The Best of 2011 Comics Gift-Getting Guide pt. 2

Part one...

MYSTIC: THE TENTH APPRENTICE
When I was reading Mystic, I thought of it as a story that would appeal to fans of both Harry Potter and Hunger Games (had just seen one and read the other), but without being a rip-off of either; G. Willow Wilson accomplishes the task of tapping into multiple current sources of pop culture zeitgeist but only as building blocks to a new, vast world. I enjoyed all the CrossGen launches from Marvel, from the clever Ruse to the whimsical Sigil, but this is the one I think will hit the sweet spot of the broadest reader base, genre fans and civilians alike. It’s also another stop on artist David Lopez’s unrelenting tour of inspiring professional self-improvement.

THE PUNISHER VOL. 1
As Mark Waid did with Daredevil, Greg Rucka made a strong choice with his take on The Punisher—both books edited out of the Steve Wacker “Spider Office”—by making Frank Castle almost a secondary character or even backdrop against which the stories take place; he’s a grim presence who rarely speaks while the stories revolve around the people he affects, only roping him in for the big action scenes or major climaxes. It’s a bold, cinematic type of storytelling that has paid off in a comic experience that stands out in today’s climate. Marco Checchetto’s haunted art with a heavy Eastern influence is another completely new direction for The Punisher, really casting him as some sort of spectral angel of death and giving weight to his status as more than merely a man.

SECRET AVENGERS: SUBLAND EMPIRE
The one and done format is hardly common in modern mainstream super hero comics outside of all ages material and certainly not in a flagship franchise like the Avengers, but Warren Ellis did it to near perfection in his Secret Avengers run over the latter part of the year aided and abetted by some of the best artists in the business. Whether it was tech-based espionage with Jamie McKelvie, crazy kung fu action illustrated by David Aja or one of the trippiest time travel yarns I’ve followed in some time by Alex Maleev, Ellis delivered across the board with intelligent and entertaining standalone stories you need to give a look.

SPIDER-MAN: MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
Over the course of just six issues in the early months of this year, Dan Slott demonstrated the versatility of himself as a writer and Spider-Man as a character in tales that ran the gamut of emotions as his awesome Big Time era of Amazing Spider-Man heated up and took off. Revenge of the Spider-Slayer was action-packed mayhem showcasing Spidey and an enjoyable New Avengers guest spot while No One Dies and Torch Song swung to the emotional side of the spectrum, tracking Peter Parker and his friends as they dealt with serious loss. The talented artists of ASM contributed with varied showmanship fitting each story, as Stefano Caselli brought his raw energy to the first while Marcos Martin delivered the stark pathos needed for the second (and a dream sequence in #655 that still has me applauding). Wedged in the middle: The debut of Flash Thompson as the new Venom in a story written by Slott with art by the great Humberto Ramos.

SPIDER-MAN: SPIDER-ISLAND
Continuing the Dan Slott love fest, Spider-Island was the textbook case of how to do a fun comic book event that also has major impact and pack metric tons of plot, character and action into every installment. It’s a great love letter to what makes Spider-Man a great hero and Peter Parker uniquely suited to his role with nice meaty parts as well for Venom, Anti-Venom, Kaine, Mary Jane, J. Jonah Jameson, Carlie Cooper and more, not to mention the villainous exploits of The Queen and The Jackal plus a boatload of great guest stars including the Avengers, X-Men, Future Foundation and tons others. Humberto Ramos turns in inspired art on the Amazing Spider-Man installments while Rick Remender and Tom Fowler tear it up on the Venom chapters also included in this main collection.

STORMWATCH: THE DARK SIDE
Paul Cornell’s Stormwatch is to me a great guide to and exploration of the burgeoning DC Universe provided by the New 52. It takes characters that lived on the fringe of mainstream comics as part of the WildStorm line and drops them into an environment skewing closer to the traditional DCU and we see how both affect one another. Cornell is create at brewing a strange but satisfying cocktail with strange moon eating monsters and angry towns come to life as excavated by a recast Authority, relocated Martian Manhunter, and an eclectic cast of newcomers. Cornell excels at building worlds, and here he gets to take that mandate a step further, rising to the challenge with aplomb.

SWAMP THING: RAISE THEM BONES
The other new DC horror staple that’s giving me good chills and more great work from Scott Snyder, who pays homage to the classic Alan Moore run on Swamp Thing and what came after but gets the opportunity to explore it from a whole new spin with Alec Holland as active protagonist rather than buried subconscious influence, an advantage he takes full advantage of. The ideas Snyder has come up with as far as gross new threats add to a vast tapestry begun in those seminal stories, and Yanick Paquette’s harsh, heavy lines provide the perfect style to convey the beauty of nature as well as its destructive force, plus the sick torture inflicted on these poor characters.

