was the best new character Marvel has come up with since Kamala Khan. Her optimism and passion for science was a fantastic angle, never more so than when she absolutely fangirls out at Mockingbird not because she's a superhero but because she's a famous chemist.

The concept of a lab full of eccentric young female scientists had real legs even before you get into the diverse and interesting personalities that populated G.I.R.L.

But, no. The insular, risk averse industry once again discovered that it cannot afford to innovate and after a mere eight issues this promising, wonderfully written, beautifully drawn series comes to an end. Its just grand irony that this issue dropped the very same week as the first issue of Generations, the grand nostalgia project meant to appease the vocal fanboy contingent by bringing back all the white male heroes.

So this one goes on the list alongside Black Panther & The Crew as premature casualties of this industry that can somehow spawn the most popular movies on the planet and somehow not make any money off the source material because advertising is for sissies. 

Comic Reviews

This week the Guardians Of The Galaxy get all-new, the push to include Watchmen in the DCU continues to be less terrible than I assumed; I try out a couple of new series; Maria Hill gets high; Nightwing gets nostalgic; Nadia Pym gets romantic (but in a totally subtextual way); and, we say goodbye to Carrie Fisher once again.

All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #1

Gerry Duggan and Aaron Kuder certainly hit the ground running. After a very slow end to Bendis run (with, I admit, one hell of a final issue), the new team takes the Guardians back into space where they belong. Most of the issue is a fun little heist with plenty of cool ersonality moments for each of the Guardians and then off to meet their buyer and kick off the plot for the rest of the arc.

Some time seems to have passed between the end of Bendis' run and this. For one thing, Drax seems to have developed pacifism and Rocket keeps mentioning some assassins that came after gim recently (in his own title?). Still, most questions the issue raises do seem to be on their way to answers some time in the immediate future, which is a refreshing change of pace.

Batman #22

You known in spite of myself I am actually enjoying this arc. I remain as hardheartedly cynical about the whole Watchmen in the DCU thing as ever but this is actually fun to read.

Hell, more than fun, this arc is actually pretty interesting from a form point of view. The two Batman issues and (by the looks of this issue's cliffhanger) the two Flash issues actually seem to be telling distinct halves of the story. Oh, Bruce and Barry are together all the time, its not like they're pursuing their own plots by themselves, but the Batman creative team has one set of prioirities for where they want to take Bruce and the Flash creative team have another set of priorities for Barry. What I was afraid was going to be a month long road block in the two series seems to have thought out to be a sastisfying part of both ongoing stories.

Plus we get the return of the Flashpoint Batman, for my money the best idea that event had.

Jean Grey #1

A slow start. The whole deal here is Jean needs some “me” time, grabs Pickles the mini-Nightcrawler and goes for breakfast in Japan. The rest is a whole lot of internal monologue to get us used to Jean as a solo protagonist and a run-in with eternal jobbers the Wrecking Crew.

Its nice. Its small and quiet and feels a bit too much like filler for a first issue to be throwing at you but I can't deny that its fun to read and I have a better handle on this version of Jean as a person than I did before.

Jessica Jones #8

In spite of the fact that this issue might peripherally involve “Captain America is a Nazi” plot threads, I must admit I liked it. I have missed reading Bendis' take on Maria Hill. Actually, now I think about it, didn't he create Maria Hill in New Avengers? Having her interact with Jessica Jones whilst stoned on painkillers is the icing on the cake. Even better, we get to see some more stoned people (somewhat more recreationally than Maria) having a lovely little conversation about who's going to take over the world: mutants or spider-people.

We also get another look into the back alley sort of world Jessica inhabits as she visits a woman called Raindrop, who looks like Katy Manning and seems to be an agent for hired killers. Sadly, not much happens on the family front in this issue but what does is a glorious one panel cameo by Luke that I just can't spoil.

Black Bolt #1

I wasn't going to pick this up but then I saw the name Saladin Ahmed on the cover, though I can't rightly say where I know the name from. I'm glad I did pick it up, though, because this is really bloody good.

For one thing, Ahmed sidesteps the problems of having a silent protagonist in a comic by bringing back narrative captions. Now, I know most comic writers have given up on the third person narration these days and I understand why. Usually they're clunky and just devolve into the writer describing things we can damn well see in the art. “He leaps across the room!”, gee, thanks Claremont, I'd have never guessed if you hadn't written it down on a drawing of the guy leaping across the room. Still Ahmed writes some damn lyrical prose in those little boxes that do a lot to set the tone of the story. Artist Christian Ahmed also shows some real range here, handling both lines and colour he's able to shift between a dreamlike style for moments when Black Bolt is alone and wandering and a more solid, clearly deliniated style for when he's interacting with other people.

Between this and Royals, I am in real danger of beginning to care about the Inhumans as a group.

Bane: Conquest #1

The other new title for the week is this, which I bought because the recent I Am Bane arc in Batman made me interested in the “ruthless, unstoppable destroyer” side of the character for the first time ever. Honestly, before this the only writer who could make me care about Bane was Gail Simone and she had a radically different take on the character. Plus its Chuck Dixon, the ultimate Batman writer, returning to DC! How could I miss out on that? I have to admit: the way Bane talks to himself gives me all sorts of nostalgia for '90s comics and Dixon's Batman and Robin runs in particular.

Dixon goes all in on the idea of Bane as a sort of darker Batman with him roughing up gun runners headed into Gotham Bay alongside a small team of sidekicks/goons. I'm not to sure why or how Bane is operating out of Gotham or if this even refers at all back to I Am Bane but I do like the basic concept. Dixon actually has Bane operating as a detective, albeit a rather heavy handed one. I'm hoping to see a lot more of Bane's team in the course of this year long run, I really want to see what their stories are, if only because I think it will liven the series.

Nightwing #20

I wish we had more chance to see the Robins as brothers. This arc has been great for getting Dick and Damian back together and Tim Seeley does a lovely line in sibling banter for them. The Morrison-era Batman comics with these two as Batman and Robin will always be personal favourites of mine and its nice to see that they're relationship hasn't been totally forgotten.

Unstoppable Wasp #5

This issue is about Nadia saving her girlfriend's life and no power on Earth will take that intrepretation away from me! Its also the first mission for Nadia's team of young lady scientists: finding a way to get the little bomb out of Ying's head, all the time with Jarvis moaning about how much mess they all make as they brainstorm well into the night. There is an absolutely glorious splash page of the brainstorming session itself so full of detail and character for the whole cast. I love this series so much.

Star Wars: Poe Dameron #14

This isn't at all subtle: this is Marvel's wake for Carrie Fisher. I don't know if it started off that way and they made some edits in the light of her passing but this issue is absolutely a goodbye to Fisher. Poe delivers a eulogy for one of his pilots lost in the previous arc alongside General Leia Organa and the rest of the issue is spent on thoughts of mortality before Poe and Leia have a heart to heart that absolutely smacks of Charles Soule writing the sort of scene that we will, sadly, never get to see the actors deliver.

Unless such a scene was filmed for The Last Jedi, this series will be the last and only word on the relationship between General Leia and Poe Dameron. If it is, then it works and we EU nerds have a genuinely moving issue to point to when we claim that Poe is all but Leia's adopted son.

Leia final scene in the issue, though obviously not the last we'll be seeing of her in these comics, is quiet and moving and a more heartfelt goodbye than anything I think the film can deliver through editing scenes that were never meant to be an ending into a conclusion for the character. I might be wrong bit if I'm not then we'll always have this. 

Comic Reviews

This week, the X-Men and Superman relaunches continue apace, Bendis departs the Guardians Of The Galaxy, Nadia Pym is still the most adorable genius in the MCU and Black Panther fails to appear in a great first issue.

X-Men Blue #1

Cullen Bunn has enough credit with me that he gets the benefit of the doubt. This first issue is fun but it does seem to lack a point. We get a nice little team building mission with Jean leading the classic X-Men against Black Tom Cassidy of all people as he tries to rob a yacht full of rich people. Its well executed, the character interactions are charming and Bunn establishes the personalities as well as the angles he seems to be taking with the original X-Men but its all in service to a cliffhanger that, frankly, just tells us something that was all over the advanced advertising for this series.

But I liked Bunn's Venom even if his Uncanny X-Men was perhaps the most filler-tastic portion of the Terrigen Years and the basic idea of this series and the X-Men's new “mysterious” leader interests me so I'll be sticking around.

Weapon X #1

This was actually a really good debut issue. The Weapon X Project is hunting various mutants (the ones on the cover), they've already captured Lady Deathstrike in the X-Men Prime one-shot and here they come after Old Man Logan. Its a good action hook to start the issue with but after it we get to the scene that really sold this series to me: Logan finding Sabretooth to ask for his help.

You see, there's something about this scene that grabs me: Wolverine, despite Sabretooth trying to gut him, actually seems pleased to see the guy. They'll probably never be friends but I like the idea that Logan, having lived through his Mad Max Plus future, has actually come to miss his worst enemy.

