Well, here we are again. Thanks to Paul S. of Goggle Kid for his comments on last week's reviews; it's true, the subtext isn't the first thing most people notice about Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose - that'd be the gorgeous naked women. I just like talking about the allegory side of it because, well, what explanation do gorgeous naked women need? In other news, I've noticed my tendency to blather endlessly is resulting in increasingly long paragraphs, so I'll be using bullet points rather than paragraph breaks to differentiate one review from the next - hopefully that'll make it easier to read.
Empowered volume two ~ Volume one of Empowered was a surprise delight - I bought it largely on a whim, having read one interview on Comic Book Resources with creator Adam Warren, and seen just a handful of preview pages, and it turned out to be tremendous fun. Empowered was originally the subject of short comic stories by Warren, and slowly took on a life of her own, resulting in longer and more complex stories and character arcs - this second volume, therefore, features far longer segments than the first, which featured Emp's debut in stories just a few pages long each. Thus volume two doesn't feel quite the same as volume one, but that's not saying it's not as good - just different. Few stories mean fewer starting points, so there's less of the random switching between topics that the first volume features; on the other hand, longer stories means more opportunity to go off on tangents, and additionally more opportunities to focus on key plot points or scenes, and really get beneath the skin of them. Emp remains, as always, a funny, adult-but-fun kind of story, heavily pop culture literate in the Buffy style, and very sweet at heart; this volume is a refinement of the original, with a bit less roughness around the edges.
Warren's art is un-inked and un-coloured - and amazing. It's a bit of an adjustment when you're used to inks and colours on your comics, but when you see what can be done just with an HB pencil, with different pressures and angles of the tip and shading using the side of the pencil, you wouldn't have it any other way. The cover features a rendition of Emp inked and coloured, and I gotta say, I'm glad the interior is left at the pencil stage - the 'polished' version isn't bad, but the pencils do so much that can't be captured by ink. I'm not normally a fan of black and white comic art, but there's no denying it's used to best effect here, and is no reason to pass this title by. Getting over 200 pages of Empowered all at once - for a very decent price - is a very nice cherry on top.
Atomic Robo #1 ~ The first issue in a six-issue series from Brian Clevinger, creator of the riotously funny 8-bit Theater webcomic, which chronicles the adventures of Atomic Robo, a smart-aleck android built by Nikola Tesla. In this issue Robo is recruited by the US Army in 1938 to defeat a Nazi mad genius, and... come on, doesn't that tell you everything you need to know? It's a light-hearted mix of steampunk and serial adventure, written with flair and panache - the 8-bit Theater humour is instantly recognisable - and drawn in a cartoony, slightly edgy style by Scott Wegener, with Ronda Pattison providing suitably fun, but not over-the-top fun, colours. Robo takes on a horde of Nazi soldiers, and ultimately their super-powered boss, with wisecracks aplenty, and amusing levels of slapstick violence, and it's all good fun.
If there's one fault, it's that Clevinger seems to enjoy the steady pacing of an adventure serial a bit too much - 8-bit Theater routinely packs a lot more panels on the 'page', with the result that the strips are much denser in dialogue and story than Atomic Robo. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun comic, and the pacing and spacing of events over panels is used to good effect, but at the end of it, I felt like I'd only just started reading - all in all, with only six issues scheduled, I'd rather see the pacing tighten up so we end up getting more Atomic Robo, even if it does condense away some of the visual breadth. Not sure that last sentence made any sense, now that I re-read it. No matter - regardless of pacing, I have no hesitation in recommending Atomic Robo to anyone who likes fun, and if you don't like fun, what's wrong with you? Now, if only Tesla had built a female counterpart...
Ms. Marvel #20 ~ I still maintain that this book would work better if these three-issue stories were compressed - spread the ongoing character arcs out over the same number of months, just have more varied supervillain-battling going on around them - but this conclusion to the Puppet Master story arc was quite satisfying. Said villain's scheme was especially icky, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this acknowledged, with Carol more than usually determined to mete out some ass-kicking to her adversary, thanks to a rather clever twist from a supporting character. No doubt everything will be back to status quo - Puppet Master included - soon enough, but within this title, I felt a satisfying sense of resolution. Carol's Lightning Storm team continues to be entertaining, though nothing especially noteworthy happened with them this issue, and both major fight scenes between Carol and her team and Puppet Master's mind-controlled super-heroines were executed with flair and ingenuity. The issue concludes by drawing several ongoing threads into a cliffhanger, which anyone who's seen the cover of #21 will know all about already - let's just say I'm looking forward to it.