ULTIMATE COMICS ULTIMATES BY JONATHAN HICKMAN VOL. 1
Speaking of writers making everything old new again, witness Jonathan Hickman capturing the widescreen majesty of Mark Millar’s original Ultimates but swiveling the camera at just the right moments to provide a new spin and open up the universe. Hickman’s first issue started out with swaggering Nick Fury, cool as ever, ready to take on gods, and ended with a note of doubt in the Ultimates’ leader’s eye that told you the rules have changed. In the new Ultimate Comics Universe, Fury, Iron Man and even Thor have to work that much harder and are paying harsher prices for their hubris while the likes of Hawkeye and others need to step up. Hickman has made the threats bigger and brought the heroes down to Earth in a way that breathes new life. It doesn’t hurt that nobody draws epic like Esad Ribic, whose work alongside colorist Dean White is breathtaking, from a city full of gods to the aforementioned moment where Nick Fury realizes he’s only human.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN: DEATH OF SPIDER-MAN
After over a decade of writing Peter Parker in the Ultimate Universe, Brian Michael Bendis gave his “baby” a wrenching, emotional and utterly heroic sendoff. Ultimate Spider-Man as it was had in my mind certainly not run out of steam, and indeed the “Ultimate Aunt May Boarding House for Super Heroes” made for some of my favorite stories over the last couple years; thus, the pressure was on if Bendis wanted to take out a character still in his prime, and I believe he delivered. This story has all the action, humor and life lessons that were the hallmark of Ultimate Spider-Man, but more than anything it’s about the relationships among the extraordinary supporting cast Bendis has built, the ties that bind them as close as family, and how much they’re willing to fight for one another, Peter most of all. Mark Bagley back on art, sharp as ever, was icing on the cake. I’m enjoying Miles Morales’ early adventures as the new Spider-Man under Bendis’ pen, but he’s got a tough act to follow to be sure.

UNCANNY X-FORCE: THE DARK ANGEL SAGA, BOOK ONE
There is no story I followed with more rapt anticipation this year than the Dark Angel Saga, salivating over each installment as it was the pinnacle of serial super hero storytelling for me in 2011. Rick Remender is a genius and I do believe Uncanny X-Force to be among his finest work, telling the story of a team doing the dirty work other good guys don’t want to touch; what shatters the cliché and also makes them perhaps truer heroes than any others in comics is that they don’t shrug off the awful acts they commit, they’re genuinely haunted, but they keep doing what needs to be done. In the Dark Angel Saga, hard choices come home to roost as Archangel loses control and his teammates must journey to no less than the Age of Apocalypse itself, facing down an evil alternate reality Wolverine and more, in a story remarkably ambitious for being told simply in one monthly series. Remender balances nostalgia and modern sensibilities like a mad chemist, creating an essential X-Men classic in the process. Mark Brooks’ art evokes exactly the feelings of familiarity shattered by change needed and Dean White provides rock solid continuity in the book’s visual appearance with his covers. And this is just the first half of the story!

WOLVERINE: THE BEST THERE IS – CONTAGION
I consider myself a man of fairly refined taste (not at all), but sometimes it’s nice to kick back with pure graphic violence and ridiculous excess, both of which Charlie Huston and Juan Jose Ryp execute with aplomb in Wolverine: Best There Is. It’s an unapologetic string of brutal fights, gross-out moments and crude humor, framed by Wolverine fighting against a bunch of opponents who have healing factors similar to or slightly varied from his own that allow them to do horrible things to one another without repercussions like they were Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote with claws and swords. The first six issues feature a truly vile villain named Contagion who I think could be a fixture given how simultaneously impressive and repulse Huston makes him. Ryp is uniquely qualified to provide the visual window for this grind house flick of a comic, taking a horror background and channeling it perfectly to super heroes.

X-MEN: FF
In the shadow of larger events, Victor Gischler put together this fun, action-packed little four-issue yarn about the X-Men and Future Foundation going through a portal in the Bermuda Triangle to another dimensions where they team up with Skull the Slayer and fight a bunch of aliens. It’s Comics 101 as Gischler puts together an enjoyable adventure that has the right amount of character moments—great stuff between “reformed” Magneto and Doctor Doom—and humor between fights and twists to create a story with heart that stands nicely on its own. Jorge Molina steps up his game huge on art, drawing some beautiful heroes, male and female alike, and exotic landscapes galore.

