In my ongoing quest to find other people to generate content for me, I opened myself up for “mini-review” requests of comics on Twitter:

Andrew Turnbull wants to know what I think about IDW’s Doctor Who books:
I actually had high hopes for these, but I’ve largely been disappointed. Bear in mind, I regularly devote blog space to talking about the New Adventures books, and IDW’s Who comics come off primarily as continuity-porn for obsessive fans. They didn’t have to be this way, not with the writing talent they’ve attracted, but they’ve not been able to attract artistic talent to the books of the same caliber. The best book so far has been the one that Paul Grist did, and even in that case it required a healthy knowledge of Torchwood continuity and at least two classic series stories. In general, I find that the Dan McDaid comics in Doctor Who Magazine are far better. But then, I’ve also bought all of the IDW Who books, with one hopefully obvious exception, so take that into consideration.

Chris Williams asks about Teen Titans:
In most of its incarnations, this is a book that frequently feels like it’s just about to get really good, and never quite gets there. I know that the 60s series has it’s defenders, but I find it utterly unreadable. The Wolfman/Perez era book was very good “superheroes as soap opera” material, but it hasn’t aged well. At all. And the current series…well, as I said, it always feels like it’s about to get good, but never quite seems to fulfill that promise.
It’s also the series that, more than any other, seems to be responsible for more retcons and restarts of DC continuity than any other. First you’ve got Haney not understanding that Wonder Girl was supposed to be Wonder Woman’s Superboy, not her Robin. Then you’ve got the aging of the characters under Wolfman and Perez while their mentors are in stasis in the home books, resulting in a situation where either Tim Drake was Robin for longer than Dick Grayson was, or Tim was only Robin for the most eventful two weeks in the DCU. The end result is this gaggle of characters that continually undermine any attempts to reconcile DC continuity into one cohesive whole, and rather than just abandon the idea of streamlining the continuity (my preferred solution) they try to fix it, only making the problem worse, because now we have to explain how Speedy can age twenty years while Green Arrow has only aged three.

K. Low is curious about 20th Century Boys:
Of the three Naoki Urasawa works I’ve read so far, this is both my favorite and the best constructed. I like mysteries and thrillers. I like works that are both entertaining and ask me to do mental work. Monster starts well, but at about the half-way mark there are so many macguffins, red herrings, plots, counter-plots and story threads that the work starts to meander from trying to juggle all this, and Johan’s actual plan ends up feeling very anti-climatic, especially since almost everything we learn in the second half of the series forces us to reconsider the information we were given in the first half. Pluto has some beautiful characterizations, but the right-wing anti-robot plots feel like a reworking of material from Monster, and the heart of the story is still robots fighting each other, no matter how much existential gilt is built up over that.
Boys, in contrast, feels like the work of a fully matured artist, and the structure gives Urasawa room to meander and still advance the story. It may just be that, after Monster, I’ve learned to spot Urasawa’s particular slights-of-hand when it comes to thriller plotting, but the central mystery’s resolution does feel a little obvious (you all realize that we’ve already seen Friend’s face, right?) leaving motivation as the real burning question, one that could use a little more development. To be fair, at this point in the series, that’s a very minor complaint.

Jeff Morris queries on ps238 and Agents of Atlas:
ps238 is probably Pete’s favorite book, and it’s one I enjoy a great deal as well. I like the cartooning style Aaron Williams uses, and I like the way he balances humor and the feeling that there are actual big risks at stakes for the book’s cast of kid super-heroes. It’s largely like what I wish books like Teen Titans and New Mutants were like. Williams is also writing horror-series North 40 for Wildstorm, and I’ve been enjoying that as well, and it also has a nice balance of humor and genre-appropriate elements.
I’m reading more Marvel books now than at any point other than my early adolescent descent into X-Fandom, and Agents of Atlas is one of the reasons why (along with Incredible Hercules and Guardians of the Galaxy). I’ve been frustrated by the frequent interjection of cross-over nonsense I care nothing about into the title, as I think it hamstrings the book; this should be a low continuity title, not something in the heart of this “Dark Reign” nonsense. Naturally, I’m frustrated that it seems to be struggling to find an audience, but given that Marvel’s core audience would rather have never-ending X-Men cross-overs and three ongoing Deadpool titles, I’ll chalk it up as yet another sign that we get the comics industry we deserve.

Mr. Masterson asks if I ever read Enigma:
Yes, I did, and I liked it a lot at the time. It’s the primary reason why anything with Peter Milligan or Duncan Fegredo’s name attached to it gets at least a look from me. But the last time I reread it, I felt that it hasn’t quite lived up to the reputation it has garnered over the years. It’s still a very good book, but I think it was overshadowed by Morrison and Quitely’s Flex Mentallo, which covered similar ground better and more succinctly. I probably should reread it again, with a specific eye towards the gay content.

Mike Sterling is a trouble-maker, and wants me to talk about Ultimate Spider-Man:
It’s the best Spider-Man book since J.M. DeMatteis left Marvel for greener pastures. Which is a bit like being the world’s tallest midget. It suffers horribly both from Bendis’ tics as a writer and the general schizophrenia of the Ultimate line. Bendis is Bendis, you hire him because his style is what you want, but his Spider-Man stories feel horribly drawn out and padded. And that Ultimate writers feel the need to rehash regular Marvel stories and characters, in a more “extreme” fashion (taken to the grotesque max in the execrable Ultimatum series), rather than just actually create new stories and characters based on the core properties, just killed the value of the line in my eyes.