Bomb Queen IV #2 ~ BQ's war on everyone continues, and this issue has its good points and its shortcomings. For one, it felt Queen-light - a lot of time is spent on other characters, and that combined rather unfortunately with the relevation that BQ's current violence spree is being engineered by a demon to make Bomb Queen herself, and all her people, feel not especially important to goings-on - just pawns in a game being played one level above them, really. On the plus side, there's ample violence and savagery - can't miss that - and the diversion to 'Editor Girl', which could have come off as goofy, was instead... well, okay, it was goofy, but a fun kind of goofy, and quite entertainingly handled. This issue introduces Nyx to the equation, and as long-term readers will already have guessed most of what is revealed, all that really happens is that she's put into place for next issue. Not the strongest issue of Bomb Queen ever, but #1 had enough power that this series can coast a bit, and hopefully pick up pace next issue without having lost its way.
Howard the Duck #1 ~ A bit of a gamble on my part: I bought this because She-Hulk is going to appear (in issue #3, if I recall), it's only four issues in total, Juan Bobillo is doing the art, and Ty Templeton, who co-wrote with Dan Slott the last three issues of his She-Hulk run, is writing it. The gamble didn't entirely pay off, sadly - there's humour here, but not enough really insightful, funny moments, and a bit too much forced comedy, and while Bobillo's art is the same as it always is, it's not art that's attractive for its own sake: Bobillo is excellent at providing art to support a funny story, but if the story's not there, the art is kind of purposeless. That's the case here - Howard's arc this issue, such as it is, is simple and obvious, and a lot of time is spent traversing the very direct route from A to B. Compared to the She-Hulk issues Templeton co-wrote, the absence of Slott's densely-packed plotting is a real sore point. I'll stick with it - like I said, only four issues - but I hope things improve.
Shanna the She-Devil: Survival of the Fittest #3 ~ Still fun, but a little bit unsatisfying to tell the truth - in this third of four issues I was hoping for something a bit plot-twist-y to spice up the ending, but by the looks of things what we're going to get is what it looked like we'd get from the beginning. Not that that's a terrible thing, and I guess one shouldn't over-complicate a leopard-skin-bikini-girl story too much... perhaps I'm just a bit miffed that my favourite supporting character (frankly, the only one who's seemed to be a character) got eaten. Prehistoric hijinks of all kinds played out, with raptors and pterodactyls and sabre-toothed tigers and cavemen and the works, so it's not like there wasn't stuff happening, and at least the jewel thieves know more about wildlife than the supposed-environmentalist in Jurassic Park: The Lost World. Khari Evans art, if anything, is getting more Khari-Evans-ish, with that particular style of faces she does becoming overpowering in some panels, but the energy is there in the fight scenes where it counts. Overall, #3 didn't drop the ball - it just didn't do anything remarkable with it.
JLA: Zatanna's Search ~ A bit of old skool fun from the 60s, with Zatanna - now famous (I hope, anyway) from Seven Soldiers of Victory - making her debut in a storyline that crossed over a bunch of the big titles of the day, including Batman, Hawkman, The Atom, Green Lantern, and JLA. There's no mistakeing the style - nearly every panel is narrated, everyone voices nearly every thought they have, and I can't swear that Batman didn't call Robin 'old chum' at some point, though that may be my imagination getting the better of me. Still, in spite of how we might sneer at the old comics nowadays, there's a lot of creativity and ingenuity in the writing, and the art, simple as it is compared to today's lavish computer-aided pages, is full of energy and purpose. The overall storyline is a touch haphazard - even including a rather flimsy proto-retcon that nowadays would have people howling 'Superboy punch' in derision - but there's enough of a unifying theme and purpose in Zatanna's odyssey that the volume is bound together nicely, and feels quite pleasingly cohesive to read. Zee herself is, naturally, far more restrained and straight-laced than today's version, but she's portrayed as courageous, intelligent, and independent, and it's no surprise that she caught on in readers' imaginations and endured to the present day.
Well that's it for this week folks - though don't forget, if you're interested in action figures, to check out the Luna review. Next week looks like a bit of a quiet one, with only Wonder Woman #13 and Heroes for Hire #14 on my radar so far - though I may pick up some others, and I've just bought the first Manhunter trade paperback, so I'll have some thoughts on that too, and I'm planning on having a new Spotlight - this one on Civil War - online soonish. As always, comments are much appreciated, via the link right here:
