Best of Comics 5/13: Guardian and Captains

I’ve been quiet of the comics front for a bit, don’t expect posts regularly but if something fantastic catches my eye I’ll throw it up here.  For now I may stick to #1’s, it’s hard to review an ongoing book without major spoilers.

Guardians of the Galaxy #1 (Marvel, Abnett/Landing):  Marvel needs to lock these two writers down ASAP.  My favorite title of the Annihilation: Conquest miniseries was the Starlord series; it kind of like the Dirty Dozen on LSD with aliens and robots.  You had some great 3rd String (or worse) characters given life and turned into something completely fun.  Needless to say I was a little disappointed when I learned Guardians of the Galaxy would replace a number of those characters with the cosmic "A-listers": Drax, Adam Warlock, Gamora and Quasar (plus the returning Rocket Racoon and Starlord himself).  I shouldn’t have been worried though, I should have just trusted in the Abnett/Landing magic.

The dialogue rocks here, especially in the action scenes, as characters banter and snipe at one another.  Groot makes an appearance, essentially as a twig in a pot, and despite having speech balloons too small to read, manages some great imagined lines (likely proclaiming himself Groot).  Mantis makes a return, which made me happy, as the quirky pyrokinetic celestial madonna was one of my favorites from Starlord and Conquest.  Here, as usual, she is equal parts cute and creepy.

Paul Pelletair’s art gives things a nice, dynamic flair and his subtle management of the background, in particular the exterior of the Universal Church of Truth ship (Battlefleet Gothic anyone?  Given Abnett’s ties to Games Workshop, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was deliberate), are worth taking note of.  The team doesn’t have a uniform per se but each costume notably employs the same shade of red as a highlight color (except for Quasar where it is dominant) that actual gives the team a nice bit of cohesion.  Pelletair’s action scenes are top notch, never muddled and never static.  His art complements the writing duo to a T.

Great action, great dialog, talking dogs, hot alien babes, and Lovecraftian horrors from Beyond!  It’s like they reached into my head and pulled out the perfect comic!  Recommended times 10.

—-Links
      Line of Fire Review w/ preview pages
      Weeklycomicbookreview.com Review

Captain Britain and MI: 13 #1 (Marvel, Cornell):  This is what a tie-in should be!  Focusing on Great Britain just after Secret Invasion #1 it focuses mainly on the titular character and some former members of Excalibur/Avengers Pete Wisdom and Black Knight.  Oh and a skull in the shape of John Lennon.  Called John most often he is, perhaps, a surprisingly interesting character defecting from the "fundamentalist" Skrull invaders to assist Wisdom and Captain Britain in protecting the Siege Perilous (apparently Marvel’s gateway to faerie and all things magic).  Wisdom and Black Knight get their chances to shine as well.  Black Knight is busy throwing quips like a leather clad Spidey which he explains are a means to stave off the murderous urges of his magic sword.  Wisdom, a character I don’t know too well, is brutal, quiet and badass as hell with his flaming knife things. That brings us to the titular Captain Britain.  I was never a big Excalibur fan so I don’t know too much about the hero, though I get the impression he has as convoluted a back story as anyone in the 616.  In the book he actually acknowledges his own second-string status, and his comment about wanting to be more like a certain other Captain was a nice touch.

The book is most interesting in terms of plot.  Rather than use the Secret Invasion as a means to push the book down our throats it seems Cornell decided to use it as a backdrop to tell a completely different story.  It’s too early to say for sure but given the branding of the invading Skrulls as fundamentalists (not to mention a skrull as John Lennon), the presence of magic, Captain Britain’s musing on being a better hero, and the usually smarmy Wisdom receiving some kind of vision I expect Cornell will be telling a tale that strays a little from the normal superhero fare.  While Cornell is weaving the deliberately mythical element into his story, one might think this would come off as a bit pretentious, but Cornell manages to balance the mythic with a restrained humor that never veer too much towards the silly. 

Kirk’s pencils really enhance the action scenes and he has a sense of action that is extremely reminiscent of Japanese manga and anime; in particular with his use of speed lines to depict motion.  Black Night’s introduction could have come off as static but Kirk’s deft use of speed lines plus the subtle blurring of the background creating a startling sense of dynamicism.  I’m not sure how Brian Reber’s colors will play out in the long run but their rather sombers tones here give the book a dark air that could drag as the series rolls on.  Regardless the book featured strong art all-around and the choice of Hitch as a cover artists isn’t a far stretch from Kirk’s own style.

All in all this was a great read that surpassed Secret Invasion #1 as a first issue.  I look forward to seeing where this book goes in the future and am happy to add it to my pull list.

–Links
      Line of Fire Review w/ preview pages.
      Comic Book Bulletin Review.
      Weeklycomicbookreview.com Review

Technorati Tags     Guardians of the Galaxy,Captain Britain and MI 13,Marvel Comics

Review: Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell

Ragamuffin is the sequel to Buckell’s previous novel Crystal Rain though that might not be apparent in the beginning, especially to anyone who hasn’t read Cyrstal Rain, a fact that might cause a problem when the reader hits the middle of the book and the narrative shifts from space to the previous novel’s Nagagada (or New Anagada if you prefer).  The plot initially focuses on Nashara a badass ladystyles sent from her homeworld Chimson to generally kick ass and deliver a secret weapon that will hopefully help liberate the masses of oppressed humans from non-human/alien overlords.

The novel started a bit slow, which I think was intentional, since as a reader I shared in Nashara’s sence of being trapped on a world she didn’t want to be in.  Once she hits open space though, gets a chance to really open up and kick the aforementioned ass, things really shine.  In a particularly brilliant action scene Nashara uses a minigun in a rather unorthodox, though fairly awesome, manner and later, in the novel’s final climatic battle, Nashara shines once again with brilliant use of her secret weapon.  Buckell introduces other new interesting aspects like the mind-controlling Satraps and certain revelations regarding the Teotl, both of which may or may not be related to one another.

The previously mentioned shift in narrative came right as I was starting to really enjoy Nashara so the shift back to Pepper, John and company really killed the pace for me a bit.  While I like the characters here I can’t help but feel this was the weaker section of the book.  The Jerome(John’s Son)/Xipilli element is what really brought things down for me.  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t badly written, in fact Xipilli was actually quite a tragic character and what he was trying to do in the novel was actually quite noble but both it felt rather extraneous in terms of the novels actual plot and story development.  It did lead to an important moment for Jerome towards the end of the novel and did reinforce the overarching theme portraying to what levels aliens have caused humans to sink to but regardless detracted from what I felt was the more interesting and better written parts of the book.

Regardless this wasn’t enough to stop me reading and the last 75 to 100 pages were more than enough to make up for any chaff along the way.  In many ways the final scenes reminded a bit of the space battle from Return of the Jedi: a disparate alliance fighting an implaccable enemy in an against all odds scenario; thrilling stuff.  Overall, given the greater emphasis on action and overall fantastic world-building I’d rank Ragamuffin slightly above it’s predecessor.  Highly recommanded title for all sci-fi fans who enjoy a well-developed, colorful world that is at the same time familiar and refreshingly original populated by unique and, for the most part, universally appealing characters.

Zoho w/ Google

In case you didn’t know you can now use your Google account to sign-in/up over at Zoho.com.  In fact, assuming this works correctly, that is exactly how I published this post.  Huzzah!