X-MEN: SCHISM
Jason Aaron has spent a few years now writing Wolverine and the X-Men have shown up now and again, but he had a pretty big assignment for his first regular go with the team, and I’d say he proved his chops quite nicely. What I like about Schism is that Aaron writes Cyclops and Wolverine as two guys with opposite but legitimate points and he’s smart about giving each a valid argument; your guts tells you Wolvie is right to want to keep mutant children off the front lines, but if you’re being pragmatic, it’s hard to argue Cyke’s stance that an endangered species needs every soldier it can get. It’s a solid battle both philosophically and eventually physically that could carry the entire story if need be, but Aaron overachieves with a deviously cool new Hellfire Club of spoiled brats that I’m happy to see have carried over into Wolverine & The X-Men with other elements of this story such as Kid Omega. As for the art—it’s Carlos Pacheco, Frank Cho, Daniel Acuna, Alan Davis and Adam Kubert jamming, so it’s pretty tough to complain.

X-MEN/STEVE ROGERS: ESCAPE FROM THE NEGATIVE ZONE
There’s an old school feel to this over-sized three-parter written by James Asmus dropping the X-Men in the Negative Zone and pitting them against Blastaar hearkening back to the days when team-ups and Annuals were a big deal in and of themselves, not just because they lead into the next big event. Steve Rogers coming to save the day comes off like a feel good moment and the story itself is a nice bit of standalone cinematic storyline. Asmus also does nice work furthering the dynamic between Cyclops and Hope, exploring Rogers’ relationship with the X-Men, and having fun with the offbeat pairing of Namor and Doctor Nemesis. The art is top notch across the board, particularly Ibraim Roberson’s turn, which looks as if he sculpted the figures out of wood and placed them on the page.

XOMBI
John Rozum and Frazer Irving’s Xombi is just wonderful and weird; it’s wonderfully weird. It’s intelligent and there were times I had to go back over what I had just read to fully understand it, but I never felt completely left in the dark. It’s a musing on humanity, religion, friendship and love couched in a quest adventure with super powered nuns and spooky golem creatures; I could keep going on about the story, but frankly writing a sentence like the one I just wrote usually suffices for my money to unpack the appeal. As always, Irving’s work is like nobody else in comics; he has a unique approach that brings sensibilities of fine art to the page and instill Xombi with a pedigree that makes it stand out even more than it already did—which was a lot.

Brenda Starr...The Rest of The Story!

[*NOTE:* Apologies to Paul Harvey.]

What bummer news: Brenda Starr is ending its 70-year newspaper run on January 2nd.


We don't really talk about newspaper strips that much...or ever...on this blog, but when I was young, reading the funnies in the paper was as big a part of my comics diet as the scattered issues of Batman I'd nab up at 7-Eleven or the Uncle Scrooges that the restaurant up the road kept behind the counter. What I'm saying is I'd read them every chance I got.

The comics section in our hometown paper The Flint Journal was really heavy on the traditional gag cartoons – the Sunday page anchored my entire life by Peanuts, Garfield and Calvin & Hobbes. The rest of the section on any day displaying a lot of funny animals and Crankshaft or whatever. But throughout the paper in odd places, they'd put the more "realistic" strips. Ones with people drawn in stiff poses standing around Miami hotel rooms and the like. The Sports Page usually had Gil Thorp tucked away somewhere. Mark Trail made the odd appearance in the Personals.

And Brenda Starr ran in the Op/Ed. I read that strip because I read all the comics, but it stood out because...well, it wasn't my thing. It was "the girl strip" but held this odd place in my mind as being...more important for some vague vague reason? I remember a plot line where Brenda was in Washington D.C. busting up some crooked politicians. Then some crazy run about a fashion show robbery. That strip kept half a hand on whatever passed for "realness" when I was 11, and I always had a soft spot for it.

So yeah...I was bummed to hear its wrapping up, even though I'm encouraged its because the voluntary retirement of current creators Mary Schmich and June Brigman. Beyond that, I wanted to mark its end here without knowing how.


But hey! Whaddaya know? I logged on to Twitter tonight, and got a little slice of history thrown my way thanks to all-around comics professor and engaging as all get out writer Dan Slott!