Of course, no review of this issue would be complete without mention of artist Greg Land. Look, I could say all sorts of things about his work but by this point I think we're all pretty well-informed on what we'll find here. Actually, by Greg Land standards this is actually pretty well drawn: no one is missing limbs, people actually make eye contact, no one is having an orgasm. These are all improvements.

Action Comics #977

And here comes Dan Jurgen with some answers... eventually. I don't mean to sound ungrateful here but the majority of this story is Superman looking into his own past and revisiting the most stable, most well known part of it: the destruction of Krypton. There are, to be frank, other questions to be answered here. The slow reveal is, as I said with the last issue of Superman, probably the best approach to prevent the sort of front-loaded exposition-heavy snorefest DC retcons often open with but an origin retelling for Superman of all people seems like the height of redundancy.

Though I must admit that having the Daily Planet back is almost worth the price.

Unstoppable Wasp #4

Still the most adorable series Marvel is putting out right now, even if the writers aren't quite up on the world of women's professional wrestling. Seriously, Poundcakes and Letha would make a fantastic tag team in the modern WWE, maybe book them in a program against Nia Jax.

Anyway, bizarre fantasy booking aside, the cuteness continues with more girl genius recruitment, more Jarvis being perturbed about everything, and Nadia finally having her sit down meeting with Matt Murdoch. Best of all, though, her “best friend” *wink wink* Ying turns up again in a scene which leaves nothing to subtext if you want my opinion.

Guardians of the Galaxy #19

“Bendis' Big Time Bye-Bye Blowout” promises the cover and it was frustratingly good. After issue after issue of single character epilogues, some good, some startlingly irrelevant (the Angela one is literally just a coda to her solo series and naff all to do with her story in this title) Bendis hands in a really good one-shot finale with the Guardians going up against Thanos and an invasion fleet of various other nasties. Its big, its fun, there's a fight sequence with various of Bendis' previous artistic collaborators pitching in a page each, and Angela does her best Doctor Who impression at the Brood at one point.

As I've said before, it isn't Bendis' writing in toto that I have any sort of problem with. I really like his work, it was what brought me back into comics as an adult after a couple of years away but I'd be lying if I said his pacing wasn't incredibly off-putting at times. If this is what he can do for a single issue (and so, so little of this issue was built up in the rest of Grounded) I cannot imagine what would happen if this Bendis turned up more consistently.

Black Panther & The Crew #1

I am not at all displeased that Black Panther doesn't show up in this issue. Instead we get a flashback to the Harlem in the 1950s and an African-American superteam of ages past followed by Misty Knight investigating the death in custody of one of their number in the present. There's also a run-in with the Americops from the Sam Wilson series who have been sent in to uphold an unconstitutional curfew in Harlem.

In all of this Ta-Nehisi Coates proves he has range. Whilst this and the main Black Panther series are clearly the stories of a place and the people who live there before they're the story of individual characters they are so distinct in flavour. Coates is also clearly loving a chance to put a Marvel Universe spin on the history of a real place after creating so much Wakandan history whole cloth.

To be honest, my only fear is that I won't like this series as much once T'Challa actually turns up to take main character duties out of Misty's hands. 

Weekly Comic Reviews

This week Amerikate gets one step closer to canon, Bane develops the depth people always accused him of, a giant red Tyrannosaurus Rex loses on coolness points to a bowtie, my monstrous case of event fatigue worsens, and Nightwing proves why he really deserves that movie DC are going to royally fuck up.

America #1

Pa' Fuera, Pa' La Calle

I am not too clear on what's going on here, I suspect I missed a short story or something along the way because this just feels like something that had set-up somewhere else. Either that or wasting over a third of the issue on an Ultimates mini-adventure was a huge pacing mistake.

Anyway, the idea here is that America Chavez is going to university. Mad as balls sci-fi university with a holographic teacher and a Department of Radical Women & Intergalactic Indigenous Peoples. Also, Prodigy turns up, probably the last Young Avenger I expected to turn up anywhere let alone here, if I'm honest. The first Young Avenger I expected to turn up, Kate Bishop, dutifully does and if the creative teams aren't planning a crossover between their two titles somewhere down the line they're insane, these two are the best besties Marvel has right now.

Definitely a promising beginning but I hope we get to see a lot more of America on her own adventures and a lot less of her as leader of the Ultimates. I also hope there's more to Gabby Rivera's plans for Lisa the paramedic than we see in this issue. I'm an old romantic at heart, sue me.

