The Web Haunt of Ryan K Lindsay

This week’s comic haul was an interesting group. Overall I must say it was pretty good, kept me interested, showed me pretty stuff, and I enjoyed it. But there are levels to my enjoyment. Let’s walk through those levels, shall we?

Strange Tales #2
An anthology, a mixed, bag, surely there has to be something I’ll enjoy. Yeah, there was, and for heaps of different reasons. The highlight just might be Jonathon Hickman’s propaganda posters for Galactus’ Herald recruitment drive. The posters are well put together, beautiful in fact, I’d put any of them in a frame and up on my walls. The final section, following the Black Widow, is straight and very cool. I liked it, and the different, more lined, art approach was appreciated. There’s a great M.O.D.O.K. story that shows him making a new best friend, and killing him instantly but still having a great time with him. There’s a crazy Iron Man story that pits him against two meat-based villains who you think are crazy but they’re nothing compared to the giant Dwight Eisenhower that comes after. There’s Ben Grimm growing a Chia-’stache but my highlight might just be Brother Voodoo. Jericho Drumm goes up against drugs, and wins with a syringe to the eye. Just look at the art below if you don’t believe me. I love that this sort of thing gets a run, the old style of art does jerk on that special place in my heart.

Resurrection #4
Good friend, and great artist, Justin Greenwood does a great job on the art duties, but I love his page layouts. He runs the panels around like they’re players on a sports field, it’s great. I’m not certain that I like the idea of splitting the issue, 16 pages for start, 8 pages for finish. It seems to make it collectively feel so much shorter for it all, even though that’s 24 pages for all those maths fans out there. I’d rather just see 24 full pages that push the story forward, but I do appreciate that Marc Guggenheim is using the back matter to flesh out previous events, or to salt things in for the future. I’d rather it all just happened together. I am enjoying this series, still, but there needs to be some wicked moment that blows my hair back to keep me salivating.

Spider-Woman #2
This took me like twenty seconds to read. Half of the issue, eleven pages, are dedicated to Jessica Drew watching a Madripoor cop get shot, and then chasing the car that committed the crime onto the roof of the building, watching the car then blow away a bunch of other cops, then seeing who is in the car. Eleven pages to do all of that. I just feel cheated. Alex Maleev’s art is spectacular, and I love what he does with so much, but it also looks like Bendis has simply fallen so far in love with Maleev’s work that he wants to leave pages upon pages open for Maleev to just fill the space, even if it means the same thing from different angles. It comes across as lazy, and like it’s all filler because they wanted the last page reveal of Viper to be the last page and they didn’t have enough to happen in between to fill a comic. This is two from two for slightly disappointing for this series, and I have to admit if the entire first arc runs this slowly that I might just drop it. Bendis/Maleev have my vote because of Daredevil, but I won’t bend over forever. This might just be a vanity project after all, which would be so disappointing.

And the win for the week comes from:

Cowboy Ninja Viking #1
I was pumped for this comic, as some of you may remember from my . I picked up the first issue and was really happy with how much more I liked it than I thought I would. This is a pretty good first issue. It sets up the main character, Duncan, and the way the comic will be dealing with his issue (he has three people in his head, a cowboy, a ninja, and a viking), when each character within him speaks they get their own panel and their words are shown by their personalised speech bubbles, six-shooter, katana blade, and axe. It’s clever and I didn’t think it was overplayed at all. I saw one reviewer say it was more annoying that when Deadpool talks in the different coloured captions. I like how Duncan is split into different characters, with different ways of speaking.

The series sounds like it should be a joke, a bunch of facebook groups fighting, bit it goes above that and really crafts its own mythology and mise en scenes. It’s got depth, and it looks like there is plenty more for us to enjoy as the story slowly comes to us. I would like nothing more than to see lots of people give this series a go. try something a bit different.

As for the story of the issue, it really jets along. It’s only 23 pages but I thought it had to have been much more. A lot is packed in, and it’s a little convoluted, but that kinda revs my engine, I know I am going to reread this issue before I hit issue #2, and not because I didn’t want to understand it, but because I know I enjoyed it and I want to see what more I can get out of it. There’s lots of characters, and I got an idea about all of them, who they are, and where the fit, and I can see the tip of what’s all going on. And there is plenty more to come.

The ending shows Duncan’s nemesis, who we met at the start of the issue, and we see his three characters too. A pirate, a gladiator, and an oceanographer. Riley Rossmo’s art is absolutely awesome, and I like the use of blue hue instead of complete colouring. A few reviewers have complained, I wonder if they complained when Casanova did a similar thing.

It makes me want to know the names of the cowboy, the ninja, and the viking. I will definitely pick up the next issue of Cowboy Ninja Viking, and hope that it continues to live up to this great first step. I like that Image does a lot of great series that I usually follow in trade, stuff like Casanova, The Walking Dead, Proof, and it’s fun to watch some come in each month, like this, and Viking (no connection, at all). Helps that both look beautiful and come in the golden-age format, which is pretty damn cool. I like when a week gives me a great feeling for being a comic fan.

Posted on October 25th, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: comics