Geoffrey vs. Black Science: How To Fall Forever

Last and certainly not least on my docket of Image Comics collections I ordered and read is Black Science,  written by Rick Remender with art by Matteo Scalera and colours by Dean White.

Black Science is the tale of an anarchist scientist named Grant McKay who creates a device to travel through alternate dimensions for a questionably ethical corporation. During testing of the device, it is sabotaged and McKay, along with his two children, his two lab assistants, his chief of security, and two corporate reps are tossed into an alternate Earth's dimension with no way home and a timer before the machine randomly jumps again.

Kiiiinda like the 90s TV series Sliders.

But Remender has taken a similar premise as Sliders, slammed it into Lost in Space, poured liberal amounts of Venture Brothers all over the resulting mass and cooked it in a 2000AD oven to perfection. Yeah, PERFECTION. This comic was AWESOME.

The first dimension is a bizarre world of fish people riding land eels fighting frogmen with electric tongues all on the backs of giant turtles. The they go to a world where Steampunk Germany is being overrun by an expansionist, supertech Navajo Empire in World War 1. Then a mixed alien semi-Utopia. Then a world where white-haired ape-men possessed by sentient gas clouds are the dominant thing. Mad ideas. Just crazy mad. I loved every page of it.

People die. Horrible people become sympathetic. A Navajo shaman gets hijacked to come along. Awesome stuff. Just a joy to read from start to finish.

Also a joy to look at! Scalera's art reminds me a lot of Brit comic artist Ian Gibson. It feels very different from most American art and brings me back to my childhood roots as a fan of 2000AD. It's lush, dangerous and incredibly imaginative. Part of why this reminds me of Venture Brothers is McKay's design. He looks like he could be The Monarch's or Rusty Venture's brother, with his sharp nose. Ward also looks like Brock Samson's uncle.

Dean White also really comes through with the colours. The opening scene with the fishmen is a rainbow kaleidoscope that just charges up with eyes. Wonderful stuff.

The other part of this that reminds me of Venture Brothers is just the set up. A desperately flawed mad scientist with two kids and a bodyguard. Rusty Venture or Grant McKay? Both! McKay is more rounded and socially active and more dangerous, but I could easily see the world of Black Science living side by side with that of the Venture Brothers. A world informed by crazy sci-fi and pulp tropes, the kind that are the background of a lot of superhero stuff, without the superhero stuff.

I can't wait for the next trade. Being familiar with Remender's long-game thinking due to following his Marvel Comics work, I am very excited to see how far this series goes. I will be aboard for every moment of it.

(PS I wonder if one day Remender will be considered the comic-world George R. R. Martin. No character is safe, man, and it is nice not knowing what to expect beyond the unexpected.)

(PPS HBO, make this show.)

Geoffrey vs. Uncanny Avengers #16

I will one day go into the whole run of Rick Remender's Uncanny Avengers. Not today. Today I bring you one awesome page of badassery, courtesy the Mighty Thor.

I. Care. Not. is pretty awesome (and he said it a couple other times this ish regarding the bad guy's boastful claims). I might have said something like "Now you serve the will of getting your ASS KICKED!" but I am not a warrior poet like Thor.

Anyway, this series is awesome and this page is as incredible a Thor moment as his much lauded "Ultron! We would have words with thee!" from Kurt Busiek's run.

Hey. I was in the middle of reading that run a while ago...I should finish it up!

Art on the first panel: Steve McNiven, inks by John Dell and Jay Leisten, colours by Laura Martin.
Art of the second: George Perez, inks by Al Vey, colours by Tom Smith.

Geoffrey vs. The Infinity Gauntlet

The Infinity Gauntlet was a 1991 Marvel crossover event series that ran for 6 issues. It detailed pretty much one fight by Marvel's top heroes against Thanos, the Mad Titan and cosmic villain who made his big screen debut in the credits of the Avengers motion picture. I forget why I felt like revisiting the series, but I am glad I did cause it is kinda awesome.

It's an important series. While it was not Marvel's first crossover (that would be Secret Wars), it sort of became the model for the "Summer Event Crossover". The big series that once a year every comic touches on in some way. Some of these crossovers have been awesome, some less so, but they sell books so they have continued unabated for decades.

It's also a relevant series because somewhere in the series are the bones of what is likely the plot for Avengers 3. At least that is what is expected by comic fans. If they do go that route (and I am one of those fans that thinks they will) it will be but a very loose adaptation. Infinity Gauntlet's main protagonists are Adam Warlock, as yet un-introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Silver Surfer, rights for film use held by Fox Studios. The story also comes from an era when Iron Man was B-list at best and I can't really imagine a scene in Avengers 3 involving Robert Downy Jr. getting his head ripped off by a female Thanos Real Doll.

Note the blood! Stark's head is totes in the can!

Infinity Gauntlet was written by Jim Starlin, the go to writer for cosmic action in the Mighty Marvel Manner. His affinity for these cosmic level characters shows and the work is a joy to read. A lot of these older comics, while still being very enjoyable, exhibit stark differences in tone and style when compared to modern comics. Infinity Gauntlet holds its own and even feels kind of ahead of its time, with a very decompressed tale told with lots of wide screen action.

This series is really just, as mentioned, ONE FIGHT. It is less than 24 hours of time. Thanos kills half the universe, everybody shows up and eventually curb stomps him (spoiler alert). That's it. But it is 6 issues, 42 pages apiece. That is a lot of story for one fight. It reads really well though. Some of the characterizations are a bit off for the era (Hulk, I am looking at you) and some characters (Gamora, Pip the Troll) seem to only be there to continue Starlin's very long form Cosmic tale of Adam Warlock and Thanos that started long before this series and continues TO THIS DAY.

The art in this series is delicious. The first three issues are by master artist George Perez. Issue 4 is by Perez and Ron Lim. 5 and 6 are just Lim. Inks on the whole series were done by Joe Rubenstein. Perez deserves every accolade he gets. He really knocks it out of the park and I don't really think anyone holds a candle to him when it comes to illustrating group fight scenes. I have to say as well that Ron Lim is maybe a bit of an underrated master himself. I've always liked him and seeing his work here with the hindsight of 23 years, side by side with Perez, it really holds its own. To me, Lim's depiction of Thanos is archetypal, based on this work and on his work in the Silver Surfer series from the same time period.

Man, I wish Marvel could do a Silver Surfer movie based on some of that stuff. It was AWESOME.

Can I talk about colouring for a second?

I was reading the first 12 issues of X-Force some time ago (note how commentary on that didn't end up here!) and had this thought. Lots of people complain about Rob Liefeld's art. I grant you, it is stylized and not to everyone's taste (personally, as I get older, I kinda enjoy it more). I reallllllly don't think the penciling was ever the biggest problem with that art. I think it was the colouring.

So much detail was lost due to the limitations of the colouring process of the era. Colours were just splatted on willy nilly. It was ugly! You can't even really wade through it to enjoy or appreciate some of the art due to the colouring. This is not a condemnation of the colourists of the time. I know there were limitations due to the process.

I'd show some examples but I do not want to get too negative or critical. Instead I will go back to Infinity Gauntlet. While it does not suffer as much from the colouring issues as X-Force seemed to, there are lots of points in the series where, compared to colouring today, it really is just basic and boring. The pencils are under-served. Lim and Perez's art deserves better. I don't know if it is possible but I would LOVE to see this series recoloured using modern techniques. Do it as a nice hardcover and put it out during the release of Avengers 3. Marvel, you know it should happen.

Anyway: here's a fun scene from issue 4 which serves as a nice contrast to modern comics where Captain America and Cyclops are not as friendly.

Get 'im, Cloak!

Spoiler alert: Cloak did not get 'im.

Also: Cyclops' X-Factor era costume was pretty nice.

Other awesome bits from the series: Dr. Doom's duplicity (shame he can't be in the film, but I bet his role could be filled by Tom Hiddleston's Loki!) Mephisto's secret attempts to undermine Thanos (Hiddleston in this role for the film too), the end with Thanos becoming a farmer (cooler than it sounds, yo), heroes like Cloak working with the big guns, Dr. Strange hanging with the Cosmic crowd, Celestials using planets as weapons, Drax the Destroyer in his purple cape (I do hope there is some kind of nod to this in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie...), Black Widow saving a baby from a fire, Eric Masterson's mullet....and so much more.

