2011 Books 71-76
Aug. 6th, 2011 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
subplotkudzu71) Incredible Hulk 441-453 by Peter David, Angel Medina and Mike Deidato: The collapse of the once proud series continues, through a combination of unforced errors and definitely forced ones. On the unforced error side, David is doggedly pursuing a plot arc about Hulk suffering brain damage from a grenade that Banner took right before he transformed into the hulk, leaving shrapnel in his brain. This is a revisiting of a classic Hulk plot and might well have gone somewhere but it comes across as very creaky, removes the Hulk from the supporting cast and returns the book to an "on the run from the army" plot, which I personally always found dull. Add into this the strange decision to revisit the Future Imperfect time travel plotline - which David might have been trying to link to the Troygan War plotline, which again had potential - and things get very muddled. These pale before the forced errors, which is the Marvel Editorial decision to give control of their key books to Rob Liefeld in the Heroes Reborn plot arc, yanking Hulk out of his regular plots into the stupid Onslaught crossover, then pulling out the Bruce Banner psyche, then a forced crossover with Thunderbolts. I doubt David really wanted to explore what the current Hulk is like without Banner, and the book just feels like it's a floundering mess, perhaps with some passive aggression in the writing under chafing editorial control. The inconsistency of the art team over the last two years hasn't helped either.
72) Incredible Hulk 454-460 by Peter David and Adam Kubert: the last of the artists David worked with on Hulk, Kubert is vastly more proficient than his predecessors, but stylistically the book, with an emphasis on four panel pages or three panels over two pages, doesn't quite jell. Story wise we get a moment of clarity in the Hulk chased by the Army plot that's going on, where David looks like he's setting things up for a a whole new paradigm, but it's totally thrown off by a forced crossover to the X-Men Apocalypse plotline, followed by the end of the heroes reborn plot and a return to something like normalcy. The psychological thread of this, that Banner actually killed his abusive father while working on the gamma bomb, thus giving vent to his internal anger (a pathetic back-justification as to why Banner would have been working on a bomb project given his later anti-military stance - how about "it was the freakin' Cold War, and Banner is an Oppenheimer analogue?") and is now being haunted by his father's ghost/memory, isn't strong enough to carry it, but might have worked as a year long arc if David hadn't had to do crossover after crossover.
73) Incredible Hulk 461-467 by Peter David and Adam Kubert: David's final 6 issues on the book show either where he might have been going with it or his graciousness in giving the new author a clean enough slate to work from - psychologically reunited, Hulk/Banner make peace with Betty, Rick (who was severely injured by the Apocalypsed out Hulk last book) and even Thunderbolt Ross, who has been restored by the Troyjans. David makes it look like he's setting up a new plot arc with Banner being employed by the government as a weapon of lat resort under Ross' direction. Then David kills Betty in a really unnecessary way that shatters the agreement and leaves the new creative team with a Bruce Banner on the run from the army with an anger-generated Hulk, basically the Hulk Status Quo Ante. He then does one last issue of Rick Jones being interviewed by Peter Parker a decade int he future that is both a psycological conclusion and a big F-You to the Marvel editorial team. It's clear that David is not leaving under good circumstances, and reading the last 27 issues it's pretty clear where the problem lies. It's a shame that the book so devolved during its last 3 years, but again, I'm not sure how much of this can be leveled at David, who had things he clearly wanted to do but was stymied in making use of the time to do them. These are perils that only exist in serial fiction.
74) Home Fires by Gene Wolfe: New Gene Wolfe! Yea! he revisits some old themes of identity in this one, where many of the characters not only aren't who they appear to be but they're being pursued by outside forces for who they no longer are. It's well put together, not as strong as the Sorcerer's House but better than Pirate Freedom. Plus, a third person viewpoint means less unreliable narrators.
75) The Green Hornet vol 1 by Kevin Smith, Phil Hester and Jonathan Lau: A comic series based on an unproduced screenplay of Smiths, I have to admit that Smith does a fine job of making the original Hornet/Kato team really impressive. The contemporary ones - of course Britt Reid Jr. is a wastrel and the new Kato is a hot chick - need some work, but all told it impressed me enough to start looking for the later issues. the art team is really heavily inspired by Mike Grell in his later John Sable/Longbow Hunters phase, but need some work on differentiating characters, and a lot more work on comprehensible fight layouts.