Mark Clapham asks about Grell’s Green Arrow run:
As far as attempts to tell “mature” and adult-orientated stories set in an existing super-hero universe, as opposed to stand-alone works like Watchmen or Bratpack, Mike Grell’s run on Green Arrow is probably about the best. It’s got some issues, particularly involving the level of brutality, and it’s arguably misogynistic, but compared to disastrous mis-steps, like Batman: Year One or Marvel’s multiple attempts at an “adult” comic, it turned out fairly well. It’s no coincidence that Grell’s departure from the title marked the start of it’s spiral into merciful cancellation.

Doktor Avalanche requests Nextwave:
Fun, and overly mean-spirited, but it was the book whose (modest) success gave Marvel the clue that the was an audience for lighter super-hero stories than what they’d been providing. It feels horribly dated already, though.

Joe Fourhman wants my opinion on Ambush Bug and Zoo Crew:
Ambush Bug is funny in very small doses, especially when those doses are spread out. Yes, I get that the joke is that it’s not a very funny joke, but still. The “look at me, look at me, aren’t I wacky” style of humor becomes very wearying.
I loved Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew when I was a kid, and I liked the recent mini that revisted the concept well enough, and I would really like DC to put out a nice collection of the original material. Especially as I never did complete a run of The Oz/Wonderland War. But the pun-based humor would probably be a hard sell today to anyone but die-hard comic fans who read the books when they first came out. (Did you see that Marvel is doing a trade of some of the STAR comics first few issues? Who do they think wants that?)

“nschaubi” offers up The Killing Joke on the sacrificial altar:
In the long run, it was probably a mistake. While it’s still a masterfully crafted story, and Brian Bolland’s art is exceptional, the overall trend towards “darkening” Batman did serious damage, I feel, to the character and the comics industry as a whole. It was an attempt to chase a post-adolescent audience’s brief, media-driven flirtation with comics, but it froze out younger and more casual audiences. The audiences comics really needed to grow as a medium. It’s only lately, with the The Brave and The Bold cartoon and Grant Morrison’s Batman work, that a serious attempt to rehabilitate Batman from the brooding, angsty loner with mommy issues has been made.

“hovy” wants a take on the recent Superman Annual #14:
I seem to be in the minority amongst my friends, but I actually enjoy what’s been going on with the Superman books lately. Supergirl finally seems to have a reason to exist, I like the Mon-El storyline, and while I think that Nightwing and Flamebird are better off as back-up features, I actually do like the take on Kryptonian politics and culture it provides. But I’m weird like that, in that I actually prefer a Superman status-quo where he’s not the last living Kryptonian, and I like the idea of him as a reluctant bridge between two cultures more than I like him one-upping Batman over whose childhood was more tragic. The recent annual was a nice look at the background of Mon-El and the Daxamites in the new continuity, and the revelation that Mon-El has a human ancestor offers some interesting possibilities for the book.

Laurie Cubbison wants to know what I think about the end of Fruits Basket:
I enjoyed Fruits Basket when it started. But I’ve only kept up with it out of inertia, and I’m actively avoiding any other manga work by the same creator. The primary problem is the same one that lots of manga titles have: there’s just not enough story to justify the sheer number of volumes devoted to it. I wanted a light humor series about people who turn into animals in embarrassing situations. I got teen girls getting weepy and lots of people feeling sorry for themselves.

Anna wants to know about what manga I’m reading:
I’ve already mentioned 20th Century Boys and Pluto…I’ve actually slowed down quite a bit from the amount of manga reading I was doing a few years ago, as publishers have gone out of business and series have concluded. I’m reading MPD Psycho and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, and those seem to be filling my thriller quotient nicely. I’ve been enjoying Inubaka quite a bit, and I’m genuinely surprised that it doesn’t seem to get more attention. Cute girls and cute doggies, people! What is not to love? For action titles I’ve been picking up a number of the Shonen Jump Advanced books, Gin-Tama and Reborn for their utter bizarreness, and Muhyo and Roji’s Supernatural Bureau of Investigation for more straight-forward adventures. Kurohime is a guilty pleasure. It’s unashamedly a T&A book, and if Chris Sims didn’t have the “so bad you love them” blogging market cornered, I would probably go into detailed discussions of this book. I’m still reading xxxHolic and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles, as I am a big girl and I love CLAMP to pieces, and the super continuity wank heavy nature of those books is strangely fulfilling. (These are also the only two manga titles that Pete reads, and he’s a bigger continuity nerd than I am…so there’s your cross-over market potential.) I also really like Wallflower, and again, I’m surprised it’s not a title that gets more attention, as it feels like such a refreshing counterpoint to all the shojo books with complete doormats as the protagonists. Sayonara, Zetsubo-Sensei and Detroit Metal City are good black comedies, if you’re into that, though both rather suffer from the fact that they only have one joke each and every installment is just a minor variation on that joke.
I’m looking forward to the eventual release of some of Viz’s online manga in book format, particularly Rin-Ne, though I hope it doesn’t become as interminable as Inu-Yasha and Ranma 1/2 became.

If you made a request on Twitter and I didn’t respond, don’t fret…it just means I never read that comic and have no opinion to offer.
Feel free to post any further requests in the comments.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 12:01 AM and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.