Here's what Dan had to say:

My little known comic lineage: My great grandfather's sister was Molly Slott, who broke thru a tough "glass ceiling" in the 40's to run the Chicago Tribune's feature section, where she oversaw popular comic strips of the day. Molly Slott's biggest achievement was championing a comic that the-power-that-be didn't want to produce because it was *gasp* created by a woman. That strip was about a girl outlaw named-

-Brenda Starr. Molly made a suggestion tho, that maybe the lead character should be a reporter instead. ;-) This January will mark the last adventure of BRENDA STARR: REPORTER, a strip started back in June 30, 1940. Not a bad run, right? :-)

And now you know...THE REST OF THE STORY! More here.

Cheers to Dale Messick, Ramona Fradon, Linda Sutter and June Brigman!!!

Obscure New Warriors!

To know Dan Slott is to love him.

Seriously, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of chatting with Dan even for a minute or seen him on a panel at a convention, you know what I mean. His enthusiasm and flat out glee for what he does is undeniable and infectious. Dan can’t help but get worked up about what he’s writing or what he’s reading or just being two seats down from Stan Lee, and not in a “look what I’ve accomplished” sort of way, but in a “holy crap, I’m living my dream and loving it!” kind of way.

He’s one of my wife’s favorite creators and she’s never even read anything he’s done, she’s just met him a bunch of times.

When we were doing Marvel.com Live at New York Comic Con, we had a family of cosplayers with a little Wolverine up during Dan’s interview time, and I swear getting to talk with that little boy about why he loved Spider-Man was better for Dan than winning an Eisner. He’s just a joy.

So it’s with great regret that I pick a nit with Mr. Slott, however, as Antonio Banderas would say…but I must.

See, yet another thing I love about Dan is he digs the New Warriors perhaps as much as I do, and as a successful comic book writer, he has the power to ensure they continue to appear throughout the Marvel Universe (whereas I was unable to get Sprocket into any of my War of Kings: Warriors one-shots or Werewolf By Night short story), an ability he has wielded with awesome results from She-Hulk to Avengers: The Initiative.

But y’see, while Dan has been good enough to keep the likes of Justice, Rage and even Hindsight Lad in circulation, I must take exception on behalf of several lesser-known (yes, lesser-known than Hindsight Lad) Warriors who continue to languish in limbo while The Slottster continues to insist that Slapstick joined off panel (to be fair, he eventually showed the flashback in an Initiative issue and it was pretty cool).

So Dan and any other creators possibly named Christos Gage or Sean McKeever or Jay Faerber who may be reading (but not you, Todd Nauck…ok, you too), I beg of you to find a home for these forgotten Heroes of the 90’s…


HELIX
A bastard child of the Spider-Man Clone Saga, this dude I mostly remember because he had the Daken long hair Mohawk a decade earlier and because his costume consisted primarily of the pads/pouches everybody had in the 90’s but as part of his skin. His powers were similar to Darwin from X-Factor, where he basically just adapted to whatever was thrown at him (so the Scarlet Spider figured out how to beat him when he was initially introduced and on a rampage by telling everybody to just stop attacking the poor guy). Also, Turbo was teaching him to speak English (he was Hispanic). He never actually joined the Warriors proper, just hung out on some missions, but I mostly want him back to see how an artist of today would depict that look.


POWERHOUSE
For a minute I thought we hadn’t seen Power Pack outside of their excellent all-ages book and Julie showing up in Loners, but then I remembered that Jonathan Hickman is using Alex over in Fantastic Four, so this is a moot point. Still, I loved Alex Power as part of the New Warriors, from his siblings being pissed at him for constantly stealing their powers to him apologizing to Nova for taking the names of one of his old bad guys (he was originally Powerpax, which 13-year-old Ben thought was the greatest codename ever).


TIMESLIP
Mr. Slott actually did use Timeslip during Civil War in She-Hulk and apparently either Jim McCann or Todd Nauck snuck her into an X-Men story in the same Holiday Special as my aforementioned Werewolf By Night epic, but we need some more Rina Patel in the Marvel Universe. I thought it was cool and unique the way she had a potentially bad ass power like being able to jump through time, but also a slow learning curve in first figuring out how to control and then use it offensively; she was also a pretty decent and not over-the-top Indian character, so that’s not a bad thing. She’d be cool doing a guest spot in New Mutants, or maybe in Avengers Academy since her and Speedball had a thing for a whole second.


THE OTHER TURBO
Mike Jeffries was a whole bundle of untapped potential. He was a comics fanboy who found a super hero suit and then had to deal with being awful at using it and his super-hot but completely platonic female being awesome at it—talk about your empathetic character for readers! His death was actually really gut-busting and well-written by Evan Skolnick (who deserves a hat tip on this list as the co-creator of Timeslip, primary shepherd of Helix and the guy who carried the baton passed by Fabian Nicieza for a solid 20-plus issues), but I’d love to see a flashback or two.