This was a really fun series. I really enjoyed re-reading it and seriously, if Marvel releases a recoloured version I will buy this sucker again.

I am going to reread Infinity War and Infinity Crusade. I don't recall those being quite as awesome as this one soooooo maybe you won't see them here. But maybe you will!

Geoffrey vs. Hawkeye #16

Hawkeye is straight up my favourite Marvel superhero. Hearing-impaired, ex-con, powerless Everyman with a bow FTW. This is of course the Clint Barton Hawkeye I am referring to. He's right there on the background image of my blog, from the cover of West Coast Avengers #24, the first American comic I ever bought as a comic collector and fan, though of course faaaaaar from the first comic I ever read. At some point I will do a whole thing on Matt Fraction and David Aja's masterpiece, Hawkeye. Today is not that day. I did finish #16 of that series earlier, an issue that focused on the female Hawkeye, Kate Bishop.

Here's the best panel from that issue. A little meta, and it is only gonna be funny to more-hardcore Marvelites, but it's a good one. A real good one.

Bwah ha ha has all round.

One criticism regarding the current Hawkeyes: the sunglasses instead of masks thing. Clint Barton's classic Hawkeye costume is THE BEST COSTUME EVER. Dear, sweet Marvel. Please revert. Thx.

Geoffrey vs. Nick Spencer's Bedlam: Volume 1

Another kinda sorta violation, but this one hinges on a personal hang up rather than anything in the work itself that may read to me as an objective flaw.

I am talking about the first trade collection of the Image Comics series Bedlam, by Nick Spencer, Riley Rossmo and Jean Paul Csuka. Covers by Fraser Irving.

I am currently really enjoying Spencer's work on the Marvel Comics series Secret Avengers (and Avengers World, though I have only read issue 1) so I thought I would give this a try.

The high concept here is what if a villain somewhat like the Joker got cured and turned to crime fighting instead of crime doing. Solid enough premise for my tastes.

The art by Rossmo is scratchy and sketchy in a very appealing way. The book looks really nice. The story was good. The lead, Fillmore Press, is likable (after he is cured anyway) and the mystery surrounding his cure is honestly quite compelling.

Here's where it lost me. The opening scene is Madder Red (Fillmore's supervillain name) in his last stand. He kills a bunch of kids on a school field trip at a concert hall. This scene seemed to be a call back to the Joker's actions in The Dark Knight Returns, where he kills a studio audience and later a bunch of  boy scouts. It's chilling and frightening and very effective.

Ever since I had my daughter though, I can't stomach violence against little girls. Fiction is supposed to be fun to read and I can't find any fun in it. I can think of other scenarios that might have the same emotional resonance without killing a little girl and I have to wonder why, why specifically it had to be a little girl killed.

This has thrown me out of other fiction too. The Night Lords trilogy, a Warhammer 40000 book series by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, has two different scenes of little girls getting killed by giant cybernetic warriors. Why? I am really not sure. All I know is it threw me out of the work, which I had been loving, and after the second scene I only slogged through to the end to finish the book. The enjoyment was gone. It threw me so far out that I have not since been able to bring myself to read any more books by Dembski-Bowden because I don't want to read about the murder of little girls in my fiction based on a game of little plastic spacemen fighting each other.

Anyway. Not to slag on that dude. He's a really good writer. As I said at the start, this is really a personal peccadillo.

So. Dead little girl. I kept reading and I really did like Bedlam. I would like to see where it is going. I just hope that Spencer can maybe kill someone other than a little girl next time we need to see just how awful Madder Red used to be.

I think Nick Spencer is definitely "One To Watch". He seems to tap into the Big Ideas I really love in comics (like Grant Morrison and Jonathan Hickman). I will have to explore his other creator owned works when I have the money.

EDIT: Totally forgot to shout out Superior Foes of Spider-Man. That is an AMAZING series.

Geoffrey vs. Velvet Volume 1: Before the Living End

This post will kinda sorta violate the ethos behind these blog posts. Since I have yet to publicly define the ethos of this blog, I shall do so now.