Batman #18

I Am Bane part three

Good grief, but I love the core Bat-titles right now. Tom King has an excellent sense of structure, he knows better than so many other authors working right now how to structure a single issue as not just an actual chapter but as a singular experience. Not to mention that I really have to give kudos to David Finch and Danny Miki, who absolutely kill on the pages that present us with parallel takes on the origins of Bane and Batman.

As this storyline has built we've been given what so many Batman/Bane stories have lacked: a real sense of the two titanic wills that clash when these two men face each other. After all these years I'm finally starting to see what people like about Bane as a villain (as opposed to an anti-hero, which Gail Simone convinced me of years ago in Secret Six).

And, of course, King's take on Catwoman continues to impress and I really hope she gets her own series again sometime soon.

Unstoppable Wasp #3

In a series of strong, memorable characters designs, Nadia's latest girl genius recruit Lashayla is perhaps the strongest yet. Black lady Eleventh Doctor might not sound like much of a pitch but the end result is fantastic and her interest in teleportation as a science has a wonderful little origin. Also, for a moment it seems the writing is building her dad up to be an absolute ogre and then the whole thing gets turned on its head.

Jarvis continues to work well as Nadia's straight man and we finally get an appearance by Nadia's sort-of stepmother Janet “Your Mama's Wasp” Van Dyne, who has been conspicuously absent from the series given how important she was to Nadia's introduction in All-New All-Different Avengers. There are more recruitments and attempted recruitments, a bit of Devil Dinosaur, Nadia's reunion with what I will continue to refer to as her ex-girlfriend until canon tells me otherwise (and probably not even then), and the return of a villain I honestly thought I'd imagined because no one else remembered her.

Not that the issue is without disappointment. I did not expect to be saying this, even after enjoying their dynamic so much last issue, but I wish Nadia and Moon Girl's meeting was more than a bookselling crossover. Who knows, maybe somewhere down the line they'll team up again. Still, the book's supporting cast is rounding out nicely with original creations who have strong enough character designs that they shouldn't fall into the mire of “Which one were you again?” that a lot of large civilian casts in superhero comics tend to fall into after a while.

Totally Awesome Hulk #1.MU

Its a bad sign when I'm three issues behind on an event series and the tie-ins are still providing me with perfectly functional entertainment. I may be looking a gift horse in the mouth here but that's not how its meant to work. I've read literally only the first issue of Monsters Unleashed, feel little pull to catch up on the series itself and yet the random #1.MU one-shots are more than enough for me. I liked the All-New X-Men, Avengers and All-New Wolverine ones and the Champions issue is quite high on the to do list even if I missed it on release week so I'm not reviewing it here.

Hell, this issue alone gives me something to rant about because Ty Templeton, artist on the main feature, uses a change in art style the way a change in art style is meant to be used: to serve the bloody story. Okay, most times when art changes its because of an emergency situation but sometimes its intentional and if it were handled this well even half the time it would be a lot less intrusive. The art style changes at a specific point to make a specific point.

There's also a Maddy Cho and Lady Hellbender back-up story that's a good little character study even if the pay-off leans more towards “please read the main series, James” than seems rational at this point. All in all, I think I'll probably remember this event for the fun done-in-one issues like this taking characters I love and setting them up against Kaiju and classic comic monsters rather than... whatever is actually going on in the main series that I'll maybe get around to at some point.

Also, is South Korean hero White Fox a new character or something dug up from the Marvel vaults? I like her design even if her character doesn't deviate much from the standard template super spy. Well, I just read the triumphant comeback of Lady Hellbender, maybe White Fox will turn up again some day.

Nightwing #16

Nightwing Must Die part one

Funny how nostalgia works. On the one hand, the days of Grant Morrison writing Dick and Damian as Batman and Robin in their flying Batmobile don't feel that long ago. Then again those days were a decade and three massive line-wide shake-ups ago. I might as well admit to myself that “DickBats”, as those days are affectionately known, are long enough ago that DC can get away with doing a reunion story that trades on nostalgia for that run right down to a cameo by the flying Batmobile.

And damn me if this issue isn't an absolute manifesto for the movie DC could (and, inevitably, won't) make out of this property. We see Dick having fun as Nightwing, beating down on some z-list armour car robbers and not only loving every minute but acknowledging that he's loving every minute. The central dramatic tensions of the issue comes from his relationship with his ex-supervillain girlfriend and from Damian's insecurities about which of them will carry on the Batman legacy some day.

Hell, there's even a nod to Dick's past relationship with Starfire, a couple of lines that could have been a whole story in and of itself, a story I would have loved to read.

And in an insane coincidence, it seems that this series might even be about to show the world how to do the terrible, grimdark 90s villain I was afraid would come along to spoil the movie. Funny how these things turn out.