SILHOUETTE
Y’know, I actually never really got behind Silhouette despite her having like 50 issues to grow on me, plus she had a way more significant role in Civil War than half the Marvel Universe, so let’s move on to…


THE OTHER SPEEDBALL
…the time-travelling second Speedball who wasn’t Speedball! Darrion Grobe cloned Speedball’s body and then used future technology to friggin’ live inside it so he could pose as him and stop his own crazy time-travelling dad Advent from destroying the world by dying in Robbie Baldwin’s place and saving Ben Reilly’s life in the process. I have no idea what I just wrote, but Darrion (another Skolnick creation) was pretty dope in an insane way and ended up being alive in an idyllic future with his reformed old man, so I’d love to see him return to the present and yell at Speedball for being emo. Yours for free, Gage!

An Open Letter to Dan Slott about Japanese Spider-Man

Once upon a time—about a year and a half ago, I think—I was introduced to the wonder and whimsy known as Supaidaman; or, as some call it, Toei Spider-Man; or, as we at Marvel.com call it since we don’t know how to pronounce things, Japanese Spider-Man.

If you didn’t click on the helpful link in the paragraph above I spent tens of seconds creating, Supaidaman was a series of 41 episodes, each 30 minutes in length, produced between 1978 and 1979 by the Japanese television company Toei. It centers on a young Japanese motorcycle daredevil named Takuya Yamashiro, whose father, a “space archaeologist” (an extremely specialized field), discovers a UFO. The evil Professor Monster and is Iron Cross Army also discover the ship and want to use it to rule the universe.

It’s more or less here that my knowledge of Japanese Spider-Man runs a bit dry because while we spent 41 weeks streaming the episodes of Marvel.com (and you can still find them there now free of charge), my participation was limited more or less staring with my mouth agape as Harry Go uploaded installments with titles like “Mysterious World! The Man Lives to Fate” and “Pro Wrestler Samson’s Tears” to the site and singing along to the show’s theme song on occasion with John Cerilli.

I was able to pierce together than unlike our Spider-Man, the Japanese incarnation got his powers from a wizard in a cave, changed into his costume using a magical wristwatch, shot some rope that was his “web” out of a little pistol and piloted a giant robot called Leopardon against giant monsters at the end of each episode in sequences which set the precedent for every similar show to come including Power Rangers.

Also, Harry keeps on his computer an image of Japanese Spider-Man firing an automatic weapon that Cerilli wouldn’t let him use for a banner on the site. Crazy stuff happened on that show.

Anyhow, a few weeks into Japanese Spider-Man’s run on Marvel.com and I got an excited phone call from none other than Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott. Now exuberant phone calls from a near-breathless Dan Slott are a welcome and semi-frequent part of my life I’ve come to accept and cherish, but this correspondence yielded particularly interesting revelations.

Dan Slott is a nut for Toei Spider-Man. He watched every episode in Japanese and later picked up any recordings he could find with sub-titles so he could figure out what the heck he was watching. He was over the moon when we started streaming the show since we had the whole series with the English translation running at the bottom of the screen.

From memory, Dan told me all about his favorite episode, “Fearful Hit Tune! Song Dancing Murder Rock,” in which Professor Monster creates an evil version of a popular Japanese boy band in order to hypnotize the country’s youth and Spider-Man saves the day by destroying the creatures with a rifle-mounted dune buggy.

Yep.

Anyways, I’m not sure Dan Slott is reading this blog right now—well, I’m reasonably sure he will, because I’m going to e-mail him the link—but if he is, I have a challenge for him.

Mr. Slott, lo those many months ago when that fateful call took place, you and I vowed to somehow get Toei Spider-Man into the pages of an actual Spider-Man comic. No, I have not checked out whether this can legally be done, but that is what Tom Brennan is for. I throw down the gauntlet to you once again, sir, to import this magical world of evil boy bands and Spider-Man piloting Voltron here to America and back out into the world for consumption by the masses. I don’t care if you reveal Professor Monster as the mastermind behind The Gauntlet or just peer pressure Chris Gage until he puts Leopardon in Avengers Academy, this is your destiny.

Also, I have read that you now write Spider-Man video games as well—specifically a Spider-Man video game in which multiple incarnations of the character from various realities feature—need I say more?

Until next time: “Kakero! Spider-Man!”