When it comes to talking about comics, or indeed any form of so-called "geek media", so much of what is written is negative. It's just nerdrage after nerdrage about everything from Pakistani Ms. Marvel to J.J. Abrams on Star Wars and blah blah blah. If you are a geek/nerd/some other identifier that gets what I am talking about, you know what I mean. You've probably done it. Nerdraged. I know I have.

If I am going to spend time writing about comics, which I love, I am not going to indulge in this. It's low-hanging fruit to come up with witty barbs with which to sting the hands of those who would craft these geek media artifacts which I may scorn.

This blog is only for me to write about comics (and maybe other stuff too but for now comics) that I love. I sorta dropped the ball on that in my New 52 post, which was not overly negative but really did indicate my feelings about the failings of the...see? There I go. Not gonna do it.

So. Comics I love.

Which brings me to Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's Velvet: Volume 1 - Before the Living End.

I decided to try some creator owned stuff. I picked three comic writers that I genuinely enjoy and ordered the first trades of some of their series. All coincidentally Image publications. The already mentioned Velvet, Bedlam by Nick Spencer, and Rick Remender's Black Science.

Since I paid for and read all three, I feel like I want to write about all three, even if my level of love for the three works is varying and therein lies the violation in a kinda sorta way.

I did not love Velvet. I guess I liked it well enough. Epting's art (colours by Elizabeth Breitweiser) is wonderful. The character of Velvet Templeton is different and compelling (a middle aged bad ass female spy). The rub is that I guess I do not love pure espionage stories. This work seems very old school James Bond. The story turns, while not being maybe that surprising, are well told and since this is but the first chapter of an ongoing, I suppose it could surprise the reader well enough down the line.

So. Lukewarm? Yeah, I guess. I was kind of disappointed. I LOVED Brubaker's run on Captain America and have loved some of his other work. I really felt the ball was in my court for loving Velvet.

I'd still recommend it to people who like pure espionage stories. I am not super familiar with the genre, as it leaves me cold, but this does seem like a comic that would really blow someone into that kind of thing away. I honestly think my parents would LOVE it but getting them to read graphic fiction would be a huge feat. I will probably try anyway.

I really want to support creators of work I love and I genuinely feel bad that I did not like this as much as I was thinking I would going in.

Geoffrey vs. Afterlife With Archie

I am no Archie aficionado. As a comics fan and long time comics reader, I know I must have owned Archie comics during my past, even if I never collected them. I am sure those grocery store digests must have made for some easy and disposable reading at some point in my life.

So while not an Archie fan, I am not a hater either. I guess I can appreciate the charm and admire the Jugheadian fantasy of being able to eat a seemingly unending plate of cheeseburgers.

Recently, the fine folks at Archie Comics, after over 70 years of accumulated stories, decided to spice up the already spiced up world of Archie by killing Jughead, turning him into a zombie, and having Riverdale overrun with a cannibalistic orgy of violence.

Just another day in the Afterlife with Archie!

I bought the first trade recently and was very, very impressed.

It's not played for laughs and a lot of the comic style hijinks from the regular comics seem to come across as being a bit more sinister. But it's also not played for grossness for grossnesses sake either.

The series is written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa with art by Francesco Francavilla. Aguirre-Sacasa is a writer and producer for the TV series Glee. I don't have much to say about Glee because I have never watched Glee. That's about all I know about Glee. I can sure tell you though that his writing on Afterlife with Archie is stellar.

I think it's ballsy to take a 73 year old perpetually teenaged wacky hijinks comic character and translate it into a dark, serious, mature work that echoes old EC Comics horror stories. Ballsy is kind of Archie Comics' brand these days though, as they introduce openly gay characters and give them their own series (Archie's pal, Kevin Kellar) and advance the plot through two different series exploring Archie marrying Betty and Veronica. The latter isn't as ground-breaking as the former but it is still pretty big when most of Archie's adventures seem to involve thwarting Reggie's attempt to cheat on a high school test while eating cheeseburgers at Pop's and mooning over the same two girls.

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE!