76) Atomic Robo vol 5 - the Deadly Art of Science by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegner: It's new Atomic Robo! Buy it! Read it! Love it! This one is set in 1930, showing the growth of Robo into the, er, man he would become in his maturing relationship with his dad, Nikola Tesla, his somewhat apprenticeship with a masked vigilante Jack Tarot and his first love affair with Tarot's techie daughter. It's a fun read as always. Remember how I praised Kevin Smith's work in Green Hornet on making the elder Hornet and Kato cool? Let me say that his work pales in comparison to how Clevenger and Wegener make Nikola Tesla cool - by the endgame you realize that Tesla was both insanely cool and a total badass. Much fun.
72) Incredible Hulk 454-460 by Peter David and Adam Kubert: the last of the artists David worked with on Hulk, Kubert is vastly more proficient than his predecessors, but stylistically the book, with an emphasis on four panel pages or three panels over two pages, doesn't quite jell. Story wise we get a moment of clarity in the Hulk chased by the Army plot that's going on, where David looks like he's setting things up for a a whole new paradigm, but it's totally thrown off by a forced crossover to the X-Men Apocalypse plotline, followed by the end of the heroes reborn plot and a return to something like normalcy. The psychological thread of this, that Banner actually killed his abusive father while working on the gamma bomb, thus giving vent to his internal anger (a pathetic back-justification as to why Banner would have been working on a bomb project given his later anti-military stance - how about "it was the freakin' Cold War, and Banner is an Oppenheimer analogue?") and is now being haunted by his father's ghost/memory, isn't strong enough to carry it, but might have worked as a year long arc if David hadn't had to do crossover after crossover.
73) Incredible Hulk 461-467 by Peter David and Adam Kubert: David's final 6 issues on the book show either where he might have been going with it or his graciousness in giving the new author a clean enough slate to work from - psychologically reunited, Hulk/Banner make peace with Betty, Rick (who was severely injured by the Apocalypsed out Hulk last book) and even Thunderbolt Ross, who has been restored by the Troyjans. David makes it look like he's setting up a new plot arc with Banner being employed by the government as a weapon of lat resort under Ross' direction. Then David kills Betty in a really unnecessary way that shatters the agreement and leaves the new creative team with a Bruce Banner on the run from the army with an anger-generated Hulk, basically the Hulk Status Quo Ante. He then does one last issue of Rick Jones being interviewed by Peter Parker a decade int he future that is both a psycological conclusion and a big F-You to the Marvel editorial team. It's clear that David is not leaving under good circumstances, and reading the last 27 issues it's pretty clear where the problem lies. It's a shame that the book so devolved during its last 3 years, but again, I'm not sure how much of this can be leveled at David, who had things he clearly wanted to do but was stymied in making use of the time to do them. These are perils that only exist in serial fiction.
74) Home Fires by Gene Wolfe: New Gene Wolfe! Yea! he revisits some old themes of identity in this one, where many of the characters not only aren't who they appear to be but they're being pursued by outside forces for who they no longer are. It's well put together, not as strong as the Sorcerer's House but better than Pirate Freedom. Plus, a third person viewpoint means less unreliable narrators.
75) The Green Hornet vol 1 by Kevin Smith, Phil Hester and Jonathan Lau: A comic series based on an unproduced screenplay of Smiths, I have to admit that Smith does a fine job of making the original Hornet/Kato team really impressive. The contemporary ones - of course Britt Reid Jr. is a wastrel and the new Kato is a hot chick - need some work, but all told it impressed me enough to start looking for the later issues. the art team is really heavily inspired by Mike Grell in his later John Sable/Longbow Hunters phase, but need some work on differentiating characters, and a lot more work on comprehensible fight layouts.
76) Atomic Robo vol 5 - the Deadly Art of Science by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegner: It's new Atomic Robo! Buy it! Read it! Love it! This one is set in 1930, showing the growth of Robo into the, er, man he would become in his maturing relationship with his dad, Nikola Tesla, his somewhat apprenticeship with a masked vigilante Jack Tarot and his first love affair with Tarot's techie daughter. It's a fun read as always. Remember how I praised Kevin Smith's work in Green Hornet on making the elder Hornet and Kato cool? Let me say that his work pales in comparison to how Clevenger and Wegener make Nikola Tesla cool - by the endgame you realize that Tesla was both insanely cool and a total badass. Much fun.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 05:56 am (UTC)I am told that Home Fires is set in the same universe as An Evil Guest, but I gather (I've not yet read Home Fires) that evidence for this, apart from Gene Wolfe having told David Hartwell that it was so, is hard to find.
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Date: 2011-11-03 08:49 am (UTC)