Back to Zombie Jughead. Juggy's dog Hot Dog gets run over and he approaches Sabrina the Teenaged Witch (sadly not played by Melissa Joan Hart - the only flaw in the story I think) to Pet Semetary the furry brute back to life. Faster than you can say "Necronomicon", zombie Hot Dog is spreading the undead cannibal plague all about Riverdale and a horde led by Jughead "Zombie" Jones is surrounding the surviving Riverdellians, holed up at Veronica's Lodge Manor.

There are dark character moments, strong action beats, scary and constructive uses of the zombie tropes, and really clever plays on 70+ years of character building that pay off even for casually Archie-aware readers, such as myself.

All round I have to say this is the best zombie comic I have read. Sorry, The Walking Dead. It's also one of the best horror stories I have read in a while too.

Now, about that art...

Holy crap do I love Francesco Francavilla's work!  GALLERY GO!

The above is his cover to Avengers Arena #16, featuring Cammi, a Marvel character. It's dark, retro, modern, dangerous...AWESOME!

Fantomex Max #1. It's Jim Steranko and Mike Mignola's art love child for this fantastic take on personal fave Grant Morrison's Danger: Diabolik expy Fantomex! AWESOME!

Check that out! Jason has never looked better! AWESOME!

I love how he uses red. And somehow he makes post-AvX Cyclops look like a Kirby-created classic. AWESOME!

This is just a piece Francavilla did for kicks. JUST FOR KICKS! This comic doesn't exist but I wish Steve McQueen had been Batman. AWESOME!

Here's a take he did for horror writer Joe Hill's novel N0S4A2. Which was the best horror story I have read in years. MORE AWESOME RED! Has he made some devil-deal to use the blood of angels in his art? I don't know and I don't care because it is AWESOME!

I forget what this was from. I think it was just a pin up in a What If?. AWESOME!

I love his art because it feels simultaneously modern and classic. Like I could have found this in 1922, 1952, 1982 or 2222. Timeless. These could be covers, panels, posters...they just work. The composition is so brilliant, with the lights and darks and OH MY GOD THE RED.

Yes I am gushing. But I have not found an artist I have enjoyed this much since Frank Quitely. (Aside: Laurence Fishburne looks like a living Frank Quitely drawing. Go ahead, watch an episode of NBC's awesome show Hannibal and tell me I am wrong. You cannot.)

Should it ever come to pass that someday I am a writer of illustrated fiction, I would love to work with Francesco Francavilla.

Ahem.

All that aside, I really did like Afterlife with Archie and I will definitely be following it in trades as it goes along.

Geoffrey vs. Deadpool #22

I have a love/indifference relationship with Deadpool. I used to think he was a worthless 90s relic buuuut...lately I have noticed he is kinda hilarious in the right hands. Those hands right now are writers Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan. Posehn is an actor/comedian who you have definitely seen in things. Duggan is...some guy, I dunno. But he seems to know his way around a pen.

ANYWAY! I never cared for Deadpool because I felt his overall design was unappealing (cheap Deathstroke knock-off), his powerset was ill-defined and weird in the way of most 90s Marvel mutant characters, and  he always seemed to be featured in punny-not-funny stories that were clearly outside continuity.

I started to get the appeal a bit after reading his appearances in Rick Remender's run on Uncanny X-Force. Deadpool worked in there. I kinda thought it was just due to the situation in that particular book by that particular writer.

Then I read the most recent run on Thunderbolts, written by Daniel Way and later by Charles Soule. I liked Deadpool there too, especially his interactions with the non-mutant portion of the Marvel universe.

So I decided to give Deadpool's main series a try, starting with the storyline called "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", which involves, in the broadest terms possible, Deadpool going to North Korea to look for his daughter, accompanied by Captain America and Wolverine.

This storyline was action packed, funny, and emotionally moving. What more could you want, right? So now I quite like Deadpool.

Here is my fave panel from issue #22. This made me crack up but it probably won't make too much sense out of context, even though Deadpool explains it all with dialogue in-panel Art by Mike Hawthorne, colours by Jordie Bellaire.

There he is, flying along in Phil Coulson's car. Hee hee hee! Delightful!

Anyway. I like Deadpool.

Added bonus contextually hilarious panel from Thunderbolts # 15, written by Soule, art by Jefte Palo.

Oddly enough, both the above panels are from stories in which Deadpool uses a hansom cab. Is that his signature vehicle? If not, it should be.